Swamp Fox__On The Run
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I have a feeling the problem @Nutterbuster alluded to lies with sight-fishing breeding beds and taking big females from them.
If this is causing a problem, there's an easy fix.
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Quit Expecting Every Hunter to Be So Hardcore. We Need Casual Hunters, Too
- Thread starter tarafrost
- Start date
I have a feeling the problem @Nutterbuster alluded to lies with sight-fishing breeding beds and taking big females from them.
If this is causing a problem, there's an easy fix.
The issue isn't dead fish at weigh-in. It's fish that survive weigh-in but die out of sight and out of mind after what is sometimes their 2nd or 3rd rodeo in the Alabama summer.
From what our fisheries chief told me, they tagged some big fish and found >100% catch rates on breeding-size individuals, with very high mortality rates. When you think about it, it makes sense that there would be delayed mortality from catching a fish on one end of the lake, sticking it in a live well for hours, and then dropping it off at a completely different location. Trout anglers have known for a long time that not every fish that swims off is going to recuperate. Bass are tougher than trout, but we handle bass a lot rougher too.
I can personally attest to seeing post-tourney mortality all the time at the ramp by my old home. And I always had a theory that the fishing off of the public pier there was better right after 50 or so boats dumped their live wells by it...
This is a fairly neutral take on the Auburn study that ADCNR is using to support a recommendation on a 14-20" tourney-only slot limit to take pressure off of breeding stock.
I never really thought about it until I read your post but it is kind of ridiculous when you look at the amount of public land west of the Mississippi vs here on the east coast and how there can be 12 trucks in a parking lot hunting 500 acre tract here and out west access is so much more limited.
As I think on all of this, I come back to my favorite introduction to one of my favorite books, the below is Barbara Kingsolver's take on Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac and the place it occupies in the current zeitgeist.
Aldo Leupold’s Farm Shack—Image credit **** Glaser
“…Environmental news is mostly terrible, and the word environmentalism has become a civic hand grenade. Throw it into a crowd and watch everybody run to opposite sides of the room, arms crossed, glowering. On one side are folks who see the world as a garden we’re entitled to reap to our best immediate advantage; on the other, those who see it as a living home in dire need of long-term protection.”
“The crowd is about evenly divided. Half of us are worried sick about a warming planet, dying oceans, massive extinctions, and the refugees already displaced by floods and droughts on unprecedented scale. We listen to scientists’ predictions, grieve the living systems we’re losing, and try to change our ways as we grapple with catastrophes beyond comprehension. We’ve lionized a Swedish teenager named Greta Thunberg who embodies the angst of a generation as she travels the globe (in zero-carbon conveyances) galvanizing young environmentalists and castigating world leaders for their failure to address the climate emergency.”
“Camped across the room, the rest of us think Greta should go home and watch movies with her friends. We don’t care for being scolded by children. We’d rather believe the leaders who tell us the earth is basically sound. Into each life some rain must fall, the weather has its ups and downs, but it’s ultimately up to God, who wouldn’t let us down. We hunt and fish, burn fossil fuels, mine coal, and harvest crops from our fields, taking these things as our birthright. If we live close to the land, we’ve watched it heal itself time and again. Farmers are conservative by necessity, trusting what worked in the past. We may be wary of new ideas and higher education because of their heartbreaking tolls on our traditions and families. Sending kids away to college brings legitimate dread that they’ll wind up looking down on our lives of labor, follow specialized jobs to distant cities, and raise children we’ll rarely see. This is all to say, we don’t take kindly to high-minded outsiders coming here to tell us what we’re wrong about.”
“Any potential exchange of these views is no longer a debate. It’s a full-metal culture war. You’d think that two camps calling themselves “conservationists” and “conservatives” might find some overlap, but no such luck…”
“It wasn’t always like this. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created by Richard Nixon. Well into the 1990s, many conservatives identified as environmentalists, and when climate change began showing up in the news, Americans of every political stripe were equally worried about it. Now we’ve lost all memory of that. Decades of calculated influence on public opinion, mostly underwritten by fossil-fuel industries, have stoked resentments and left us all blaming each other for our losses while the profiteers carry on raiding the larder. When I came to A Sand County Almanac this time around, I was dragging a heavy heart. And was startled to find something I’d never noticed before in these pages: a pathway to detente. Maybe even progress.”
