I have seen the decline in my friends and family hunting. A common issue for all of them is the difficulty in obtaining a hunting permit. For example, Utah sold unlimited deer and elk hunting permits until 1994. Then deer permits were cut by 150,000 (from the high sales of 250,000) and people are now forced to draw. The application period is in February-- when most people are not even thinking about hunting. Then our state decided to grow antlers on elk and now it takes 15+ years for the average hunter to draw a permit. It takes time and dedication to play the game. Of course whatever is best for the game should be the management strategy.

Restrictions to access through less hunting permits or restriction to access through loss of lands to hunt are an issue.

Let me put it like this. Here in west Tennessee deer hunting has long been big. Time was I can remember what the traffic was like at 4 a.m. on opening day on the highway east to the main hunting areas of west TN and north MS. SUVs, pickups, RVs, mostly towing trailers with 4 wheelers (or in them days, 3 wheelers). Crowded just like afternoon going home rush hour on the interstate. Bumper to bumper, nearly. At 70 mph.

Or going in the opposite direction, west across the bridges to the flooded rice and bean fields and flooded green timber of Arkansas for the opening day of duck season (many of us were torn on which to attend, because duck and deer open the same day). The crowded highways were the same.

And the all night truck stops or the donut shops that opened early were full of guys wearing camo. Also full of big talk.

But today you still see some headed east or west in the wee hours of the morning of opening day. But just a few only.

Not at all like it used to be.

And once you get out there and up on your deer stand on opening day, now you may hear 4 or 5 shots the first couple hours. But very faint and from far away.

Time was, it sounded like a war. And in duck country, you still hear guns going off, but I remember when the clock struck legal shooting time, and the entire battle line opened fire.

Anyway, the young ones, they just ain't taking it up. Many reasons. The Numero Uno big one's the cultural changes.

You've now got so many kids who not only hate hunting and fishing, but they refuse to eat meat at all...

Colorado cut the number of tags issued for elk this year, at least in our units, and are talking like in 2014 that ALL elk tags are going to the draw like the trophy units in the state. Deer tags have been draw only for the last 6 or 7 years and drawing an antelope tag here usually takes 8 to as many as 14 years. That certainly doesn't help our sport.

quote:

Originally posted by MC:
I have seen the decline in my friends and family hunting. A common issue for all of them is the difficulty in obtaining a hunting permit. For example, Utah sold unlimited deer and elk hunting permits until 1994. Then deer permits were cut by 150,000 (from the high sales of 250,000) and people are now forced to draw. The application period is in February-- when most people are not even thinking about hunting. Then our state decided to grow antlers on elk and now it takes 15+ years for the average hunter to draw a permit. It takes time and dedication to play the game. Of course whatever is best for the game should be the management strategy.

Restrictions to access through less hunting permits or restriction to access through loss of lands to hunt are an issue.

Access is one problem, building houses on winter range is another. It's not like the reduction in the number of permits resulted in a jump in hunter success, there are fewer deer in many areas that historically were pretty good. Cache Valley is a good example, a field where I used to see up to a hundred mule deer in late December is now a subdivision.

Tom- That is a good point. I am not saying we should keep pounding a shrinking resource, just that there are less hunting opportunities in our area. Loosing 150,000 deer hunters due to permit cuts at the time meant 8% of Utah's overall population were cut out of hunting deer. That is a direct correlation to the downward trend of hunting. If Dad can't get a permit, he won't take his kids hunting and they in-turn will most likely never be hunters. This was an important part of the debate when Utah went to small hunting units and was being pushed to make extreme tag cuts.

In talking with clients from back east, I hear it is difficult to find access to huntable lands in some areas. That is their reality.

I mostly refer to the average hunter, not the wackos like me and most hunting site visitors. We'll hunt however we have to, but most people just don't have the passion to do so.

The herds are down in Idaho but not the hunters, everywhere you go you see an out of state truck parked. These guys come early, work hard & spend a lot of money because their home state is flooded with hunters or a lack of hunting opportunities.

Dick

Interesting stats. I would have thoughtthe cetral south, Texas, OK, etc, would be higher. In my area, we seem to have a lot of kids getting into hunting, of course it's very much a family actvity. In the shop where I work, we have a couple young guys that are as gung ho as us older guys, one of them has young ones of his own getting into it. We get updates on new hires every week, and I was noticing the other day how many of the new people listed, hunting, fishing, and shooting as hobbies.

quote:

Originally posted by MC:

In talking with clients from back east, I hear it is difficult to find access to huntable lands in some areas. That is their reality.

