Read in the paper this morning that the forest industry wants the hunting to increase because of damages done to young trees costs them alot. Not unreasonable I thought, but reading a bit further it seems they want to reduce the elk (in America it's moose, in Europe it's elk. much closer to the proper name for the animal which is älg) population to a fifth. Considering how important an event the hunt is, especially in northern Sweden where many rank it right up alongside christmas and midsummer, I don't think they'll get very positive reactions to this proposition. Each year almost 100,000 elks are shot out of a population that is around 350,000 before the hunt starts (in northern Sweden it's the first Monday in September and in southern Sweden the second Monday in October). This sounds like alot, but apparently roughly 100,000 are also born each year. Quite a few are killed in traffic accidents and only 4,500 die of natural causes. So the population should be quite stable.
200,000 something (I don't remember the exact number) hunters have gotten hunting passes this year. Out of those only 13,000 something were women, however there was an increase by 800 since last year... I said "only", but that's quite a few heavily armd girls out in the forest ^_^ and I think the numbers will even out more with the new generations of hunters.
Personally I've never hunted, or even wanted to. It would just seem wrong to kill these beautiful animals. I do however see the need for it as we've killed off all the elk's natural enemies and the forest industry *is* important for Sweden.

Oh, by the way. Does anybody else have trouble scrolling on this page? I don't know if it's got something to do with my making the scrollbar transparent (probably only visible in IE).