There's a difference
There's a huge difference between hunters in the field these days. It's a difference that impacts us all right down to the pennies spent to improve hunting conditions in your own back yard. Ducks Unlimited-Tennessee State Chairman Bob Foster and I had lunch recently. Over pizza we talked about the recent DU state convention and the flooding in Nashville that weekend.
Part of the convention contained reports and lectures from DU's top biologist. The information is interesting to say the least and indispensable to the hardest or hardcore waterfowlers. Inevitably we drifted into the standard conversation of how most people argue that no matter how much they give, hunting seems to get only worse.
Here's where I jumped in. In order to understand the big picture, you have to understand who we're dealing with, especially in the ranks of waterfowl hunters. It's standard issue that Ducks Unlimited spends money on waterfowl habitat. They're never far from a statistic or dollar figure to prove it, either. The problem is that they seem to have no idea who their demographic is. The high-brass plantation DU crowd died out in the late 1980s. End of story.
Every time I enter the sensitive argument of whether conservation groups actually improve hunting conditions(read results), I beg this point, to a fault. Look around at who has the recognizable DU head sticker on their truck. Sure there's plenty of expensive 3/4 ton pickups, but far more modest-means folks are flying the DU colors these days. Look closer and it gets even more complicated.
I blasted to Bob the exact scenario. A guy never hunts a day in his life and has no concept of what to expect, goes on a duck hunt. The experience is downright life altering. Boats, decoys, dogs, swamps and shotguns. Are you kidding? He's hooked. He buys everything he needs and is now a duck hunter. In his thirst to immerse himself in everything waterfowl, he finds Ducks Unlimited and supports it. "You mean to tell me if I give you money, there will me more ducks to shoot? ...sign me up."
The problem started before he found DU. Right out of the box a hunter's expectations are high (and wrong). It takes years of hunting and thousands of hours in the field to get a real sense of what to expect. If you asked me, expectations are really what it's all about. You can't market conservation and complex environmental strategy to a guy that just wants to shoot his new shotgun. You just can't. So now you have hoards of geared up newbie hunters blasting the swamps all to hell, wondering why there aren't more ducks. Compounded by the fact that they'd already given $500 to improve their odds in a drunken moment of chance at an event.
It's a recipe for disaster and a formula that sooner or later will play itself out, leaving an awful taste in the mouths of many.
You can't really force hunters to appreciate the small things or even legislate ethical hunting. What you can do is teach them what to expect in the field. Yeah it might seem counter productive to tell hunters they're going to shoot less in the swamps, but it's true nevertheless. I tell all new hunters to lower their expectations. It's hard work chasing ducks, and few are the full limit days for the average hunter. Helping them to understand the facts of waterfowl hunting before you even mention habitat concerns just makes more sense to me. Correcting distorted expectations right up front sets the table for a more educated and dedicated member base.
We want to bring more hunters to our sport. More hunters equal more money, more innovation and more motivation to take care of these resources, but I can't think of one guy who wants that new guy sitting across from him in the morning. The segregation of new and old will get much worse before it gets better. Especially as the un-groomed habits of new hunters drifts further from the time honed practices of the veteran hunters in the modern era. Everyone tries to teach kids the right way to hunt, at least as well as they were taught, but almost no one will tell a group of grown men they're playing the game the wrong way. Fields and marshes are being flooded with inexperienced hunters who've bought themselves a new lifestyle, and the responsibility of guiding them lies with all of us, especially the more powerful and able conservation groups like Ducks Unlimited.
