Douglas Radziewicz may oppose hunting for his own personal reasons (“Change hunting laws,” letter, BDN, Dec. 2), but his criticisms are based on emotion rather than facts. Your readers deserve the truth.

Hunters help wildlife, more than anyone else in the country. Through a self-imposed 11 percent federal excise tax on hunting-related equipment and supplies, hunters contribute more than $150 million annually to wildlife conservation. These funds have allowed states to buy more than four million acres for wildlife habitat, and they sometimes account for 75 percent of a state’s conservation budget.

Add to that the more than half a billion dollars a year that Americans spend on hunting licenses, permits and stamps, and the bottom line is that hunters are underwriting wildlife conservation in this country to the tune of nearly $2 million a day.

Thanks to the projects these funds have made possible, we now have six times as many turkey, 18 times as many elk, 30 times as many bison and 52 times as many whitetail deer as we had in 1900. It’s not just game species that benefit. Bald eagle nesting pairs have risen from 400 to more than 2,660. Trumpeter swans have come back from a low of 73 birds to more than 12,000.

Hunters also help fuel our economy. Add up what’s spent on travel, lodging, equipment, supplies and so on, and you’ll find the average hunter contributes $850 to the economy, for a total of about $14 billion each year. That’s more than Americans spent on Coca-Cola in 1992.

All wildlife species and all Americans — Radziewicz included — benefit from the positive contributions hunters make possible. Tim Pitcher Lakeville