Our freedom to hunt and fish depends on habitat. While many of us enjoy hunting and fishing in human altered environments such as farm fields or reservoirs, there is something special – even magical – about hunting deep in the backcountry or fishing on a remote river. Wilderness hunting and fishing delivers a sense of freedom, challenge and solitude that is increasingly trampled by the twin pressures of growing population and increasing technology. Many treasured fish and mammals – such as cutthroat trout, grizzly bear and bighorn sheep – thrive best in wilderness. Many more flexible species, like elk and mule deer, benefit from wilderness. From the Steens Mountain Wilderness in Oregon, the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, our members treasure America's wilderness system and strive to add to it.
We take the advice of Theodore Roosevelt: "Preserve large tracts of wilderness... for the exercise of the skill of the hunter, whether or not he is a man of means."