NPR has an article about a serious problem that has an easy solution that no one wants to mention. The problem is that the number of hunters in the United States is declining, and since — under the Pittman-Robertson Act, a tax on guns and ammunition is one of the main source of conservation funding, money for conservation is also declining.
The article doesn’t mention some of the nuances of the problem. First, the real financial problem isn’t the declining number of hunters but the fact that America has a president who supports the Second Amendment. By comparison, when Obama was president and questioned widespread gun ownership, sales of guns and ammunition hit record levels, not because people were hunting but to safeguard and/or express their gun rights.
Second, the decline in hunters creates another problem at least as significant as the shortfall in revenues: a surplus of deer and other huntable wildlife. Deer in particular are overrunning much of the country. The animal most likely to kill you in rural areas is not a cougar or grizzly bear but a deer when you hit them with your car and they come flying through your windshield. Some areas also have too many elk and other huntable species. Continue reading
