Reader Lou Alexander just got back from a vacation in England (Lou, it sounds like you take some killer trips, by the way), and emailed me, commenting that, "Hunting is a rich man's sport there."
     While it's true that in this country you don't have to be rich to be a hunter (yet!), sportsmen as a group spend some serious bucks. Around the time I got Lou's email, I was reading that Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation report on the money spent by hunters and fishermen a year. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's currently on the CSF homepage.
     Just to post some fun facts for a Friday afternoon, I yanked a few of the most interesting annual numbers out of that report.

$76 billion - Amount sportsmen spend on hunting and fishing a year (that's more than the revenues of Google, Microsoft, eBay, and Yahoo combined)

12.5 million - Number of hunters in the U.S.

$23 billion - Total amount hunters spend on their sport a year

$1,992 - Individual amount the average hunter spends on his or her sport a year

     And here's what the report says those bucks buy each year:

$493 million - Spent on hunting dogs

$2.4 billion - Spent on guns and rifles

$203 million - Spent on binoculars, telescopes, and field glasses

$459 million - Spent on apparel

$187 million - Spent on decoys and game calls

$696 million - Spent on ammunition

$3.50 - Spent at a yard sale by me on my newest pair of camo gloves (I talked the guy down from $7 - what a steal!)