National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses
Remarks: Preserving the Privilege to Hunt
By James L. Cummins, Immediate Past-President,
Boone and Crockett Club
December 10, 2025 • Memphis, Tennessee
Abstract: It is no secret that hunters represent a relatively small percentage of the population and that the future of hunting will be determined by a large voting population that doesn’t hunt. As hunters, we must maintain a position of social and political relevance beyond just our time in the field to maintain our ability to hunt. This has, and likely always will, require proactive leadership from our community. We must ensure that our community continues to give more than we harvest and care for the resource more than anyone else. This work underpins our social license to hunt, fish, and shoot, regardless of the legal protections afforded by current law. As we discuss other proposals over the next several days, we challenge you to think about how you can carry on the important task of maintaining a strong position for hunters, anglers, and shooters in each of our states.
Introductory Comments
Good morning, fellow sportsmen and women, and distinguished members of the National Association of Sportsmen’s Caucuses.
I’m James Cummins, Immediate Past-President of the Boone and Crockett Club, Vice-Chair of the Board of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, and Executive Director of Wildlife Mississippi. I stand before you today deeply concerned about the future of our traditions and the legacy we have for the next generation.
Before I proceed, let me tell you a bit about the Boone and Crockett Club. It was founded in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt as North America’s oldest wildlife conservation organization. Our legacy includes creating the National Forest System, National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, establishing modern game laws, developing a system for the conservation of private lands, and promoting ethical hunting.
Former Club member and U.S. Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas said it best: “In the United States, while the right to keep and bear arms is constitutionally assured, hunting is a privilege to be repeatedly earned, year after year, by those who hunt. In a democracy, privileges are maintained through the approval of the public at large.”
The Mathematics of Democracy
We face a sobering reality: hunters represent just 4% of Americans—a number that has been declining for decades. This means 96% of Americans don’t participate in our activities, yet their votes will determine our future.
There are a few million hunters, a few million anti-hunters, and several hundred million independents. They hold our future in their hands. Their opinion of hunters will determine whether our children inherit the privilege to hunt.
This is our “social license to operate”—society’s implicit permission for us to continue our traditions. This social license is more powerful than legal protection because it creates a political environment where favorable laws pass and endure.
Learning from William Faulkner: The Model Hunter
To understand what earning this social license means, let me tell you about Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner, whose image as a hunter was impeccable.
In November 1909, twelve-year-old Faulkner killed his first white-tailed buck in the Mississippi Delta, about 60 miles south of where we are today. Deer hunting became his way of life. When asked why he hunted, Faulkner responded: “always to learn something… not only to pursue but to overtake and then to have compassion not to destroy… The pursuit is the thing, not the reward, not the gain.”
Faulkner returned annually to deer camp with lawyers, bankers, farmers, and blue-collar workers. For him, this was his sanctuary—where he was no longer a world-renowned author, but another hunter at camp.
In 1950, when called to inform him he’d won the Nobel Prize for literature and asked if he’d come to Sweden to receive it, Faulkner responded, “I can’t get away. I am going deer hunting.” After deer season, he went to Sweden.
This character builds respect for hunters. Faulkner represented our best: thoughtful, respectful, deeply connected to nature, and understanding hunting is about far more than killing.
Our Conservation Legacy and Modern Challenges
When market hunting and habitat destruction drove species toward extinction, hunters advocated for science-based management and funded their restoration through user fees and excise taxes. The 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act created a system where hunters tax themselves on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment—generating over $20 billion for conservation so far.
While we are strong financial supporters of conservation efforts, unfortunately, hunters are often painted unfavorably by those who don’t understand true sportsmanship. Many project us as cold-hearted killers. While some are, most are true conservationists. According to the NRA, 80% of Americans approve of hunting for food, but only 29% approve of trophy hunting. This presents both challenge and opportunity. We must explain our motivations in terms that resonate with non-hunters.
Several trends work in our favor. Reports about altered food sources and possible disease links have many rethinking their position on hunting. Consumers are buying more organic food, growing their own produce, and some are turning to hunting for health reasons. The Locavore Movement—people eating local or regional foods—is growing. When comparing wild game to mass-produced foods, nature’s bounty is much more appealing.
