If hunter numbers are decreasing then..

why the hell is there more and more people in the woods everytime I go? There maybe a new study I haven't read but if you listen to NRA and other conservation organizations hunters are a dying breed. I'd like to invite them to Jack county on any given Saturday in November or opening day Michigan where the woods are orange with hunters. I remember just a few years ago around Graham and Jacksboro when you may hear a shot or two on opening day and last year I counted over 20. Time for me to find a new area I think.

Depends on how you look at the numbers, and what you want the numbers to reflect.

in a way i dont mind they decrease....more deer and possibly bigger bucks around, but at the same time, less hunters, means more deer and possibly less bucks and an un healthy deer herd..i guess you could look at it either way, good and bad

also, the hunting idustry itself would hurt,

I'm more worried about TPWD hurting than anything else. We should all do everything we can to recruit new folks into the outdoors.

I grew up hunting Jack Co when it was 1 buck, no doe, and didn't have any pigs to speak of. Definitely remember hearing more than a few shots opening weekend. After that it would taper off and if you heard someone shoot it was worth discussion back around camp.

Think a big difference these days is with a 5 deer limit plus pigs there is a lot more shot opportunities for a hunter. Same amount of hunters but they are doing a lot more shooting.

I just read in USA Today that hunter numbers are increasing again after decreasing recently. They are attributing some of the increase to the local food movement and the fact that the animals live a clean, free life until their last day. If that is why some folks are getting into hunting, I say, "welcome aboard".

More and more people moving to Texas and wanting places to hunt. May not be decreasing nationwide but increasing in certain areas.

Also, more land being sold off and sub-divided. I can think of several places where neighbors were FAR away. Now these said places have subdivisions and "ranchettes" on both sides of them. Honestly, I don't like it at all.

I hate it, I go hunting to not see people and now I got neighbors building cabins across the road and new lease guys down the road blowing up everything. I agree land being inherited and split doesn't help and I'm sure a five deer limit has something to do with it but the amount of people hunting are out running the amount of game to be hunted, I see less animals every year.

Compared to 20 or 30 years ago there is quite a bit of land that s no longer available for hunting. That means the hunters are moving to other areas that already had their fair share of hunters. You can draw a 10 mile circle around south half of Abilene, a lot of that land was deer hunting land 10 years ago, today there are houses, subdivisions, ranchitos, and businesses on a lot of that land. That is a lot of old hunting leased land that the hunters have moved away from.

Maybe they just went back to counting traditional hunters and took the bait&wait numbers out of the mix????

People don't have time for it anymore and are in debt up to their eyeballs.

Another possibility is that many of those hunters are not buying licenses, particularly those states with an abundance of public land. I see "poachers" nearly every time I hunt in New Mexico, and they seem to increas! In some states, those hunting fees continue to increase, so fewer licenses are sold.

Well, out West mule deer is king. With their declining numbers tags are getting cut, season are getting cut so that'll help show fewer licenses sold. Plus you have MLD where 1 license can be used to shoot a ton of deer.

A good possibility here is that your sampling is heavily biased. There may be more hunting/hunters where you are, but that does not mean that hunting or hunters is increasing. It just means there are more where you are. Your tag line says you are in Arlington, so I am guessing you are hunting somewhere reasonably close to a major metropolitan area. So you likely get a lot of city-slicker day trip type hunters concentrated locally.

Maybe the numbers are decreasing because deer hunting is becoming a rich mans sport. With the price of leases, guns, ammo, stands, bait, and gas it is getting hard for the average man to hunt. I'm not rich but I'm not poor and I can't afford a lease. I have to make do with hunting on public land. A lot of people can't even do that. Hunting license, fishing license, WMA permit= $105. That's a week worth of food for a lot of people. Just my $.02 worth.

I have no hard data; it may even be a wild-arse guess....

But you take the cost of a Texas deer lease when I was coming of age 50 years ago in 1963, and the price of a tricked-out 4WD pick-up. Compare that cost to a similar lease and similar truck today. I bet the increases are pretty close.

I'm not rationalizing, just observing.....

I was coming of age in 63 also. I don't remember ever hearing of a deer lease back then except for the ones down by the border where hunters could wander across for the night. You could ask a rancher if you could hunt their land. Most of them would let you. Nobody had a tricked out 4wd. A tricked out truck was 2wd with mud grips on it. Don't get me wrong I understand your comparison. The first day lease I went to cost me $50. I got two does. I just feel that the average man is getting squeezed out. I hate to see what it is like when my 16 yr. old is 40.

