Can Maine's declining hunter numbers be reversed?

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Ken Allen

Maine's hunting license sales have shown a long-term decrease in the last 36 years, but that trend has not always been the case. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century, hunting license sales continued rising until 1970 when it hit 212,080. The rapid-growth years lasted from 1940 when the figure was below 100,000 through 1970. (The big spurt gained momentum after World War II.)

Over the last three decades, though, hunter numbers have fallen to about 170,000, according to a recent Wildlife Division and Management Report put out by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W). Admittedly, license sales have shown minor, short-term gains in the last 36 years, but the overall trend has been downward.

These days, hunters have several impediments, explaining why DIF&W sells approximately 42,000 less licenses. Five leading reasons follow: 1) Hunting-license costs, 2) hunter-orange-clothing expense, 3) hunter-safety-course requirement, 4) development eating up hunting land and 5) negative publicity toward hunters.

Reason 1 seems like small potatoes, but it does discourage hunter participation. Reasons 2 and 3 have practically eliminated shooting mortalities, but these perfectly legitimate obstacles have added to dropping hunter numbers. Reasons 4 in particular and 5 hinder hunter recruitment.

Twenty-five years ago, I was shooting my mouth off in an article, alleging that license sales and safety clothing were a paltry expense when a fellow school teacher set me straight. He had three teenage boys 16 years and older who hunted, and even in those years, it set him back considerably to get the four of them into the deer woods, duck marshes and bird covers.

These days, a combination fishing-and-hunting licenses for four residents 16 years or older spoils the looks of a $100 bill. If that same family also bowhunted in the statewide season, participated in the expanded archery option, decided to bear hunt from August through October and bought a muzzle-loading permit (should one or all of the family members not shoot a deer in the regular firearms season), then it would cost over $100 each or approximately $450 for all four. This does not count buying duck stamps to chase waterfowl.

Add to that $20 to $30 each for an initial expense of a hunter-orange hat and vest, and then that overall figure crawls up to around $550 per year for a family of four. In short, we're talking serious pocket change.

Even with all that money, hunting (and fishing) license fees appear to be a bargain price, and to prove a point, lots of hunters are fond of dividing 365 days into the price of a license and claiming cost as pennies a day. Most deer hunters are lucky to get out four or five days per season, though, so we need to be careful which figure we use to divide into license costs.

Along that line of expenditures, an outdoors writer friend goes to the Sportsman's Congress most years and loudly compares a license fee to the price of going to the movies or out to dinner, where a couple might spend $20 to $30. The trouble with that analogy is obvious to a guy like me who grew up in rural Maine. I know folks who cannot afford $20 for a movie and popcorn for two or dinner at a restaurant that might run $30 per couple. Licenses come damned hard to folks with low incomes.

The hunter-safety-course requirement and mandatory hunter orange have saved countless hunter lives -- perhaps as many as 450 humans since the laws were initiated in the 1970s. People in 2006 have forgotten or perhaps the younger ones never knew that hunting deaths in the 1950 and '60s rose as high as 19 a season.

These days, I strongly feel that shooting deaths and injuries have dropped dramatically because of hunter orange. The hunter-safety course must help, too, but it comes with a cost best described by a quick anecdote.

My two daughters spent their childhood playing interscholastic field hockey and basketball, which made hunting out of the question. Last year, my youngest daughter, a 16 year old then, sprung a request on me in the first week of the regular firearms season for deer. She wanted to go hunting. In the old days, I would have taken her shooting and when satisfied with her competence, we would have headed to the woods. These days, though, she couldn't buy a license without the hunter-safety course.

The next summer, she was not interested in hunting, so a hunter-safety course interested her little. In short, folks must plan ahead, which doesn't take into consideration the whims of 16-year-olds.

Whether it is right or wrong, the hunter-safety course stops these people who have an instant yearn to hunt, but recently, George Smith told me about a plan the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine would like to pass in legislature. Instead of having people sit in a classroom and listen to a lecturer, newcomers to hunting would have an option to take a computer course that allowed active participation from the student.

One of the ideas being kicked around includes a full, field-training day after the computer part. Of course, this would eliminate the spontaneous recruitment of hunters just as surely as the current course does now. This whole idea is in the early stages, and I shall report more on it later.

Here's another little tidbit for folks aghast at the idea of changing hunter-safety-course requirements. Fishing is far more dangerous than hunting, and in some years, as many as a dozen anglers may drown participating in this seemingly benign hobby. On top of that, injuries are common because of slippery rocks and docks and of sharp hooks impaled into body parts -- such as an eye. In addition to dangers, fishing involves complex considerations -- like is that 8-inch, speckled fish a brown trout or endangered Atlantic salmon. A mistaken identity could cost big bucks. Considering the above, it's amazing that no one has come up with a fishing-safety-course requirement.

You must ask yourself why a hunter-safety course is important and a fishing-safety course isn't, particularly when you realize that some years not one hunter dies in a shooting fatality, thanks mostly to hunter orange. When one does occur, it's often self-inflicted.

Even more compelling, some states and provinces have more hunting deaths from people falling out of tree stands than being shot.

The bottom line is this: Because of dropping hunting numbers, anything that changes that trend without endangering folks is a huge plus to the sport's future.

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer. To reach him, e-mail: kallyn800@aol.com