“First of all, salvation begins with love. That’s not enough, but it’s a start, and Aldo Leopold has more love for life in all its forms than anyone I know, from either camp. The man gets up at 4 a.m. to hear the birds wake up. He’s out there with his dog and his cup of coffee, not just for some cheerful music but to greet species and individuals he admires.”
“…after a reverent passage on wild places, he concludes: “It is here that we seek—and still find—our meat from God.” The use of “meat “ and “God” in a metaphor for deep satisfaction might irk some modern environmentalists, but the words will find purchase in the hearts of rural readers who are weary of being maligned for their loyalties to meat and God. Weary, also, of urban land-saviors who look to nature for spiritual balm or recreation, and presume a moral high ground over the folks who literally owe their survival to the land.”
“…We listen and take our truths—ALL of us—from people we trust, who know us and have our interests at heart. This is a built-in bias of the human psyche, and the crux of the fix we’re in as we stand in nations divided against themselves. As long as we live in entirely separate worlds, without comprehension of the others’ language or daily grinds, the door between us is sealed. Not a word will pass from one side to the other.”
“…I’m unusually preoccupied with this deadlock, as an environmentalist who is also a country girl, raised in rural Kentucky, living now on a farm in the Appalachian Mountains. I love this landscape and my neighbors, but I can tell you that it has never been harder to be a rural person in America. Employment is scarce, schools are under-resourced, doctors and other crucial services are overstretched or nonexistent. The main streets of our little towns are rows of shuttered local businesses, all bankrupted by internet sales and box stores…Out here in the heartlands we’re still raising kids and crops to feed a nation’s appetites for food and labor, but we’re feeling pretty lonely about it. And invisible…If rural folk appear in mainstream culture, it’s generally in a voyeuristic hit-and-run piece on addiction and poverty, or a degrading caricature intended as entertainment…”
“Imagine, then, the novelty of reading A Sand County Almanac, a rural man’s earnest, exultant accounting of his life in the country. He’s not singing his praises to some untouched parcel of pricey wilderness real estate; it’s just a worn-out little farm. Most of it’s native glory was driven out by previous owners who overcropped its topsoil down to naked sand, then abandoned it with debts to the bank.”
“In the heat of modern culture wars, a voice like this could risk getting canceled…Some of his language might mark him as old-school, a product of the same era as the cabal of elderly men who now impose mine-and-drill politics on many nations—that is, the time when the earth’s resources seemed in endless supply. Like those men, Leopold was well-churched in the notion of earth-as-property. But unlike them, he found his way to a nuanced idea of the planet as an autonomous collection of lives. He managed to be more inclusive than the best of us…A mountain’s right to the integrity of all its interdependent species—wolf, mouse, aspen tree—he likens to our human right to possession of our flesh. He feels empathy for that mountain as one living, breathing creature, and talks us into feeling it ourselves. He makes the case for that mountain’s legitimate, legal right to its own good health. With this astonishing claim, he pulls the reader well beyond the accepted wisdom of his time, and the accepted wisdom of ours, 70 years after his death.”
“A Sand County Almanac charts the path he walked from woodsman to environmentalist, and at every turn we can still hear the kid with a fishing pole over his shoulder. For the reader who doesn’t know him, I hope you’re about to meet a friend…He may help you see past the frustrating divides that plague the awfullest failure of our day, as we try to reconcile human subsistence with the needs of our damaged biological home. If you’ve lost all hope of finding a common language for that conversation, you might well find it here.”
