Your tax dollars at work: Ed Carter, Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies, talks Pittman-Robertson, wildlife management, and where your money goes

Hunters really ARE the original conservationists, and today you’ll be armed to defend that audacious statement. Ed Carter, president of the Association of Wildlife Agencies, walks us through the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, aka Pittman-Robertson Act. That’s the excise tax firearms manufacturers pay to the feds, which then is routed to state wildlife agencies for conservation and management. The fund has generated billions of dollars and we hunters are the ones who ultimately paid into it through our purchases.

We’ll learn where the money comes from, what your money is spent on, and what it can’t be used for, where endangered species fit, why mountain bike riders, hikers and wildlife watchers don’t pay (yet), and how P-R funds can now be used for hunter education and shooting range development. Ed answers questions from listeners Spiro Mavroidis, Jim Kuzilik and Pete Aplikowski, there’s a dog training tip on “place learning” and how it affects performance, we look at publicly-accessible land near Mott, ND, and the Upland Trivia question offers a YETI Rambler as the prize.