rare birds

I was looking through some older field and stream magazines i have and seen this article i thought would be interisting. I don’t know if its online because this is from a feburary 2002 mag. Im rewrighting it as i read it. Heres what it says about duck and goose hunters in canada……License sale figures in Canada show steep, long term decline in waterfowl hunter numbers. While deer hunter numbers remain relatively stable, waterfowl hunter numbers have fallen, despite near-record numbers of ducks and geese on the praries. In 1978, 524,946 Canadians bought waterfowl permits. By 1999, that number had dropped to just 197,584. In Manatoba, one of the nations premier waterfowling areas, the number of resident hunters declined from 46,050 in 1978 to 11,051 in 1999. NO single factor drives the decline. More Canadians are moving to urban areas. Anti-hunting sentiment has risen. The hunting population is aging. Youth sports compete for the next generations attention. None of these problems are news to American waterfowlers, yet our ranks don’t show the same preciptous drop. “Americans and Canadians have different mentalities,” says Murry Gillespie of Manitoba Conservation. “Canadians tend to opportunistic. If they can shoot some birds, fine, but they aren’t as passionate about waterfowl hunting as Americans are. New nontoxic-shot regulations and restrictive gun laws may prove the last straw for the older generation of Canadian waterfowlers. “Older hunters aren’t going to put up with gun registration and the requirement to buy a gun locker.” Johnathan Scarth, president of the Delta Waterfowl Foundation, says the decline of waterfowl hunters in Canada has implications on both sides of the border. “With a shrinking constituency of hunters you’ll see more pressure to close areas like our provincial parks to hunting. As neighbors, Americans should be concerned that anti hunting groups could use Canada as a precedent to discourage hunting.”— This article was written by Philip Bourjaily. I seen this article and thought it might be why theres more ducks and geese showing up that i’ve heard about here on this site plus the dangers from the influance of the anti-hunting people on both sides of the borders.