I think a "tribe" of Leopoldesque sportsmen is much more likely to survive and be valuable to society than a tribe of influencers or gatekeepers, which seem to be the groups most of us currently fall into. Some of us want to make videos and podcasts and start niche industries and be "pushers" for hunting, sometimes in the name of R3, but usually for personal gain. The kneejerk pendulum swing reaction to that seems to be the folks who want to "hunt quietly," but I don't see what the long-term goal is with that. Try to hang on as a shrinking 5% minority that slips further and further into the upper class every year?
Aldo Leupold’s Farm Shack—Image credit **** Glaser
“…Environmental news is mostly terrible, and the word environmentalism has become a civic hand grenade. Throw it into a crowd and watch everybody run to opposite sides of the room, arms crossed, glowering. On one side are folks who see the world as a garden we’re entitled to reap to our best immediate advantage; on the other, those who see it as a living home in dire need of long-term protection.”
“The crowd is about evenly divided. Half of us are worried sick about a warming planet, dying oceans, massive extinctions, and the refugees already displaced by floods and droughts on unprecedented scale. We listen to scientists’ predictions, grieve the living systems we’re losing, and try to change our ways as we grapple with catastrophes beyond comprehension. We’ve lionized a Swedish teenager named Greta Thunberg who embodies the angst of a generation as she travels the globe (in zero-carbon conveyances) galvanizing young environmentalists and castigating world leaders for their failure to address the climate emergency.”
“Camped across the room, the rest of us think Greta should go home and watch movies with her friends. We don’t care for being scolded by children. We’d rather believe the leaders who tell us the earth is basically sound. Into each life some rain must fall, the weather has its ups and downs, but it’s ultimately up to God, who wouldn’t let us down. We hunt and fish, burn fossil fuels, mine coal, and harvest crops from our fields, taking these things as our birthright. If we live close to the land, we’ve watched it heal itself time and again. Farmers are conservative by necessity, trusting what worked in the past. We may be wary of new ideas and higher education because of their heartbreaking tolls on our traditions and families. Sending kids away to college brings legitimate dread that they’ll wind up looking down on our lives of labor, follow specialized jobs to distant cities, and raise children we’ll rarely see. This is all to say, we don’t take kindly to high-minded outsiders coming here to tell us what we’re wrong about.”
“Any potential exchange of these views is no longer a debate. It’s a full-metal culture war. You’d think that two camps calling themselves “conservationists” and “conservatives” might find some overlap, but no such luck…”
“It wasn’t always like this. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created by Richard Nixon. Well into the 1990s, many conservatives identified as environmentalists, and when climate change began showing up in the news, Americans of every political stripe were equally worried about it. Now we’ve lost all memory of that. Decades of calculated influence on public opinion, mostly underwritten by fossil-fuel industries, have stoked resentments and left us all blaming each other for our losses while the profiteers carry on raiding the larder. When I came to A Sand County Almanac this time around, I was dragging a heavy heart. And was startled to find something I’d never noticed before in these pages: a pathway to detente. Maybe even progress.”
“First of all, salvation begins with love. That’s not enough, but it’s a start, and Aldo Leopold has more love for life in all its forms than anyone I know, from either camp. The man gets up at 4 a.m. to hear the birds wake up. He’s out there with his dog and his cup of coffee, not just for some cheerful music but to greet species and individuals he admires.”
“…after a reverent passage on wild places, he concludes: “It is here that we seek—and still find—our meat from God.” The use of “meat “ and “God” in a metaphor for deep satisfaction might irk some modern environmentalists, but the words will find purchase in the hearts of rural readers who are weary of being maligned for their loyalties to meat and God. Weary, also, of urban land-saviors who look to nature for spiritual balm or recreation, and presume a moral high ground over the folks who literally owe their survival to the land.”
“…We listen and take our truths—ALL of us—from people we trust, who know us and have our interests at heart. This is a built-in bias of the human psyche, and the crux of the fix we’re in as we stand in nations divided against themselves. As long as we live in entirely separate worlds, without comprehension of the others’ language or daily grinds, the door between us is sealed. Not a word will pass from one side to the other.”
