Huge hunting drop-off

[Guest guest]

From Tom Stienstra's Outdoors column in the sports section of today's Chron:

 

HUGE HUNTING DROP-OFF

 

The big story at the national conference of the Outdoors Writers Association

of America last week in West Virginia was regarding the huge decline in the

number of hunters in the United States.

 

A national survey conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was

released at the conference that showed that the number of all hunters

declined by 7 percent in the past five years, and that small game hunting

was down 22 percent. This was explained simply: As older hunters die or

drop out of the sport, they are not being replaced by younger hunters at the

same rate.

 

[The article also mentioned that only 7% of Americans now have hunting

licenses.]