LITTLE ROCK — State game and fish agencies worry about declining numbers of hunters and fishermen, but that trend looks upward in more than half of the states.
On Aug. 15, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently released its 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation State Overview report. According to the report, 28 states saw increases in the number of wildlife-related recreation participants in 2006-2011. Alaska enjoyed a 47-percent increase, the nation’s largest, followed by Louisiana with 40 percent. Those numbers include wildlife watching.
South Dakota had the highest proportion of state residents who hunted with 21 percent, and Alaska had the highest proportion of state residents who fished with 40 percent. Vermont is the top wildlife watching state, with 53 percent of state residents reporting some form of nonconsumptive wildlife-related activity.
Overall, the 2011 survey revealed that 38 percent of all Americans 16 years of age and older participated in wildlife-related recreation in 2011, an increase of 2.6 million participants from the previous survey in 2006. Participation in recreational fishing increased by 11 percent, and hunting participation was up 9 percent. That reverses a trend showing a 10-percent decline in hunting participation between 1996 and 2006.
Associated with these increases is a corresponding increase in hunting equipment expenditures. They increased 29 percent from 2006. That pays big dividends for fish and wildlife conservation through several major federal programs supported entirely by hunters and fishermen. Hunters and anglers pay 10-percent federal excise taxes on all hunting and fishing equipment, including guns and ammunition. These taxes, combined with funds collected by states through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses pay for almost all fish and wildlife conservation and associated recreational opportunities. Arkansas and Missouri also have one-eighth of 1 percent sales taxes that provide additional money for hunting, fishing and other wildlife conservation.
Also, funds generated from the sale of federal duck stamps pay for the national wildlife refuge system.
Through these federal programs, hunters and anglers since 1937 have paid more than $11 billion in excise taxes on purchases of firearms, ammunition, archery, fishing and boating equipment toward thousands of conservation projects, wildlife-associated recreational opportunities and access, and sport shooting ranges around the nation.
FALL FISHING
Although hunting is the dominant topic in the fall, some of the best fishing of the year is getting started right now, too.
Bill Eldridge of Benton is an avid crappie angler who loves deer season because it lures most fishermen into the woods. That means he has places like Lake Ouachita and Lake Maumelle almost all to himself. Jerry Blake has the same desirable situation at Lake Greeson, as does Darryl Morris at Lake Hamilton and Grant Westmoreland at DeGray Lake. I’ve enjoyed some of my best crappie outings in the fall with these gentlemen.
It’s best in October and November when the fall foliage blankets the hillsides. The lakes are generally calm, and the weather is usually pleasant. Eldridge has a milk run of brushpiles he likes to fish in the vicinity of Denby Point on Lake Ouachita, and he also has a couple of excellent areas on Lake Maumelle. His tactic is simple, but precise. He casts a small tube jig on a light jig head, counts it down to the depth of the brushpile and retrieves it slowly so that it nicks the top of the brush. You don’t catch as many crappie as you do in the spring this way, but they are almost always huge.
Blake has a network of milk runs at Lake Greeson that include hundreds of artificial crappie condos. They are all over the lake, on every piece of topography at all depths. His method is designed to put meat in the boat. He uses a battery of color-coded rods tipped with rosy red minnows set at various depths. When bobbers go down at a consistent depth, he adjusts all of his rods for that depth. He yells out the color of the bobber that plunges so that you can grab the correct rod. Likewise, he usually catches big crappie in the fall, and he catches them in a hurry.
Morris uses the same method at Lake Hamilton. That place is almost too busy for fishing from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but in the fall it’s virtually deserted.
Fishing for bass, stripers, walleyes and trout is also excellent in the fall. You don’t have to forgo deer hunting to enjoy them, either. There’s plenty of time for both.
Sports, Pages 30 on 09/23/2012