2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation

The US Fish & Wildlife Service has released the preliminary findings of their National Survey. If you are an angler, the news is pretty good. There was a 16% increase in the number of anglers 16 years of age and older from 2011 to 2016. But for hunters, the number is down by 16%, from 13.5 million hunters to 11.7 million.

Only 5% of the US population 16 and older went hunting in 2016. If we hope to see future generations participate in hunting like we do today, major efforts must be put forth to save the sport.

I don't want to think about the ramifications of hunting going away. But with only 5% of the population participating, anti-hunting forces continuing their campaigns it doesn't look good.

We have posted about the efforts of the Council to Advance Hunting & Shooting Sports and their National R3 Plan. I urge everyone to get involved. Mentoring can play a key role insuring the future of hunting for generations to come.

Peer-to-Peer Mentoring

There is a great article by Tom Keer that was first published in Ruffed Grouse Society magazine talking about peer-to-peer mentoring. (Click here for the RGS Facebook page).

Quoting from article,

Think about it. Our next generation
is highly social and digitally connected.
About 2.3 billion people use nearly 1,000
different social media platforms to share
information. YouTube alone has over a
billion users, with hundreds of millions
of hours of video consumed every day.
Theirs is an inter-connected version of
show-and-tell, meaning that our next
generation is probably more comfortable
learning from a peer than a mentor. While
my efforts as a teacher/mentor reach some
young adults, a greater number could be
reached through peers. The generation
gap is bridged, lessons are learned and
a new generation of young bird hunters
carries the torch onward.

You can read the whole article here. As we look at the work ahead of us to reverse the trend of declining numbers of hunters, this is another approach to getting more folks outdoors.