Counting Hunters.

I've never been one to jump on a bandwagon. Come to think of it, if somebody is making a ruckus about how good, new, big, unique, wonderful or surprising something is, I'm immediately looking for the other side: the bad, old, small, mundane, boring or cliche. Not that I don't want to be surprised or uplifted by good news. I do. Everybody has a platform to raise, a point to prove, and the minute I feel a campaign comin' on, I'm looking for the truth that lies somewhere beneath the rosy surface.

So it was recently when I received some good news statistics about big game hunting published by a chapter of a well-known hunting club. The gist of the four page brochure was contained in the headline "Big Game Hunting Is On The Rise."

Tremendous, I thought, and then as I read on, my instinctive nature took over and my hackles began to rise. First, let me state that I was surprised. I thought hunting in general was declining, and guess what, it is. That wasn't the nature of the piece. This was about big game hunting.

So I was still surprised. I didn't know that big game hunters as a group were increasing. Good news! Once again my antennae began probing the atmosphere for signs of misdirection. For gosh sakes, where did this distrust develop?

Let's throw out some of the numbers from the piece and you can draw your own conclusions. First, numbers of most big game animals have increased substantially in the past 50 years. Turkey have increased the most dramatically recently, up almost four million since 1973, to 5.2 million, or a threefold increase. Deer are up to 33 million and elk are up to 1.2 million. Wow!

Consequently, according to the brochure, numbers of big game hunters have risen, from 6.4 million in 1985 to 11.3 million in 1996 (There was, however, a slight drop from 1980 to 1985).

What concerns me are a couple of things, not the least of which is that the numbers of hunters only increased by about a half million from 1991 to 1996, even with the incredible increases in turkeys (yes, turkeys are considered big game). As a matter of fact, the number of turkey hunters increased by 500,000 from the 1991-96 period, and the number of bowhunters increased also. Increases were seen in numbers of elk hunters and numbers of deer hunters.

So, I have a question: With all those increases, why did big game hunting only grow by a half million, or five percent over the same period? As a matter of fact, according to the information, bowhunting increased twofold over the past 10 years, to 3.2 million yet big game hunters as a group certainly didn't keep pace, or even come close.

So if bowhunters, elk hunterss, turkey hunters and deer hunters increased altogether by 1.7 million (muzzleloaders are up too, but it doesn't say how much) during the period from 1991 to 1996 (I'm calculating bowhunters at one-half the 10 year period rate) then why is big game hunting only up by 500,000 over the same period?

I'm not trying to be critical of the brochure, but I don't understand the numbers. Perhaps some of the hunters are buying multiple licenses and are being counted twice? Certainly a large number of those who hunt other big game also hunt turkey, accounting for some duplication.

Anyway, I'm happy for any number that puts a favorable spin on hunting, and for hunting clubs that do such a great job of representing hunters to the world. I just wish I knew where all those new hunters went.