Last year, the banquet attracted 800 hunters. You can go to the stores and restaurants, and there are always hunters. You see a lot of camouflage. It's a real big deal. We don't know what the impact is, but we know that it is big.
Hunters spend a lot of money.
Shackelford County has about a dozen very large ranches. John Tate, a resource team leader with Natural Resources and Conservation Services in Albany, said that on those ranches more than 80 percent of the acreage is available for hunting leases at one time or another. Many of those ranches offer hunting packages, Tate said. That ranchers welcome hunters marks a change from the past. When oil was good most ranchers did not lease land.