I lived in North Carolina and Connecticut in the last 20 years, both offer very limited public hunting.

In North Carolina, it's best to either have a friend who farms or join a club that leases land. Once we went to a place that was in the published list of public land, only to find that the state had leased it to a club. Reservoir duck hunting was one of the few exceptions.

Connecticut is another problem, mostly private land and many of the bigger places belong to people who aren't friendly to hunters (sometimes for good reason). It is well to have a friend who farms there, too, or a club membership.

I hunt public land here in Idaho. I have not seen the decline. You still have to get up in the middle of the night to find a place to park and hunt on public land. By the end of our lengthy seasons getting up at 3:00 am starts me longing for some serious decline in hunters. This opinion is not unique to me. On the plus side, I live close enough to hunt from home so if the areas I want to try are overrun with camps and trucks, I can go home and try another day.

How things are, or appear to be in one area, may not or does not give an accurate view of what is taking place. Yes, there are still a lot of people hunting, but numbers are down from 20 years ago. Twenty years ago you could buy a buck and a bull tag OTC in Colorado, 1992 was my first year to hunt there. I have seen the Mule deer season get reduce to only 2 of the gun seasons and all the tags are drawing only. The fact that the mule deer herd has declined triggered that more than anything else. However the elk herd has been increasing, why take away the OTC license sales.

Texas is a poor place to look at or use as an example. Hunting is Big busimess down here, especially deer hunting, but the economy is forcing people to make tough choices and in the overall scheme of things, hunting is going to take a backseat when folks get tired of the BS.

In fact, Texas hunting license sales have been more or less flat for well over 30 years, but, of course the population has nearly doubled in that time, so hunting license sales as a percentage of population have declined significantly and are currently about 4%. This is fairly easy to understand since most of the newcomers are going to go to bigger cities where the hunting tradition is not as strong, and access is difficult and/or expensive.

I wrote this as one of my LAST SHOT columns in about 1988. I would imagine it's no better now with some of the reasons for declining numbers.

WE'RE LOSIN' 'EM

It's no big secret the number of hunters on a national level has declined over the last two decades. With the growth of many small cities into larger cities, a less rural population has resulted. This alone has cut hunter numbers. The seemingly parallel decline occurring in Arizona -- once considered to have a very "rural" population -- is even more distressing.

Unquestionably, the cities here have also grown rapidly. In the Phoenix metro area alone, the population has jumped from 900,000 in 1965 to 2.3 million now. The state's overall people count has increased proportionally, too. Yet, despite the huge influx of people into Arizona, the sales of hunting licenses have fallen substantially from historic highs.

At a recent Arizona Game and Fish Commission meeting, Education Branch Chief Kerry Baldwin explained the history of license sales. He cited a steady growth in license sales from World War II into the 1970s. The gas crisis of the 1970s signaled the peak of license sales growth relative to the changing population across the country. The key years appear to be 1970-71, when most of Arizona's big-game hunts went to a permit system.

Baldwin also pointed to the large drop in youngsters between 10 and 20 years old now getting into hunting. Overall only 5.6 percent of Arizona's residents bought licenses in 1987 compared to 9 percent of the total population in 1967. The number of youths buying licenses declined even worse.

Many factors have played a part in the overall decline. A poor economy, adverse weather and high gas prices have had noticeable but short-term effects over the years. Declines in specific game populations and regulation changes like the permit system played key roles, as well.

More discouraging, though, are the long-term variables -- the ones that will carry over for the coming decades and possibly predict the future of hunting in this country.

First, we have an aging population. This especially shows among licensed hunters because of the lower recruitment of youngsters. As more hunters get older and quit hunting altogether, fewer people will take their place in the outdoors.

Earlier, I mentioned the growth of cities. With this upsurge in a more urban population, fewer and fewer youngsters get to experience the outdoors on a firsthand basis. Instead, they watch the Discovery or Disney channel to learn about wildlife and the outdoors. By the time they become adults, their only experiences with live animals other than a domestic pet might come from a zoo.

