Wednesday, December 31, 2014

"In military affairs, quantity has a quality all its own."

"In military affairs, quantity has a quality all its own." -- Clausewitz.
From the 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (Revised February 2014).
In 2011, 13.7 million people 16 years old and older enjoyed hunting a variety of animals within the United States. They hunted 282 million days and took 257 million trips. Hunting expenditures totaled $33.7 billion. Big game hunting was the most popular type of hunting. Almost 11.6 million hunters pursued big game such as deer and elk on 212 million days. Big game-related expenditures for trips and equipment totaled $16.9 billion. There were 4.5 million hunters of small game including squirrels and rabbits. They hunted small game on 51 million days and spent $2.6 billion on small game hunting trips and equipment. Migratory bird hunters numbered 2.6 million. They spent 23 million days hunting birds such as waterfowl and doves. Migratory bird-related trip and equipment expenditures totaled $1.8 billion. Nearly 2.2 million hunters sought other animals such as raccoons and feral pigs on 34 million days, and their expenditures for trips and equipment were $858 million.

6 comments:

skybill said...

Hi Mike,
Any info out of all that data on "Accidents??" Considering that most hunters are "Safety Minded" the number of incidents are probably zip!!!
Got Gunz??,
skybill-out

prambo said...

Yes, there does appear to be a fairly large group of 'Muricans that are clinging desperately to their Bibles and guns.....

...and ammo, scopes, red-dots, bipods, magazines, reloading supplies, camo gear, training, laser distance finders, compasses, Mil-Dot Masters and...

...oh, and .MIL manuals, survival gear, sneakiness, knowledge of low intensity conflict, insurgency, COIN, tac medical, guerilla warfare, their own military training.....

...and, and....binoculars, local geographical and terrain knowldge, knives, "still hunting" techniques.....

...and all that other stuff I keep forgetting.

Oregon Hobo said...

Considering that estimates range at 80~100 million gun owners in this country, I find that 13.7 million figure telling in an entirely different way.

What those numbers point to is the fact that, for the vast majority of us, hunting is irrelevant to our decision to own guns. The only people who believe hunting to be some sort of top priority among the gun owner community are clueless politicians looking for a photo-op or to preach some asinine talking point about standard capacity magazines being unnecessary for hunting. All too many Fudds enthusiastically agree with all of this of course, because after all who doesn't like to have their own sense of relevance artificially bolstered by Very Important Pinheads on the teevee at the expense of ones would-be political allies?

The fact is, hunting is all well and good if that's what you're in to, but it's a hobby indulged by, dare I say, a fringe group of gun owners, whose sense of self-importance over the rest of us gun-owning rabble is already over-inflated enough.

Regards,

#OREGON HOBO#

Anonymous said...

Hobo, I'm an avid hunter (a Fudd, as you say), and I'd venture you that we hunters stand firmly on your side of the fence by a very vast majority. I never liked the "Fudd vs. 2A" dichotomy. Its a false division, and we don't need those.

Jim Zumbo to the white courtesy phone, please......

Paul X said...

Yeah Hobo, you must have got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. ;-)

oughtsix said...


Jim Zumbo and Dick Metcalf too!!!