COLUMN ONE : A Surprise Bounty for Hunters : The Sportsmen’s Caucus wields new clout in Congress and across the nation. It hopes to bag victories on issues ranging from polar bears to Mojave Desert access.

It comes as a bittersweet surprise to the dwindling percentage of Americans who hunt for sport: They have become, of all things, the unintended beneficiaries of the national debate over gun control.

This occurs at a time when hunters have organized as never before against the forces besieging them--the animal protection movement, the federal and state budget-cutters and, quite often, the environmentalists.

As a result, hunters stand more powerful, voice stronger resolve and command greater prestige in Washington than at any time in at least two decades.

More than 40% of the lawmakers in the House and Senate belong to the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus. Started five years ago to safeguard the interests of sports hunters and anglers, the caucus is among the largest on Capitol Hill. And didn’t President Clinton go bird shooting with a caucus leader this winter to show his allegiance?

There are few in Congress who oppose all forms of hunting. And it’s hard to find a Clinton Administration official who doesn’t see the need to woo hunters more energetically--even as the government seeks to control the firearms of urban violence.

But just what do the hunters intend to do with their newfound political clout?

On issues coming before Congress beginning this week, the Sportsmen’s Caucus aims to have its say on everything from the trophy hunting of polar bears to the “multiple use” of forests, wetlands and grazing lands. The caucus wants changes in the Endangered Species and the Marine Mammals Protection acts. It is pushing a so-called “hunter’s bill of rights,” and is determined to maintain hunting privileges in the California desert.

But for all this bravado in Washington, these are days of foment for America’s everyday hunters.

By region, by generation and by gender, the nation is divided over hunting--often deeply. The rifts widen because hunters’ typically conservative political leanings have separated them from their more liberal, erstwhile friends in the environmental movement--despite the common desire for healthy wildlife habitat.

And while many game species are thriving in America, the places to hunt them unfettered have not expanded. Some have shrunk or grown more controlled under the pressures of human population growth, suburban sprawl and public backlash over the recklessness of some hunters. The share of Americans who actively hunt is shrinking, too, leaving many feeling isolated.

Finally, there is the growing might of the animal protectionists. When asked about the most important animal rights fight of the future, veteran activist Cleveland Amory responds: “To get rid of this dreadful hunting.”

Hunters, it seems, began taking him dreadfully seriously a few years ago.

The Sportsmen’s Caucus was established in 1989, two years after the Brady Bill was introduced in Congress to require a waiting period for handgun purchases. True-blue hunters and anglers formed the core, but they enlisted colleagues not previously as concerned with sportsmen’s issues.

For at least some recruits, caucus membership was a way to demonstrate that gun control could be unyoked from the interests of, as they say in Washington, “legitimate sportsmen.”

For others, it represented recognition that hunters back home were becoming more politically active.

So as the government undertook the first national firearms legislation in a generation, hunters found themselves wrapped in a reassuring political embrace. Members of Congress did not just have to oppose the National Rifle Assn., they could also support the Sportsmen’s Caucus.

“I guess you could say we’re in better shape than we’ve been in in a while,” allowed Rep. Bill Brewster, a two-term Oklahoma Democrat who has created a niche for himself in Congress as a voice of hunters and co-chairman of the Sportsmen’s Caucus. Currently, the caucus roster lists 185 House members and 35 senators.

After Clinton signed the Brady Bill in December, the President joined Brewster for a morning of hunting on the Maryland shore. The take was a single duck; the symbolism, though, was received by millions of people. Gun control, the President said, “doesn’t have anything to do with hunting.”

The President’s point man on the hunting issue is Kenneth L. Smith, former governor’s assistant in Arkansas and now deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Administration, Smith said, does not aim merely to support hunters, but to recruit them and maintain their “heritage.”

“Let me say I believe it is important for the (Fish and Wildlife) service, state agencies and the hunting community as a whole to engage in outreach to promote hunting among the young and those who live in urban areas,” Smith said.

The new political energy of hunters extends way beyond Washington. In the last two years, sportsmen’s caucuses have been organized in all 49 state legislatures, except Hawaii’s.