Lifestyles have also changed drastically in the last 30 years. In many families both parents MUST work just to pay the bills. Thus, they have little free time for hunting. Instead, the adults take up golf, tennis, bowling or other pastimes, ones they can enjoy close to home and over a few hours. To them, finding time to play 18 holes is a lot easier than finding a few days to hunt deer. These people spend a large part of their expendable income closer to home, too.

No doubt the current trend in the family makeup accounts for at least some of the lack of recruitment among youths, and it's less than encouraging:



* 30 percent of all children live in a one-parent family;

* 50 percent of all children will live with one parent by age 18;

* 90 percent of all single-parent families have a woman as the that parent;

* 10 percent of the population is comprised of 15-19 year olds;

* 93 percent of the hunters in Arizona are males.



Most juvenile hunters come from homes where hunting and fishing have been a traditional part of the adult family member's lifestyle, according to Baldwin. If juveniles do not participate in hunting or fishing by the time they hit 18 years old, they likely never will. The current surveys support this; 85 percent of current hunting license buyers started before they reached 18 years of age.

Many of my neighbors show just how true these statistics are. At least three families on my block consist of a divorced mother and one or more children. One lives across the street. The mother has been alone for nearly 12 years and somehow has made do on her earnings from two low paying jobs. She was determined to keep herself and three kids off the welfare roles.

When I first talked to the oldest boy nearly 10 years ago, James was 11. I had been outside packing my truck for a deer hunt, and James was cutting his front lawn. He shut down the lawnmower and walked across the street just to visit. During our conversation, I found out he had never hunted and fished only at the park about a mile away. He told me his mother simply never had time to take him. From what I already knew, she probably didn't have the money to spend on even the most minimal equipment either.

Two weeks after the deer hunt, I invited James into my house to see my collection of trophy mounts. They somewhat awed him at first. During the next few months, though, he became a regular visitor. He always enjoyed talking about my trips and looking at the photos from the successful ones.

All my kids are long gone, and I always have these leftover fishing rods, reels, lures, line, baseball hats and other sundry goodies, courtesy of the manufacturers. Plus, my closet contains at least 15 firearms, and I can only use one at a time.

So about five years ago I decided to "adopt" James. During one of his visits, I asked if he thought his mother would let him hunt. He said he didn't know but he would ask.

A day later, I heard a loud knock. When I opened door, James was standing there with a very big smile on his face.

"She said I can."

"She said you can what?" I asked.

"I can go hunting with you."

"Aha, now I understand. Good. But first things first. There's a thing or two we need to get done. I want you to take a hunter education course. Just tell your mom I'll take care of the registration fee and get you to the classes."

The next day I called the game department and got the dates for the next hunter ed class in our neighborhood. James and I attended together, and he graduated with flying colors. A week later, I took him out to the desert and let him shoot some clay birds with my 20 gauge shotgun. We made two more forays to the desert before I felt he had progressed enough to shoot at a live bird without becoming discouraged over missing. On the way home from that third trip, I stopped at a license dealer and bought James his first hunting and fishing license. The next weekend James killed a limit of doves. A week later, we went fishing at Lake Pleasant.

He was hooked.

James is now 20 and attending an out-of-town college on an academic scholarship and majoring in biology. He wants to be a wildlife researcher. He finds little time for hunting and fishing now but still manages to stop by my house and reminisce whenever he comes home to see his mom. Naturally, his mother is proud of James' scholastic accomplishments -- and deservedly so.

I have no doubt the youngster will get back to hunting and fishing once he graduates. Before he left for school last August, he told me he would be home for the Thanksgiving holidays and would like to do a little quail hunting with me and my German shorthair if I have the time.

Of course, I made the time. If hunting is to survive, we need all the help we can get. James and youngsters like him represent the best help around.

----- 30 -----

Plenty of places to hunt in New Mexico, if you can draw a tag. This year I applied for every license available, except bear and lion. Didn't draw squat.

The game dept added a bunch of bighorn tags this year, a total of 16. 15 of those tags went to non-residents.It seems to be the same with the better deer and elk areas also. Most (about 70%) of the antelope tags go to the landowners. To high priced for most of us.

Most resident New Mexicans are just about shut out of hunting in their own state.

