06-12-2005, 11:28 PM
Dec 6, 12:24 AM EST
High-Tech Gear Fuels Hunting Spending Boom
By DANIEL LOVERING
AP Business Writer
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Raising a rifle scope to his eye, Dan Tracey squints and takes aim at an imaginary target. Then, he twists a knob and the device's cross-hairs light up like a Christmas tree.
"If it's pitch black (outside), you can see everything," said the 25-year-old hunter, placing the $1,400 accessory back in a display case at the Sportsman's Warehouse store he manages on Pittsburgh's outskirts.
Electronic scopes are among an array of high-tech gadgets and premium quality products to hit the market in recent years and contribute to unprecedented spending among hunters, even as the number of people taking up the sport continues to decline.
The hunting business - guns, accessories and trip expenses - is a roughly $21 billion a year industry, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's most recent figures.
Spending among individual hunters has jumped 11 percent annually over the past decade, with current spending estimated at $1,638 yearly per hunter, said Steve Wagner, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group.
Also fueling spending are soaring costs for permits and trips to increasingly rarified hunting preserves - a trend hunters say has shifted the sport away from its blue collar base.
"The number of participants is shrinking, but collectively, hunters are spending more than they ever have on their sport," Wagner said. "Part of it is because of the technology."
Among the gizmos enticing hunters: a $200 pair of headphones that block the clatter of gunfire but allow lower-decibel sounds such as the voice of a fellow hunter; $500 binoculars that digitally compensate for shaky hands; and a variety of $100 to $450 color-screen Global Positioning System devices that display topographical maps.
Other products pushing up the market include shotguns with rare hardwood stocks and detailed metalwork that fetch upward of $6,000, goose decoys for $120 apiece and shotgun shells filled with tungsten pellets that set back hunters $2 each time they pull the trigger.
"Before it was just plain (shotguns) - really just wood and metal," said Tracey, the Sportsman's Warehouse manager. "Now they're inlaying gold in them and engraving them. Every year we see higher and higher end guns of that type. But people are buying them. It's kind of like the SUV of guns."
Customers driving the market tend to be baby boomers on the cusp of retirement, a group with spending power to buy not only pricey gear, but leases to wildlife-rich land for hunting or expensive travel packages to game preserves, he said.
"It really has become a white collar sport in many ways," said Tracey, whose store - the 43rd in the Salt Lake City-based chain - opened just four weeks ago.
Mike Fitzgerald, who founded the Wexford-based fishing and hunting tour company Frontiers in 1969, said he had been worried that the interest in shooting had reached a plateau, but he's seen a resurgence among baby boomers.
"People nowadays will fly clear to Argentina for a four-night, three-day dove shoot and fly back. And we didn't see that happening years ago," he said.
Even leading retailers such as Nebraska-based Cabela's Inc. are selling not only equipment, but the whole hunt.
The cost of state permits also has risen dramatically, with tags to hunt elk reaching well over $500 in some instances.
Yet hunters appear to be a dying breed. There were 16.2 million licensed hunters in the United States in 1984, when the sport peaked in popularity. Last year, that number slipped to 14.7 million, reflecting a lack of younger people taking up the sport, growing urbanization and a cultural shift away from hunting, among other factors.
Pennsylvania, however, remains thick with hunters. The state sold over 1 million hunting licenses last year, said Jerry Feaser, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Only Texas has more.
Many Pennsylvania hunters have taken to the woods in recent days for the annual rifle deer season, which opened Nov. 28 and continues through Saturday.
Michael Gerhein, a 64-year-old hunter in Gilpin Township who has participated in the sport since he was 12 years old, concedes that "most hunters are guilty of getting more and more gadgets."
"There's all kinds of stuff out there," he said. "But it doesn't make it any easier to hunt. You still have to put in your time."
.....når bare man har nok penge og krudt.....så går det ikke aldrig helt galt :-)
Favourite Quote: Vi løser ikke vore problemer ved at tænke på samme måde, som da vi skabte dem.....(Albert Einstein)
High-Tech Gear Fuels Hunting Spending Boom
By DANIEL LOVERING
AP Business Writer
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Raising a rifle scope to his eye, Dan Tracey squints and takes aim at an imaginary target. Then, he twists a knob and the device's cross-hairs light up like a Christmas tree.
