This is for the anti hunting treehugging animal rights activists……..mainly…….
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Hunters footing the bill

March 1, 2003
By Lew Freedman Chicago Tribune

Forget tradition. Forget the joy of being out in the woods. Forget the thrill of the hunt. When animal-rights activists talk about how hunting should be eliminated, talk money.

Talk about how hunters? license fees pay the bills for state natural resources departments around the country, about how hunters? expenditures fund jobs and how their spending serves as the engine for the economy in small towns across the country.

That is the advice of Eugene Decker, a retired Colorado State University wildlife management professor.

?Ask them, ?Do you realize what will happen if we stopped all hunting??? Decker said.
Actually, Decker, who gave a presentation on defending hunting at the recent Safari Club International convention in Reno, doesn?t believe hunters should waste time talking to animal-rights activists at all.

He thinks hunters should remain dispassionate and talk dollars and cents in making a common-sense argument to the vast majority of Americans who polls show have no strong opinions about hunting.

Animal-rights activists will never change their minds, but those in the middle can be swayed by riveting talk about greenbacks, he said.

Some of the fallout listed by Decker, 72, an avid quail hunter, if hunting is banned in the United States and revenue for game management is lost:

The loss of $20 billion in annual expenditures.

The loss of 500,000 jobs.

An average 70 percent decline in revenue to state agencies that supervise wildlife and the environment,

A likely drop in governmental financial commitment to National Wildlife Refuges.

An increase in the incidence of vehicle-deer and vehicle-animal accidents resulting in increased human fatalities.

There are already more than 20,000 vehicle-deer accidents in Illinois annually and 40,000 a year in Wisconsin.

Decker, who cited the 2001 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?s survey of outdoorsmen for his statistics, makes a logical case. Indeed, there will always be a percentage of Americans who wish to eliminate hunting, and the nation?s hunters won?t waver from their commitment either.

But the other millions of Americans in the middle may be swayed by explanations of how the loss of sportsmen?s financing is likely to hit them in the pocketbook or contribute to the downfall of wildlife programs.

In a related seminar, Shane Mahoney, executive director of science, wildlife and protected areas for the government of Newfoundland, made a similarly provocative presentation about why modern man hunts.

The best hunters were idolized by their societies, now the best athletes are, he said. Hand-eye coordination evolved when men?s lives depended on it. Now those with the best-hand-eye coordination are baseball and basketball players.