Richard Wood said: <<
"It seems to me that there are more birders than hunters and it is time for us to ante up." << That statement didn't sound right to me, so I checked (google search: mn fishing licenses sold/ mn hunting licenses sold). From the MN DNR website, in the year 2002, I looked at the number of hunting and fishing licenses sold, assuming that anyone who bought a license is considered a fisherperson or a hunter. The results are below in round numbers: Fishing: 931,895 resident fishing licenses sold, with 192,000 being husband and wife combos. So the number of resident fishing licenses sold is about 1 million. In addition to this are about 250,000 non-resident fishing licenses sold. Hunting: About 460,000 firearms and archery deer licences, 300,000 small game licenses, 120,000 duck stamps, and 100,000 pheasant stamps. You must have a duck or pheasant stamp to hunt those species, in addition to a small game license. Thus, the total is about 2 million licenses sold.when compared to our population, is roughly 40% if each person only bought one license which is probably unlikely since many people hunt and fish and there would be overlap. So for an argument let's say that somewhere between 20-40% of the MN population hunts and or fishes. Now, show me where we have anything like that number of birders??? What is the membership of the MOU, a few thousand? Sure many people enjoy viewing nature, actually who doesn't? But would those people call themselves birders? I doubt it. Let me put it this way. When I tell my friends I'm going birding, they say "your doing what?". I never get that response when I say I'm going hunting or fishing, often when I say I'm going hunting or fishing I get the response "me too, where are you going?". I know this is anecdotal, but the hunting and fishing numbers back it up. So let's not kid ourselves, many people may enjoy viewing wildlife, but are they dedicated enough to buy a license? I would guess that MOU members or audubon society members etc may be, but that is about it. The average person would probably laugh at the thought of buying a stamp to look at birds. Andy Bicek Elk River, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20071003/73818080/attachment-0001.html