Terrific feature on how hunting finances conservation in California, in today's Sacramento Bee

Ryan Sabalow of the Bee writes from the heart, as a hunter himself.   He tells of killing a deer last fall in Modoc County, the first he'd taken since his grandfather died several years ago; Sabalow also writes of a recent duck hunt near Gridley, with his 14-year-old nephew.  Here's an excerpt:

It had been at least a decade since I’d killed a California deer. The last time I did, my grandfather was with me. He died in 2016 at age 80. Ever since, I’d carried around his hunting knife in my gear. I was waiting to use it on the next buck I’d killed.

But before I put blood on grandpa’s knife that frosty morning in October, I pulled out of my backpack an orange piece of state-issued paperwork. A “deer tag.” Through tears, I filled it out and tied it to the four-point buck’s antlers.

In its own way, that act of filling out my hunting permit was profound. It linked me to my past and with it to an American tradition that’s in danger of fading quietly away.
The growth of cities and changing attitudes about the outdoors and animal rights have caused the “sport” of hunting to dwindle across the country. We know from hunting regulators all over the U.S. that the demand for hunting licenses has fallen dramatically.

This has a paradoxical impact on wildlife in California and elsewhere. State agencies in all 50 states collect hunting revenues that pay for habitat programs protecting not just hunted animals like deer and ducks but also endangered species.

In California, around a quarter of the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s budget is paid through hunting and fishing licenses and taxes on hunters’ firearms and gear. California’s 235,000 licensed hunters play an outsized and critical role in supporting habitat and wildlife that our 38 million fellow Californians enjoy. And their numbers are falling dramatically. There were nearly 700,000 hunters in 1970 when there were almost half as many state residents.

The story's photos are fabulous, too.  

Prior posts about hunting by my Law and Rural Livelihoods students are here and here.   You can find other posts about hunting trends and so forth just by using the word "hunting" in the search box.