I agree with everything mentioned above, and anyone who is old enough to remember hunting during the 50's, and 60's and remember the stories from their parents and grand parents, this hunting thing has grown by leaps and bounds since then.
Maybe they are concerned that it may be tapering off, and like mentioned, it's become the sport of the rich folks.
Fewer rich folks= fewer common folk in the field.

I only regret that I was too young to enjoy the good old days of mule deer hunting, back in the 60s, when a group of buddies could drive out to Colorado or New Mexico and all shoot gagger bucks, and many over 30" wide. Nowadays, a guy would have to pay a handsome sum--and be quite lucky--to find a muley approaching the size of those 50 years ago.

I DID get to enjoy the heyday of quail hunting....when a wing-shooter didn't even need a dog to find covey after covey, so long as he was in good country. I hope the quail come back for my kids and grandkids to enjoy, as I did.

lumber jack's

I think the percentage of hunters per capita might have slightly decreased in Texas since I began hunting 23 years ago, but the overall number of hunters seems to be increasing since the population of Texas has gained 9 million people since 1990.

A guy we get tags from in the Gunnison Basin has some of his dad's mounts in his ranch house and I would imagine there's 10 over 200. He took me to his dad's house on down the road and he had probably 20 more on his wall in the 190-230" range. Amazing what very low elk numbers and prime browse let those deer do.

I think this is a big part of it. I also know there are many ranches that were once leased that are no longer avaialble. 50 years ago the rancher looked at Hunters as an additional source of income. Now adays his kids probably don't ranch and don't live there. They also don't care much for the ~$5k a year they can make leasing the place, and just keep it for family use.

What land that is still available or affordable gets more pressure.

would rather be hunting than working, but a wise person realizes bye working can aford to hunt.

first lease got on was 1 buck, had 3 days for doe, but real reason, it had hog's, 24-7 365 for around $200.00 a gun. times have changed.

By the numbers

Hunting license sold by state from 2004-2013

http://wsfrprograms.fws.gov/Subpages/LicenseInfo/HuntingLicCertHistory20042013.pdf

From 1958-2003

http://wsfrprograms.fws.gov/Subpages/LicenseInfo/HuntingLicCertHistory.pdf

In 1958 there were 408,682 licenced hunters in Texas. In 2013, there were 1,036,946 licensed hunters.


Nation wide in 1958 there were 14,138,182 licensed hunters compared to a US pop. of 171.98 million people or roughly 8%

In 2013 there were 14,631,327 licensed hunters compared to a populaition of 316.16 million, or 4.6%.

The peak of hunting license sales in the US was in 1982 with 16,748,541 when the population was 231.66 million so theere was 7.2%.

I got that from the linked data if my math is correct.

So the percentage of the population who hunts is shrinking, but the numbers of hunters is stable to growing slightly.

Take into accountthe shrinking land available to hunting, and the number of people being forced to public land due to the rising cost of leases, and you see the problem.

The place we hunt has been hunted for 60+ years. My Dad remembers growing up hearing shots all the time throughout deer season. Compared to now when he hardly hears any. I also remember when i started hunting hearing more shots than i do now (hardly hear any now).

A newspaper interviewed my great grandma about wild life in our area. In the article she mentions that the bucks aren't as big as they use to be back in the day (this article was in in the mid 90's). Dunno what that means but I also hunt different now then they did back then.

As a side story, when i was getting my hunters education and took my exam. I talked to the young guy next to me and he commented he hope he passed. He was going hunting the following weekend and has never shot a gun or hunted. I was immediately concerned for the deer he was hunting (but i hope he had a good experience).

Nationwide in the last 25 years 41 million acres of agriculture land has been lost to urban expansion. 41 million acres is the size of the state of Indiana. During this 25 years Texas has seen a lot of growth in population, a good chunk of that 41 million acres were in Texas.

I am sure somewhere there are stats on this just for Texas, but I am no looking anymore. It is pretty simple to see that as land for hunting decreases, the price of leases will go up, and up, even if the number of hunters remain the same. During these same last 25 years, Texas has also gain a few million people, even with a loss of hunter from the base population, we have gained through the increase in population.

Interesting because when the TP&W shortened the hunter ed class time, there were a lot people on THF were all for it. But then I guess they already knew everything.

Shortened it and started letting 9yos take it....

