Hunting and Government

Oregon’s Coming Expensive Lesson

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For decades, hunters and fishermen have quietly funded conservation while everyone else took credit. In Oregon alone, sportsmen contribute nearly a billion dollars annually to the economy and generate tens of millions more through Pittman-Robertson excise taxes that fund wildlife habitat, hunter education, and conservation programs. Yet lawmakers continue treating these same people as a problem rather than partners. Perhaps Oregon should proceed and learn the lesson firsthand. Numbers don’t care about politics. When the funding shrinks, the jobs disappear, and conservation budgets start hurting, the state may discover who was paying the bills all along.

The Michigan Deer Debacle: How the DNR Managed to Fail Hunters, Farmers, and the Deer Herd All at Once

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For generations, deer hunting has been woven into Michigan’s identity. Opening day used to look like a state holiday. Orange jackets in diners at 4 a.m., rifles leaning in pickup trucks, kids learning from their dads and grandfathers that hunting wasn’t just about venison—it was about discipline, stewardship, and tradition. But if you look at the numbers today, something has gone badly wrong. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has spent decades regulating, restricting, tweaking, and “managing” the deer herd, yet the results speak for themselves: declining harvests, shrinking hunter participation, and a system so tangled that it now struggles to produce enough hunters to even keep the herd under control.