Declining Licenses, Bottlenecked Gates, And The Myth Of “Too Many Hunters”

The trailhead looks crowded and it’s tempting to say hunting has exploded—but the numbers tell a different story. We dig into decades of data from California, Oregon, and Washington and find steep declines in license sales even as state populations soar. That drop doesn’t just change who we see in the woods; it guts the funding that keeps wardens in the field, hatcheries open, and habitat projects moving. It also shrinks our political voice, making it easier for decision-makers to ignore science-based game management when only a sliver of voters are hunters.

We talk openly about the culture, too. Social media can turn a quiet hunt into a performance, piling on pressure to “fill a tag” and nudging some toward bad choices. We push back on that and return to first principles: your tag, your hunt, your standard. Meat in the freezer is a trophy. Passing a buck can be the right move. Teaching a new hunter might matter more than posting a grip-and-grin. Those small, ethical choices create a healthier community—and better outcomes for wildlife.

Solutions start with unlikely allies. Deer are an umbrella species; when deer do well, ecosystems do well. That’s why we champion broader coalitions—hunters, anglers, hikers, timber partners, and conservation groups like Mule Deer Foundation, RMEF, and NWTF—focused on habitat restoration, responsible predator management, migration corridors, and access. We also tackle the access debate head-on: gated roads bottleneck people and inflate the sense of crowding, and paid entry can feel unfair, but with intentional partnerships and clear rules, working forests can be wildlife engines and reliable hunting grounds.

We close by calling for science-first management and unified advocacy. When participation falls, we need more voices, not fewer; more mentorship, not more gatekeeping. If you care about blacktails, elk, or healthy forests, your voice matters right now. Subscribe, share with a hunting buddy or an outdoors-curious friend, and leave a review telling us the first step you’d take to strengthen conservation where you live.

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Transcript

Setting The Stage: Hunters Vs. Deer

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. All right, this week went down the rabbit hole again with doing some research. And so this one is too many hunters and not enough deer. And I wanted to address those. And this also what spurred this is when I was doing those episodes with Paul down in California. So we were talking, he is very much on the forefront on re-establishing the black tail deer population down in California.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Okay.

Social Media Pressure And Poaching Risks

SPEAKER_00 0:43

And so he and he's changing his approach, which Agenda 23 is his approach, and it's more of a multi-stakeholder, not just hunters. And but we started looking at some of the numbers while we were recording that and in between the episodes and everything. And I knew that from a comment, and this is a comment what started this on Facebook was a comment I saw, and this was a group in Idaho, and someone was very long rant against social media influencers of the hunting industry. Industry. And guys going out there and getting a big bull, a big buck, just a different animal, and posting those pictures on Facebook and on social media. Uh-huh. And he had a problem with that as far as turning it into, and he had some legitimate points about turning it into a kind of a relational type of an activity that you go out with your friends and you're going hunting to this is social media clout type of thing. And I get that of seeing some people, and it's not all of them, but they'll post their gripping grins online. And while for the most part, I don't mind that, but I do know having been seen behind the curtain, I would say. Buck Ventures, and not that this happens with anybody that I've met there, but I know that there becomes a lot of pressure, and we've talked about this, and we've talked about it with Asha, a lot of pressure to produce content. And so that's then you get these big names. And I know somebody in Idaho, one of the big names, he just got busted for poaching. And so it can spur that type of activity. But one of the problems this guy had with it is for people who post on social media and people who want to teach classes, with which then brought us into the mix, as far as not directly, he has no idea who we are, but he had a problem with there being more hunters out in the forest. He's like, There are too many hunters right now. There needs to be less hunters, there needs to be yeah. And I I think that was just it.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