Could have a lot to do with why there are fewer numbers of hunters.

quote:

Originally posted by pagosawingnut:
Colorado cut the number of tags issued for elk this year, at least in our units, and are talking like in 2014 that ALL elk tags are going to the draw like the trophy units in the state. Deer tags have been draw only for the last 6 or 7 years and drawing an antelope tag here usually takes 8 to as many as 14 years. That certainly doesn't help our sport.

Can you elaborate? I'm a non-resident elk hunter who hunts Colorado unit 75. For non-residents, first rifle season this is about a 58% chance of draw with no points. With one preference point, a non-resident is substantially gauranteed to draw first rifle elk season in unit 75. Are you saying that this is changing?

I love elk hunting, but I'm not into waiting years to do it. I have gone in 2006, 2009, 2011, and plan to go next year in 2013. After that I was planning to apply every year thereafter for first season with second season as second choice -- going every year (because 2nd season in unit 75 has been an unlimited draw in the past). I'm getting old, now at 56 years old, so feel I don't want to skip seasons.

This would put a major wrinkle in my plans if they limited all these units. I would probably stop elk hunting. Maybe stop hunting generally. Yah, those kind of policies are NOT good to preserve the sport of hunting.

quote:

Plenty of places to hunt in New Mexico, if you can draw a tag.

There is the rub.

quote:

Most resident New Mexicans are just about shut out of hunting in their own state.

There is another rub, and that is why Colorado and some of the other states went to limiting the % of tags/permits, Non-residents could draw.

The residents of the states got tired of being pushed aside in favor of Non-Residents. the game departments of all states are red-headed step children when it comes to funding from the state they are in.

The legislators in Austin, thru the manuverings of "Slick" Rick Perry, have creatively fixed it so that some of the $$$$$ TP&W gets that should go into their accounts, goes into the states Generasl Fund.

Delta Waterfowl did a series in their magazine about this subject a few years ago, the articles are a good read.

from Delta Waterfowl Magazine,

The Vanishing Hunter Part I

The Vanishing Hunter Part II - How the ‘King’s Deer’ became the ‘People’s Deer’

The Vanishing Hunter III, Social Aspects

The Vanishing Hunter IV, The Role of the Media

The Vanishing Hunter V: It's the Culture

Here in south Alabama the main reason is lease prices. Clubs are outrageous with severe restrictions on size or point restrictions. All you see on the shows is management for trophy antlers but what about just enjoying the hunt? A kid has a hard time sitting still for any lenth of time as it is, then when he finally sees game, he has to let it pass. And forget about small game hunting. Not allowed on most leases, some not even when deer season is out. How do you recruit young hunters when they can't even shoot anything?

On one hand its harder than ever to draw a tag ANYWHERE that has draw tags, however the extensive draws have given us a pool of trophy animals like we've never seen. Yes I'm tired of not drawing a Deer, Elk, Bear, Antelope, Moose, Desert Sheep tag every year but I feel that when I do I have the best odds right now of killing a great trophy, better than 20 years ago.
Now if you guys would all just become so disheartened as to drop out of the drawings I'll have better odds of drawing MY dream tags.

Pagosawingnut I must confess I've not heard of elk in Colorado going full draw.
Our DOW manages these herds for maximum dollars and all the over the counter tag sales are keeping the DOW looking good in that respect.
Good luck to you all this fall.

quote:

I'm tired of not drawing a Deer, Elk, Bear, Antelope, Moose, Desert Sheep tag every year

You can get over the counter tags in at least some U.S. state or Canadian provinces for those species, with the exception of desert sheep.

But most are not gonna be "trophy" animals, or even males of the species.

Too much emphasis on "trophy" in the current hunting culture and not enough on just enjoying hunting and the game taken as food.

I hunt pretty much everything I legally can, big game, varmints, small game, upland birds and waterfowl. Often combining hunts, with deer/black bear season in my area running concurrent with grouse, mountain quail, rabbits and tree squirrels. Lot more fun and productive that way.

My out of state hunts in the future will be for cow elk, white-tail does, non trophy pronghorns with whatever small game and bird hunting I can plan on the way to or from.

Either over the counter or easy draw, reduced cost tags, I just want to enjoy myself and put venison in the freezer.

With our economy the way it is, even the reduced price/left over tags are being yanked up really fast because people still want to hunt but either do not want to mess with the draws or cannot afford to put in for the draws.

