Fascinating article on hunter recruitmen
Colorado
Saw this on the Pope and Young facebook page, and remember Lou talking about the coming loss of boomers.
Interesting findings. We do a ton of licensing stuff for youth, but maybe the target audience should be those kids out fot he house and in charge of their own finances.
https://www.outdoorlife.com/why-we-are-losing-hunters-and-how-to-fix-it?CMPID=ene012218&spMailingID=32727148&spUserID=MjIyNzg4MzQ1NTc4S0&spJobID=1202809756&spReportId=MTIwMjgwOTc1NgS2
Well, this same issue was going on 20+ years ago. Nothing has really changed.
Except I see more hunters in the field now than I did 20 years ago.
A lot more hunters! Now with the prevalence of GPS with property ownership, there are guys getting into places that I never ever thought they would find. There also seems to be a contingent of "hard-core" hunters that will go much further into rough country than ever before. Hard to believe there is actually any decrease in hunter numbers anywhere when you start looking at the points races going on in all the western states for multiple species either.
35% drop in hunter numbers since 1982. 11% drop in the past 5 years. Organic locavores will help make up for a tiny bit of the loss in areas where access is available and lots of whitetails live. Out here in the West? Not so much until 15 years from now when overall numbers drop by an additional 30%, outfitting dies a slow death, and more private land is open to welcome hunters to help control exploding game populations.
This is very real, and nobody knows what to do about it.
In 15 years hunters will experience the true "Glory Days" of hunting. Tags will be easier to draw, much more available land to hunt, way less competition in the field. I'll be 78 and hoping I'll still be out there doing it like Paul Navarre!
Not sure what happened to my graph but here it is - hunter numbers as a percentage of the overall population, updated to 2016.
I believe the reason it "seems like" there are more hunters is that there is way less private land available to hunting due to leasing, development, and closure by non-hunting owners. Also, there is a subset of younger (25-40 years old) who take advantage of technology and better backcountry equipment to get back in there. "Backcountry endurance hunting" has become a sport unto itself. When I started bowhunting big game in the 70's in CO very few backpacked in. we did sometimes, but back then you could ask permission on ranches and the gate would open, and on public land the elk were still unpressured and close to roads.
Well depicted, Lou. Thanks! It's a Catch 22. More hunters are needed to support the structure. More hunters will destroy it. We've seen a large uptick in NR participation in the OTC unit we frequent - folks having their own version of a "hunt of a lifetime".
It appears that a change of optics is needed. Drawing more support from non participants, something like the wolvers do, might be one approach. "Hug a Hunter" needs to become "Help a Hunter" (I can see that going over like a lead zeppelin.) An alliance with other recreators is probably the only practical near term solution.
