Out of a total U.S. population of about 310 million people it is estimated that about 80 million are gun owners. The most recent statistics from the USFWS indicate that 12.5 million hunting licenses were sold in the U.S. in 2006, down from 14 million in 1996. When you consider that some hunters purchase licenses in more than one state and are probably counted more than once and a significant number of hunters only use bows, the percentage of gun owners in this country who hunt with firearms is probably less than 15% of all gun owners. While the number of gun owners has held steady, the number of hunters continues to drop.

The continuing decline in the hunting population is what has me concerned and I do not think it has anything to do with gun laws. Buying a rifle or shotgun is the easiest part of hunting these days. Urbanization, suburban sprawl and the recognition by land owners that they can charge large sums of money for people to hunt on their land has drastically reduced hunting opportunities and has made finding and getting to a place to hunt time consuming and expensive. I grew up in a house out in the middle of the woods in Western Massachusetts. I could walk out my back door and I could be hunting. Now that I live in a suburb of Sacramento, California I have to drive at least an hour to find one of DFG's wildlife areas where hunting is allowed. The hunting is usually poor and many of the areas look like the city dump.

I am 59 years old and I have taken my two sons hunting with me and while they have showed some interest I doubt they will continue to hunt when I am gone. They are like most young people, there are a lot of things they would rather be doing than getting up at 4:00 A.M. to go hunting. My father was from Boston and did not hunt but my maternal grandfather lived in a small town in northern New Hampshire and was an avid hunter, trapper and fisherman his entire life of 89 years and would take my cousins and me out hunting and fishing whenever possible. I inherited his Savage model 99 in .303 Savage that was manufactured in 1908. Young people today do not have someone like my grandfather to introduce them to hunting and mentor them.

I know there are many people that fear they will lose the right to own firearms but I do think that there is little danger of that happening . I am much more concerned about the future of the sport of hunting. Hunting is declining not because of gun control laws but because finding places to hunt is becoming more difficult. That is why as a hunter I financially support groups like Ducks Unlimited that work to provide more habitat and hunting opportunities rather than the NRA and its fixation on the politics of gun control. I do not want to own a gun just for the sake of owning it, I want to be able to hunt with it and that is getting harder all the time.