Most significant threat to hunting?

[John Scifres]

Without a question, the lack of recruitment of new hunters will doom our hunting heritage.  All the other things are contributive but the simple fact that fewer people hunt will eventually make us irrelevant.  The statistics are undeniable.  About 5% of Americans hunt.  Many of those are past child bearing age.  Most have not replaced themselves.

[snag]

You got it John. We will be overrun by ignorant nonhunters. I don't necessarily mean stupid when I say ignorant. I mean they have not grown up in a hunting family and they raising their kids in that same ignorant environment. So, they want to see animals in the woods, but not allow others to kill them...because they don't understand what it means and the benefits of being a hunter!

[John Scifres]

I don't blame the lack of recruitment on anyone as much as I do ourselves.  As I said, the other things are contributive but we did this.  Generally, by the time we realized there a was a problem, really back in the 70s, the tipping point had been reached and we have been going downhill since.  I blame ignorant hunters much more than ignorant non-hunters.

[KentuckyTJ]

I believe Roger hit it on the head. When I first started hunting, deer and turkey's were very scarce around here to say the least. Due to hunters interests and dollars our state wildlife dept. stocked animals bringing them back to the good populations we have today. With hunters dollars habitat preservation also has improved. When our generations kids grow up and don't care whether there are any animals to hunt or even care to hunt period. Habitat and hunting seasons will begin their decline.

It's true hunters kill and take, but we are the ones that brought the animal back and are managing them so the populations don't get out of control. Will the next generations be good stewards of the land and its critters, or will they just not care? Hunter interest and habitat preservation is the key and one can't happen without the other. None of my non hunting friends has ever given a dollars to save habitat or protect wildlife.

[pete p]

your president and vice president.

[George D. Stout]

Apathy, and mostly from parents who use electronic baby sitters.  They are too lazy or don't care to show the kids what's available outside.  

Non-hunters won't end hunting...even more ridiculous to think the President or Vice President will.  It's us......only us.  Hunters who sit around whining and don't know the phone number or e-mail address of their representatives.  They are the first ones to be negative about hunting and never call their reps (they will say it won't do any good).  Of course it won't do any good if you don't do it.

In Pennsylvania we have over 2million acres of public hunting land, and a majority of hunters only bitch about no game.  It's not lack of land; it's not lack of opportunity; it's not non-hunters.   Look in the mirror and see if you are doing all you can to promote hunting.  And not just in your own house.

[Morning Star]

In Pennsylvania we have over 2million acres of public hunting land, and a majority of hunters only bitch about no game. It's not lack of land; it's not lack of opportunity; it's not non-hunters. Look in the mirror and see if you are doing all you can to promote hunting. And not just in your own house.
 

George,

Interesting as Iowa is in a completely different ball park.  Adequate amount of game, yet ranks in the bottom 4% of States as far as public acres.

[George D. Stout]

Morning Star, and leasing will eventually eliminate even more private land there for the average hunter, as in a lot of midwest areas.  The insatiable quest for big antlers has imbedded the seed and frankly it is not for the best overall.  When only the affluent can hunt, what has been gained?

I should have also mentioned that Pa. has large amounts of private land/farms that open their land to hunters.  Even with that, hunter numbers are dropping and I doubt that trend will stop. It's a new age....new generation, different outlook.

[Horner]

I have to add one more thing.  I think that public land is great.  That is what I hunt all of the time.  However, it is over hunted during the state wide gun season.  The early season of bow hunting can be OK, but after the guns crack, you are lucky to see many animals during daylight hours on public ground.  There is nothing wrong with the gun season, it's just that there are to many people on any given track of public land in Ohio.  All of the deer are on the privatly owned farms with limited to know hunting.  This is where the over population stuff comes into play.  Its sad when you hunt your boots off all day long and on the way back home you see 20 or more deer in someones back yard, because they are feeding them.  This is a whole nother issue!!!!!!
Horner

[Mark Baker]

Loss of access to huntable habitat, public or private.  I feel game herds in general are in great shape these days.  But the fact is that "average hunters" cant access them.  This, I feel, is a great contributor to the apathy, the drop-out rate of existing hunters, the recruitment of new ones.  All in the name of money for a few.  The industry of hunting is killing hunting.  