When asked to argue their case, hunters say something that may surprise some: They are the nation’s original conservationists.

Yes, there were unfortunate episodes in America’s past where wanton hunting wiped out the passenger pigeon and drove the bison to near extinction. But pioneer conservationist-hunters like Teddy Roosevelt and Wilderness Society founder Aldo Leopold conceived a logic for a nation that had outgrown its frontiers: Managing game populations and habitat was in the hunter’s long-term interest.

Since then, hunters have come to pay for--and almost wholly shape--the nation’s wildlife management efforts. The private Safari Club notes with pride that in this century, white-tailed deer have increased their numbers fiftyfold, elk eighteenfold, antelope two-hundredfold and wild turkeys have rebounded from a small few to 4 million.

Perhaps it should be noted that predators who compete with humans for game--notably the grizzly bear, wolf and panther--have not done as well.

And neither have the hunters.

From 1955 to 1975, about 10% of Americans counted themselves as hunters, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. There has been a steady drop-off since: 9.1% in 1980, 8.4% in 1985 and 7.5% in 1991. Today, the number of hunting licenses issued nationwide is about 15 million.

In California, the number of licenses has decreased since 1972, from 651,091 to 299,416.

And the future? Among themselves, sportsmen and women are divided as perhaps never before, unsure about allies old and new.

To the extent that the Sportsmen’s Caucus represents hunters, the battle is less about Roosevelt-style land conservation and more about land use and budget allocations: The inviolable rights of private property owners; the multiple use of lands to include not only hunting but grazing and logging and mining; a deep suspicion of government land regulation, and a nostalgic resistance to change.

Thus, the League of Conservation Voters, an independent group that rates Congress on environmental votes, scores the members of the Sportsmen’s Caucus poorly. In 1993, the league said, the caucus contained only three environmental “heroes,” those who voted pro-environment 80% of the time, and 84 environmental “zeros.” Overall, the caucus was ranked significantly lower than Congress as a whole.

“Typically, the caucus is terrible. They’re the kind that put on plaid shirts on Election Day and pretend they’re environmentalists, then go back to Washington and vote against the environment the rest of the time,” said Peter L. Kelley, the league’s communications director.

One of the most stinging charges against the caucus is that its leaders are elitists in the mold of the modern European sporting gentry--they hunt in exotic locales and private preserves beyond the reach of all but a few, and come to represent less the interests of ordinary hunters than of the chummy clique of their outdoor pals in the development, ranching, mining, oil and chemical businesses.

Financing for caucus activities, for everything from its hunting trips to its educational programs and summer camps for youths, comes largely from just these kinds of interests--oil and timber companies, tobacco and cattlemen’s associations. But there also is backing from ammunition and fishing tackle manufacturers and publishers of sporting magazines, including Times Mirror Magazines, publisher of Outdoor Life and a subsidiary of the company that owns the Los Angeles Times.

Members acknowledge their caucus is partly fraternal. But no more so, they insist, than other special-interest congressional caucuses.

Brewster said that he is unfazed by the caucus’ low environmental ratings--he scored 45% on the League of Conservation Voters 1993 report. “Some of these environmental groups are too heavily influenced by the animal rights types,” Brewster said.

But his own life may illustrate something more fundamental at work. By occupation, Brewster is a rancher and a land owner. Hunting is his hobby. When a bill to raise grazing fees is proposed as a conservation step, or when wetlands reform threatens to restrict agricultural land use, Brewster finds himself solidly with the land use status quo--and in opposition to environmentalists.

For 1994, the Sportsmen’s Caucus has seven specific goals beyond its general call to protect the interests of hunters and anglers. They are:

* Passage of a bill to forbid protesters to interfere with hunting on federal lands. Such an amendment has passed the Senate and is pending in the House.

* Amendment of pending legislation to create a national park in the Mojave Desert. The caucus wants hunting rights preserved.

* Significant revision of the Endangered Species Act to benefit hunters and landowners. The caucus calls these “common sense amendments.” Environmentalists say they are an all-out assault on this longstanding conservation law.

* Maintenance of agricultural subsidies that pay farmers to keep some land fallow. These lands have become important wildlife habitat. Clinton has proposed cutting the financing in half.