“…I’m unusually preoccupied with this deadlock, as an environmentalist who is also a country girl, raised in rural Kentucky, living now on a farm in the Appalachian Mountains. I love this landscape and my neighbors, but I can tell you that it has never been harder to be a rural person in America. Employment is scarce, schools are under-resourced, doctors and other crucial services are overstretched or nonexistent. The main streets of our little towns are rows of shuttered local businesses, all bankrupted by internet sales and box stores…Out here in the heartlands we’re still raising kids and crops to feed a nation’s appetites for food and labor, but we’re feeling pretty lonely about it. And invisible…If rural folk appear in mainstream culture, it’s generally in a voyeuristic hit-and-run piece on addiction and poverty, or a degrading caricature intended as entertainment…”
“Imagine, then, the novelty of reading A Sand County Almanac, a rural man’s earnest, exultant accounting of his life in the country. He’s not singing his praises to some untouched parcel of pricey wilderness real estate; it’s just a worn-out little farm. Most of it’s native glory was driven out by previous owners who overcropped its topsoil down to naked sand, then abandoned it with debts to the bank.”
“In the heat of modern culture wars, a voice like this could risk getting canceled…Some of his language might mark him as old-school, a product of the same era as the cabal of elderly men who now impose mine-and-drill politics on many nations—that is, the time when the earth’s resources seemed in endless supply. Like those men, Leopold was well-churched in the notion of earth-as-property. But unlike them, he found his way to a nuanced idea of the planet as an autonomous collection of lives. He managed to be more inclusive than the best of us…A mountain’s right to the integrity of all its interdependent species—wolf, mouse, aspen tree—he likens to our human right to possession of our flesh. He feels empathy for that mountain as one living, breathing creature, and talks us into feeling it ourselves. He makes the case for that mountain’s legitimate, legal right to its own good health. With this astonishing claim, he pulls the reader well beyond the accepted wisdom of his time, and the accepted wisdom of ours, 70 years after his death.”
“A Sand County Almanac charts the path he walked from woodsman to environmentalist, and at every turn we can still hear the kid with a fishing pole over his shoulder. For the reader who doesn’t know him, I hope you’re about to meet a friend…He may help you see past the frustrating divides that plague the awfullest failure of our day, as we try to reconcile human subsistence with the needs of our damaged biological home. If you’ve lost all hope of finding a common language for that conversation, you might well find it here.”
I think a "tribe" of Leopoldesque sportsmen is much more likely to survive and be valuable to society than a tribe of influencers or gatekeepers, which seem to be the groups most of us currently fall into. Some of us want to make videos and podcasts and start niche industries and be "pushers" for hunting, sometimes in the name of R3, but usually for personal gain. The kneejerk pendulum swing reaction to that seems to be the folks who want to "hunt quietly," but I don't see what the long-term goal is with that. Try to hang on as a shrinking 5% minority that slips further and further into the upper class every year?
neonomad
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Moloch always wins in the long run.
Swamp Fox__On The Run
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To return us to the track, let's circle back (as they say) to the original imbecility:
"But you know what else hunting needs? Casual hunters. A lot of them. More than we have now."
That's what she said. ---Literally.
[ba da bum]
Can you imagine anyone saying this about anything else?
For example:
What we need is
more casual trout anglers
more casual pier fishermen
more casual Sunday drivers
more casual deer-doggers
more casual accountants
etc.
The over-riding reason anyone would want MORE hunters, casual or not, is money.
Sorry, sister.
Sell it elsewhere.
"But you know what else hunting needs? Casual hunters. A lot of them. More than we have now."
That's what she said. ---Literally.
[ba da bum]
Can you imagine anyone saying this about anything else?
For example:
What we need is
more casual trout anglers
more casual pier fishermen
more casual Sunday drivers
more casual deer-doggers
more casual accountants
etc.
The over-riding reason anyone would want MORE hunters, casual or not, is money.
Sorry, sister.
Sell it elsewhere.
"What the advertisers that underwrite my salary need is....."
=
we
=
we
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- Jan 5, 2021
- Messages
- 3,530
We are decreasing excessive populations of animals.
