Here’s a chance to vote in a poll at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on whether you support recent proposed legislation to remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List. As of this writing, 63% opposed such legislation.

Tom Remington

Yikes!! For those hoping to spread their beloved wolves from coast to coast across America, a recent poll conducted by Idaho’s Lewiston Tribune (subscription required), shows that 78% of respondents think wolf reintroduction has been a “fiasco” or even worse, they want the wolves all killed.

Pay attention now wolf lovers. This is the result of your uncompromising insistence that all Americans be forced to swallow your wolf sickness. You have created this hatred toward the animal and now with your petition to cover the rest of the nation with wolves, that detestation to the predator will keep growing.

The poll looked like this, from the information supplied to me:

A scientific resolution filed with the federal government calls for reintroducing tens of thousands more wolves across the country. My reaction to this is …

Great. Wolves are an integral part of a healthy ecosystem. – 10% – 36 votes

We don’t need no more stinking wolves. Kill ‘em all. – 43% – 151 votes

Tom Remington

Do you believe wolves in the Northern Rockies require federal protection? Vote now!

Politico.com is reporting that a recent poll sponsored by the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, indicates that hunters and fishermen favor McCain over Obama but not by the same margin as we might normally see. Fishermen have a slightly more negative impression of McCain.

Tom Remington

The results of the latest Black Bear Blog poll show that readers think that if Barack Obama and John McCain go head to head for the presidency, McCain would win convincingly.

Today marks the last day of the primary voting campaign. Democrat voters will head to the polls in Montana and South Dakota to cast a ballot for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. It will be interesting to see what kind of a voter turn out these two states have as the media has already decided that Obama has won and will announce his victory tonight. Unless Clinton has an ace up her sleeve, it certainly appears that it will be McCain vs. Obama come November.

Here are the results of the Black Bear Blog non-scientific poll.

Pick a Winner! From the pairing below, who do you think will win in November?

* Obama vs. McCain – McCain will win: 52% (108)
* Obama vs. McCain – Obama will win: 23% (47)
* Clinton vs. McCain – McCain will win: 10% (20)
* Clinton vs. McCain – Clinton will win: 10% (20)
* None of the above will be elected: 6% (12)

Total Votes : 207

155 readers were prophetic enough to see that is sure looks like Obama and McCain on the ticket in November. Of those, a clear decisive majority, 108, thought McCain would beat Obama head to head. 47 picked Obama to win.

We do have some hopeful readers who thought it would be McCain against Clinton. In that match up, it was a draw with 10%, or 20 readers, opting for both to come out on top.

I’m not exactly what 12 readers had in mind when they believed that none of the three candidate would even get elected.

Once again it was a fun poll, which is the intent. I hope you’ll take a moment while you are here to participate in the new poll located just to the right in the right side bar. Thanks for playing.

Tom Remington

I guess if Black Bear Blog readers had their chance, they would just as soon put Al Gore on an iceberg and set him adrift, somewhere…..anywhere. The latest not-so-scientific Black Bear Blog poll showed 58% of readers (at total of 73) thought Al Gore should be sent sailing.

Just as interesting though is that 39%, a total of 39 readers, want the polar bear listed as endangered – not threatened but endangered. As far as anything in between, there wasn’t a lot of interest.

Here are the results of the Polar Bear Poll!

Should The Polar Bear Be Further Protected With Endangered Species Act?

* List the bear as Endangered.: 31% (39)
* List the bear as Threatened.: 6% (7)
* Leave well enough alone.: 6% (7)
* Put Al Gore on an iceberg and set him adrift.: 58% (73)

Total Votes : 126

Thanks for participating and check out the latest poll to the right.

Tom Remington

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Washington, D.C. vs. Heller gun ban case, I placed a poll on the Black Bear Blog to see how readers felt about what if any changes we could expect from this hearing. Of course a decision isn’t expected until perhaps as early as June, only speculation from the so-called experts have made its presence throughout the media.

