So are they helping the KS deer season and the economy? Or taking away hunting opportunities from Kansas residents?
Your thoughts?
So are they helping the KS deer season and the economy? Or taking away hunting opportunities from Kansas residents?
Your thoughts?
The two results are not mutually exclusive.
The conversion of an activity that used to be conducted without money exchanging hands into a business opportunity does increase economic activity, which in the eyes of most modern economists is a good thing. And the KS deer season may be "helped" by it terms of the average antler sizes of animals taken, and possibly the number of adult bucks taken as well.
The harm will occur in areas that don't show up on statistical printouts. The number of hunters recruited will dwindle with the reduction in huntable land available to the average or lower income would=be participants. That may take a few years to be fully accomplished, as many will hunt the remaining free opportunities for a few years with declining satisfaction until they give it up or find a way to come up with some lease money.
The overall effect after some time may be either a plus or a minus depending on you definitions of the terms.
If hunting is completely dependent on public land, it's standing on thin ice. Our public officials and agencies are already introducing and protecting out competition in the business of controlling the numbers of prey animals. We may see man as a perfectly viable and most effective population controller, who also happens to benefit the public economy in the hunting areas and can respond immediately to special circumstances in altering the control to suit unusual circumstances. Our government sees man as a less desirable option....one that uses personal weapons and justifies their continued possession and use by the public, and which tends heavily to support political factions that vote in unpleasant ways and say nasty things about our glorious leader. Between the bunnyhuggers educated partially by modern universities and partially by Disney Studios who now are firmly entrenched in mony positions in the agencies with a say in the matters, and the political future landscape, we would appear to be accelerating on the downside. The gradual reduction in hunter usage of public lands will likely pick up speed until it passes some unseen point in public approval and then will be made complete.
The business side of hunting may be what preserves it at least a while longer. Non-hunters may not vote based on the support of a candidate for hunting, but they do vote on economic issues, and if hunting is a more documented part of the economic health of a region, it becomes harder to eliminate without political repercussion.
We are seeing the first wave of leased hunting, with the emphasis heavily on "quality" hunting for trophy animals. If the trend continues towards leasing being a more and more common practice and public hunting a more crowded, unsatisfactory and unreliable alternative, we will probably see a shift towards greater availability of hunting on leased properties for the average guy to take "management" bucks and antlerless animals, maybe with stipulations that they not hunt during the prime trophy hunting periods or portions of the property. Supply and demand should eventually democratize (small "d") the availability of many leased properties, as will the business practice of preferring a long-term relationship with a customer base that may survive for generations, as opposed to the "get what the market will bear this year" mentality of a shorter-term relationship, with its attending increased advertising/marketing costs.
I see movement in that direction among the guys I shoot with now, with more of them leasing or considering leasing even though they are not inch-counters and look down on "horn porn".
Their definition of a "quality" hunt is one where they don't have to arrive early to get a parking spot and then out-walk the younger hunters to reach the most inaccessible areas, carrying their climbing stands in and out daily because they would be stolen if they were left overnight. If that type hunt becomes available on more leased properties at more reasonable prices than the trophy hunts on prime properties, the demand will be there to satisfy the supply.
The times are changihg.....but they always are and always have been.
A free market and supply and demand will usually find the appropriate level, and almost always does that better without government "help". There will be a few hiccups along the path, but I trust those factors FAR more than I do the control freaks being elected by the urban majorities.
The trend has been going on for a long time, with land prices having gradually reflected more and more of the "recreational value", trespass fees in some areas, and hunt clubs either buying or leasing land for longer term relationships with the owners. I think the trend is probably a healthy thing overall, as compared to the unreasonable expectation that we could continue forever in a shrinking world with permission granted on a handshake, or the expectation that government ownership and interference would somehow change its pattern and remain beneficial to a smaller voting bloc than to a larger one. That "free" hunting we enjoyed for generations was never really free, it was just paid for by someone else....the landowner or the taxpayer, or both, at a minimal cost. As the value of the activity and the land it was conducted on both increased, it was inevitable that it would eventually become increasingly commercial.
If that seems completely repugnant to you, try this: get some clubs and go in search of a place to play some golf for a handshake. You'll find a wide mix of places available, all the way from beautiful courses on which you may have watched the pros playing on Sundays last summer, to some local courses that look as though there may have been sheep grazing on them yesterday and where the greens are barely distinguishable from the fairways. The prices to play there will be roughly equivalent to the quality of the courses and the proximity to people with good incomes, and will range from courses anyone can walk and play during slow hours for well under twenty bucks, to some that will give you sticker shock. Don't think you'll find any where they welcome you to play for a handshake. But the vast majority of them will be private enterprises serving a demand from the public, and creating income for the owners and a few employees in the process. And they won't disappear even if the current leader of the country gets frustrated in his efforts and throws all his sticks in the lake and declares the game to be un-American, inhumane, and a threat to national security.
