The decrease in hunting may be correlated to the increased cost of gear. Go to the store and price out equipment for everything you need to start hunting. You’ll find the cost far outweighs the expendable income of our youth. Now they want to raise the license cost.

Again, directly correlated to the influence of social media and the like. A person doesn't need the latest greatest despite what you see and hear in the magazines, tv shows and on facebook and instagram.

Your hand me down 30-30 or base model bolt gun, camos bought at walmart and a $2 orange hat kills deer as dead as a carbon fiber gun and sitka gear.

At 14 yrs old, I was out of my mind to whack a 4 pt on state land with my dads 30-30 and a blaze orange suit I got for my birthday from the discount store while sitting on a lawn chair in a blind I built from limbs and brush with a handwarmer with a burning charcoal stick in it. That was before I learned a 30-30 wasn't tough enough for deer and I needed an Ozonics system to de-scent my clothes.

This thread was not created for the sake of complaints, although I have my opinions on the way the deer herd is managed here. Just thought that decrease in harvest was a substantial and interesting number, and worthy of a discussion.

I didn’t have time to process a deer I recently shot and my usual processor jumped his price to $185 for their basic cut. Insane, and I’ll be cutting up my own deer from now on.

Lots of good points have already been stated, and I think there’s a significant cost barrier surrounding hunting right now - licenses, weapons, equipment, private access, processing costs, and so on. Not sure if there’s a solution to that and I agree the trophy mindset is a detriment to future recruitment efforts.

Grew up in Michigan, and I would agree its a hard state to manage effectively. The UP of Michigan is not the upper lower, the upper lower is not the central, central not southern Michigan. The UP and southern Michigan couldn't be more different as far as diversity of habitat, weather and deer numbers. So, you need to manage each differently. I live in Kentucky, the eastern part of the state (mountains) is a far cry from western KY, (agriculture) so they are zoned differently. In all zones (1-4) it is a ONE buck limit period. The number of does that can be harvested and the length of the modern gun season is what sets zones apart. A Zone 1 county, which is a considerable amount of western KY, is an unlimited doe harvest.

It costs me $27 for an annual hunting license, plus $35 for a Deer Permit, so $52 total. I'm not sure what Michigan costs to hunt, but I do go there every year to bow-hunt, it costs me $172 I think as a nonresident.