Today less than 6% of Americans hunt, while less than 1% traps animals for fur. To combat this decline, wildlife agencies are pumping tax dollars into campaigns to boost hunting, fishing, and trapping license sales.

From focus groups to surveys to educational curricula, state and federal wildlife management agencies are attempting to assess and influence public attitudes toward “consumptive wildlife use activities” (hunting, trapping, and fishing). Their goal is to increase license sales, generate revenue and maintain the support of the politically powerful “consumptive-use” lobby.

In 1996, hunting license sales were down 1.5 million from the record high of 16.7 million licenses sold in 1982. Trapping license sales have dropped to such a degree that their numbers are hardly even tracked by federal agencies, with less than 150,000 licenses sold nationwide last year.

In California, hunting license sales have declined by more than 30% in the 1990s. Less than 1% of the state’s population now purchases hunting licenses, and fewer than 300 individuals purchased trapping licenses in 1998, a number that will inevitably decline since voters passed Proposition 4, which bans fur trapping using body-gripping traps.

How to combat this decline and improve the public image of bloodsports? In Wisconsin, the state has suggested hiring a full-time employee to ensure “tolerance and acceptance by persons who do not hunt, fish, or trap.” According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this person would be responsible for “initiating after-school activities that introduce youths to adult role models of positive images of hunting, fishing and trapping.”

Positive images of what? Decapitated deer hanging on mantels and skinned foxes waiting to become fur trim?

Wisconsin is not alone in promoting killing animals for “recreation.” With men accounting for 91% of U.S. hunters, many states have shifted their focus toward children (“youth hunts”) and women. Women who participate in “Becoming an Outdoors-Woman” programs now offered in 44 states are taught how to use a bow and arrow, how to hunt with dogs and “old-fashioned survival skills such as black-powder shooting” among other activities, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

Despite efforts like these, hunting, fishing and trapping license sales are still declining in many states. Today’s youth is clearly not interested in the “tradition” of killing wildlife; less than 1% of all 6- to 15-year-olds participate in hunting activities today. Public opinion surveys show the vast majority of Americans oppose the recreational killing of wildlife. In 1996, almost 63 million Americans participated in some form of wildlife-watching recreation (observing, photographing or feeding wildlife, etc.), pumping $29 billion into the U.S. economy.

It is only a matter of time before the consumptive user is no longer the key to our wildlife management agencies’ existence. Efforts are increasing to change the hunter-dominated constituencies of our wildlife agency commissions and the funding sources upon which they rely, and API is working toward this end.