Our country celebrated the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary last week.

Since the ink dried on this document, the country has endured a Civil War, a couple World Wars, stock markets that climbed and crashed, life expectancy doubling and a population that grew from 2.5 to 342 million people. Despite this country’s ups and downs, it remains unrivaled by others.

This anniversary is a great time to look back at how hunting and fishing has changed, not over the last 250 years, but over the last half century.

In 1976, I was a teen who’d just moved from Fort Carson, Colorado, to Fort Douglas, Utah, following my father’s military reassignment. With the Wasatch Mountains at my back and a view of the Great Salt Lake, there couldn’t have been a better place for a young person that loved to hunt and fish. Since then, some tools of these endeavors have transformed while others have not.

Rifles have changed so little I’ve hunted with the same bolt action weapon my entire life. Scopes, binoculars and range finders have greatly improved. The combination of a good rifle and optics in the hands of skilled marksmen means shots more than 400 yards can now be consistently lethal.

Global Positioning Systems and cell phones give people fewer reasons to get lost, but they still do. The bullets I now use are constructed of copper rather than lead. This change reduces death of birds of prey and other avian scavengers that feed on carcasses left in the field. Over the last 50 years, mule deer populations have declined while elk numbers are up.

Shotguns have also changed little. The primary improvements have been interchangeable choke tubes. If you spend enough, today’s semi-automatics are more reliable and lighter than those sold a half century ago. The scatter gun of my youth — the Remington 870 pump shotgun — is unchanged and still available. If you hunt waterfowl these days, you are required to use non-toxic shot. Duck populations are stable. Geese numbers have increased. Pheasant populations are down.

The biggest change has been access to private lands. This is in part due to the increased value of big game hunts. In the 1970s, Utah and Idaho allowed hunters on private lands that were not posted. More land is now posted, and laws have been modified so the burden of proof when crossing onto undeveloped private lands favors the landowners rather than the hunter.

The appearance of fishing rods and reels has not changed but anglers have more options. Materials for rods have gone from fiberglass to graphite and other composites. Most fly reels now have exposed spools so they can be palmed as a secondary drag system. Floating fly lines were primarily double tapered but now are mostly weight forward. For baitcasting reels, braided line was common 50 years ago. It mostly disappeared but has now returned. Your only option for lines on spinning reels was monofilament. Today people also use braided and fluorocarbon lines.

The general set of fishing lures is unchanged — spoons, spinners, jigs, crankbaits and plastic worms. There is a greater variety of lure shapes and sizes. The big change has been new techniques. Fifty years ago, I could not imagine rigging a plastic worm as whacky or drop shot and then watching how bass responded to their presentation on a forward-facing sonar. I mostly use the same array of flies I did as a teenager. The difference in nymphs is now they often have brass and tungsten bead heads. The major change to dry flies is the utilization of foam bodies.

The Second Amendment’s assertion of “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” has been strengthened. Primarily through the 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs Heller which concluded people had the individual right to possess firearms for traditionally legal uses. With rights come responsibilities. Questions remain on how to keep guns out of the hands of those who use firearms to needlessly harm others.

The number of hunters and anglers have gone in opposite directions for the last 50 years. Utah and Idaho populations nearly tripled between 1976 and 2026. Over that time, the number of hunting licenses sold stayed the same or declined. In contrast, sales of fishing licenses nearly doubled in Idaho and more than doubled in Utah.

For western hunters and anglers, the best 50-year period likely occurred between 1926 and 1976. This era saw regulations that controlled harvest and fewer people. The last 50 years have seen management stabilize inland fish and game populations despite a huge influx of people and associated development. My hope is good management, and continued support of hunting and fishing will result in the next 50 years being as good as the last.