Deer hunting caught in an identity crisis

It's hunting season, and in northern Minnesota, like generations of Americans before him, Dan Walker is belly down in the underbrush, his bolt-action rifle trained on a whitetail deer.

Well, not quite.

Walker is actually in his condolike deer stand 14 feet above the ground, playing cribbage with his wife and kids by the fire, while the aroma of homemade chicken-noodle soup cooking on the stove fills the air. When a deer passes, he'll open his double-hung window and take aim. "My buddies say this isn't really hunting," says the 30-year-old owner of a utility construction company, who calls his stand "the Taj Mahal." "I'm a little spoiled."

Hunting is in the midst of an identity crisis. Despite its image as a heartland fixture — and its influence in the world of lobbying and politics — the sport is struggling. Overall, the ranks of hunters are shrinking, down 7 percent since 1991, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's most recent survey, in 2001. The number of hunters aged 18 to 24, a demographic critical to the future of the sport, has dropped by over a third in the same period. The number of people holding paid hunting licenses nationwide has stayed essentially flat from 2001 to 2004.

Some rank-and-file hunters complain that the sport is being hijacked by its luxe fringe. Even with fewer people hunting, spending on trips and equipment is up 29 percent since 1991, a development the industry attributes to a rise in the number of well-to-do hunters. That has the industry taking the luxury push even further. Their target: thick-walleted newcomers, not dyed-in-the-plaid-wool veterans who grew up with a rifle case and a duck call.

Some traditionalists also say they feel increasingly marginalized by the National Rifle Association and its focus on handguns. At the Web site of Hunt Fair Chase, a hunting advocacy group, debates rage over whether Republican politicians are abandoning hunters by failing to protect prime game lands.

Writes one online gadfly: "News flash: our guns will never be taken away, but our wildlife and its habitat is." Last year, the NRA created a new group, NRA Free Hunters, meant to keep hunters from feeling neglected.

One reason frustrations are flaring up more: Available land for hunting has shrunk significantly in the past few years. Part of this stems from the real-estate boom, which has city-dwellers and suburbanites buying weekend homes in rural areas, then posting "No Trespassing" signs to keep out hunters. It also reflects stepped-up drilling on public land. In 1999, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved 1,803 permits for oil and gas drilling on its lands; last year, that number more than tripled, to 6,399, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.