Half of my home state of MA has an average population of 10-15 deer per square mile - which is the population ecologists think is a healthy number for this type of ecosystem. If hunting stopped happening in these places deer numbers would get out of control amd the forest ecosystem would cease to funtion in an healthy way.
Other parts of the state have populations that have exceeded the carrying capacity. The islands off the coast have 300-500 deer per square mile…In places where the deer are way out of balance the state is doing everything it can to lure more hunters in. If we all actually made an effort to hunt in the locations where deer were over abundant we would be providing a tremendous service.
I can’t speak to other states, but in MA, license sales are resulting in the continual acquisition of more public land.
I’m kinda surprised by your perspective @Nutterbuster. You’ve gotten pretty cynical. We need articulate people like you helping to make the case for hunting, not against it.
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I want to stress that while I'm disagreeing with you, I'm not trying to be disagreeable. I don't feel like I'm cynical, but I am trying to be extraordinarily realistic about the situation because comfortable conformity, bad ideas, half truths, and other brain worms aren't conducive to fixing a problem that I think is very likely beyond fixing even if we get it right. I care about the problem and get more agitated every year I see it get worse.
MA appears to be on the opposite end of several spectrums compared to AL. Small and blue and urban vs big and red and rural. So I am willing to cede different realities. But, in the conversations I've had with private landowners of rec property and ag, city leadership, and DCNR agencies...hunters suck at population control in extreme situations like you describe when you compare alternatives. The people I have talked to who want to kill lots of deer or hogs fast (farmers, HOA/municipality leadership, private land managers) don't want to do it in daylight hours, during deer season, while abiding by bag limits. They especially don't want to manage draw systems and police lots of individuals, or use archery tackle. They want to go in with traps, poison, spotlights, the works...and fill pickups until they hit the magic number. Our DCNR has tasked technicians with this task on quota hunt property before because hunters wouldnt/couldn't kill the numbers they needed to.
We can't keep pretending that we're the sole sword-in-the-darkness protecting wild places and riding on accomplishments of better men and better administration's. We have to be honest about where we are and what we bring to the table. We have to make environmentalists realize that they have way more in common with us than not, and that we can help them win fights. If we can win fights that protect habitat, then we can all fight over who gets to use it.
IE, if we can save the habitat, we can save the hunt (bad as i hate to quote NWTF). We're largely sitting out habitat fights, and when we do fight, we're going it solo instead of with allies.
We gotta start thinking about if we're willing to die fighting side by side with an elf...
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I agree with all of that.
The public, at least where I live isn’t going to get behind snipers with nihht vision, piles of poison, or driving deer into cages. And as much as some of them dislike hunting, they will choose everyday hunters who want to feed their families and donate meat to the food shelter over the alternative.
MA may be a lot more rural and red than you realize.
I’m all for finding common ground with the snowmobile club, ATVs, equestrians, paddlers, birders, fisherman, mountain bikers, dog walkers, metal detectors… etc etc. land preservation is in everyone’s best interest.
I didn’t realize that we saw environmentalists as separate. I’m one and always have been. I was a tree hugging dirt worshipper long before I took up the hunt. My primary interest in hunting is and always has been about developing my connection to nature and food.
I have been holding off on this because I don't want to jinx it, but I have a very real and very relevant story that I've been part of for several years that may be coming to a close soon.
I live in a suburb of a port city. It is a man-made deep-water port in a shallow estuarine system. It was recently deepened and widened to accept larger vessels so that we could get the economic boost that came with being a bigger, "better" port than another more famous and successful port city. The end result will be ludicrous amounts of money for the dudes at the top, and some of the money will find its way in the rest of the community. That community has groups in it that definitely need it; we're usually tied for poorest state in the union with MS. Understandably, to an extent, big business and local/state/federal leadership have been delighted with the whole thing.
