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Hunting season: A link to our past: Most urban Canadians associate guns with crime, not with putting meat on our tables

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Late fall is hunting season in B.C., and before the snow flies, a quarter of a million hopefuls will try their luck in deer stands or duck blinds across the province.

But although game populations are stable in most regions, fewer hunters than ever are expected to buy licences this year. Over the past decade, the popularity of the sport has slumped markedly.

Outfitters and shooting clubs blame the suffocating burden of government red tape, and perhaps they have a case.

See if you can decipher this piece of bafflegab from the B.C. government's synopsis of hunting regulations: "'Adult Bighorn Ram' means any male bighorn mountain sheep, the head of which, when viewed squarely from the side, has at least one horn tip extending beyond a straight line drawn through the back of the eye opening and at right angles to a line drawn between the centre of the nostril and the lowest hindmost portion of the horn base."

You could have a PhD in linguistics and not know what that means, but there's a fine of up to $50,000 and six months in jail for getting it wrong.

However, damning bureaucracy for the declining popularity of hunting misplaces the blame. A change of government in Ottawa will not reverse negative attitudes toward the sport: The real cause lies deeper.

From earliest times until the middle of the last century, trade in fur and game animals played a central role in our economy and culture. Long before the Royal Canadian Mint was established, beaver pelts in Quebec and deer skins on the prairies were taken as coin of the realm.

As late as the 1930s, settlers on the prairies ate venison or starved. In simple terms, those who lived on the land lived off it.

Today, only in Saskatchewan, the Maritimes, and the Canadian north do a majority of residents still live in predominantly rural areas. In another generation, two at the most, the northern territories will be our last non-urban hold-out.

With this migration has come a profound shift in attitudes. The 70 per cent of Canadians who live in cities are more likely to associate guns with crime than putting meat on the table.

Although firearm-related deaths have remained largely unchanged in 50 years, the fear of violence, if not violence itself, has become an urban reality. We also live in a time when the impact of human society on the planet grows more intrusive by the day.

There is a natural desire to conserve what remains of endangered species like grizzly bear or mountain goats. Hunters of course would point to their record in revitalizing threatened wildlife populations, such as waterfowl on the prairies or antelopes on the high plains.

Organizations such as Ducks Unlimited contribute more money to habitat restoration than environmental lobby groups do. And modern game management practices create sustainable, and in some cases expanding, populations of wildlife.

But this is less an argument based on facts than on perceptions. Though some city dwellers distrust hunting and its motives for other reasons, sheer distance is a factor.

Those folks in camo-gear and pickup trucks are a world apart. Society, it seems, has moved on, and they haven't.

And perceptions, ultimately, can be more powerful than the most deep-rooted traditions. Even among aboriginal peoples, for whom hunting was as much a religious ceremony and art form as it was a means of subsistence, the old lifestyle is disappearing.

When Inuit families in Iqaluit prefer chicken to caribou, it's only a matter of time before urban culture extinguishes its predecessor. That would be unfortunate.

Hunting and fishing are windows into our history that we shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to close. In our high-velocity, high-stress culture, preserving linkages with the past helps moderate the pace of change.

Values like hardiness and fending for oneself are still qualities we admire. Taking a child on a goose hunt or a fishing trip will teach more about self-reliance than any number of outings to the mall. And it will provide a healthier dinner.

No tradition played a larger part in our country's heritage than hunting and trapping. A generation from now, if those crafts are lost, we will all be the poorer.