Nature is relentlessly fecund, demonstrated by the dramatic increase in the nation's White-tailed deer to an estimated 20 million today. At the same time, the sport of hunting is in a slow, steady decline, insufficient to cull the herd. Each year, 1.5 million deer-vehicle collisions cause over a billion dollars in damage to vehicles and injury several hundred people. The deer don't make out too well, either. I suspect a well-placed bullet is preferable to death by windshield.

The decline in hunters also threatens the livelihood of many in areas dependent on the money hunters spend on their sport, an estimated $6.7 billion in 2006. Hunters also spent $700 million in various licenses and tags in 2006, money that often provides the lion's share of funding for state wildlife management programs.

Don't miss the rest of our series on Makeovers Needed!

Perhaps Sarah Palin will make hunting sexy again, but failing that, hunting is in need of a makeover if it is to remain a meaningful wildlife management tool and tourism lure. How could this be accomplished?

The first hurdle, I think, lies in our society's disconnect between the meat we eat and the source of it. While we encourage the killing of animals each time we buy chicken nuggets,many people find the actual process distasteful and would prefer never bloodying their own hands. Perhaps the personification of animals in cartoons and television is in part responsible.

When John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, wildlife lovers cringed for two reasons. The first is that she seems like just the kind of smart, young leader who has battled corruption and government waste that could get not so environmentally friendly Republicans elected. The second is that Palin herself has been on the side of hunters instead of wildlife watchers--even when the fiscal numbers are not on hunting's side.

Palin--in addition to vowing to sue to stop the listing Polar Bears as an endangered species--has put the weight of the state behind defeating a ballot measure that would have limited the aerial shooting of wolves. Nationwide aerial hunting has been banned since 1972's Airborne Hunting Act, but Alaska gets around that by saying the hunters are working for the state to control predators. The idea is to produce more moose and caribou to hunt.

The Alaska Fish and Game Department has been allowing aerial wolf hunting--even though voters said no to it twice--for since 2003. (The legislature later overturned the voters' decision.) But this time Alaskans voted 92,781 to 74,124 to allow it.