Lora and I were trying to arrange a doe antelope hunt in central Wyoiming in units with access issues, we were on line to Wyoming F&G 5 minutes after they started selling the left overs and all were done gone.

quote:

Too much emphasis on "trophy" in the current hunting culture and not enough on just enjoying hunting and the game taken as food.

This issue is going to come back around and bite hunters and state game management officials in the arse big time in the next few years I believe.

Here in Texas, the Antler restrictions that were put in place are changing up the dynamics of the deer herd in some areas. This is not an opinion or an assumption or based on hearsay, I am out in the pastures maintaining feeders and game cameras daily. With the emphasis that has been placed on the 13 inch or bigger bucks, the upside is that more quality young bucks are being seen, but people are not taking the time, except on the places with strict management rules of their own in force, to let these bucks mature. The result being once a buck, especially on the smaller properties 500 acres or less, reaches Lucky #13, he will be shot. The downside is that too many branch antlered bucks with inferior genetics as far as antler growth is concerned, that will never reach 13 inches no matter how long they live or how much additional protien feed they have access too.

They are getting a free ride and breeding lots of does, putting more bucks in the herd with inferior genetics, but also passing the genetics for those little racks along to all the does they are breeding, so thayt the fawns, either sex have the inferior genetics. Even if those does are bred by a buck with superior genetics the resulting fawns will still receive some inferior genetics from the doe. The fawn might grow a better rack than its grandfather on the does side of the equation, but nothing equaling what it might have had were the bad genetics been present.

I am happy that some folks are interested in shooting only trophies, but it is not the be all end all of hunting and I believe managing our various species by concentrating only on the "Trophy" segment of the herd is going to prove detrimental to the overall health of the herd.

The emphasis being placed on "Trophies Only" is creating a situation where youths are not developing an interest in hunting because they get fed up with the whole routine and then when an animal does come in sight after all the work, they can't shoot it because it isn't a "Trophy" many kids simply say to hell with it and find other things to do instead of going out and hunting.

My opinion, but the worst thing that happened to hunting was its classifacation as a "Sport". Too many people equate a "Sport" with some form of competition, and hunting is not supposed to be a competition.

quote:

They are getting a free ride and breeding lots of does, putting more bucks in the herd with inferior genetics, but also passing the genetics for those little racks along to all the does they are breeding, so thayt the fawns, either sex have the inferior genetics. Even if those does are bred by a buck with superior genetics the resulting fawns will still receive some inferior genetics from the doe. The fawn might grow a better rack than its grandfather on the does side of the equation, but nothing equaling what it might have had were the bad genetics been present.

Geez, where the heck are you coming up with this?

The genetics of an individual deer never change. Neither a buck's sperm or the carrying of a fawn will do anything to alter the doe's genetics.

The only passage of any genetics is from the parents to the offspring -- 50% from each. That's why strictly culling small bucks is mostly irrelevent because 50% of its genes came from the doe that dropped him.

quote:

On one hand its harder than ever to draw a tag ANYWHERE that has draw tags, however the extensive draws have given us a pool of trophy animals like we've never seen. Yes I'm tired of not drawing a Deer, Elk, Bear, Antelope, Moose, Desert Sheep tag every year but I feel that when I do I have the best odds right now of killing a great trophy, better than 20 years ago.
Now if you guys would all just become so disheartened as to drop out of the drawings I'll have better odds of drawing MY dream tags.

Pretty much sums up Wyoming to. Never seen the demand so high. Even in the draw areas trophy quality is there, but the experience of limited hunters afield is gone. The G&F balances their budget via doe/fawn, cow/calf tags.

Tony, this is one where you are wrong. I respect you and your opinion, but the folks with TP&W have been researching this for a long time. Add to that all of the deer breeders in Texas and the work they and their professional biologists have done, and the proof, in Texas at least is in the pudding.

I do not ask you or anyone else to agree with anything I say, but have the manners not to treat what I say as if I am a foolish child or have no knowledge. You want to be condescending toward me, that is your perogative,but I have been watchinmg and involved in what has been going on in Texas for a while now.