Small problem. The USACOE used what's called thin layer sediment depositing to dispose of the dredge spoil from creating the channel, and planned to continue that methodology indefinitely to maintain the channel. The amount of mud dumped into the bay has been and would/will continue to be devastating to water quality. We've already lost 80-90% of our seagrass and oyster beds, and this could very well be the death-knell for what is left of nursery habitat, which would in turn lead to the collapse of a commercial fishing industry made famous by a Tom Hanks movie, as well as a fairly thriving recreational industry that, in addition to bringing in lots of out-of-state money (to the DCNR as well as the general economy [yours truly makes his living off of this]) provides a great deal of quality-of-life improvement for residents.
The alternative to all of this is something broadly referred to under the umbrella of "beneficial use." Basically the sediment is used inland or dumped strategically to rebuild shorelines or barrier islands, instead of being left to smother the bay floor. It costs the COE money, and doesn't do a dang thing to help make the port money. So the plan was to just dump it and tell people that the bay was "a naturally muddy system."
I've been part of a local nonprofit that realized that the Sierra Club and Audubon crowd wasn't going to win a fight with the city's port authority and the COE. Neither was CCA or BCHA. Neither was the shrimping and commercial fishing industry. Neither were the charter captains taking folks out to catch specs and reds and snapper. Neither were the good-ole-boys in their jon boats.
I sat in town halls and watched the Sierra Club ladies take the mic right after the shrimpers in their white boots and the fly anglers in their silly hooded sun shirts and the charter captains in their AFTCO shorts. Next thing you know, we had the ears of both of our US senators. It's really, really hard to ignore multiple special interest groups in the same community all telling you the same thing.
Four years ago, the environmental group spearheading all of this was seen as pariah by the local hook-and-bullet groups. And the local hook-and-bullet groups were seen as either ignorant hicks or bloodthirsty good-ole-boys making handshake deals on golf courses and pheasant farms by the environmentalists. There is a lot of work to still be done in the relationship, but it took relatively little time to grow into something capable of throwing and landing punches.
Both groups are better off if they win this fight. The rednecks will be able to sight fish for reds and dip crabs and gig flounder, pass those traditions on to their kids and grandkids, and generally enjoy a much healthier fishery. The libruls will get to watch sea turtles and manatees and sunsets and drink cocktails on their little bayside cottages after they go to their local art walk.
The anglers who joined that coalition in my mind did something much more impactful that pretty much every alternative action course I've seen. I really think that if we can stop a "dump mud on the oysters and grass forever" plan, that may be the single biggest local conservation achievement of my lifetime.
If we can replicate that success elsewhere, we can win fights to build and maintain habitat, and that will make it so that maybe we all feel better about having more casual hunters around.
I live in a suburb of a port city. It is a man-made deep-water port in a shallow estuarine system. It was recently deepened and widened to accept larger vessels so that we could get the economic boost that came with being a bigger, "better" port than another more famous and successful port city. The end result will be ludicrous amounts of money for the dudes at the top, and some of the money will find its way in the rest of the community. That community has groups in it that definitely need it; we're usually tied for poorest state in the union with MS. Understandably, to an extent, big business and local/state/federal leadership have been delighted with the whole thing.
Small problem. The USACOE used what's called thin layer sediment depositing to dispose of the dredge spoil from creating the channel, and planned to continue that methodology indefinitely to maintain the channel. The amount of mud dumped into the bay has been and would/will continue to be devastating to water quality. We've already lost 80-90% of our seagrass and oyster beds, and this could very well be the death-knell for what is left of nursery habitat, which would in turn lead to the collapse of a commercial fishing industry made famous by a Tom Hanks movie, as well as a fairly thriving recreational industry that, in addition to bringing in lots of out-of-state money (to the DCNR as well as the general economy [yours truly makes his living off of this]) provides a great deal of quality-of-life improvement for residents.
The alternative to all of this is something broadly referred to under the umbrella of "beneficial use." Basically the sediment is used inland or dumped strategically to rebuild shorelines or barrier islands, instead of being left to smother the bay floor. It costs the COE money, and doesn't do a dang thing to help make the port money. So the plan was to just dump it and tell people that the bay was "a naturally muddy system."