And I think a majority of hunters or outdoorsmen have felt that at one point or another. Yeah. As far as and some of that is just the frustration of the season not going well for them, an unfilled tag or whatnot. And I get that, I totally understand that. And I and to your point about the celebrity side, I guess, of uh we'll call it of the hunting industry. I myself have felt, and it's funny that we're tapping into this a little bit, but I myself have felt the pressure of having to fill a tag.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Like you said, produce content and everything. And that's what gets views, it gets clicks and all that stuff. But I have this year I shied away from that as much as I possibly could. I passed up six shooter bucks.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Because I was after one, and I told myself I wasn't gonna settle or give in to that pressure, and that's where things go bad. It takes it to a side that gets into the ego-driven, it gets into the social media clout, and it takes it from a sport that we love to a competitiveness that is unhealthy. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Yeah, it stops, and our point has always been your trophy is your trophy. Right. And if that is meat in the freezer, that's okay, there's that's a legitimate trophy. And shoot the buck you want. Like Ted Nugent says, it's it's your tag.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yeah, we're not gonna tell you what a trophy is or is not.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

And but you're of the point where you you you and it's I would say you've you passed up bigger bucks this year than the one I was after. Your target buck. The target buck just caught your interest.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

And that's it, and again, if anybody's come to the seminars or heard me, even on this, on the podcast here, I say that's how I'm wired. Yeah, you know what I mean? And that's fine, because it's my hunt.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

And some people are wired like that. I'm not if it's the last day, I want to shoot if possible. But I'm still newer to it, and I still want that I can get one every year.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

But I'm not gonna push my standard on anyone else. I passed him up, maybe the next guy wouldn't have. Maybe he thinks I'm crazy for doing it. And you know what? He's entitled to his opinion, and that's just we're just gonna leave it at that. But that's my hunt, my tag, and that's what I want to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

And I don't want to interrupt you, but you were also, didn't also that the Facebook thing that that started this whole thing, wasn't it also referring to oh, how did you put it before? Didn't like influencers teaching other people how to hunt?

Trophy Standards And Personal Ethics

SPEAKER_00 5:49

There was some comments about that, about ultimately didn't want hunting to be made to look attractive. And by putting when you put a trophy, a big bull, a big buck, a big bear, when you're putting these big examples, these trophies that maybe they're making Pope and Young or Boone and Crockett, or they're just a really nice looking buck. And guys who might have been just meat hunting, well, all of a sudden now that they want to get those, or it's oh, well, that looks like that's a lot of fun because it's picking up new people into the hunting as a hobby, as a sport.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

That's his problem with it, is that it's bringing too many people in. Bringing too many people. Okay, okay. They have a hard time with that one saying, Well, I don't understand what the complaint is.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

It's the bringing people in, and I know you we had someone come up to you one of the first years, I think it was the first year that we did the booth up in Puallop, and commented to you about they were gonna him and his friends were gonna take you out in the woods and kill you. Jokingly, of course. I didn't know what at first.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I mean, it it he very straight faced. It was in Puallop. It was the first or the second year that we had our booth up there, and and by no means am I saying that I'm an influencer or anything like that as far as social media. But this gentleman walked up to me, and I could tell because he was waiting to talk to me.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

If you've ever been to our booth, there's times we have four or five, sometimes six people there, as far as pro staff helping and taking care of clientele and people that want to talk and show off their racks and stuff. But he had waited through a couple of people that I were talking, I was talking to to approach me, and he didn't give me his name. He just walked up and said, Me and my friends, we want to, like you said, take you out in the woods and kill you for what you're doing. And I'm thinking to myself, what did I do wrong? You know?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Because you were teaching people how to trophy tactics, how to get their trophy, whatever that was, and to teach people how to hunt, how to successfully hunt black tailed deer. Right. That's our whole thing, and you've been successful over the years. And you're teaching because Osha and I have pushed you into it, whether you wanted to or not. Nope, it's time to start doing this. But he came in, he came up making that comment because he didn't want more hunters. That was the catalyst behind it. He just didn't want more hunters out there, he didn't want more competition, more competition and more. And this is somebody who he trophy hunts and he gets very big, great bucks. I and I don't think he's brought any of his by, but I saw his, I think his grandson and his son's buck.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