TP&W thru their studies on places like the Kerr Wildlife Management area in the hill Country have proven conclusively, that the offspring of does that were fathered by bucks with superior genetics, when bred with b ucks that had the genetics for big racks, produced fawns that wpould produce big racks. This is simple livestock management. If those same does were bred to bucks with inferior genetics, the fawns produced wouldhave better antlers than the buck that fathered them, b ut not as good as if they had been fathered by a buck with better genetics. I have seen it in action on HF deer breeding operations, and I have the proof, via game cam pictures of what happens when the better bucks are taken pout of the gene pool and only the inferior bucks are left.

If you intend on calling me a liar, just say so.

quote:

Originally posted by Crazyhorseconsulting:

TP&W thru their studies on places like the Kerr Wildlife Management area in the hill Country have proven conclusively, that the offspring of does that were fathered by bucks with superior genetics, when bred with b ucks that had the genetics for big racks, produced fawns that wpould produce big racks. This is simple livestock management. If those same does were bred to bucks with inferior genetics, the fawns produced wouldhave better antlers than the buck that fathered them, b ut not as good as if they had been fathered by a buck with better genetics. I have seen it in action on HF deer breeding operations, and I have the proof, via game cam pictures of what happens when the better bucks are taken pout of the gene pool and only the inferior bucks are left.

Nah, I agree with that part. This is the specific part I was addressing. Perhaps you didn't mean how it reads -- or at least how it read to me.

"...but also passing the genetics for those little racks along to all the does they are breeding.."

Okay, let me re-phrase that, when a does is bred, the genetics, will be inherited by the offspring. The does genetics will not be changed/the bucks genetice will not be changed.

The changes will occur in the fawns produced. I aspologise that I did not clarify that better in my original response.

You are correct ibn that it is not the genetics of the parent animal that changes. however if an animal with superior genetics for antler growth breeds with an animal with inferior genetics the resulting fawn(s) will not do as well as fawns produced from mating of animals where both parents have superior genetics.

Sorry for not making my point clearer.

We're in full agreement.

Sorry for the confusion Tony.

Folks, in 1945 there was about 100,000,000 in the US. Today there is about 300,000,000. On the one hand, those new folks have to live somewhere and this has taken "hunting land" out of the mix. Secondly, you have more hunters competing for less hunting land. The good old days of driving until you came to a rural area, parking the car, and going hunting are pretty much gone. Land owners and farmers have learned that access to land is a comodity that has value. And so this has also taken more hunting land out of access to the general population. So the various states had to go to some sort of lottery for access to their limited acreage.
As it has become harder to find a place to hunt or to draw a tag, more and more hunters have turned to other recreation.
I won't go into the fact that hunters have stood by for years and years whilst PETA and other similar outfits have bombarded our schools with "educational" information that is skewed against hunting.
So you have less and less opportunity to hunt. And your have fewer and fewer folks that are interest in hunting.

Can't argue with any of that.

Based on the land base we have in the US, maybe we have reached carrying capacity in the number of hunters we can support.

465H&H

quote:

Too much emphasis on "trophy" in the current hunting culture and not enough on just enjoying hunting and the game taken as food.

+!

One doesn't make new hunters with trophy hunting

quote:

Originally posted by kudu56:
Even in the draw areas trophy quality is there, but the experience of limited hunters afield is gone. The G&F balances their budget via doe/fawn, cow/calf tags.

That practice makes me sick.

Crazyhorse - I agree with you 100%. There's too much trophy hunting being done today, and not enough hunting for the enjoyment of it. How are we supposed to get a kid interested and excited about hunting when there are so many trophy size restrictions? To a young lad, a forkhorn or 3-point buck IS a trophy, and gives them a sense of accomplishment! I also agree that genetic runts are being given a pass by these trophy size restrictions (in places like Texas), and therefore are able to pass on their their inferior genes. Genetically small-racked bucks should be allowed to be taken - they taste just as good as the big bucks.

I am 37, every year I am astonished at the situation we are facing as hunters.

I would imagine that my father who grew up in the 1940s and has seen the change from how awesome the 1960s was until now is the most affected.

What sucks is it is only going to get worse.

18 of us hunt on 5,000 acres of prime land. Most of us are in our 60's. Our kids hunt with us until they get a car, then they chase women & don't hunt. A few of us now have grand kids that are starting to hunt. Personally my Daughter & son in law don't hunt.