I've been part of a local nonprofit that realized that the Sierra Club and Audubon crowd wasn't going to win a fight with the city's port authority and the COE. Neither was CCA or BCHA. Neither was the shrimping and commercial fishing industry. Neither were the charter captains taking folks out to catch specs and reds and snapper. Neither were the good-ole-boys in their jon boats.
I sat in town halls and watched the Sierra Club ladies take the mic right after the shrimpers in their white boots and the fly anglers in their silly hooded sun shirts and the charter captains in their AFTCO shorts. Next thing you know, we had the ears of both of our US senators. It's really, really hard to ignore multiple special interest groups in the same community all telling you the same thing.
Four years ago, the environmental group spearheading all of this was seen as pariah by the local hook-and-bullet groups. And the local hook-and-bullet groups were seen as either ignorant hicks or bloodthirsty good-ole-boys making handshake deals on golf courses and pheasant farms by the environmentalists. There is a lot of work to still be done in the relationship, but it took relatively little time to grow into something capable of throwing and landing punches.
Both groups are better off if they win this fight. The rednecks will be able to sight fish for reds and dip crabs and gig flounder, pass those traditions on to their kids and grandkids, and generally enjoy a much healthier fishery. The libruls will get to watch sea turtles and manatees and sunsets and drink cocktails on their little bayside cottages after they go to their local art walk.
The anglers who joined that coalition in my mind did something much more impactful that pretty much every alternative action course I've seen. I really think that if we can stop a "dump mud on the oysters and grass forever" plan, that may be the single biggest local conservation achievement of my lifetime.
If we can replicate that success elsewhere, we can win fights to build and maintain habitat, and that will make it so that maybe we all feel better about having more casual hunters around.
Farmers around where I live definitely do NOT look at hunters as service providers. More of a pain in the rear or nuisance. Getting permission to hunt private land is harder than ever. Only takes one bad apple to ruin for others. I can give countless stories of absolute disregard for the landowners property and livestock. It's hard to knock on doors to ask. Cause you can tell as soon as they answer the door they are already annoyed.
On the other hand, they will GLADLY take leasing fees. Which is becoming the norm now if you want a chance at hunting private. And these fees are darn right crazy! I have so much money in my equipment, clothing, licenses, ECT that paying leasing fees for seasonal access isn't worth it.
I may be the minority in this. But I think there are more hunters now than there were when I was younger. Social media and the antler craze has everyone out looking to shoot a Booner. LOTS of casual hunters. Ones that have money to pay the high prices for leasing fees and then go out first day of gun season and shoot a giant. Then done for the year. I'm not hating on them. But they aren't woodsman or hard core hunters. It has hurt access to private lands (cause there are more of them) but also public land is flooded too. Now the popular thing on the socials is hunting public. I've seen more out of state people on the small public parcel near me than ever before. A couple "influencers" talk about big dear on public in Indiana and here they come.
The point system out west is crazy and makes my head spin. My dream is to shoot a big horn. That's a pipe dream at my age and income class. Unless I hit the lottery or win a tag, there isn't enough years in my life left that I'll draw a tag. I have some friends that are buying tags for their toddler children just in case they want to hunt one in the future they have a chance. Elk hunting is popular as ever. I think some would agree it's had help from some high profile public figures/hunters.
I will say, I'd rather save the leasing fee money and spend it on points for tags out west though. Either way, it's an expensive game to play to get to hunt out west. I don't think anyone can argue with that.
Maybe. Hunter numbers peaked in the 70s and 80s (I would argue because of things like Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, PR, DJ, etc) but have been on decline since. If you were born in the 60s, then maybe we have more hunters now after the little COVID spike?
It's more likely that there appear to be more hunters due to social media and, more worryingly, crowding. I wrote an article interviewing a man who explained that, contrary to popular local opinion, we did not have more duck hunters crowding the bay today. We just had fewer birds, and fewer bays that held birds, which in his mind resulted in everybody piling in on a limited resource and leading to a feeling of crowdedness and the Season of Hate and Spite.