He brought he so he did bring his buck by for me to see that year. And to quantify all of this, guys, I want to say that we have since become good friends and we always talk when we go up there and stuff. But there are those that don't that aren't looking for friendship. No, that are just they're saying that stuff and they mean it 100%. And I don't know if it's ego, if it's jealousy, maybe it's both, you know, blowing somebody else's candle out to make their shine brighter. There are those people out there, yeah, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

And so with this, the idea of there not being hunters, not being more hunters, and so I started looking at the information. Like, does that hold water? And so we and like I said, we were talking about this on the episode with Paul, and I don't know if it made it into the episode. I think we kind of touched on it here and there because he was looking up on it, looking the information up on his phone while I was chatting with Steve and John, and so there was kind of a lot of back and forth. But so I pulled up the numbers for state of California, Oregon, and Washington. And so pop human population, the number of licensed sold, and the big game populations. And I just went with elk, deer, black bear, and cougar. And I brought up black bear and cougar because that's gonna get not enough deer. That was the other kind of rabbit trail that I went and started pulling up articles and doing a lot of reading on that.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So this is to combat the guys that are saying there's too many hunters and not enough deer or elk.

“Too Many Hunters” Complaint Unpacked

SPEAKER_00 10:18

And something that just occurred to me of why I think people think, and I forgot what you said that made me think about this, but it used to be when, and I can't I don't know when the changeover was, but when you and I were kids or teenagers, like I didn't hunt. I went out a couple times with my dad, but we would go out, we were shooters, we gun guys, uh-huh. We were always always going out in the woods and going shooting, and just the random rock pit out in the forest type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

There were no gates. Right. Now, like everywhere has almost everywhere has a gate right at the start, and I think that creates a false sense of how many people are out there because like you go to a main line and there might be four, five, six trucks at these main lines, or even more. It used to be if you could drive back into the woods and spread out, you might only come across two guys sitting on a couple clear cuts or in a couple of areas, and so it it didn't feel like there were a lot of people. Whereas if you pull up to a gate and there's six trucks parked there already, you just feel like this is there's too many people, there's too many hunters, because then you're limited by a couple miles, and I think that kind of gives a false sense that there's more people out there than actually than there used to be.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Limited access is bottlenecking everybody up into pinch points and stuff like that.

Gates, Access, And Perceived Crowds

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yeah. So the first one, California. So in 1980, they had a population of 23.7 million approximately. There were 53 or 53, 533,000 hunting licenses sold. Now, this could be any hunting license, whether it's bird hunting, duck hunting, big game. It did I didn't get into those type of specifics, but for 533,000 on a 23.7 million population, total population. So 2.25% of the population bought a hunting license. In 2025, or fairly recently, the population now in California is 39.4 million. They sold last year 278,000 licenses. So it's 0.71% of the population now are hunting. 532 to 278. So basically half from 1980 to 2025. And I am going somewhere with a lot of these numbers. So Oregon. So you're saying there's half the number of hunters now, and twice, almost twice the population. Okay. Hasn't quite doubled. So Oregon, 2.6 million and has increased to 4.2 million now. The licenses estimated at 400,000. So when you go back to 1980, it sometimes documents you you get an estimation, you don't get the actual number. So 400,000. Well, now it's 331,000. Again. Also on the decline. Population from 2.6 million to 4.2 million, 15.2% as percentage of population has dropped down to 7.8%.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Washington, 358,000. Okay. Go back, sorry. 4.1 million population in 1980. Now it's 8.1 million. We basically doubled. Doubled.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

So honey license went from 358,000 estimated to 185,000.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

My goodness.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

It went from 8.7% of the population down to 2.3%. So a bigger drop than even California percentage-wise.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Right. So basically what we're looking at, people, if you're hearing this, try and put it in layman's terms, yeah. Is the population has increased.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And but the number of hunters has actually gone in reverse. Significantly. Yes. Not because of population, because even with the population increase, there's still fewer hunters than there was back in 1980. Yeah. And looking at this, man, Oregon's huge California 0.71%. Percent. That is huge.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