Desperate hunters are also more prone to "breaking laws" or crossing ethical lines than they may otherwise have done.  The difficulty in finding places to hunt, combined with the pressures and expectations that the industry blatantly promotes leads to disappointments and regular folks "giving up" what seems to them something that only the "rich" can do.  This loss of hunter numbers will ultimately lead to declines in revenues and good management options for the public.  That's my 2 cents.

[broketooth]

i live in estern nc andi hear some horrible stuff sometimes. some of the stuff i hear is from first hand sources not to be named. here in eastern nc you can harvest 6 deer total, four antlered and two anterless deer. now from some of these sources ive heard them say" ive killed sixteen so far". wow talk about greed, and they have gone further to say that they havent even filled their tags yet. some of these sources are members of hunting clubs, whom as you may know also run dogs. which i totally disagree with.where is the sport in that? now i only have access to public lands. during bow season none of the fire trails are maintained so all the undergrowth is kinda tall, which makes it difficult for a bow hunter to see whats going on. but whatch out for regular gun season that stuff is mowed down quick. but then the woods is full of gun totin road side hunters runnin dogs. now let me ask you, would you want to step in these same woods with a bow while the gun hunters runnin dogs are at the road 500 yrds behind you while their dogs are runnin loose. and on top of it , which has also been my experience if you are lucky enough to make a harvest and you are draggin one out of the woods these same gun totin' roadside dog runnin'hunters aproach you and say " my dogs where runnin that deer  its mine" what would you do? now i did tell this particular fella." your the fella with the gun, do something". i did walk away with my deer. but man let me tell ya compitition is feirce round these parts. i say get rid of the dogs and the hunting clubs and give everyone including the deer a sporting chance otherwise its just gonna get worse. and the heart of the problem i think is it is those with money. and im not talkin just a weekly pycheck either if ya know what i mean

[Mojostick]

I agree with "progress", and everything that comes with it.

That involves urbanization, where fewer and fewer have less and less concept of the natural world around them or that they are even a part of it. For most, meat only comes pre-cleaned and pre-packaged and somehow hunting a wild animal is cruel but raising an animal in a cage to kill is not.

It involves technological advances. From the 3 channel black and white turning into the 54" HD 300 channel eye catcher to the game Pong turning into Grand Theft Auto III. It involves this very screen we're reading, the internet. It's Facebook, Twitter and the Ipod, with the text message and the blackberry included.

It involves the busy go-go work world many are now almost trapped in to pay the bills. And in order to make up for time not spent with kids, many parents overload and overschedule them with sports activities, ballet, swim classes, band practice, etc.
With all the other activities scheduled, there's no time left for hunting season.

It involves loss of habitat due to sprawl. In order to escape the urban lifestyle, many (myself included) opted for a few acres within reasonable distance to where the good jobs are, yet close enough where there's good schools. But for every new sub-rural development that goes in, one more good hunting woodlot is gone. Then comes the invariable demand for better shopping and restuarants in the area, since those of us who moved farther from the city rarely want to have to go back there, other than for work only.
And then every new store or restaurant eats up that much more vacant land.

And the eating up land isn't a zero sum game. A new big box store eating up 400 acres doesn't eat up just 400 arces. It kills most hunting for at least a 1/2 mile radius, if not more. Given that a gas station and fast food joint will follow, at least a mile radius has been lost.

Then there's single paraenthood. One can't fault unhappy marriages from ending, but a single mom and a dad who gets every other weekend usually results in a kid having a greatly reduced chance of becoming a hunter.

I happen to think that fellow hunters, even those on different sides of any issue are among our greatest assets. Like a family, we're all we've got when it comes down to it.

And as far as "big bucks" ruining things, I can think of "big buck" contests and "big buck night" on local TV hunting shows since I was born. Boone and Crockett has been keeping these scores since 1950.

