NRA Says We Must Stop the Decline of Hunting

Unless a person has ready access to hunting land, it's difficult to bring others into what would be a New Thing. That's a major problem, absent a fairly fat billfold.

Then there is the societal aspect of competing interests. The "real" outdoors competes with TV and computer games. For young people, the misinformation present in public schools doesn't offer reasons to learn about the realities of nature and the outdoors.

I don't really have an answer...
 
Art Eatman:
Unless a person has ready access to hunting land, it's difficult to bring others into what would be a New Thing. That's a major problem, absent a fairly fat billfold.
Click to expand...
This much is very true.
If I didn't have public land access in Colorado, I wouldn't be hunting.

However, watching my kids/neighbor kids grow up playing various flavors of Xbox or PlayStation, i notice that:
1. They mistake thumb skills for life skills.
2. They mistake game tactics for real life tactics.
3. Their patience level drops the more they play.

How are you going to keep them down on the farm when they are so good they can get to level 3 without missing once?
 
"equipment expenses"? A gun and a knife ....and if you are on this forum, it's likely you have a selection of those
Click to expand...
Knife is cheap. Gun choice is limited in my state and I would not own one of the models that is legal for hunting if not for hunting. Clothes, stand, hunting boots, etc. It all ads up.

.... everybody needs a break .... mine is Firearm Deer Season ....and if you are telling me that you work even 300 days a year, I'm callin' BS. I make time ..... but you do what you want ...
Click to expand...
Part of the point here is hunting can be a pretty expensive break. One of my alternatives is wood turning. I can actually make money woodturning. Not much per hour, but I net positive.

as for "a couple hundred dollars driving around" ..... stop road hunting and stay on stand ...... you couldn't find enough ground to hunt on and now that you found some, you are driving around aimlessly?
Click to expand...
Have to get to the stand. Have to drive to all those houses to knock on doors.

as for depreciation ...... the newest vehicle in this household is a 2010 .... there ain't no appreciable depreciation .... the rig I took hunting this year was my 1996 F150 extended cab ..... it's the same thing I've been driving down there since 1998 ....
Click to expand...
Have you ever figure transportation costs for a fleet? As part of my job at a small company I ran with a small fleet I did. It is astounding. $30.00 for an oil change every three thousand miles? That is a penny a mile in oil changes alone. Lots of cars go 5,000 now. On synthetic that will cost $50.00. You can change it yourself and save a few bucks, but there goes an hour or two by the time you get to the store to buy stuff, dig out the tools, change it, take the old oil somewhere to be recycled. It all ads up. Fast. Gas is generally less than 10% of total cost. I've know a lot of people who thought they were making lots of money but could never quite get ahead b/c their contracting job had them running all over and they didn't calculate their expenses correctly.
http://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/


everybody has their priorities, I guess ....
Click to expand...
I currently have my retirement funded. Every dollar I save at this point is like time I buy back at the end of my career. If I am going to spend money I need to get the best bang for my buck. Hunting hasn't been close the last few years.
Plan is to buy a property outside city limits in three years. That should make it easier. Eliminate all the transport costs for one.
 
Last edited:
Art Eatman said:
Unless a person has ready access to hunting land, it's difficult to bring others into what would be a New Thing. That's a major problem, absent a fairly fat billfold.
Click to expand...

^^^This. When I was a kid, I could hunt any piece of property as far as I could walk in a day. Come deer season, after first day folks would group up and make drives that were whole sections wide, covering a dozen different farmsteads. Now those same farmsteads/land is considered"recreational" and has access to only a few who either own it or lease it. Both are costly. We are fortunate in the area/my state to have a bountiful public land resource. Not all sates areas are so fortunate. Not having a place to hunt, keeps a hunter from hunting.
 
Unfortunately, hunting is becoming a gentleman's game. Land access is very limited in many areas. I see no real solution to the problem.
 
^ it’s only a problem to those who don’t own land or are in the business of selling licenses


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
It's not just owning land, it's owning enough to hunt. That isn't very many people.

