Turkey Money Tracks

By Al Van Vooren, Regional Supervisor Idaho Department of Fish and Game - Southwest Region During the past few weeks, several thousand camo-clad hunters have been traversing Idaho in pursuit of tom turkey. And as they've left home and traveled rural Idaho, frequenting gas stations, restaurants and other businesses, they've left a trail of money. Actually, a good bit of money. To determine exactly how much money, the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) contracted a national survey of turkey hunters around the country to get a handle on the economic impact of spring turkey hunting. Nationally, annual expenditures by spring turkey hunters in 2003 totaled $1.795 billion! And as those dollars flowed through businesses and wholesalers, they stimulated $4.4 billion in economic activity. The report goes on to say that this activity in turn supported $88.9 million in state sales tax and $198.6 million in federal income tax receipts. Okay. As impressive as those figures are, I can't relate to them very well either. But we can get closer to home; Idaho was one of the nine states surveyed to develop these figures. Last year, nearly 18,000 hunters took part in Idaho's spring turkey hunting season. Retail sales to those hunters totaled nearly $13 million dollars. And the total economic activity stimulated by spring turkey hunting in Idaho generated $650,000 in Idaho sales and income tax. Those concerned about tax revenues ought to be able to relate to that. If you've already done the math, you've figured out that those figures mean each Idaho turkey hunter spent an average of $724 that they attributed to spring turkey hunting. Three-fourths of that was attributed to "non-trip" expenses, such as licenses, camping gear, camo clothes, ammunition, decoys, etc. These are the things that accumulate and sneak into the garage during the off-season so they don't all show up on the credit card bill just prior to turkey season. The NWTF survey showed that "trip" expenditures (the money that leaves tracks across rural Idaho) averaged $156 per hunter for the spring turkey season. Now that begins to hit home. How do these figures compare to your spending? I saw the report just before the turkey opener, and for the heck of it, kept track of what my hunting buddy and I spent on our annual turkey outing - and where we spent it - to see how we compared to these figures. "Average" spending for two hunters for the season would be $312; we spent a combined $198 for our four-day trip (we hope to get out again, so will get closer to the season average). How was our spending distributed? Officials in rural counties that support the bulk of the hunting activity have expressed frustration that a lot of the "trip" money is spent before hunters leave home - buying groceries and gassing the vehicle. That does happen. But in our case, we left tracks across five counties. Less than one-third of our total was spent in our home county. The money we dribbled out across rural Idaho isn't going to bulge the coffers in any of the counties we visited, but throw together 18,000 other turkey hunters, then deer hunters, salmon anglers, elk hunters, crappie anglers, and other sportsmen and it does make a difference; a big difference. Hunting, fishing and wildlife watching is a billion dollar industry in Idaho. Turkey hunters - and sportsmen in general - leave big tracks across Idaho.