What do you feel is the single biggest threat to deer hunting long term?

Land access!

 

For me, it's land access.


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I'm surprised as well. I feel that's the least threatening of all the choices.

There will always be others that look down on hunting, whether that's PETA or the next door neighbor. Some have seen a small sample of hunting - which is usually the drink beer, shoot stuff type - and others are just the ignorant type that have no particular reason as to why they dislike it.

With a little common sense and some research, most will weed these negative groups out.

 

You know I thought more on this and when reading your's I think in place of anti's in my list of 3 things I would replace it with just simple: Hunters. The brethren that is hunters creates the stigma, image or thoughts people have towards hunting by our actions, accountability from within and how we choose to portray ourselves....

 

From what I'm seeing in PA, it seems to mostly stem from the mismanagement of the herds. For one, less deer means lower recruitment numbers of young hunters. No 12 year old kid wants to sit and watch squirrels all day and I can't blame them.

Secondly, and I've witnessed this first hand in PA, is that with poor management techniques, many landowners who once allowed hunting by permission on their land have now closed the gates. So now, due to the mishandling of the deer herds, we have fewer new hunters and less land to hunt.

 

Hunter recruitment and participation because without the numbers we lose the $ and without the $ we lose our voice. Not to mention anti groups will probably continue to grow as the sissifying of the US continues. If their voice gets louder than our $ then we could be in trouble.

 

Hate to say it but I have to agree with you. I don't know about there but here in Ontario Canada our conservation officers are a sort of PETA type now and hunters with no respect of rules, regs, and ethics give them fuel. I don't agree with all the rules but breaking them doesn't fight them, it only gives them reason for more rules.


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I think slob hunters that are overly redneck defintely hurt the public perception. But there are other factors too.















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I agree. That's why I believe we should all strive to clean our public image and learn to educate in a way that doesn't come off as a boisterous *******.

FWIW, I'll take one for the team and start the education process on the naked hotties:D they'll need a lot of work.

 

My exact thoughts...

 

Land access, easily.

When hunting becomes only a rich man's sport, hunting slowly dies. Look at Europe.

 

New recruitment. IMHO is the worst threat.
Anti hunters, fueled by ignorant slob hunters, dampen the spirit of new hunters.
Reasonable access dampens the spirit of new hunters.
Video games instill instant gratification, which dampens the spirit of the new hunters, if they don't see deer.
They say the kids are the future of hunting. Sort of scary to me.

 

Most hunters are totally against anti hunters. Anti's are a pita to most hunters. Crossbow hunters are hunters. Please don't become an Anti because you don't hunt with a crossbow. Hunters need to pull together regardless what kind of bow.

 

Obviously a combination of all these are problems. I'm not sure if hunter recruitment is down or not. I do know for a fact that women hunting and firearm use is way up. The NRA numbers are way up, fueled primarily by females(and Obama).

In my area, loss of habitat is a major issue. I have seen a shift in the last 5 years or so. Thousands of acres have came out of CRP and have been converted back to agricultural production. On top of that, farmers are starting to farm every possible tract of land they can. Dozing out lots small woodlots. With this, the carrying capacity of the land is shrinking. Also, this helps to concentrate the deer into higher density populations which eventually will lead to disease.

Access to quality hunting land is also a lot tougher these days. Unless you are willing to outbid someone on a lease, you are less and less likely to have access to quality hunting ground. This could easily lead to people dropping out of the sport all together.

I personally don't see the anti-hunters as a huge issue, unless the conservatives lose enough ground that we can no longer control part of congress or the whitehouse.

 

I feel like the biggest problem is....

 

Don't get your panties in a bunch. See the smiley, it was a joke.

 

Doesn't that hurt?

 

In a perfect world we would all stand together with a clean image. I bet there's already a majority that do it the right way. But what is out of our control is who is thrown into the category of hunter. Personally, I wouldnt consider a poacher a hunter, but the general public will throw them in with the rest of us.

Doing things the right way is great but also boring to the media. They thrive on getting the worst stories, usually about someone getting shot in season or a poacher.

What I am leading up to is that I do agree we should strive to be the best we can. But also, let's control what we can control. You'd think our image would be easily controlled by us but the hunting population is bigger than this forum.

 

I had 3 of them on your list which kind of all tie together. The anti-hunters, the access to land (both public and private since government can just take your land from you), and habitat quality/reduction which is in tandem with the access to (and amount) of land.

To think of what things may look like in a few hundred years (all things considered), it almost makes you hope that things collapse and we go through a rebirthing period where we HAVE to go back to primitive living. Some people just think food, money, shelter, and basically everything just magically appears.

 

Hands down its land access due mostly to leasing, in my area a lot of that is from outfitters. Like somebody said above, when it becomes just a rich mans sport most people will quit. Around here, the affordable leases are no better than hunting public there is so many guys in the lease. I've said it when the leasing started when I was in high school which was over 20 years ago, there will be two kinds of hunters, rich and outlaws.
And its our own fault. Non hunters and land owners didn't start leasing,we did due to our own greed. I don't want anybody else to hunt around me so I lease it and that runs you, Bob and Frank off. Well you and bob find another spot but you don't want me coming in there and running you out again so this time you lease it. Then Joe down the road hears that you've been killing some nice deer and goes to the land owner and offers 5 times what you were paying but has to get some buddies in to help pay for it. Now everybody is right back to where it was with lots of guys hunting the same ground but now you're paying out the *** for it. The farmers is happy though, well sort of. All the guys on his high dollar lease are just there for the big bucks so he has to get depredation permits and shoot does during the summer to keep them from destroying his bean field.
Or, and this one is worse, you don't want to have to do any of the work, you just want to shoot a nice deer. And that springs forth the worst evil of all, outfitters, who pay more than anybody can afford for the lease and tie up huge tracks of land. So you roll in, he puts you in a tree overlooking a nice corn pile that has lots of pics of deer over that nobody has hunted over in months, and walla, you're a big deer killa.
There, that's what I think