In PA, I don't think a basic hunting license is prohibitively expensive. It's all the extras (furbearer, muzzleloader, archery, antlerless, bear, etc..) that really jack up the price. I am a fisherman and my fishing license costs more than my hunting license.

I think cultural changes and commercialism are major factors in the decline of hunting.
 
it’s only a problem to those who don’t own land or are in the business of selling licenses
Click to expand...

Wrong.



When a tiny minority are the only people doing a thing, that thing will be vulnerable: Look at fox hunting in England. There are large sections of the American population that know nothing about hunting, and would not be upset if it were outlawed.... there are smaller groups that are upset that you are hunting, and they are vocal, well financed, and organized. They have already succeeded in making it a serious crime in some areas to put your own dog down ..... if you want to keep hunting, you aught to ensure it remains popular ...... "We must all hang together, or surely they will hang us separately.
 
I have a friend who retired moved out to the country lives on 20 acres they got 4 deer this year, the big farms have become a patchwork of smaller plots but the deer don’t honor property lines.

Yeah a lot is posted but there’s still deer moving because the habitat has become more suitable to them than the large hay or crop fields that used to be there.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a dog or deer there always a way to dispatch with attracting attention.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
From post #25
""The biggest threat to public land hunting is in the west. Access to millions of acres of public owned land is blocked by private land owners.""

Just drive across ND and MT-over 80% your land and mine. Barbed wire fence on both sides of highways for THOUSANDS of miles.
 
NRA is wrong

The world is changing, a lot since the NRA was founded almost 150 years ago.
Hunting, like buggy whips of the time, simply doesn't have the need it did then, as I expect very few meals today in the US are the result of hunting compared to the total.
And the trend of shrinking and fewer hunting venues isn't going to change going forward.

Like brick and mortar stores, NRA needs to find and focus on its relevance in today's world as Amazon has, and not try to revive the glory days of yesteryear. It ain't hunting guys.
 
ike brick and mortar stores, NRA needs to find and focus on its relevance in today's world as Amazon has, and not try to revive the glory days of yesteryear. It ain't hunting guys.
Click to expand...

So they should abandon support for folks that hunt?
 
jimbob86 said:
So they should abandon support for folks that hunt?
Click to expand...
NRA needs to understand trends and who their customers are today and tomorrow.
It may be as you suggest, or not but the trend I see is making hunting increasingly more expensive and less productive. Virtually none of my peers who hunted in our teens still do.
 
It's hard to get young folks involved in hunting. This is doubly true for young folks whose parents do not hunt. i introduced several teenagers to hunting with their parents permission. Was advised by many: "Don't do that you will get sued if "something happens".

A couple of these teenagers had never fired a firearm. i introduced them to rifles and gave a firearms safety and marksmanship course, one person at a time.

Those five teenagers are now grown up and all continue to hunt: Most have families. One made enough money selling wild hogs to pay for a four year college degree. He is a US Army special operations officer. When he comes to town i'm the first person he sees after his parents.
 
It's hard to get young folks involved in hunting.
Click to expand...

Because something is hard is not a reason to not do it........ I believe the opposite is true: We did not go to the Moon because it was easy, we went because it was hard, and the rewards were many and varied, some immediate and obvious and many more were intangible and not realized until much later ....

I believe the same is true about hunting and doubly so about passing hunting and it's sense of here and now concrete cause and effect ..... on to this new push button "virtual" generation ....


This is doubly true for young folks whose parents do not hunt. i introduced several teenagers to hunting with their parents permission. Was advised by many: "Don't do that you will get sued if "something happens".

.
Click to expand...

Everything has risks. Courage lies somewhere between foolishness, competence and cowardice .... You know where you are, Sir.

A couple of these teenagers had never fired a firearm. i introduced them to rifles and gave a firearms safety and marksmanship course, one person at a time.
Click to expand...

This is how "grassroots" is done, one person at a time. Well done, Sir!