And so Washington, 2.3. Looking at this, and this was what we brought it up with those numbers from California. And I think at first when we pulled them up, it seemed even lower then. And we were bringing up 1970 numbers. And the numbers we pulled up, it went from like 3.8% down to 0.56%. So these other numbers that I just pulled were 0.71, so they were a little higher. But either way.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

That's still a tremendous job. Drop from 1980 to 2025 to go from 8.7 in Washington down to 2.3.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And so part of the reason, and this is Agenda 23, and this was Paul seeing the handwriting on the wall. And I think as a Washington, and I didn't look up Alaska, even though Alaska has sit at black tail, they have blacktail. I didn't look them up because I think they as a state are just structured different than California, Washington, and Oregon. Different politics. Right. It just is. But he did agenda 23. They created that because it's to create bigger, more stakeholders into wanting to see restored habitat for deer, wanting to see increase in deer population. And he had mentioned blacktail and I deer as a whole are seen as an umbrella species. If deer are doing well, everything is doing well. If deer are not doing well, everything else is suffering as well. So if you focus on deer, every you're gonna improve everything else. And so seeing the handwriting on the wall as someone from Washington, and I would say to all of our Oregon listeners as well, your numbers are declining for hunters. We we need to see the handwriting on the wall as hunters.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah. And not just a little bit decline.

Hard Numbers: CA, OR, WA License Declines

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Not a little bit of a decline because, and I would say 7.8% for Oregon, you still are a big enough voting block that you can create change. But California at 0.7% and Washington at 2.3%, we are small enough groups that we can be ignored. Outdoorsmen can be ignored by politicians because ultimately you don't get 0.7% of the vote. Who cares? You don't get 2% of the vote? Eh, who cares? They can have that attitude of they don't have to care what we think. So we need to be working together with other people who are interested in conservation and preservation. We are involved in the preservation of the hunting as a sport. Other people want to conserve our natural resources, including wildlife. We need to be working together, and that's where my mind was going when I was researching this is eye-opening. How do we work together? And what are some of the other groups? Because I can seriously, I think if you went to anybody and said, hey, look, we have our deer populations are suffering, and here's why they're suffering. And whether or not you're a hunter, you just want to be able to see more wildlife. You want healthier forests. You're going to be interested in enacting that change, even if you're not a hunter.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Now there will be the rabid anti-hunters, and we need more people because they're very loud. And we need to be just as loud. And we need more on our side so that we're actually heard, I think. And so this is where I'm going with a lot of this.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

So, like I just said, this is eye-opening. Guys, I'm looking at the numbers right here in front of me, and it almost I mean, this is almost a state of panic.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

And having gone through what we've gone through in the last 10 years with the game commission and everything, and you I start realizing just now the light's going on. This is why we're not getting things back. Because they don't have to listen to us. Our numbers are so small, they don't have to they can ignore us, like you said. And it does not affect enough of the community, enough of the population to make them worry about getting re-elected, to make them worried about losing funds or backing or anything like that. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

And this is the fact that whether or not you fish, if hunting's your thing, you need to back up the guys who are going fishing. Yeah. Guys who are going fishing need to back up the hunters. We need to be on the same side.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Hikers, campers, campers, mountain bike, all everything, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

If you enjoy the outdoors, we need to be on the same side. And you need we need to back each other up.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

And I understand like there's some frustration when, granted, when the population goes up, that can mean shrunken outdoors areas, but there's still a lot of wilderness out there, even in California.

unknown 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Because, granted, the population has exploded, but one quarter of all of California lives in Los Angeles County. And there are still in those really dense counties, there are still some open spaces. There's m the mountains, the the mountains just San Gabriel Mountains just north of California. Uh-huh. Yeah. And there's mountain lions up there and black bear, and there's wild animals up there. And so even if the population is going up, and yes, they're urban sprawl and all of that, but I think a lot of it is we're misinterpreting, and it gets down to, like I said before, it gets down to misinterpreting what six trucks at the gates mean, what those gates mean. It's that everybody bottlenecks there. And we've talked about this in previous episodes about if you get there and you run into another guy who's gonna go in, hey, which way are you going? Yeah. And adjust your plan.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