With 80% of Americans living in cities, our challenge is helping society maintain a connection to land—whether they hunt or not. Most Americans value the outdoors. People want to do what’s best but aren’t familiar with what that is. We must help them see that hunting and conservation help our economy, retain jobs, preserve property values, promote healthy lifestyles, and increase natural resource sustainability. If more hunters projected Faulkner’s image—caring deeply about the hunt, habitat, and having an understanding and respect for animals before and after harvest—hunting would have more support.
We must communicate how hunting and conservation benefit the common good. Why is scientific forest management good for deer, deer hunting, deer habitat, carbon sequestration, and clean drinking water? This makes hunter-conservationists relevant to society, ensuring we have a seat at the table when resource decisions are made. We must be known not just as hunters and anglers, but as people solving problems.
The Economic Imperative and Coalition Building
The outdoor recreation economy generates over $800 billion annually and supports millions of jobs. Hunting alone generates over $25 billion in annual economic activity; fishing adds $46 billion. These activities support entire supply chains, from manufacturing to retail, and from guide services to hospitality industries.
Consider the ripple effect when a hunter purchases a rifle. That transaction supports the retailer, manufacturer, steel supplier, shipping company, sporting goods employees, and through excise taxes, the biologist managing habitat for hunters. This interconnected web of conservation funding remains invisible to most Americans.
We must build coalitions beyond the hunting community. This means finding common ground with conservation organizations – and environmental organizations – sharing our habitat conservation commitment, partnering with rural development groups, understanding outdoor recreation’s economic importance, and building bridges with agricultural interests in explaining the land relationship to urban populations.
We must engage our youth beyond traditional scouting groups—4-H clubs, FFA chapters, outdoor and conservation education programs, even urban youth groups—to share our values of conservation and self-reliance with young people who might never encounter hunting.
The Poaching Problem
Many in society use the terms poachers and hunters interchangeably. However, to protect our social license it’s important that we differentiate in the public’s eye that ethical hunters are NOT poachers and we will not tolerate this crime.
In previous NASC conferences we’ve told you about the Boone and Crockett Club’s Poach and Pay research. After five years of in-depth research, we released the results in early September of this year. This is the most comprehensive study of wildlife crime in the history of the United States, and it’s very disconcerting. We found that poaching has a detection rate of just 4%—far lower than other crimes like aggravated assault, 57%, or even theft at 25%. Poaching’s extremely low detection rate stems from its nature—crimes occur in uninhabited areas with few witnesses and limited conservation officers.
More concerning, this “dark figure” of about 95% of wildlife crime going undetected and unprosecuted results in a minimum conservation cost of poaching of $1.4 billion in lost fines and restitution every year. This translates to an average state level loss of $6.1 million in fines and $22.7 million in replacement costs for each state annually, which exceeds the revenue generated by hunting license sales in 39 states. This theft of public resources directly undermines conservation efforts funded by law-abiding hunters—clearly poaching is not a victimless crime.
The research goes into far greater depth than I can cover today, but importantly the report includes recommended solutions grounded in criminological theory, including: 1) Legislative action for replacement costs across states and reclassify certain wildlife crimes as felonies; 2) Judicial education to help prosecutors understand the nature of wildlife crimes; 3) Enhanced enforcement through increased officer presence and anonymous reporting hotlines; and 4) Public education campaigns to elevate social stigma against poachers, similar to successful anti-drunk driving efforts.
The message we want to bring forward is powerful: if you poach, you will pay. Success requires unprecedented cooperation between state legislatures, agencies, conservation organizations, hunters, landowners, and prosecutors.
Every state will be different in potential legislative fixes, and the Club will work with CSF’s state policy team and NASC on the best policy to carry forward. If passed and signed into law, these changes will help make a difference to reduce wildlife crime.
Youth Engagement and Building Coalitions
No challenge is more critical than passing our traditions on to the next generation. But recruitment and retention require more than taking young people hunting and fishing. We must engage in broader youth development, serving as coaches, mentors, volunteers, and role models.
Women represent the fastest-growing segment of new hunters, but they often face challenges in a male-dominated activity. Creating welcoming environments for all new hunters isn’t just about fairness, it’s about expanding our community.
Similarly, hunters from urban and suburban areas may need different approaches than traditional rural recruitment methods. Their motivations for hunting—often include organic food sources, conservation participation, and authentic outdoor experiences—should be supported rather than dismissed as less legitimate than traditional motivations.
