REVIEWS
Aiming for Future Growth
A REPORT SHEDS LIGHT ON HUNTING AND SHOOTING SPORTS
By Eric C. Nuse
At last, under one cover, are the results of
most of the recent scientific studies and
surveys looking at recruitment and retention
of hunters and shooters in the United States. This
information is crucial to anyone who is concerned
about the health of the nation’s hunting heritage.
Credit: Ingrid Nuse
Eric C. Nuse is
President of Orion
The Hunter’s
Institute and
Founder of Eric C.
Nuse and Associates.
The Future of Hunting and the Shooting Sports:
Research-Based Recruitment and Retention
Strategies (Duda et al. 2008) presents the results
of a three-year nationwide study about hunting
and shooting participation. A joint effort of the
Responsive Management consulting group and
the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF),
the study was funded by a multi-state conservation
grant and includes input from wildlife professionals, outdoor recreation professionals, academics,
sportsmen, and conservation groups. Summarizing the findings, this book includes statistics
and analysis based on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service’s “National Survey of Fishing, Hunting,
and Wildlife-Associated Recreation” (FWS 2006)
as well as the results of 20 nationwide focus groups
and two scientific telephone surveys conducted
by Responsive Management. The surveys include
5,040 interviews from the general population and
1,053 from a hunters-and-shooters sample, making
this one of the largest studies ever done on hunting
and sport shooting participation.
Credit: iStockphoto.com/Sawyer
According to Responsive Management’s Executive Director Mark Damian Duda, lead author of
the book, “The purpose of this project is to better
understand the factors related to hunting and sport
shooting participation, identify strategies to better
meet the needs of current and potential participants, and more effectively communicate to the
public about these activities.” The book achieves
these goals with clearly presented data in chapters
covering hunting initiation, participation, demographic trends, motivations and satisfactions, target
markets, recruitment programs, public opinion,
and action items.
As president of Orion The Hunter’s Institute and
former executive vice president of the International
Hunter Education Association, I have long been in-
volved in hunter recruitment and retention efforts.
Tracking down information about these issues,
however, has often been difficult because hunting
data are typically scattered, outdated, or too localized. This book’s primary strength is that it compiles
results from hundreds of recent studies and surveys,
sorts the results by topic, and follows them with a
list of 196 “action items” that offer research-based
guidance on recruitment and retention. Action items
12 to 17, for example, note that because a “natural
path” of initiation creates the most avid hunters, recruitment efforts should focus on younger
individuals who come from a hunting culture, have
a father as a mentor, and start with simple target
shooting or small-game hunting. Such data-driven
guidance makes this book an essential reference for
anyone concerned about the health of hunting and
shooting sports.