Here’s the results of the poll:

With oral arguments of D.C. v Heller behind us, how do you feel about gun rights in America?

* They will mainly go unchanged.: 21% (30)
* There will be a slight reduction of gun restrictions.: 30% (43)
* There will be a significant reduction in gun restrictions: 28% (40)
* There will be a slight increase in gun laws.: 9% (13)
* There will be a significant increase in gun laws.: 8% (11)
* I don’t think gun rights are important.: 4% (5)

Total Votes : 142

I can only surmise that from the results of this survey, Black Bear Blog readers must feel that the Supreme Court will, at the very least, keep things the same with any ruling they may make. 21% of readers believe there will be no changes to America’s gun laws.

The majority of readers (30%) thought there would be slight reductions in gun laws and 28% said there would be significant reductions.

16 readers thought gun laws would get stricter or they didn’t think gun rights are important.

I may opt to run this poll again after the Supreme Court makes a ruling and see how readers view things then.

Thanks for taking the time to participate in our polls and make sure to check out the latest poll just to the right.

More on District of Columbia vs. Heller

Tom Remington

The latest Black Bear Blog unscientific poll taken of participating readers, verifies for me what I have claimed and suspected for quite some time – that the loss of lands to hunt on is one of the major factors in any reduction of hunting participation.

According to the poll, and you can view the results below, out of 276 responses, 112 or 41% think that reduced access to huntable lands is the biggest cause of any reduction in hunting participation.

Studies sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continue to show that hunting participation is on the decline. There is other information available that show that not to be the case in certain states. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to see what readers thought.

The second biggest reason indicated was time to hunt. I wondered how closely this number would resemble the land access issue. A bit surprising to me was that only one person indicated that disease of deer would be a factor.

Below is the results of the poll. Make sure to give us your thoughts on the newest poll that you can find just to the right of this page.

If you think the number of people participating in hunting is decreasing, select which of the below you think is the biggest reason.

* Cost: 11% (30)
* Social Pressures: 8% (23)
* Success of Anti-Hunters: 6% (17)
* Reduced Access to Huntable Lands: 41% (112)
* Disease: 0% (1)
* Time to Hunt: 24% (67)
* Reduced opportunities for Hunters to be involved in Fish and Game in their State.: 9% (26)

Total Votes : 276

Tom Remington

Below are the results of the latest unscientific poll from the Black Bear Blog.

Of the following candidates still remaining in the presidential primary, which one best supports our Second Amendment right?

* Hillary Clinton: 7% (25)
* Barack Obama: 8% (31)
* Mike Huckabee: 26% (98)
* John McCain: 26% (96)
* Ron Paul: 24% (91)
* Mitt Romney: 9% (32)

Total Votes : 373

The poll results are interesting but not surprising, to me anyway. While clearly readers think that republicans best support our Second Amendment rights, not so many think Mitt Romney, who has since this poll was created, dropped out of the race. I’m not sure how much that actually affects the outcome of this poll.

Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Ron Paul virtually split evenly a total of 285 votes. Each one got nearly 3 times the number of votes as either Clinton or Obama.

From the democrat’s side, what I take from this poll is that Hillary Clinton, because of her past record on gun rights, received the lowest number of votes. Obama, even though he has essentially no record on gun control but has stated publicly that he will do “whatever it takes” to get guns out of the hands of criminals, received more support than Clinton.

Thanks for participating in this poll and make sure to give us your opinion on the newest poll just to the right.

Tom Remington

I would suppose that this recent study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proves once again that statistics prove that statistics can prove anything. I have lived for 55 years and during that time I have seen scientific studies draw conclusions that were overturned a short while later as the result of a different study. There are even studies now to show that studies can be misleading. So what do we do with studies?

Good question. I would suppose that there is some good in everything, right? So, if that is the case, we should take each study for what it is, extract from it things we find of value and appear to be accurate and perhaps learn something from it.