It's big enough.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

And I and honestly, I've chatted up, and uh, we have a lot of guys who will chat up everybody at the gate. And we've had guys who've taken the class because it got chatted up at the gate by one of our pro staff. For the most part, people I think they're willing to work together. Some guys aren't, but make the effort. It's it gets down to making the effort.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

So here's something you didn't touch on, Aaron, and I just thought about this. Going to hunting license, hunting license sales.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

We live in Washington, so let's look at Washington real quick. So in 1980, they sold 358,000, estimated 358,000 licenses.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

So when you go in and you buy that license, and I don't know, in 1980, I don't think they well, they didn't have the package deals. You just went in and you bought a license and separate tags. It wasn't a package like they're doing now and stuff. But every one of them, whether it's small game, large game, it's a license. It was a hunting license all the way up till now to where they're buying the package. 358,000.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Well, that could include like duck hunters.

Political Clout And Agenda 23

SPEAKER_01 22:23

But the base is there's always a base sale of a license. Of a license. Of a hunting license there. This is just hunting. We're not talking fishing.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Not talking fishing.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Because if you go saltwater, freshwater back then, you still had to have the base fishing license. Okay?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Actually, yeah, 1980. I think it was just salmon.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Salmon card?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Salmon card. Because I remember at some point so growing up on the Puget Sound, I grew up in Port Orchard, we always had a boat and we went fishing all the time. Always out on the water going fishing. And I remember when they started the bottom fish sticker on your license, and it cost three bucks, and everybody lost their minds. How dare they? But I remember as a kid, we would ride our bikes down to the Harper Dock in Port Orchard, and we would go crabbing as kids, or we would go fishing as kids and be doing both at the same time. We'd pull up the crab pots, no limits. We'd go home with a bucket full of red rock crab, and that was just the way it worked. That's how everybody did.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Okay. So it just for this example, let's say, let's just say, folks, just plain pretend here. We're flirting with numbers. 358,000. Let's say that it's just a solid number, not estimated. It's a solid number. 358,000. And let's just for this example say that those hunt licenses were$10 each.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

How much money is that?

SPEAKER_00 23:49

$3.58 million.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Okay, for those who don't know, Aaron is a rain man. This guy is a human calculator. It's easy. Yeah. But I'm just saying this is why I'm doing it with you. Okay, so$300.58 million.$58 million generated from just license revenue. That's not tags. That's just license. Now, jump forward to 2025. Let's just say those licenses are the same ten dollars and there's$185 million.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

That means$185,000.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

$1.85 million.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

It was what they pulled in. Think of the revenue lost.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Yeah. Even if you adjust for inflation, it's still overall you're there are better ways to manage or to bring in income. Right. To bring in more money to manage. And we do want game wardens out there. We do want everything managed.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

But that's the thing I'm saying. That's the point I'm trying to make here is that we went from fictitious$3.5 million down to$1.8 million to pay for game wardens, keep fish asheries open, work environment pro environmental projects, enhancement projects and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

You're wondering why things aren't getting done. You're wondering why they're not you're not seeing these things. You're seeing hatcheries close, you're seeing fewer game wardens, you're seeing less animals as far as because they used to transplant elk throughout the state. They're not doing that anymore. That's why. Because they don't have that revenue. And that's just the hunting licenses. That's huge.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

It is. And oh, I just had a thought.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

How do you compensate for that? How what what do you drum up and generate that kind of income?

