Over the last decade, many states have expanded opportunities for archery hunters wishing to use crossbows. Incorporating crossbow hunting opportunities into game management may increase hunter recruitment and retention, and crossbows can be valuable tool for controlling game populations, particularly in suburban and urban areas. Over the past decade, many states have eliminated restrictions on…
Defined as the distance from an occupied dwelling, public road, or city limits that is required to legally discharge a bow or firearm, legal discharge distances vary tremendously from state to state. Often enacted due to unfounded safety concerns, arbitrary and unnecessarily large discharge distances pose negatively impact hunter access in suburban and exurban areas….
Many sportsmen and women depend on federal lands managed by agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for access to activities like hunting, fishing and recreational shooting. As these agencies develop strategies to manage federal lands, it is critical for those who support these activities…
Sunday hunting bans are one of the last remaining examples of the puritanical blue laws that were initially designed to encourage church attendance. At the time when these restrictions were first put in place, other activities that were illegal on a Sunday included opening a store for business, drinking alcoholic beverages, and tilling your fields….
Concerned about the uncertainty that 30×30 policies may pose for hunting and fishing access, the sportsmen’s community issued the Hunting and Fishing Community Statement on the 30 by 30 Initiative. This statement recognizes and embraces the overlap between the sportsmen’s community’s collective work to conserve fish and wildlife species and their habitats and the establishment…
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a progressive, fatal, degenerative neurological disease occurring in farmed and free-ranging deer, elk, caribou, and moose. The disease was first recognized in 1967 as a clinical ‘wasting’ syndrome of unknown cause in captive mule deer in Colorado. CWD belongs to the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs)….
One important tool for protecting fish and wildlife habitat is a state-level tax credit for gifts of land for conservation or conservation easements. With a wide variety of implementation options, these programs can provide alternatives to development by providing landowners with financial incentives to conserve land. These lands benefit fish and wildlife populations and have…
Properly managed wildlife habitat is essential for supporting sustainable and healthy wildlife populations. Well-managed lands containvarious successional stages that provide a diversity of habitats capable of supporting a diversity of wildlife. On federal lands, however, young forests and other early seral habitats are often underrepresented. The most efficient method to improve wildlife habitat is through…
This term is used to describe a variety of conservation and management methods in the waters of the U.S. MPA’s are not necessarily no fishing zones, but the number of proposed MPA’s by environmental organizations calling for permanent closures to recreational fishing have increased in recent years. Marine protected areas that do implement restrictions on…
In most states, fish and wildlife agencies are the entities best equipped to address fish and wildlife management issues within their respective borders. Recent efforts have been made to undermine state fish and wildlife management authority by placing greater authority under federal or local jurisdiction poses a serious threat to the future of state-based scientific…
Anti-hunting, animal-rights extremist groups such as the Humane Socieity of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have always posed a great threat to sportsmen and women, using their political capital to advance a fallacious agenda. Recently, these efforts have promoted the idea that nonhumans (animals) should have the…
Misinformation on our hunting and angling traditions directed to impressionable students can have wide and long-lasting repercussions, especially as these students grow up to be voters, legislators, attorneys and public officials. On the whole, America’s students are not hearing about the value of science-based conservation and the integral role of hunting and angling in natural…