If anything has changed there, it's the very widespread availability of whitetail deer all across the country, compared to 30-40 years ago. What was once considered to mainstream hunters as an accomplishment, that being killing any buck, is now viewed by more and more hunters as ho-hum, since there's so many deer in so many area's that just killing any buck offers little challange to more and more hunters. If you see 2-3 bucks every sit, compared to maybe 2-3 a year 30-40 years ago, why end your season early, is the thinking that's taken hold.

[dragon rider]

Walt Disney.  

He and his company more than anyone else has popularized the notion that but for hunters, nature is the garden of Eden where all animals live a full happy life and, if they die at all, do it in peace, passing on words of wisdom to their descendants.

Too many people grow up on that stuff thinking man is evil and nature is good.  They have no idea that life of a deer or an elk, for example, is so tough, trying to find food, trying to make it through the winter, trying, where there are still predators not to make it on to some predators dinner menu, that the best of us hunters is a minor nuisance compared to what else they face.  But Mr. Disney and his followers have so well established the argument that hunting is cruel and evil that the facts rarely actually get into the debate.

[saltwatertom]

Loss of habitat.

But.......

As with all things there is always more to the picture. All the little things add up. Pollution, changing values, TV, religon, nonreligon, media coverage that makes a minority look and actually be, powerful, but....

with out habitat you can change ALL the other things and we won't have animals and we won't have hunting.

Also there is more to habitat than just a few acres set aside. Read "Walking the Big Wild" or "Being Caribou" by Heure. He set it in perspective..  

I could go on and on but there it is , my  $.02 worth for now.

[Paul/KS]

When states, such as Kansas, started thinking that big game are a commodity and hunting is a revenue source that is making it harder for some as far as acess...
Couple that with a 24/7 work week and it gets harder for some of us to get the chance to hunt often enough to justify the time and cost...

[GingivitisKahn]

Originally posted by Clay Hayes:
 In your opinion, what is the most significant threat to hunting today?  Think big, think hard.    
[/QB]

I think you know the answer to that:

 

We currently live in burgeoning socialist state and hunting is just one of the many freedoms to which we are apt to wave bye bye.

[Boone the Hunter]

well Roger has a good point, when i was about 12 me and my friend almost had a gun drawn on us by a cop when we were out behind his house plinking with our bb guns, we were in a big woods in an area were you could shoot more than a bb gun, and some crazy lady apparently reported some heavily armed diabolical youths planning on world domination, roaming the forest. Anyway ignorance is becoming a real problem, more and more people are believing they are doing more for the outdoors by sitting on there couch and leaving it alone than the outdoorsmen that love and care
for it more than they could ever understand.

[tcw]

I am not sure what the largest problem is.  I just know that there are several and that I am doing what I think is the most powerful thing I can do.  I am raising my 2 boys to the most ethical, honest and conscientious way that I know how.  

We hunt because any meat-eater should be okay with it.  Meat comes from animals and they are all "innocent" - not just the wild ones.   I'm surrounded by the same ignorance I used to have about hunting and hunters.  Society sees is as barbaric, when it is actually the most fair, ethical (not to mention Godly) way to obtain meat.  Hunting is being bred out of our kids.  You with children need to have good reasons to hunt and then teach them to your kids.  Buy them a license early, get them out in the woods and teach them to appreciate- no, cherish the natural order of things.  Do it within the rules and our numbers will grow.  Their families will do what we are doing.  

I openly share my reasons for hunting with people I work with.  I raise chickens (6 hens) for eggs and grow veggies in the summer.  I see hunting as an extension of this urban agrarian lifestyle that I have going.  I talk openly about it and am prepared to defend my position with honest, valid answers.  Hunters used to be gentlemen - let's bring some of that back, guys.  

PS:  I am in the heart of Minneapolis, Minnesota - a metropolis.

[Chuck Jones]

Pogo said it best....

      "I HAVE SEEN THE EMENY!

      AND HE IS US!

[Zbone]

Leasing and the overall commercialization