* Prevention of budget raids on the license fees paid by hunters for wildlife management. Some in Congress would like to divert some of these funds or charge hunters extra for anti-crime programs.

* Amendment of the pending reauthorization of the Marine Mammals Protection Act so that hunters can legally import polar bear “trophies.” These bears are protected in the United States, but some hunting is allowed in Canada and proposed in Siberia.

* Defend the rearing and release of captive ducks at private shooting clubs. Some biologists fear these birds will spread disease and weaken natural flocks. The caucus leadership vows to oppose regulation unless these fears can be proved.

A good number of hunters say that the caucus’ agenda does not represent the desires of all sportsmen and women.

Call it the “greening” of the outdoor sporting community. Some hunters say this is an instance of Congress lagging behind the people. Here and there, evidence points to hunters loosening their rigid arm-lock with the gun lobby and reaching to their former allies in the conservation movement.

“We’ve begun to include them more in things,” said Kevin Sweeney, chief spokesman for Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. “It was a mistake not to involve them from the start in the initiatives we’ve undertaken. . . . What we’re trying to do here is provide more habitat. And if you’re interesting in hunting and fishing, you should be our natural allies.”

Richard Parsons, government affairs counsel for the Safari Club--which represents hunters with international concerns--partly agrees:

“With environmentalists, our goals are and should be exactly the same. Wildlife that has a value to someone is more likely to be preserved than wildlife that doesn’t. We support sustainable use.”

Those who read sportsmen’s publications vouch for a new environmental tone these days.

Some sport fishing magazines have become downright rabid in supporting the cause. Writing in Fly Rod & Reel, outdoor journalist Ted Williams disowned those land-use traditionalists who presume to speak for sportsmen in Congress.

“The congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus is a front for politicians pushing the agenda of air and water polluters, clear cutters, oil and gas extractors, agribusiness habitat wreckers and wetlands developers,” Williams wrote.

If this bridging of the gap between hunters and environmentalists is indeed genuine, it will be bad news for the animal rights movement.

A Los Angeles Times poll in December found 54% of respondents opposed sport hunting. The strongest opposition came from women, young people, blacks and Westerners.

Perhaps sentiment in Congress is so lopsided for the other side because hunting is regarded as a culture and animal rights as a movement.

Annette Lantos is a congressional volunteer and staff director of the Congressional Friends of Animals Caucus, chaired by her husband, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame). She said the caucus has a membership of 25.

Who are they? “Well, we don’t disclose our members,” she said. “It’s not quite acceptable yet. We’ll lose them.” Even at that, the Friends of Animals Caucus says that it is not openly anti-hunting. “We’ve learned that you cannot legislate morality. Ours is an educational effort,” Annette Lantos said.

Wayne Pacelle, national director of the Fund for Animals, acknowledges being on the defensive in Washington like never before.

“When historians sit down to write, they will say that this marked the pinnacle of hunter strength in Congress,” Pacelle said. “But on Capitol Hill, their power is really the product of the good old boy network. The Sportsmen’s Caucus may have 40% membership in Congress, but its agenda couldn’t claim 10% support among the public.”

For now, animal protectionists continue to claim a strong alliance with mainstream environmental groups, and have taken their anti-hunting campaigns around Congress directly to voters. Their strategy is to confront, state by state, those types of hunting that arouse the most controversy. Two ballot initiatives have been successful: A 1990 California measure that outlawed hunting mountain lions and a 1992 Colorado proposition outlawing baiting and dog hunting of bears.

In elections this year, Pacelle’s group and others are focusing on bear and cougar hunting in Oregon and trapping in Arizona. Some activists are itching to target one state and try for an all-out hunting ban.

Maybe a more lasting battleground will be America’s youth. Animal protectionists have campaigned hard, and by many indications successfully, for the attention of children. Hunting activists say they are fighting back with youth camps, fishing derbies and shooting safety programs.

“This is a heritage that is passed down from one generation to another,” Brewster said. “Eventually, if there aren’t young people to hunt, it will die out.”

Times researcher Doug Conner in Seattle contributed to this story.