Hunting, outdoor sports are an overlooked giant | Leflore County ...

By State Rep. JAMES LOCKHART
Hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreational activities are an overlooked economic giant. Americans spend an annual $646 billion on outdoor recreation.

The industry contributes 6.1 million American jobs and nearly $40 billion in state and local tax revenue nationally. Any small business owner can tell you about how the hunting season brings in new customers. Some businesses rely heavily on the hunting season to bring them customers.

Not only has this industry contributed to our country and hometowns economically, but they have also historically fought for wildlife conservation. Due to the efforts of sportsmen and state wildlife agencies, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Pittman-Robertson Act in 1937.

This extended an existing 10 percent tax on ammunition and firearms used for sport hunting and earmarked the proceeds for state wildlife restoration efforts.

The hunting and outdoor recreation industries are growing rapidly, even as other aspects of the economy continue to struggle. How many of you know someone who goes hunting every year, and always has, who doesn?t slow down because things have changed?

President Teddy Roosevelt was a great hunter and responsible for today?s national park system. Hunters and fishers are out in the beautiful world God has created and they respect and cherish that beauty.

On Arbor Day in 1907, he had a message for the children of the United States:

?We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted ? So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumers without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.?

It is an honor to serve the people of House District 3 in LeFlore County. It is very important to me that each of you know my door is always open and your voice is always heard.

If I can be of assistance please call me at home at (918) 653-7571 or at the Capitol at (405) 557-7413 or find me on Facebook or by email [email?protected].

Source: http://leflorecountyjournal.com/2012/11/hunting-outdoor-sports-are-an-overlooked-giant/

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