We must build coalitions beyond the hunting community by finding common ground with conservation organizations, partnering with rural development groups, and building bridges with agricultural and forestry interests.
Our Call to Action: Leadership for the Long Term
We must address challenges within our community: poaching and ethical violations damaging our reputation, inadequate diversity, and poor communication focusing on what we’re against rather than what we’re for.
True leadership requires us to step forward on issues that matter to our broader communities. When rural communities face economic hardship, when schools need volunteers, when youth organizations need mentors, AND when government tries to damage the conservation systems we have spent over 125 years building and nurturing, we should be present and engaged. This builds the relationships and reputation that sustains our social license.
State and Local Leadership: Where Change Happens
Each of you represents a state sportsmen’s caucus with opportunity to ensure your state leads in demonstrating how hunters, anglers, and shooters can be positive forces. You must be known for more than opposing anti-hunting legislation, you should be recognized as the group people call for natural resource expertise.
Our greatest challenge is communication. We’ve become skilled at talking to ourselves with scientific facts, but less successful communicating with the broader public in ways that resonate with their values. The anti-hunting movement uses emotional appeals and simple messages connecting with people’s feelings about animals. We must become better storytellers by connecting facts to values non-hunters care about: family traditions, healthy food, environmental stewardship, authentic experiences.
The Inheritance Question
I want to leave you with a reflection. My wife’s family has had a summer home in Monteagle, Tennessee, since 1873, a wonderful place to get out of the hot, humid summers of Mississippi. Their next-door neighbor was Frank Waldrop. He was executive editor of the Washington Times-Hearld, which later merged with the Washington Post. Cissy Patterson was its owner-publisher. Upon her death, she left the paper, including part of the Chicago Tribune, to several people, of which Mr. Waldrop was one. As I was recently rambling through some of my father-in-law’s papers, I found a letter Mr. Waldrop sent to him and four other friends. The letter was about the land between the rivers, then and now. That land encompassed Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, Virginia, the same land my ancestors settled in the 1640s.
I never met Frank Waldrop, but from the many conversations I had with my father-in-law, I felt like I knew him. So, I leave you with some thoughts he conveyed to his five friends in his March 30, 1982, letter: “It is simply this: there is no free lunch. You never get something for nothing. In the end, all bills are paid. The American nation started as certainly on that finger of land between the rivers as it started anywhere. It started in danger and in fear. Peace, sunshine, beauty, do not come on the cheap, and they are fragile as all imagine. Remember this: it cost something to achieve America. You are inheritors.”
To reinforce this point about inheritance, Theodore Roosevelt said it best, “This land and its wildlife are not ours for the taking. We are simply borrowing it from future generations, and we have the responsibility to give it to them in the same or better condition than it was passed to us.”
Our Moment of Truth
Obtaining the privilege to hunt, fish, and shoot was not a free lunch—it was earned by generations who understood that with privilege comes responsibility. Our decisions in the coming years will determine whether these activities remain vibrant traditions or become increasingly marginalized.
We have tremendous advantages: an unmatched conservation legacy, economic impact, and examples like William Faulkner showing hunters can be thoughtful advocates. But these advantages mean nothing if we fail to translate them into political and social relevance.
The future isn’t just about wildlife management, land access, or constitutional rights. It’s about demonstrating to fellow Americans that we’re the kind of citizens they want as neighbors, leaders, and stewards of shared resources.
I challenge you to return to your states committed to elevating engagement beyond traditional advocacy. Build relationships with non-hunters sharing your values. Most importantly, live your life so when people think of hunters and anglers in your community, they think of people like William Faulkner—thoughtful, respectful, deeply connected to nature, and committed to something larger than themselves.
Our social license to hunt, fish, and shoot is not a birthright—it’s an earned privilege renewed through our actions every day. Like Faulkner, understanding the pursuit is the thing, not just the reward, we must understand that earning our social license is ongoing pursuit requiring our best efforts, highest character, and deepest commitment to values making hunting, angling, and conservation worthy of public support.
The future rests not in our hands alone, but in our ability to convince fellow Americans that our traditions deserve to continue.
What will we do with our inheritance?
Thank you.