Coalition Building Beyond Hunters

SPEAKER_00 25:42

And that's and that is bring more people into the sport. Whether it's and really how I got my start hunting again is I just went out, like a couple friends, hey, let's go out grouse hunting. Well, that's pretty easy. We just walk the roads and get a 20 gauge. Okay, well, that was 300, 400 bucks to go get a 20 gauge and some shells. Let's just walk around grouse hunting. And it was a cheap and easy way to get into hunting, and then it kind of grew. And then of course I took the plunge and finally started deer hunting and other big game. But even before this, I was still buying a hunting license to go grouse hunting. Uh-huh. Small game. Okay. And whether that was 40 bucks or 50 bucks or, you know, I can't remember what it was. I forgot to buy it this year with in the package deal. And I was kicking myself because I think it was$55 just for the, or$45 just for the small game license. And it would have been like half price had I added it on. That's what happens when you buy it online. Oh, this was another thing that touching on the numbers and the advocacy. And I think we'll talk about this actually, because we haven't even gotten into part two of this. So I think we're going to turn this into a two-week episode because we're at the 30-minute mark right now. And I think we could talk another 30 or 35 minutes on the next part. But with the advocacy, it's also bringing in thinking about the timber companies. So I know, and this is very unpopular, and I get it. Warehouser charging for guys to key access or walk-in access onto their property.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Basically a trespass fee.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

A trespass fee. And well, it used to be free, and now guys are ticked off because they have to pay for that. Completely understand that. But what was the real eye-openers when we were at Buck Ventures and we were talking to one of your friends there, and he's he was so excited because he got a lease on some property. I don't know if it was North Carolina, South Carolina, or Tennessee, or he goes, I got a thousand acres. The lease basically to go hunt, which is permission to go hunt, so the trespass fee. Where you pay the landowner.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

He goes and he was excited because he got access to a thousand acres and it was for three years, and it was gonna only cost him, only going to cost him twenty-one dollars per acre, or yeah. Yeah, it worked out it was gonna be twenty one hundred a month or twenty one hundred a year.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

No, it or was it twenty one thousand? I think it was twenty-one thousand.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah, a year for three years. And I don't know what warehouses, three, four hundred bucks for a family or something.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, three well three seventy five, I think. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Guys, it could be worth, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

And I get it, I get it. Having lived through the gates being open year-round and you could just go in, yeah, and where it is now, and then also having hunted out of state in Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, all over the Midwest and whatnot, and having talked to guys that have those leases, yeah, where a small one is 6,000, that's a cheap lease. You know, guys are dying to have something like that back there, and we gripe and complain for paying$375. But I get it, having lived through the freeze, it's hard to swallow.

Funding Collapse From License Sales

SPEAKER_00 29:24

It's a hard pill to swallow, and I completely get it. But when you stop and think that east of the Mississippi River, 80% of the U.S. population lives east of the Mississippi, 20% lives west. We're kind of spoiled out west. We have a lot of now, we might have to drive a couple hours to get there, but we have access to a lot of open forest, open land that just doesn't exist back east. Right. And so and because that doesn't exist is why you have limited opportunities to hunt. But then they have so many whitetail because I'm sure all of their numbers, all of the numbers, and I even looked up Idaho, all of the numbers have dropped in every state of total of percentage of hunters in the state. Just the raw number. I think Idaho's actually was the one that went up, but as a percentage, it still was half of what it was back in 1980, 1970. But back east, you got to think that there's fewer, even in Alabama and where there's a lot of hunting.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

But you can the population hasn't you, you know, that all that's done is continue to grow. Yeah. It's getting smaller and smaller all the time.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

A deer a day, or three deer a day is the bag. Which is just crazy to think that we have all this open land and everything, and we can go get one a year. They can go get three a day. So it's a little skewed. But when we talk about groups that we need to be working with, we absolutely need to be working, and this will go into this because we're going to talk about habitat, we're going to talk about deer population and big game populations next week. But you have to have everybody on board working out the system, working out the game management plan. And honestly, from what I've seen, timber companies do a good job of creating some pretty good habitat. When they go in and clear cut, and that creates a lot of new growth, new opportunities to feed, and then they replant them, and then it becomes good cover. Well, a lot of the places we go hunt are are on these pieces of property, these timberlands, right? I'm all on Sierra Pacific, but we need to work with them and say, hey, you know, wow, why are you resistant, possibly, to hunters coming onto your property? What is it? Yeah, a good way to work this.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

