“Hey PETA I don’t see you sitting on the front porch shelling butter beans donating to people who might want to eat” – Michael Waddell – Professional hunter
This was from the Iowa show right after the BC crew donated some venison to hunters helping the hungry.
Leave regret behind.
Fly, while you still have your wings.
Time waits for no one.
My thoughts vacillate;
Trapped like a moth in the light,
Waiting for sunrise.
By MARK YOST
![[gun0209]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-FM251_gun020_F_20100209190414.jpg)
Harrisburg, Pa.
The Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show is a sportsman’s paradise, but one where trouble is brewing.
There were lots of kids here with their families, walking the nearly 300,000 square feet of the State Farm Show Complex. They were checking out the newest fishing lures, gun blinds and camouflage clothing. But many of the outfitters who set up booths at the show and sell mountain-lion stalks in New Mexico, bear hunts in Maine and African safaris are worried that they’re in a dying business.
State Farm Show Complex
Through Feb. 14
“Most kids wouldn’t know a deer from a dog,” said Jim Paine of Illinois Trophy Bowhunters, an outfitter in west central Illinois. “It’s sad.”
Indeed, many of the outfitters said that the majority of their clientele are 50-year-old men, a growing number of women, but very few kids. Most pinned the blame on one thing: video games.
“Why are they going to come out and freeze in a blind all day and maybe get one shot when they can sit in their living room and shoot all day long?” asked Brad Bowser, owner of a Linneus, Maine, guide service. Mr. Bowser’s daughter, Sienna, is 14 and hunts regularly, but she said that she’s an anomaly among her friends.
Video games are the easy villain, but the problem goes much deeper.
Since the 1920s, more people have lived in cities than on farms. There’s also the stigma of guns. In the 1950s, nearly every high school in New York City had a shooting team. Today, if you brought a gun to school you’d be expelled.
Then there’s economics. Many of these trips aren’t cheap and they’re often paid for with discretionary income. That means that when times are tough, often one of the first things to get cut from the budget is the annual hunting trip.
Robert Dunn of Dunn’s Sporthunting said one of his clients brought his three grown sons on an African safari. The cost was $79,000, with another $10,000 for airfare.
“These trips are not for the faint of wallet,” Mr. Dunn said.
Fishing is hurting, too. Tom DePersia, a boat captain from Marshfield, Mass., said that 20 years ago there were what he called “dock rats,” kids who hung out and begged to go out and work the charter boats. Many of them went on to become boat captains and deck hands as adults. Today, Mr. DePersia said, there are no more dock rats. “They’re all at home doing this crap,” he said, moving his thumbs and mimicking a video game controller.
He also blamed broken families. “A 10-year-old kid can go out and play baseball without his dad, but they can’t go hunting or fishing,” he said.
At his booth here, Mr. DePersia runs a continuous videotape of a 17-year-old kid hauling in a 1,000 pound tuna off Cape Cod, but the video is 20 years old. “We just don’t get kids like we used to,” he said.
The outdoor industry is aware of the problem and trying to fix it. Outfitters are offering father-son and father-daughter trips, but with little success. Of the hundreds of hunts he led last year in Maine, Mr. Bowser said, only a dozen or so included families with children. Mr. Dunn said he’s tried to get outfitters to offer half-price trips to kids accompanying a full-fare parent, but it’s been a tough sell.
Still, gun sports are trending younger in one way: It used to be that you had to be 13 or 14 to hunt, but some states have changed the law so that children as young as 5 can go out and hunt under adult supervision. Craig Cushman of Thompson/Center, a unit of Smith & Wesson, said the problem is the “kid bubble.” Thompson/Center sees kids hunting and shooting from age 6 to about 13, then loses them during their teenage and college years. A few come back in their 20s and 30s, but most never do.
Some are hoping that a proliferation of cable television shows featuring young, attractive female hunters will also appeal to a broader audience, especially girls. “The message is that it’s OK to have pigtails, wear makeup and shoot things,” said Kandi Kisky, who hosts “Whitetail Freaks” on the Outdoor Channel. Thompson/Center, trying to ride this trend, has a pink version of its Hot Shot, a single-shot .22 rifle designed for youngsters.
Ted Nugent, the rock guitarist and hunting advocate, thinks the problem is that even pro-hunting groups are too timid. “We need to be celebrating the utter joy and spirituality of hunting, not apologizing for it,” he said.
But the answer for many of these outfitters may not be hunting at all. Many here have started offering safaris that substitute cameras for guns.
“It very well may be the future of this business,” said Mr. Dunn.
Mr. Yost is a writer in Chicago.
Nothing breeds contempt
like the bad memories that
you have given me.
A terrible thing.
I’m sure if we keep watching,
They’ll show it again.
The mirror collapses,
and my body escapes but
my image cannot.
Inspired by Ministry’s “Burning Inside”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/09/AR2010010902005.html
I invite readers to undertake a brief thought experiment with me. The Jan. 1 front-page article “Homicide totals in 2009 plummet in District, Prince George’s” reported that the District has just experienced its lowest total number of homicides in 45 years. This was also the first full year after the D.C. handgun ban was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, and therefore the first year that city residents were able to maintain handguns legally in their homes.
The thought experiment is this: If the numbers had, tragically, gone the other way, and 2009 had the highest number of murders in nearly a half-century, imagine the hue and cry that would have gone up from opponents of Second Amendment rights. There can be no doubt that The Post’s editorial page would have cried ominously that the increase was linked to the court decision, and anti-gun activists of all stripes would have been hysterical.
More disturbing still is that the article made no mention of the Heller decision. Surely, regardless of one’s political opinions, it is reasonable to expect that a news article focused on a remarkable and startling change in the homicide rate would at least mention the landmark ruling that led to the only significant change in the District landscape in 2009.
William Ciucci, Washington