Hunting Statistics and Economics
The US Fish and Wildlife Service sponsors a National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation every five years. The questions are developed in concert with technical committee members from every state and with representatives of nongovernmental organizations. The last survey was conducted in 2006. The final report for 2006 will be issued in late 2007.
The most recent survey report (2006) indicated in that year:
• 12.5 million people 16 years old and older enjoyed hunting a variety of animals within the United States. They hunted 220 million days and took 185 million trips. Hunting expenditures totaled $22.9 billion.
• An estimated 10.7 million hunters pursued big game, such as deer and elk, on 164 million days.
• There were 4.8 million hunters of small game including squirrels and rabbits.
• They hunted small game on 52 million days and spent $2.4 billion on small game hunting trips and equipment.
• 2.3 million hunted migratory birds such as doves or waterfowl
• 1.1 million hunted other animals such as woodchucks and raccoons
How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude! ~Emily Dickinson, letter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper, 1880
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938
What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn! ~Logan Pearsall Smith
Man's heart away from nature becomes hard. ~Standing Bear
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! ~John Muir
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. ~George Washington Carver
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will...