And we can list off right off the top. I mean, okay, so fire danger, uh-huh, vandalism, we get that. There's poaching, we get all that, but uh, you're 100% right, Aaron, when you say it. We do need to be working together. We need to be working together with the Mule Deer Foundation, the Blacktail Foundation, the Whitetail Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, National Turkey Federation. I mean, we gotta start working with these things, and we have to start learning to recognize whether it's our own personal bias or if it's reality, these things that we're complaining about. Yeah, you know what I mean? Stop chasing people away. The numbers don't lie, we're declining, and you said it, and they can ignore us, and they figured it out. Yeah, that's the hard part. I mean, that stinks.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

And so I am looking at things like the traditional, well, this is why this is, and I think I've always pushed back on that because I have a friend who doesn't he doesn't like when he sees Oregon license plates at the trailheads or at the mountain bike courses up in the mountains, he doesn't like to see Oregon being in Washington, Oregon license plates, they need to just stay in their state. And I'm thinking, how many times have we gone snowshoeing and hiking and you've gone mountain biking down in Oregon?

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Right. It's exactly right. It's exactly right.

Recruiting New Hunters Through Small Game

SPEAKER_00 33:33

And as far as I'm concerned, Oregon residents, California, whoever, you're welcome. You're welcome to come here and hike our. We got some great trails. You're welcome to come here. I don't mind out-of-state hunters if they want to hunt here, but vice versa. And if they're managing, if they've got to manage things so that it's fair for their hunters first, and or however it's going to work, but just be we gotta have each other's backs. It's that's how I'm seeing it, is we need more people who have each other's backs, who are willing to work together, come to a consensus of what needs to be done, and then act on it and hold politicians' feats to the fire that they are going to act on that. And WDFW and ODFW and Department of Fish and Wildlife in California, all of these groups that okay, you have this plan in place. Are you enforcing it? And I know that's that's recently come up. You and I both put in our feedback about a bill, Senate bill, was it 5640?

SPEAKER_01 34:40

I think that's it.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Yeah, and that they just fulfill the game management plan that was in place. Yeah, that's all we're asking. Based on science, based on science. And yeah, I think, and that's kind of where we're at with that. So we did go a lot longer talking about this, and with the shows coming up, I was gosh, we've got episodes to get out. It's yeah, just because we're really looking at that. But I think we got enough to do the next episode, so we will be recording that. And this is talking about what we what our issue here was the what did I say, too many hunters and not enough deer. So next week we're gonna talk about not enough deer. And by that I mean, is there not enough deer or is there not enough elk? Is there not enough animals? And are they healthy populations or are they not healthy? What's going on with all of that?

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Is predation playing a role?

Paid Access, Leases, And Perspective

SPEAKER_00 35:38

And all that and I found out some very interesting stuff, and I'm really excited to share it with everyone. But we will hold on to that till next week. If you could go on to your platform, like, subscribe, share, heart, which, whatever your platform asks, if you could do that, it really helps to push our podcast out. We'd really appreciate it. If you're coming to the show, please stop by our booth. We'll be in Puallop, whatever it's called. Peter Piper picked a pickle. We will be there at the booth. Come by, say hi, love to chat with you, love to see you. We got some stickers for you, love to talk in to go into the hunters gathering, still have slots open. We are fast approaching classes being full. We're not even to the shows, and we're almost 100% full. We are really, really close. There are only a few slots left. In fact, the online is closed, and we're gonna create a wait list for the online. Yeah, it's been crazy. But appreciate you listening to us. If you have an idea, shoot us an email at blacktailcoach at gmail.com. Love to talk about what you want us to talk about. And until next week.