This recent study shows that Americans are not enjoying nature like they used to. There are several articles written about this report and like mine, they focus on perhaps one aspect of it. I was reading the story published at NPR.org and came across an interesting statement that I found puzzling, among other assorted emotions.

“We’ve got data for hunting licenses, fishing licenses, three different data sources for camping and backpacking and hiking,” Pergams says.

All of these data sets go back at least 20 years, and they show that a few outdoor activities have remained popular. One in 10 Americans has gone hunting every year for the past several decades. And the overall number of backpackers, while relatively minuscule, has actually risen slightly.

The report claims that hunting and backpacking are exceptions to the national trend of opting for something other than a visit to the outdoors. But this statement alone is confusing, at least to me it is, and maybe it’s because I am wanting to read into it more than I should be.

Take the one statement that says, “One in 10 Americans has gone hunting every year for the past several decades.” In an attempt to better understand what is going on with hunters in America, I have to ask if this means that generally speaking, each year for decades at least 1 in 10 Americans are out hunting? Or does it mean that that one hunter has hunted every year for decades? There is a difference.

But let’s look closer. Oliver Pergams, who explains the study for NPR, says that they have extensive data collected for many years.

Pergams teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For several years now, he has been collecting outdoor head counts kept not only by national parks, but also by state and local parks, the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and commercial polling firms.

Let’s round the U.S. population to 300 million. Pergams says that 1 in 10 Americans hunt every year. That’s 30 million! This number doesn’t agree with the numbers recently released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for their 2006 survey(pdf) that claimed there were 12.5 million hunters. This is substantially different. Who has the grasp on what is really going on?

I’m not sure I can honestly answer that question but can only point out the differences in the reports. Pergams claims to collect data from several sources – head counts kept not only by national parks, but also by state and local parks, the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and commercial polling firms.

The study conducted by USFWS seems to have been done more as a polling survey.

We consulted with State and Federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations such as the Wildlife Management Institute and American Sportfishing Association to determine survey content. Other sportspersons’ organizations and conservation groups, industry representatives, and researchers also provided valuable advice.

Once consulting was completed to determine what content would be sought for the survey, the actual survey, according to the explanation given, was conducted in two parts.

The first phase was the screen which began in April 2006. During this phase the Census Bureau interviewed a sample of 85,000 households nationwide to determine who in the household had fished, hunted, or wildlife watched in 2005, and who had engaged or planned to engage in those activities in 2006. In most cases, one adult household member provided information for all members.

And part two:

The second phase of data collection consisted of three detailed interview waves. The first began in April 2006 concurrent with the screen, the second in September 2006, and the last in January 2007. Interviews were conducted with samples of likely anglers, hunters, and wildlife watchers who were identified in the initial screening phase. Interviews were
conducted primarily by phone, with in-person interviews for respondents who could not be reached by phone. Respondents in the second survey phase were limited to those who were at least 16 years old. Each respondent provided information pertaining only to his or her activities and expenditures. Sample sizes were designed to provide statistically reliable results at the state
level.

Is the data more accurate taken by Pergams’ group because it was actually head counting? Perhaps but I’m left with questions from the information of both studies.

One of the reasons I asked exactly what was meant by 1 in 10 Americans hunted is because with the USFWS survey, there doesn’t appear to be any means of tracking hunter activity from year to year. Let me try to explain. If a person is being surveyed and asked if they hunted that particular year, they may answer no. Perhaps his entire family didn’t hunt that year. Not built into the method, at least that I can tell, is whether that same person hunted in previous years and if so, which.

Why is this important? I know many people who, when asked, would declare themselves to be a hunter, yet may not have hunted for a year to several years. On the same token, a person and perhaps several family members all bought hunting licenses but unforeseen circumstances prevented them from hunting that year.

The point to this whole discussion is that one study states that the number of participants in hunting has remained solid for several decades with 30 million Americans taking part. The USFWS study says 12.5 million Americans hunted in 2006 and that number has been steadily dropping. Who’s right?

Tom Remington