It's hunting season, and in northern Minnesota, like generations of Americans before him, Dan Walker is belly down in the underbrush, his bolt-action rifle trained on a whitetail deer.
Well, not quite.
Walker is actually in his condolike deer stand 14 feet above the ground, playing cribbage with his wife and kids by the fire, while the aroma of homemade chicken-noodle soup cooking on the stove fills the air. When a deer passes, he'll open his double-hung window and take aim. "My buddies say this isn't really hunting," says the 30-year-old owner of a utility construction company, who calls his stand "the Taj Mahal." "I'm a little spoiled."
Hunting is in the midst of an identity crisis. Despite its image as a heartland fixture — and its influence in the world of lobbying and politics — the sport is struggling. Overall, the ranks of hunters are shrinking, down 7 percent since 1991, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's most recent survey, in 2001. The number of hunters aged 18 to 24, a demographic critical to the future of the sport, has dropped by over a third in the same period. The number of people holding paid hunting licenses nationwide has stayed essentially flat from 2001 to 2004.
Some rank-and-file hunters complain that the sport is being hijacked by its luxe fringe. Even with fewer people hunting, spending on trips and equipment is up 29 percent since 1991, a development the industry attributes to a rise in the number of well-to-do hunters. That has the industry taking the luxury push even further. Their target: thick-walleted newcomers, not dyed-in-the-plaid-wool veterans who grew up with a rifle case and a duck call.
Some traditionalists also say they feel increasingly marginalized by the National Rifle Association and its focus on handguns. At the Web site of Hunt Fair Chase, a hunting advocacy group, debates rage over whether Republican politicians are abandoning hunters by failing to protect prime game lands.
Writes one online gadfly: "News flash: our guns will never be taken away, but our wildlife and its habitat is." Last year, the NRA created a new group, NRA Free Hunters, meant to keep hunters from feeling neglected.
One reason frustrations are flaring up more: Available land for hunting has shrunk significantly in the past few years. Part of this stems from the real-estate boom, which has city-dwellers and suburbanites buying weekend homes in rural areas, then posting "No Trespassing" signs to keep out hunters. It also reflects stepped-up drilling on public land. In 1999, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved 1,803 permits for oil and gas drilling on its lands; last year, that number more than tripled, to 6,399, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
Hunters, often conservative in their politics, are fed up enough to join with some unlikely allies. At the Sierra Club, efforts have intensified to court hunters. Over the past two years, the group has stepped up its "Natural Allies" program — an outreach to hunters that was low-profile in the past — appointing a director for the first time and giving it an increased presence at sportsmen's shows. It's even started offering safety and education classes to new hunters at its storefront offices in several states.
Hunting remains popular
For all its problems, hunting remains incredibly popular in the United States, with an estimated 14.7 million people currently active in the sport, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife. But the sport's future face is on vivid display at the luxury end. Hunters from Michigan to Oregon are checking in for room service and spa treatments — the menu at Rough Creek Lodge in Texas includes a $260 "Gentleman's" reflexology session. Elsewhere, they're driving $7,000 souped-up all-terrain vehicles with polypropylene gun protectors and camouflage seat covers, and carrying $1,600 Swarovski binoculars.
"You can have an $8,000 hunting jacket and not have a hunter's heart," says Tony Heckard, a lifelong hunter from Molalla, Ore., adding that his recent hunts have been ruined by the roar of ATVs.
One of the newer parks is Windy-B-Ranch in Jacksonville, Texas. The ranch advertises its "Super Bucks," which are deer specially bred for giant antlers that look great on a trophy wall. To ensure that all goes well for guests, the ranch spreads around food stands that draw the quarry right into gunners' sights. "You can hunt a lifetime and never see a deer like this. It's luring newcomers plus a bunch of old-timers who are just tired of shooting real small deer all their lives," says Ron Boren, the ranch's owner.
In Texas Hill Country, Rough Creek Lodge, where a half-day hunt starts at $480, recently started offering "generational hunts" to encourage the family to bear arms together — with a chair mounted on a truck so grandpa can shoot if he's too tired to walk. At the Hudson Farm in Hopatcong, N.J., a hunting club where the outdoor waterfalls are powered by turbine engines for dramatic effect, this season marks the opening of a new Disneyesque "quail walk." Guests shoot clay discs on a course outfitted with motion sensors and 18 different sound effects such as cackling pheasants and flapping wings.
While some critics call sporting clays "golf with a shotgun," Steven Polanish, Hudson Farm's manager, says his course is "the next big thing," and can help attract new hunters who've never picked up a gun before.
In keeping with the industry's push for growth, they're working hard to lure women. They also expect that effort to pay future dividends if moms bring their kids along, too, and groom the next generation of Daniel and Danielle Boones. High-end lodges are offering special family discounts, while hunting-gear makers are pitching women everything from $1,300 designer game bags to lacy negligees with camouflage straps. "You don't need a Y chromosome to hunt well," reads the catalog copy for a pair of women's briar-proof pants from the Ugly Dog Hunting Co.
The sport's greatest obstacle used to be animal-rights activists. But there are new barriers for the old guard and newcomers alike, including increasingly restrictive laws in some states. Vermont's Department of Fish and Wildlife, for example, will add another 16 pages to its 56-page rule book next year, including a new rule that protects yearling bucks from being hunted.
Some states are also upping license fees. Wyoming offers nonresidents the chance to compete in a special lottery for licenses to hunt big game like Rocky Mountain elk if they pay $893, almost twice as much as the regular fee for out-of-state hunters. In Alaska, a proposal is now on the table to double hunting licensing fees in some cases to help raise $3.5 million for wildlife management.
The National Rifle Association, still the nation's largest lobbying group for hunters, says it's pleased with recent successes in land protection. In the last year, it's helped pass "no net loss" programs in Arkansas, Illinois, Georgia and Maryland that require state government to track each acre of public hunting land it takes away and work to replace it with another. The NRA points to other gains for hunters such as the Bush administration's decision to start 67 new hunting programs on national wildlife refuges.
For Larry Caudill, it's time to hang up his gun. The Albuquerque retiree says his usual nearby hunting grounds are overrun with equipment from coal-bed methane drilling. Rather than travel to a fancy lodge with unspoiled terrain, Mr. Caudill has decided to stay home. "I can't afford a $10,000 elk hunt," he says.
Reed Albergotti contributed to this article.