Hunters help bag big bucks

Saturday is National Hunting and Fishing Day and I hope sportsmen will celebrate by following a dog’s nose through a good patch of grouse cover.

Or landing a huge steelhead on the Snake or a king on the Columbia.

Or hunkering in the brush to bugle in a bull elk or casting a fly to a rise on the Clark Fork River.

Or building a blind with a kid and putting out decoys during this weekend’s special youth waterfowl hunt in Idaho.

Or dropping off care packages for the gracious landowners who let us hunt on their property.

Of course, there’s more to hunting and fishing than putting meat in the freezer and a trophy on the wall, and sportsmen can feel good about that, too.

More than a century ago, sportsmen were among the first to recognize the encroachment on open spaces and wildlife populations. President Theodore Roosevelt, a legendary sportsman, helped formalize solid land conservation policies and hunter ethics. Market hunting was outlawed and sportsmen began contributing money for state and federal wildlife protection agencies.

During his presidency, Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service and signed the 1906 Antiquities Act under which he proclaimed 18 national monuments. He also established five national parks, 51 wildlife refuges and 150 national forests.

Not a bad legacy for a hunter.

The effort wasn’t limited to the bully pulpit.

Sportsmen, rich and poor, have contributed more than $23 billion to safety, habitat and access programs through the 11 percent federal excise tax they pay on hunting and fishing equipment.

In recent years, legislators have toyed with a similar tax for other outdoors sports, such as bicycling, hiking, climbing and the like, but efforts failed because recreationists, manufacturers and retailers for those sports lack the sportsman’s resolve.

Hunters and anglers pay their dues over and over. Their license fees contribute an average of 75 percent of the funding for state fish and wildlife agencies that manage not only game species, but also non-game species enjoyed by nearly everyone.

Still, the hunters and anglers volunteer to do more.

Sportsmen have risen to the call of conservation as decisively as they react to the call of a spring gobbler.

Groups such as Trout Unlimited, the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep and the National Wild Turkey Federation have contributed additional billions plus countless volunteer hours and energy to conservation projects.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation reports that its members raised $20 million last year alone through banquets, land donations, gifts of cash and stocks, conservation easements and merchandise sales.

In Washington, the RMEF has permanently protected 12,500 acres and has helped enhance 191,500 acres of elk habitat. The group is currently working on a project in the Tieton River area near Yakima, one of Washington’s most significant elk strongholds.

RMEF is teaming with The Nature Conservancy to raise $9 million to purchase 16 sections of Plum Creek Timber Company land to prevent it from being liquidated to private developers. The land is checker-boarded with public land, which boosts in the impact of the deal to more than 30,000 acres, according to Rance Block, foundation regional representative.

That’s just one of many sportsmen’s groups out there working.

Since its inception in 1937, Ducks Unlimited members have raised nearly $1.6 billion and conserved more than 9.4 million acres of waterfowl habitat throughout North America.

I’m not saying that hikers don’t appreciate birds, but their contributions to bird habitat pales in comparison to the efforts of waterfowl hunters who give so much to take so little.

I stopped in the Pullman Starbucks early one morning last fall for a cup of Joe to sip on the last leg of a trip to jump-shoot ducks. The young woman behind the counter winced a little at my camouflage clothing and said, “You’re a hunter, huh?”

I chuckled and said, “Guess I can’t hide it. I’m taking the dog out to look for some ducks.”

But she didn’t chuckle back. “I don’t understand it,” she said.

“That’s OK,” I said. “But if you ever want to talk about it over a cup of coffee, I’ll treat — as long as it’s organic, shade-grown coffee that doesn’t contribute to clear-cutting of rainforests and the decline of neo-tropical birds.”

That was the end of the dialogue, eye contact, wincing and any other means of expression on her part.

I’ve never had ducks that tasted better than the four I shot that day.

President Richard Nixon approved the first National Hunting and Fishing Day 33 years ago to recognize the largely unheralded conservation efforts of sportsman’s groups.

If you don’t belong to one of these organizations, it’s time to take a stand for the future as readily as you might go for a tree stand on a well-worn deer trail.

Then you can drink your morning coffee with even more pride.

Archery scrutinized: At an upcoming meeting, the Spokane County Commission plans to consider banning archery in the county no-shooting zone that currently prohibits only firearms

Fueling the debate: Oil makes the world go around, and it certainly adds slipperiness to the politics and policies that affect nature and the environment. Here’s some insight.

Alaska announced Monday that residents will receive $919.84 checks this year as their share of the state’s oil production — a $187.72 drop from last year’s payout and another sign that the big oil sugar daddy is going sour.

Dividends peaked at $1,963.86 in 2000, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The dividend checks are distributed every year from an oil royalty fund created after oil was discovered on the North Slope. Some 600,760 Alaskans are expected to receive dividends this year. About $12.5 billion has been distributed since the payouts began in 1982.

This is why Alaska residents are not impartial in the debate over oil development in sensitive federal lands.

Alaskans pay no state income tax, no state sales tax, and in the state’s two largest cities, Anchorage and Fairbanks, no municipal sales tax.

Alaska faces chronic deficits because it relies on oil for about 80 percent of its revenue, and that’s something to keep in mind for the next round of arguments to invade fragile wildlife sanctuaries such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Bully for Alaskans who have found a way to avoid paying taxes, but not at the expense of national interest lands and creatures.

Energizing the debate: Alaska isn’t the only place that’s running out of oil. The entire world is facing a shortage that’s coming with staggering speed now that China, with its enormous population, is showing signs of being as piggish about petroleum as the United States.

To help make sense of the upcoming crisis, the Spokane Community College Geology Lecture Series has scheduled one of the country’s authorities on the economics and geopolitics of world petroleum supplies.

“Oil and the American Way of Life,” will be presented by Robert Kaufmann, Boston University geography professor, 7 p.m., Oct. 28 at SCC’s Lair Student Center.

Before deciding whether your next duck hunting rig will be a standard pickup or a Hummer 2, you might want to listen up.