Hunter Recruitment

[GW11]

There's also the ever-shortening attention span factor with people these days. There's even been talk of changing the layout of golf courses (18 holes is way to long) and the physical size of the hole because golf is "too hard" to learn and become good at quickly enough. Golf, like hunting, is failure-dominated. Meaning that it takes a whole load of unsuccessful outings before success begins. The have-it-now mentality of the world today just doesn't fit with the patience required to hunt, especially big game. When new hunters come to realize that it's not as easy as it looks on Wild TV or YouTube, they give it up. The internet has created an impatient society.

[MikePal]

We had a couple of young guys thru the years that joined the Deer camp and hunted with us up to the point where they had to field dress their own kill....that was the game changer for them, they never came back...LOL...

[Snowwalker]

This was not always the case.

They used to make shotguns that would fold up into a case that looked like a brief case, it was supposed to be used when you took the trolly to the gun range.

People in the city don't have exposure because a lot do not know it even exists. Look at high density residential, much of this is new Canadians, many of whom come from areas where gun ownership is illegal and hunting is not something that the average person can do. I learned to hunt from my dad, I am working on teaching my wife the art as well, but for people who are not part of the culture to want to join there are more than a few hurdles.

You did see that I did say lack of exposure right? I know that there are many in the city that are also hunters. We agree on the fact, your filling in the facts

[Fox]

You did see that I did say lack of exposure right? I know that there are many in the city that are also hunters. We agree on the fact, your filling in the facts

Yep, it used to be a higher percentage rural society, now that has changed to an urban setting.

It also used to be cheaper to get meat by hunting, that was why all the poor people hunted, that is no longer the case either. If I counted how much that deer meat cost me I would be sick, ha ha.

[MikePal]

I took a quick look thru the remainder of the MNR Harvest reports this morning for the big game data and see that the trend in Hunter Numbers was, across the board, not overly positive.

Estimated Moose numbers; taking a look at the report at link it says that the estimated numbers of moose hunters dropped in 50+ % of the MWU's since 2006.

https://dr6j45jk9xcmk.cloudfront.net...tivity-and.pdf

Bear licenses have actually stayed pretty stable from 2003-2013, 17,000 to 21,000 or 20% growth over 13 years or 1.5 % annually…which translates to only about 300 more licenses per year.

https://dr6j45jk9xcmk.cloudfront.net...ty-harvest.pdf

Add that data to what the Deer numbers show (down in over 50% of the MWU's) and the very low growth (+1.5 %) of the Waterfowl permits sold, it's apparent that the Hunter recruitment numbers (how many are taking the courses), while impressive to the OFAH, are less than adequate to maintain sustainably of the sport. Especially since when you look at the increase in Hunter Licenses sold to them is only about 50%.

In most cases it appears that Hunter recruitment is barely covering the decline of hunter numbers in many WMU's and in most cases (over 50%) are not replacing the Hunters who are dropping out of the sport. Failure ? Definitely not a success.

Should we be overly concerned? Does it matter ?

[welsh]

You're continuing to assume that deer and moose tags measure hunting participation.

We first have to decide what makes someone a hunter, for our purposes. Do they have to hunt certain game, or hunt a certain number of days a year? Is someone who gets out only once a year to sit in a blind with his buddy a hunter? What about someone who self-identifies as a hunter but, some years, doesn't get around to hunting? The difficulty in measuring actual participation becomes clear.

[MikePal]

Well since I have included Bear, Waterfowl, Turkey, as well as Moose and Deer in the data provided, that covers pretty much all BUT small game.

(I'll look for data on Migratory Game Bird hunting to see what is happening there over the past decade..any guesses ?)

Small Game, I assume, falls under the sales of the Hunter licenses data which as stated earlier, are only increasing about 3% annually.

The question then is, how many of those new recruits actually go out and hunt small game. I suspect if they did they would quickly transition into hunting something other than just small game. However the numbers, over the 7 yrs of data, don't show that happening.

I suspect with a lot of the new hunters, Dad is buying the license for them but, like they found in the Fishing survey, allot of them are finding reasons (excuses) for not going out hunting.

edit add: as suspected:

, in Ontario the number of migratory bird hunting permits reduced from over 130,000 in 1985 to just 62,000 in 2013,

[MikePal]

Since Migratory Bird hunting hits closer to home for you Welsh....with the decline in the number off permits being sold, from 1330,00 to 62,000 over the past 20+ yrs....are you not concerned that the lack of recruitment into the sport will hurt it ?

[welsh]

I don't worry much about whether hunting is going to survive.

It's simply not something I see as important enough to care about, frankly: hunting is going to survive in my lifetime, and what happens after that is out of my control. Indeed, what happens in my lifetime is largely out of my control. The massive decline in hunting from the 1970s through the 1990s resulted from huge demographic shifts. It wasn't anything anyone could reasonably expect to reverse, and it still isn't. But I don't share in the general pessimism about the future of hunting. My kids will be able to hunt if they choose to.

[MikePal]

I don't worry much about whether hunting is going to survive.

It's simply not something I see as important enough to care about, frankly: hunting is going to survive in my lifetime, and what happens after that is out of my control. Indeed, what happens in my lifetime is largely out of my control. The massive decline in hunting from the 1970s through the 1990s resulted from huge demographic shifts. It wasn't anything anyone could reasonably expect to reverse, and it still isn't. But I don't share in the general pessimism about the future of hunting. My kids will be able to hunt if they choose to.

seeing a sportsman having that attitude, it sure is hard not to be pessimistic about the future.

"hunting is going to survive in my lifetime, and what happens after that is out of my control"....not if you do something to help make it better..