"If it's pitch black (outside), you can see everything," said the 25-year-old hunter, placing the $1,400 accessory back in a display case at the Sportsman's Warehouse store he manages on Pittsburgh's outskirts.
Electronic scopes are among an array of high-tech gadgets and premium quality products to hit the market in recent years and contribute to unprecedented spending among hunters, even as the number of people taking up the sport continues to decline.
The hunting business - guns, accessories and trip expenses - is a roughly $21 billion a year industry, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's most recent figures.
Spending among individual hunters has jumped 11 percent annually over the past decade, with current spending estimated at $1,638 yearly per hunter, said Steve Wagner, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group.
Also fueling spending are soaring costs for permits and trips to increasingly rarified hunting preserves - a trend hunters say has shifted the sport away from its blue collar base.
"The number of participants is shrinking, but collectively, hunters are spending more than they ever have on their sport," Wagner said. "Part of it is because of the technology."
Among the gizmos enticing hunters: a $200 pair of headphones that block the clatter of gunfire but allow lower-decibel sounds such as the voice of a fellow hunter; $500 binoculars that digitally compensate for shaky hands; and a variety of $100 to $450 color-screen Global Positioning System devices that display topographical maps.
Other products pushing up the market include shotguns with rare hardwood stocks and detailed metalwork that fetch upward of $6,000, goose decoys for $120 apiece and shotgun shells filled with tungsten pellets that set back hunters $2 each time they pull the trigger.
"Before it was just plain (shotguns) - really just wood and metal," said Tracey, the Sportsman's Warehouse manager. "Now they're inlaying gold in them and engraving them. Every year we see higher and higher end guns of that type. But people are buying them. It's kind of like the SUV of guns."
Customers driving the market tend to be baby boomers on the cusp of retirement, a group with spending power to buy not only pricey gear, but leases to wildlife-rich land for hunting or expensive travel packages to game preserves, he said.
"It really has become a white collar sport in many ways," said Tracey, whose store - the 43rd in the Salt Lake City-based chain - opened just four weeks ago.
Mike Fitzgerald, who founded the Wexford-based fishing and hunting tour company Frontiers in 1969, said he had been worried that the interest in shooting had reached a plateau, but he's seen a resurgence among baby boomers.
"People nowadays will fly clear to Argentina for a four-night, three-day dove shoot and fly back. And we didn't see that happening years ago," he said.
Even leading retailers such as Nebraska-based Cabela's Inc. are selling not only equipment, but the whole hunt.
The cost of state permits also has risen dramatically, with tags to hunt elk reaching well over $500 in some instances.
Yet hunters appear to be a dying breed. There were 16.2 million licensed hunters in the United States in 1984, when the sport peaked in popularity. Last year, that number slipped to 14.7 million, reflecting a lack of younger people taking up the sport, growing urbanization and a cultural shift away from hunting, among other factors.
Pennsylvania, however, remains thick with hunters. The state sold over 1 million hunting licenses last year, said Jerry Feaser, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Only Texas has more.
Many Pennsylvania hunters have taken to the woods in recent days for the annual rifle deer season, which opened Nov. 28 and continues through Saturday.
Michael Gerhein, a 64-year-old hunter in Gilpin Township who has participated in the sport since he was 12 years old, concedes that "most hunters are guilty of getting more and more gadgets."
"There's all kinds of stuff out there," he said. "But it doesn't make it any easier to hunt. You still have to put in your time."
.....når bare man har nok penge og krudt.....så går det ikke aldrig helt galt :-)
Favourite Quote: Vi løser ikke vore problemer ved at tænke på samme måde, som da vi skabte dem.....(Albert Einstein)
.....ualmindelig velinformeret i forhold til min alder ... :-)
Favourite Quote: En humlebi ved ikke, at den ikke kan flyve......Gå ud på terrassen og vift med armene...hvis du letter må du være uvidende ;-)
Favourite Quote: En humlebi ved ikke, at den ikke kan flyve......Gå ud på terrassen og vift med armene...hvis du letter må du være uvidende ;-)