Hunting is highly regulated in Germany, as are most things. German citizens were forbidden to hunt until 1949. If it'd been found out, both your dad and the family would have been in hot water. When my daughter was there, they got an infestation in the attic of their rented house. They were forbidden to take individual action. They had to hire a professional, who could only trap, couldn't kill anything. It was his opinion that the critters were "minks," a product of his broken English, since the nearest mink was in Belarus (I checked). IF they were pine martens, at least that's still a mustelid. They were more likely red squirrels. The pest control guy was totally ineffectual. They finally ran them out with their kids loud music. My remark about the wildlife is referring to the fact that Germans are much more urbanized than even here. Only a tiny fraction ever goes near wildlife. The idea that there would be enough demand for wildlife cameras to support its being marketed there. The licensed hunters in the US hovers around 1%. In Germany, it's .003...
Actually, I knew the percentage was pretty tiny, so I looked it up. There are about 350K licensed hunters and 90 million population. It's a fierce process over there first to obtain a gun (expensive) and then obtaining a license, and, more importantly a place, to hunt. They have a vastly different attitude about guns, etc. They never were a frontier...
So Germany is about .4%. I've seen numbers that are higher than 1% for US; more like 4% of total population. Either way it is a big difference. I think the percentage is consistently dropping in the US as fewer younger people are taking up hunting.
Those who do hunt are a determined bunch. They have to be. Hunting in the US is really a red state phenomenon. Alabama, going by licenses, is around 10%. When you get to the blue states, logistics of population, etc., indicates that the percentage of hunters is going to be low...
Tennessee cooks the books with hunting licenses by providing a fishing/hunting combo license for residents as the only option for fishing. Of course, some of these licensed hunters are not "permitted" to hunt if they were born on or after 1-JAN-1969 and do not have a hunter education certificate. I think there was some motivation to show a higher number of hunters (federal money maybe or maybe some additional clout in politics). I don't know if this is common in other states, at least for residents.
I didn't know that. Interesting. There may be some funding tie-in with the federal F&WL agency. I'm exempt because of age, so I haven't really looked into it lately. I do know that anyone born in 1977 or after has to get certified, but it can be done online. The original need for the camera was to observe the deer in our 3 acre property and see what their normal pathways were at night. Their plant depredations had gotten so bad, I was threatening to get a crossbow and take some of them out. (Huntsville's ordinance, like most others, only prohibits firearm discharge in the city limits.) Then, I started to worry over a misplaced shot. What if one wandered off to die on someone's lawn - with my bolt sticking out of it. In the last few days, I found out that a friend and close neighbor had taken out a buck and a doe, at least that's what he admits to. Seems like our deer traffic has decreased more than that. When I asked him about the wounding worry, he said that, yes, that worried him a little also. (He's taken other risks I wouldn't have.)
Really seems to be based more on population density - NY state has one of the highest densities of hunters/sq mile of any state in the US:
I'm not talking about gross numbers of hunters. I was talking about hunters as a percentage of population. Our percentage is roughly 10%. NY's is 2%...Really seems to be based more on population density - NY state has one of the highest densities of hunters/sq mile of any state in the US:
I understand - just pointing out that there are lots of hunters in the northeast. Obviously not the same percentage as down doing, though if you look at HY and remove the NYC metro population from the state (I'd bet less than 0.1% of NYC dwellers hunt) the numbers would be less skewed.
Coupled with those states' firearms laws..
