Inside the hook and bullet crowd, you’ll find a lot of fiscal conservatives in general, not because of any party affiliation but more of a philosophy of how to try to get things done,” Hall said.

But while they may understand the budget crunch, hunters and anglers are not done making their case to get their funding restored and the riders removed.

Leaders from Ducks Unlimited, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies met last week with top aides for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In their presentations, they cited the benefits that come with wildlife conservation, including flood control and better water quality. Federal dollars are also leveraged by upward of five to one with private and state money. Lawmakers also need to be reminded that the nation’s estimated 40 million sportsmen of voting age pay billions of dollars every year in state and federal taxes through their licenses and equipment purchases.

“If we want to talk about how to fix the deficit and how to fix the debt, our respectful argument is don’t get rid of those things that make you money,” Hall said.

Apart from tight budgets, hunters and fishermen face other trends not working in their favor. For starters, Republican lawmakers often chalk up some of their cherished conservation programs as little more than green boondoggles. As America gets more and more urban and suburban, the hook and bullet crowd also finds fewer lawmakers who regularly cast a line or shoot a gun.

“John Dingell is the last of the crowd who’s still around, a guy who is not partisan, who knows fish and wildlife,” Fosburgh said of the Michigan Democrat and dean of the House.

The loss of key advocates like the late Rhode Island GOP Sen. John Chafee and New York Republican Reps. Sherwood Boehlert and Jim Walsh has also hurt. “What we’ve not seen is the next generation of leaders step up like that, especially on the Republican side. There’s a smaller bloc than there once was,” Fosburgh said.

Jim Connaughton, who served as chairman of Bush’s White House Council on Environmental Quality, said a variety of hook and bullet groups are expressing angst over budget cuts.

“All of the major conservation organizations, from center-right to center-left, are deeply disheartened by the sidelining of their issues and their needs in the wake of these huge stresses as a result of the deficit and runaway entitlement programs,” he said.

Many conservation leaders were cautious about making overt political threats. But they said their dues-paying members will take notice if funding levels for their favorite programs keep getting slashed and if the policy riders don’t disappear. “There’s a tipping point,” said Scott Kovarovics, conservation director at the Izaak Walton League of America, “in which folks who hunt, fish and enjoy the outdoors are going to take a step back and say, ‘This isn’t one thing; it’s a series of things.’”