Survey Shows Warming Worry Among Hunters, Fishers - NOLA

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That stands in sharp contrast to the media stereotype that sportsmen, who tend to be conservative, are marching in lockstep with the knuckle-dragging approach to this issue taken by the Bush administration and others in Congress. Hunters and anglers agree with the world's most respected authorities on climate science, that the only thing to debate about global warming is not whether it exists but what we should do about it.

By now a number of you already are mumbling the bromides prescribed by global warming naysayers: Just more hysterics by the lefty-dominated green groups who keep insisting the sky is falling. No self-respecting sportsman -- no thinking sportsman -- would fall for these overblown claims. The guys answering this survey must live somewhere on the Left Coast, do their fishing in a park pond and hunt with a Nikon instead of a Remington. Wrong. Way wrong.

One of the most newsworthy things about this poll is that the hunters and anglers who responded are a demographic mirror of the Bush administration's most loyal supporters. Seventy-three percent said they were conservative to moderate on political issues; 53 percent voted for Bush in the last election (29 percent voted for Kerry). Fifty percent considered themselves Evangelical Christians.

Nor were they the victims of a cleverly manipulated poll by a subsidiary of Greenpeace. The scientifically valid survey was conducted by the respected research firm Responsive Management, which has specialized in polling sportsmen for a client list that includes many fish and game agencies and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. According to Responsive Management, everything was done to make sure the respondents were a snapshot of the national demographic profile of hunters and anglers, including pulling names for the lists of licensed sportsmen and proportioning the sample among states to reflect national demographics.

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http://www.nola.com/sports/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-24/1153639028230580.xml&coll=1

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1. The author of this story

Bob Marshall is an outstanding straight shooter when it comes to outdoor activities. He gives the "knuckledraggers" no quarter. Imagine, relying on the world's most respected authorities for information.