Texas loses about 200,000 acres per year to urban expansion,

http://www.texaslandconservancy.org/who-we-are-mainmenu-34.html

How many deer leases would be lost every year?

who controls the animals in urban (?) areas? Or are they just allowed to multiply and fester? Don't know what it is like now, but there was an island back home that you couldn't hunt. There were some of the scraggliest, nastiest looking deer ( some even deformed) on there that you'd ever see...

Deer inside towns are still regulated by the county rules. But, because they are in town and firing guns inside city limits is highly regulated, most are protected. If the town thinks the deer numbers are a problem, they can decide to relax the rules on firearms, allow bow hunting, or hire someone to clear out deer through the use of special permits.

A lot of it taken over by urban sprawl will be taken over by HOAs and liberals.

Which one is worse? Another thing that comes with urban sprawl is rats and cockroaches. Maybe they just thrive around HOA's and liberals.

Wonder if that has only rifle deer hunters..

Nav, despite what you may think, a hunting license is required for the archery only season.

Its not the decrease in hunters, its the increase of liberal non hunters.....

We have gone through a major transition in my area east of Abilene. Fifty years ago, we really didn’t have enough deer to hunt. Twenty-five ago, we had a good population but most of the tracts were fairly large. The land owners permitted hunting but only in limited amounts. Today, our area has undergone major changes. The next generation of absentee landowners have divided and sold off their holdings, primarily to DFW folks. I have one immediate neighbor whose place was a little over 700 acres. The only hunters on the place were his two nephews. Today, it is owned by six different owners with only one owner residing on the property. All the other tracts are owned by non-residents or hunting groups. Lord only knows how many hunters pass through Luther’s original 700 acres in a hunting season. Opening day is like a war zone.

Cars, trucks and disease.


Don't forget that this is often done just so they can pay the taxes on the land they inherited.

Many of these ranchers/farmers where "land rich" but had to work the land to make it pay and did not have any other wealth. When they died and the kids inherited, they did not have the capital to pay the taex without selling a portion of the land.

whin i thought i was rich, making that easy money. was fixing up a house ta live in, run up a credit card was making payment's. went to a credit adviser, who looked at income vs money going out. asked what other bills we had. told about Family lease bout $200.00 a year. thats your problem was the advise, we walked out, payed bills off on our own. like u went to public land. leases getting higher & higher. people doing the work only to lose lease to higher bidder. More money ya have the more Freedom ya have, do to Government shut down, can't aford ta get to WMA land, dont do no good ta complain. keep your head held high & your powder dry.

Possibly lease owner management
knowing the amount of time, effort
and moneys spent to produce trophy
bucks.
Computer age with applications letting
them keep tabs on expenses.
You want to hunt, what's the hunt actual worth.

Ammo is crazy high and for a while it was hard to find. I think most people don't target practice as much. $2-$4 a bullet has made people think twice about shooting cans,etc. Just like gas prices...when gas was $1 a gallon there was a lot of Sunday driving just sight seeing. Not near as much of that now....a lot has changed in a short time...

I have hunted in Jack and Palo Pinto all my life on our family place. When I was a kid you couldn't see a house from any point on our property other than ours and one neighbor. Never heard a gun shot besides our own. Now you can see about 20 driving the perimeter. A bunch of bigger places that had old ranchers forever divided up from family growth or older folks moving in the city and selling the ranch ends up splitting up 100 acres for 10 ranchets or whatever realtors call em. The way most people think why sell 100 acres to one person when you could sell ten 10 acre places for more money. I think each one of them has a family member who target practices their ARs all day on sundays or sky blasts their shotgun during dove or duck season. There are also a lot more shots because everyone has an AR these days instead of just a trusty deer rifle.

Might be the amount of legal hunters. It seems that every year I see more and more people throw caution to the wind and hunt illegally, wether its not getting a license at all or just not using tags etc..

makes me feel kinda dumb. had hogs every night coming inta feeder's waited till got my hunting licnce so could legaly put some hog in freezer, & dogs run em out before could get legal shot of. all due to Government shut down.

This has to be the best ill informed statement of December 2013. Texas Parks and Wildlife were not part of the shutdown, the shutdown had noting to do with getting a Texas hunting license.

my late duck stamp was due to the shutdown...and I had 15 roll-over teal tags to use!!!!!

so i dont need a licence to kill a hog for food

had 4 deer tags

not complaining. but is it not against law, to shoot a hog unless have hunter licence could have put some chops on & freezer. one mans cull is anothers trophy

Yes you do but what does that have to do with the shutdown?

just making sure thanks