Those five teenagers are now grown up and all continue to hunt: Most have families. One made enough money selling wild hogs to pay for a four year college degree. He is a US Army special operations officer. When he comes to town i'm the first person he sees after his parents.
Click to expand...

The rewards for doing the hard things are sometimes great and lasting..... Again, Well Done, Sir!
 
Many young people are very much about instant gratification. When I encounter something difficult, I tend to step up to the challenge. I don't like being told or thinking that I can't do something. I want to prove that I can. I'm having a very hard time instilling this in my kids and it is very frustrating. It isn't that they aren't smart or strong willed, or hard working, but they apply it to life very differently. They are however kids and that is to be expected. It is my current challenge (duty, really) to teach them to accept challenges and rise to the occasion not because they have to, but because they want to. Technology and society today work against those character traits IMO and are weakening future generations.
 
Many young people are very much about instant gratification. When I encounter something difficult, I tend to step up to the challenge. I don't like being told or thinking that I can't do something. I want to prove that I can. I'm having a very hard time instilling this in my kids and it is very frustrating. It isn't that they aren't smart or strong willed, or hard working, but they apply it to life very differently. They are however kids and that is to be expected. It is my current challenge (duty, really) to teach them to accept challenges and rise to the occasion not because they have to, but because they want to. Technology and society today work against those character traits IMO and are weakening future generations.
Click to expand...

Agreed ..... and I feel your pain, particularly with my youngest two ...
 
the trend I see is making hunting increasingly more expensive and less productive.
Click to expand...

More expensive in absolute number of dollars, yes ....but as a percentage of disposable income? Not my experience at all. I think back to when I was a kid ..... Folks did not have much "disposable income" then .... hunting was the entertainment and part of the grocery budget, shells were common Christmas presents and hunting licenses were popular as birthday presents, .... and back then , a hunter would be lucky to draw a deer tag every other year .... most got around this by having the husband apply one year and the wife the next to ensure a tag was drawn .... but it was one deer a year for until the '90's .... I've taken as many as 4 in a single year and my kids added to the tally most years .... so "less productive" hasn't been my experience at all.
 
Because something is hard is not a reason to not do it........ I believe the opposite is true: We did not go to the Moon because it was easy, we went because it was hard, and the rewards were many and varied, some immediate and obvious and many more were intangible and not realized until much later ....
Click to expand...

LOL, we didn't go to the moon because it was hard. Kennedy said that in a speech and that was nothing more than propaganda nonsense. The goal was to look superior to the Russians. There were lots of hard things we could have done on mother earth that we didn't attempt and still haven't accomplished today. The issue isn't hardness and the comparison with hunting and going to the moon is spurious.

A lot of people won't hunt or won't stay involved with hunting specifically because it can be hard to accomplish. It can be hard to own your own land to hunt. It can be hard to find a lease within a reasonable distance that you can afford. It can be hard to make it to the lease for your recreational hunting time because so many other things in life get in the way of committing that much time. Most hunters aren't hunting out of necessity. It is recreational. In fact, the meat gained by a lot of those recreational hunters is really expensive on a per pound basis. Most of your hunters are doing to be your deer, duck, quail hunters who have season limited time constraints who obtain a limited amount of resources. Many are just trophy hunters, first, and the meat is secondary.

Most anybody that has a job and family isn't likely to have a lot of time to spend going door to door to ask landowners for permission to hunt (free or paid). It is hard work to do and getting turned down is more often the norm than the exception. So no only is it hard, but discouraging.

I understand that it is sad that so many landowners have learned that they can earn income from leasing their land for hunting, earning extra money to support their families. It is sad that so few landowners are willing to allow strangers free access to their land to hunt. Of course, so many of them have gotten burned in the past by hunters who failed to take care of the property, left open gates, left trash, shot livestock, etc.

You can blame $$ for ruining hunting, but should also blame a lot of the hunters who have ruined it for the rest of us by not being good borrowers of other peoples' lands.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top