I'm having a problem reconcilling the bad rants about trophy hunting causing the decline in hunting.
Is buying a hunting license just supposed to be about "filling a freezer" ,which is a laugh when you look at the cost, or killing something?
First off, I am not a trophy hunter, I don't have the drive nor time to be one. But, I'd never pass up a top tier animal to shoot one "cause he'd eat good". I'm sure there will be folks that swear that is what they do but they would be in a distinct minority.
And when I say trophy hunter, we're disregarding the folks that patronize places that sell "hunts" on steroid driven animals or pen raised, special diet animals; but rather, are hunters that take the time to be well practiced with their EQ, stay in shape, and do their home work. Whether they are going to a local hunting venue or traveling half way acrost the US.
And I don't see how that is a bad thing.

quote:

I'm having a problem reconcilling the bad rants about trophy hunting causing the decline in hunting.
Is buying a hunting license just supposed to be about "filling a freezer" ,which is a laugh when you look at the cost, or killing something?
First off, I am not a trophy hunter, I don't have the drive nor time to be one. But, I'd never pass up a top tier animal to shoot one "cause he'd eat good". I'm sure there will be folks that swear that is what they do but they would be in a distinct minority.
And when I say trophy hunter, we're disregarding the folks that patronize places that sell "hunts" on steroid driven animals or pen raised, special diet animals; but rather, are hunters that take the time to be well practiced with their EQ, stay in shape, and do their home work. Whether they are going to a local hunting venue or traveling half way acrost the US.
And I don't see how that is a bad thing.

If people stopped placing the emphasis on just the trophy aspect, that would be fine. They aren't. They do not care about the meat, all they are concerned about is the score of the antlers. These folks are pushing that on to their kids. Kids don't give a shit about antler size. They just want to shoot something.

Yank a kids ass up at 4 or 5 in the morning, haul them out into whatever the weather conmditions are, then if they see a deer, telling them they can't shoot it because it ain't __________________, and see how long the kid buys into that shit!

It isn't an endictment against people that want to kill trophy animals. It is when the whole emphasis of the hunt is based on what a rack will score, with no consideration given concerning the meat that was made available at the shot.

There is nothing wrong with anyone wanting to kill a "Trophy" animal, as long as it does not become the be all end all of going on a hunt.

Few if any of us would pass up a "Top Tier" animal if it stuck its head up. To make that the ONLY reason to hunt, and to actually look down on those of us that do not shoot just trophies, is one of the problems.

I guess I'm lucky in that I don't know anyone that would get his kid out at 5 in the AM and then tell him he couldn't shoot a legal animal 'cause it wasn't big enough. If I did, I wouldn't know them long. You can spot folks like that long before you're cornered into going hunting with them. By their vechicles and watches and such. And so can avoid them. And, in truth, I don't think they represent a large enough percentage of the hunting population to have a real effect on things. Perhaps they are so loud, like some of the other minorities, that you think they are a larger group than they really are.
To me a real trophy hunter is one that is competing against himself. When a man makes a post that he killed an X pointer and then adds that it is his personal best, I can really identify with him. But when a guys comes in with: "I past on a 180 (I don't even know what that means) 'cause I felt there was a 190 in the area, etc. etc...". To me, that guy isn't a trophy hunter, he's a bullshit artist. And a poor one at that.
IMHO I think you're painting your indictment against hunters with a very wide brush.

Hello,

I am 28 years old and seen may of the people who I once hunted with drop off. I believe it is a lack of drive and willingness to deal with everything that comes along with hunting. As said before it is not easy to get access to land and with the economy being what it is there is not a lot of time available to invest into it (when work is available its time to work). I am lucky and my parents have a large track of land but if I did not have that my only hunting would take place on traveling hunting trips. I also find it hard as a young man to just start fresh into a new area. What I mean by this is when I moved to my new city I have and still am having trouble breaking into the hunting groups. Most area's are taken and it is hard to get into the "in crowd" but with my land situation it does not truly effect me. Also, the mindset of younger hunters has changed and there is some much more to do without all of the effort (sports, video games, partying, ect.). Then throw in the cost of hunting and you lose a lot of 20 somethings with student loans, cost of living and starting life. I believe hunting will also have a good population but it will be more 40 - 50 year old's getting back into hunting from the time off.

Thanks,

Seth