And if it can’t, who's going to pay to conserve the state’s wildlife and habitat?

The list of obstacles looming before Golden State hunters reads like a doomsday letter: Megafires close millions of acres of forest during deer season and consume precious quail habitat; urban sprawl eats up increasingly large sections of wild land; drought turns reservoirs to puddles and puddles to cracked earth; duck populations struggle and deer numbers plummet; predator populations expand; ammunition becomes harder to find and much more complicated to purchase; and the possibility of a ballot initiative banning hunting lingers in a state with 63 percent fewer hunters than it had 50 years ago.

But don't worry—there's good news in this episode, too.

This episode is based on the story Can Hunting Survive in California? by Christine Peterson, which appeared in the No. 1, 2022 Issue of Outdoor Life. You can read more stories from this issue on Apple News, and subscribers can access them our iOS, Android, and Outdoor Life apps.

Hosted by Editor-in-Chief Alex Robinson.

Edited and produced by Senior Deputy Editor Natalie Krebs.

Theme song by Harrison Black, Zep Jameson, and Emerson Lee.

News clips in this episode include excerpts from The Sacramento Bee, ABC 7 News, ABC10, 23ABC News, with sound effects from the National Park Service and FreeSound.org.

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