John Lott has the scoop on how fewer and fewer people identify themselves as hunters. I think he nails the reasons (as he has in the past; most of the links below are to his blog):

Fewer people have grown up in rural areas raising the costs of them learning how to hunt, [there are more things to do besides hunting], increased licensing requirements raising the costs of getting started, and having to travel farther to go hunting.

A lot of these have affected me lately. I grew up in Green Bay, Wis., and hunted with my dad pretty much every year between turning 12 and heading off the college. College was a little tougher, but I still hunted for the most part.

Now it’s getting really difficult. I live in DC-suburban Virginia without a car, and no one I know even owns a gun, so hunting around here is out of the question. I’m starting out career-wise and don’t have vacation time to use, so I had to plan to fly home for Thanksgiving (when the deer season is) instead of Christmas. Then, the state I lived in for 22 years socked me with a $160 licensing fee for being “out of state” (in-staters get $24), even though I’ll only be in town to hunt for two days — in my case, this feels rather like a penalty for obeying the law (I changed my drivers license over when I moved, and then admitted that to the Wisconsin DNR instead of just using my old customer ID number).

I love hunting, so I’m willing to go through all that, but it’s not surprising that the less dedicated just give it up. I suppose there’s a certain libertarian argument for this; people who hunt should pay the licensing and forest upkeep costs, and if people aren’t willing to, that’s the market saying hunting isn’t viable.

The problem is, hunters aren’t the only people who enjoy the nature their fees (and equipment taxes) maintain, and in fact someone has to hunt, whether paying or being paid for the privilege. Hunting is actually a needed service — deer populations have gotten out of control, and (for example) the Green Bay area has even had special seasons so they wouldn’t have to call in snipers to manage the numbers.

To some degree hunting’s decline is unavoidable, but when states go out of the way to discourage returning children from hunting with their dads, it’s not like there’s nothing anyone can do about it. For a long time people were willing to pay to essentially act as wildlife management. Now people like that have become scarce, and many states respond by demanding hunters, particularly out-of-state ones, pay more?

Why don’t states do with hunting like some do with college tuition — reciprocity agreements for in-state fees? If they keep jacking up the charges the way they have been, the only message to take from it is that they don’t think hunting is worth saving. We’ll see if they change their minds when they start hitting deer with their cars.