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December 11, 2006
The Decline (and Fall?) of Hunting
Today, I'm blogging from the CocoaPerk, a coffee shop on Cocoa Road, in Hershey, PA. (Turn right off of Chocolate Avenue.) Very good coffee, reliable wireless, so-so art on the walls. [Update: Great muffins.] [Update 2: Hershey's public library has no decent maps of the town available to the casual tourist on inquiry. Nor internet access without a residency card. I'm back at the 'Perk, trying to get oriented via the web. Hopefully, continuing angst about the library will burn off muffin #2.]
While thinking about my classes for next semester, I couldn't help but listen into a conversation at the next table. A few of the locals were discussing the decline of hunting. According to that hearsay (confirmed by google), the number of licenses sold in Pennsylvania has crashed in recent years, reflecting a nationwide trend.
This is a story you don't see discussed much in the national media (although Newsweek covered it last week) - probably because reporters didn’t grow up hunting. According to the guys at the next table, the decline largely has to do with the disappearance of small game hunting (and prey) as a result of sprawl, and the increased expense associated with big game hunting. I wonder too what part the reduction of leisure time (for the non-wealthy) plays in the story.
The interesting facet of the story for this law blog is the tension between the decline of hunting and the rise of the constitutional case for gun rights. Of course, the argument for an individual-rights view of the Second Amendment doesn’t depend on the existence of a single rabbit, deer, or quail, but hunting surely gives gun rights advocates with some political cover. Home-defense is hard to connect with the need for large-caliber weapons (not impossible, to be sure, but it is a tougher sell politically I'd think). And the transformation of hunting into an elite activity would seem to be a blow to the cause, at a time when it seems poised on the brink of some major victories in court.
You see what you can learn by eavesdropping?
Posted by Dave Hoffman at December 11, 2006 08:32 AM
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Comments
Even though I don't personally enjoy hunting I hope that deer hunting (perhaps especially in eastern PA) won't drop too much further since we're obviously not going to re-introduce natural predators, and a large number of the deer we don't hunt will be killed by their number one un-natural predator, the automobile. That's surely to no one' advantage.
Posted by: Matt at December 11, 2006 10:05 AM
I'm not sure you actually "learned" anything by eavesdropping other than how better to eavesdrop. (You didn't get caught did you?)
Pennsylvania may be a bad example in the comparison to the decline of hunting because of the recent backlash involving anger directed at the Pennsylvania Game Commission's deer management program - ie. the reduction of the deer herd. The PGC knew that when they put the new program into place it would anger some hunters who would, in protest, refuse to buy a hunting license this year. Statistics from other states doing similar things shows the decline is short-lived.
Perhaps a bad year to eavesdrop.
Now on to the 2nd Amendment. All your points raise good questions, all of which have been debated over many cups of coffee.
Perhaps the number one mistake made by advocates for gun rights, including the NRA, was when they opted to argue FOR gun rights based on such things as hunting, self-protection, etc., when the argument should have always remained a Constitutional right, period.
It will be interesting to watch the further court rulings on this issue in Washington, D.C. where arguments are now going on that the Constitution's 2nd Amendment guarantee was for "militias only". This could become very big and once again wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Posted by: Tom at December 11, 2006 12:46 PM
...a year ago, according to a special annual economist article, the world populous tipped from predominantly rural to metropolitan. I think this move from the rural to the metro is what has reduced the number of hunters.
Posted by: erasmuss at March 2, 2007 08:08 PM
