Everyone used to hunt. At least, it seemed that way.
Gary Cooper palled around with Ernest Hemingway in Sun Valley, Idaho, during hunting season. Sophia Loren was a bird hunter with a fondness for Brittanys.
Even more important than celebs are rank-and-file hunters. There’s no arguing that hunters make up a declining percentage of the population; it’s an inevitable outcome of the increasingly urban makeup of our country. City folk don’t easily become hunters, especially when they have to drive hours through traffic to get to some open country.
Faced with those obstacles, we might all resort to hanging out in hipster bars downtown, washing down artisan pickles with craft beer. Hunting is hard when you’re in the city, and 80 percent of the U.S. population now lives in urban areas.
The total number of hunters is down, having peaked at 16.8 million in 1982. The good news is that the numbers are fairly stable. In 2015 there were 14.8 million paid hunting license holders in the United States, according to data compiled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (229,317 in Montana). Even though the overall numbers have slowly declined over the last 30 years, it seems to have stabilized in the 14-15 million range for the last decade or so.
There’s a similar tale to tell with fishing. There were 28.5 million fishing license holders in the U.S. in 2015. That number topped out at 31.5 million in 1988.
Remember, while the number of hunters and anglers is down a bit in the last few decades, the overall population has grown dramatically.
Even though the number of hunters and anglers is relatively static, there remains cause for concern. American hunters look much like they always have: we’re mostly male, white and live in rural areas. There’s nothing wrong with being any of those things, and I’m not just saying that because I qualify on all accounts. But we need to be mindful of the fact that the overall population fits that description less and less every year.
Should we care? Absolutely. As mentioned, most U.S. citizens now live in urban areas, women outnumber men and 40 percent of the population are minorities. Despite that, it’s the simple truth that virtually all of my hunting companions over the years have been white males. The same holds true for participants on most television hunting shows.
That’s not so much the case with angler buddies. In fact, when I became a member of the Deep Creek Fly fishers back in Southern California some 30 years ago, that was a pretty diverse group.
All these diverse folks are voters. Most of them don’t care one way or the other about hunting, as long as it is perceived as ethical and reflecting Fair Chase principles, even if they’ve never heard the term “fair chase.”
The best way to ensure those folks don’t move from the neutral to the anti-hunting camp is to convert them ourselves. We need to turn more women, minorities and millennials into hunters; it inoculates them from the disease the anti-hunting mentality represents.
Hunters and anglers still foot the bill for wildlife conservation in this country, including about $1,000 I’ll spend this year for licenses. I’ll also contribute excise taxes when I pick up ammo, and possibly a new 20 gauge.
The problem is that the demands on state fish and wildlife agencies grow more complex every year, and the responsibilities for managing non-game animals threatens to overwhelm what are some of our most efficient government agencies.
We need to line up a new set of celebrities to add some glamor to our cause. I know many are fond of Gonzo hunter Ted Nugent, but his uncompromising beliefs don’t play well with non-hunters. We need to find a better way to speak with non-hunters. The future of hunting depends on it.