Overall the number of hunters are going down but it seems like the competition for Western hunting tags has never been higher. Maybe hunting especially tree stand hunting is just not fun for people? Maybe if we want the numbers of hunters to increase we need to find ways to make hunting more interesting/proactive like it is done out west?

I know 10 year ago the nonresident Illinois shotgun tags could be bought the day before season and the past two years they've sold out week in advance in the county I hunt. I also hunt Tenn, NC, and Ohio and seems to me there's just as many if not more hunters as always. But everyone keeps saying that hunters ##s are decreasing drastically. I just don't see it

I will hunt 4 different states this year (WY,SD,MN,AZ) no matter how far I go in out west it doesnt seem like I can find a spot without a plethora of other hunters. It takes years (3+) to get a decent public land rifle antelope tag, no state that I know of has good leftover elk tags. I do see and hear alot less hunters in my home state of MN were deer hunting is done from tree stands.

we need to get groups together again and teach them how to do drives

So they can blow each other's heads off.

Jim

Anyone know how many hunters there were in the USA 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and now?

Private land tied up by leases' = what seems like more hunters on public ground. I don't think there are more hunters, we crowd public land because there's no where else to hunt.

Humans evolved largely hunting in groups, they have done it reasonably safely for 250,000 years. Choose your partners wisely and be willing to pass on a shot.





If these percentages are correct we had 18.5 million hunters in 1991 and 14.2 million in 2016

Dang Video games

Seems when there were no deer, there were loads of small game hunters hunting over an extended period. Now, there are few small game hunters and most deer hunters only hunt a couple weeks out of the year. Lots less hunting done...but all at the same time?

That's very true squacks, I squirrel hunted, and coon hunted all the time when I was younger. Now you hardly ever hear hounds treed at night or even hear people talk about it

I never used to put in for hunts in the west because I had enough friends who did with mostly poor success. Lots of money to build points.

But I hunted ducks on state and federal refuges in CA for many years and saw that even with a significant decline in waterfowl hunters and an increase in refuge acreage it got much more difficult to be drawn for a refuge through the lottery draw system.

My guess was always that long ago it was easier to be a casual duck hunter and hunt inexpensively or for free private land, and most of that type of land is gone due to development. Plus, as stated above, most kids don't have the parents/time/money or attention span to become avid hunters. Same trend here in France.... kids are far and few between on the driven hunts and the average age keeps going up.

Pete

KS raised the price of deer tags. I didn't hunt deer this year. fish and game is all about selling antlers here. They will tell you money is for habitat etc. I am unaware of any habitat restoration. Here in the part of KS I live in, rabbits are rare, bob white quail are gone, big eating size bullfrogs are gone, prairie chickens are gone, muskrats and mink are rare. Wildlife and parks wont talk about it. The money is in antlers. Glyphosate and Atrazine are king.

The elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. I suspect agriculture chemicals are having a devastating effect on lots of things.

Never thought of the OP's theory about tree stand hunting versus 'spot and stalk' and still hunting, but he could be on to something. I've never hunted out of a tree stand, and don't know how you guys do it. I would be bored silly. I want to have the ability to see or cover a lot of ground if I want to.

I sincerely believe Danny's quote is more powerful than most understand. The top leadership of much of the USDA has come from corporate chemical companies. We are only beginning to understand the Round Up experiment that has been conducted on us........I was fortunate enough to hear Jonathan Lundgren speak at a conference before he was fired from the USDA/ARS as his pesticide findings did not line up with the chemical companies agenda and supposed USDA research......

Waggler hit it on the head about wanting to cover some ground, it was what I loved about hunting the west, walk all day and still on public land. I bought 30 acres outside my subdivision 25 years ago to hunt on, can't walk all day but we kill deer there every year.

Ridiculous statement. Deer drives and party hunting is very common in the midwest.

It's no longer about the hunting, it's about the catching. Who killed the biggest set of antlers? who caught the biggest fish? Rather than enjoy hunting around your home, it's " let's go where they grow the biggest deer", so we can put a large set of antlers on the wall for people to see. That's why there are more people trying to draw tags in trophy areas. Small game hunting is more about the hunting experience than harvesting a trophy. I put a lot of blame on losing young people on the outdoor shows. Kids watch an outdoor show where the star gets in a tree stand and watches a food plot with ten or fifteen deer in it, within a half hour a trophy buck, that's bigger than most people have ever seen walks out and the star shoots him. A kid goes hunting and sits for an hour and all the kid sees is Chipmunks. The kid gets bored and never really generates any enthusiasm for hunting. It's hard to blame the kid, sitting in the woods freezing bores me too. I'm not smart enough to have a solution to the problem, but I do know I'm enjoying things like Squirrel hunting more. There's more activity and nicer weather and a lot less boredom.

Good point on chemicals. I'm 46 years old and in the last 30 years the habitat of western and northern Oklahoma has changed significantly, in large part, because of chemical agriculture. Other aspects of agriculture have affected the habitat too (some good some bad). Whether we want to admit it, the weather/climate is also different. This is all anecdotal from me but surely some smart graduate student is studying it.


I still think we're losing (lost) a cultural battle when it comes to hunting and hunter recruitment.

pretty tough to take a kid quail hunting when there are no quail