Mobile Delta Duck Hunting: Fifty-Five Opening Days of Change
A veteran hunter reflects on fifty-five opening days of Mobile Delta duck hunting and how things have changed over the decades.
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Are they hog hunting/trapping?
That's a pipe dream in the Midwest. I live in Indiana and they mere thought of a farmer paying a hunter to hunt would get a lot of laughs.
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Would you believe that some Audobon properties in my neighborhood have started welcoming bow hunters?
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This is it. It’s about increased pressure on decreasing spaces. This is why we all need to do Everyrhing we can to preserve as much space as possible. At least in my parts, land trusts are making incredible headway at acquiring land and holding CR’s on private land, and keeping it all open and accessible for the public to use.Maybe. Hunter numbers peaked in the 70s and 80s (I would argue because of things like Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, PR, DJ, etc) but have been on decline since. If you were born in the 60s, then maybe we have more hunters now after the little COVID spike?
It's more likely that there appear to be more hunters due to social media and, more worryingly, crowding. I wrote an article interviewing a man who explained that, contrary to popular local opinion, we did not have more duck hunters crowding the bay today. We just had fewer birds, and fewer bays that held birds, which in his mind resulted in everybody piling in on a limited resource and leading to a feeling of crowdedness and the Season of Hate and Spite.
Mobile Delta Duck Hunting: Fifty-Five Opening Days of Change
A veteran hunter reflects on fifty-five opening days of Mobile Delta duck hunting and how things have changed over the decades.
I'm in my mid 40's. So I cannot speak to those decades. But I can tell you that hunting was not near as popular amongst my peers while I was in high school. Now most of my friends from high school hunt.Maybe. Hunter numbers peaked in the 70s and 80s (I would argue because of things like Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, PR, DJ, etc) but have been on decline since. If you were born in the 60s, then maybe we have more hunters now after the little COVID spike?
It's more likely that there appear to be more hunters due to social media and, more worryingly, crowding. I wrote an article interviewing a man who explained that, contrary to popular local opinion, we did not have more duck hunters crowding the bay today. We just had fewer birds, and fewer bays that held birds, which in his mind resulted in everybody piling in on a limited resource and leading to a feeling of crowdedness and the Season of Hate and Spite.
Mobile Delta Duck Hunting: Fifty-Five Opening Days of Change
A veteran hunter reflects on fifty-five opening days of Mobile Delta duck hunting and how things have changed over the decades.
I've also seen more trucks parked next to woods and public land near me than ever before.
I can only speak for what I've seen in my small world around me. I guess I'm assuming it's like that all over. I would argue that if there were less hunters now that ever, then how do we have such a large "hunting industrial complex"? There has to be consumers (hunters) buying these products -and lots of them, or we wouldn't see the large Cabela's/Bass Pro places, ECT.
I also wanted to tell you I have to agree with you on the duck numbers comment. I don't have near as many years of waterfowl experience. But I've hunted with a few salty dogs that have told me it's nothing like it used to be. I always contributed it to the fact that I live and hunt in the armpit of America -when it comes to waterfowl hunting. Lol nothing like down south. But you boys down there, could definitely speak more to that. It's a way of life for you all.Maybe. Hunter numbers peaked in the 70s and 80s (I would argue because of things like Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, PR, DJ, etc) but have been on decline since. If you were born in the 60s, then maybe we have more hunters now after the little COVID spike?
It's more likely that there appear to be more hunters due to social media and, more worryingly, crowding. I wrote an article interviewing a man who explained that, contrary to popular local opinion, we did not have more duck hunters crowding the bay today. We just had fewer birds, and fewer bays that held birds, which in his mind resulted in everybody piling in on a limited resource and leading to a feeling of crowdedness and the Season of Hate and Spite.
Mobile Delta Duck Hunting: Fifty-Five Opening Days of Change
A veteran hunter reflects on fifty-five opening days of Mobile Delta duck hunting and how things have changed over the decades.
Bobcat/coyote trapping. Mostly on the big deer ranches down south. Not sure what the guys doing beaver work down there get