I am writing a paper for my English class and I wanted it to be hunting related. Based on RBHunt's suggestion from another thread, I am writing my paper on the decline in young hunters and the lack of hunting opportunities for young hunters. This is a "Problem Solution" paper. The lack of young hunters and hunting opportunities for them is the problem. I have to come up with a solution or series of solutions which are currenly not being used. I already have several ideas for solutions, but I wanted to open it up to you guys. I would also really like to hear from some of you that live in Africa. What are your thoughts and opinions on how we can get more youngsters interested in hunting?

Ah my boy, this is a subject dear to me but one I've come to largely ignore anymore. First a bit of personal history... A small group of close friends including myself - all avid shooting and outdoor sports activists - recognized this issue and decided to try to do something about it about fifteen years ago. We tried to organize and involve our state's outdoors people and started another organization to promote the sports among youth and women.

Both efforts started off very well. The state organization (which is still exists but is largely ineffective) deteriorated quickly. The victim of apathy among most users and ego among the leaders.

The youth organization is also still in existance but bearly. It is but a shadow of what it was. The reason here was also apathy among the target audiance and eventual burn-out on those running it - myself included.

The real problem we face in the decline in hunters - not only recruitment of new hunters but even of established participants - is not the result of the usually cited causes such as urbanization, cost, greeny influence, etc... but rather it is a much more subtle sociatial change.
As recently as twnety-five to fifty years ago virtually every man exhibited some inclination towards the outdoor sports. Even if it was a once a year fishing or hunting trip. Look at some of the old TV shows from the fifties and sixties, even the seventies! Leave it to beaver, Andy Griffith, The Brady Bunch, etc. All portrayed family or at least father/son outdoors outtings in a positive light. Even the city boys on the canoe trip in Deliverence were bowhunting as part of their trip. It was our culture and everyone accepted it as perfectly normal. In today's PC world outdoors sports and particularly HUNTING are portrayed as something distastful. While this attitude doesn't help the real culprit is our changed way of life.

Thirty years ago the typical African safari was thrity days, today seven and even five day hunts are popular! Many (mostly eastern) states forbid Sunday hunting since the advent of hunting regulations more than a hundred years ago. The recent trend is to abolish these "blue laws." The reason typically given is "time availability" - "I just don't have enough time to go hunting otherwise..." We used to MAKE TIME, today its a matter of convenience. We spend many more hours entertained by organized spectator sporting events such as ball games, car races, etc.. from the comfort of our big screen TV's, while finding time to actually involve ourselves in participatory sports like hunting and fishing is a chore.
Sure the days when you could begin hunting right from the backdoor rather than driving hours to the hunting grounds favored participation, just as having to travel to a city to see a ballgame made that a special event. So you see, it is largely a product of the times we live in rather than something resulting from factors we can easily address or change.
As Adults lose interest, so to will their children. In addition we have so many other activities for children these days there is little "time" left for hunting! Soccer, little league, dance class, karate, pee wee football, etc... What's more most parents seem obligated to have their kids in EVERY possible activity running from one to the next leaving even less time for the more subtle, slower paced activities like hunting.
It was these other activities that spelled the eventual doom of our youth program. The kids absolutely loved the laid-back noncompetitive atmosphere where everyone was equal regardless of ability. Participation however depended on what other sports season was on. Too bad. Too bad for the kids, the sports and our over all society because as Ted Nugent is fond of saying - "teach your kids to hunt and you wont have to hunt for your kinds!" The attitudes and principals learned from hunting are much more desirable than those we get from the sports stars our society worships and effects continue to ripple and snowball as time goes by.

I'm sorry ES that I can't offer a "solution" to the problem you pose. The solution would have to be a total societal solution, a change in attitude and values. A change that ain't gonna happen short of some catastrophe that cripples the entire country. It wont likely be in our lifetime but short of such a total change in direction, hunting - as we know it today - is doomed.

Oupa, you just described my life. My daughter is 16, son is 14. Both kids are very active in school functions and other sporting activities. It seems every weekend is busy with baseball, football, orienteering (my daughters sport), and many other activities that revolve around our kids.

Looking back, it seems that it was almost a competition between parents to see who could have their kids in more activities. I grew up in Alaska, with not much to do besides being outside. My kids still don't believe that we didn't have a TV from the time that I was 12 until I was able to buy one for myself. I sometimes think we would be better off without the TVs, video games, and computers.

Here in Washington State we have hunting seasons that get shorter every year and the opportunities to have an enjoyable hunt shrink as well. After moving to Washington in 1987 I began hunting in Okanogan County for mule deer. The deer season was 4 weeks long and you could find large areas with no other hunters. Now those same areas have more hunters than deer occupying the forests and the season is only 8 days long. Each year I was finding myself less excited about the yearly trips. I would take my kids out, but it was not much more than a camping trip in the fall.

In 2002 I was sheep hunting with my dad in Alaska, and because of the weather we had to spend a lot of time sitting in our tent. He had just returned from Zimbabwe on a plains game hunt. I grew up following him around in the woods looking for deer and elk, and later for caribou, sheep, and bear. As I sit and listened to his stories about Africa, I knew I had to go. It wasn't the stories or the types of animals or even the adventure that Africa offers that called for me to visit the dark continent. It was the look in my dad's eye when he told the stories. He wasn't talking to me, he was reliving the event, he was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. All he could talk about was Africa, while we were on a dall sheep hunting trip in the Chugach Mountains in Alaska.

Two years later he and I went to Namibia, and needless to say I was hooked. I have been there every year since, and I am going again this year and I have booked a hunt for next year.

Last year my wife and I were discussing a family vacation. We have never been anywhere out of the county on an extended vacation with the kids, and it won't be long now with college around the corner and it won't happen at all. Both kids will be off leading their own lives and who knows when we will get them together again. I was able to convince my wife that a trip to Africa would be the best for everyone! We are leaving July 1st for Namibia for a 3 week trip to include a photo trip to Etosha and a 10 day plains game safari.

I don't know what the future holds for hunting in the US, but I know what hunting in Africa did for rekindling my own passion for the sport. I can only hope that it will plant the seed for my kids and that they will learn to love hunting in the way that I do. I feel very fortunate to be able to afford a trip such as this, but it is also my job that ties me down and doesn't allow the time to get out and enjoy the woods the way I did in my youth.

Eland Slayer, great topic and good luck with the paper. I would love to see the finished product.

Shaun

Hi Eland,
Noble effort..
We make an Africa trek every other year as a method to keep the hunting spirit alive. That and a week in October for Elk, and Antelope and doves in September, and mule deer in November. It's a priority for me, and since I am the king of my castle attendance is mandatory. My two boys (14,16) have missed alot of sports consequently.

If you think it's hard in Texas, try living in Southern California! I didn't even own a gun until I was in my 20's!!! There are very few gun shops, very few places to shoot, and what public land there is, is often "closed" due to fire hazards, or some environmental purpose.

I have to drive quite a distance to do any hunting, and pigs are the only real practical big game animal for those of us who cannot take the time to travel upsate, get to know the area, or hire a guide or draw a tag for a desirable spot.

I am on the Board of Directors of Safari Clubs Los Angeles Chapter, and we help set up a well attended and fun "Youth Safari Day" every summer, that indludes busing in intercity kids.

I was lucky to grow up in the hils above LA, so i was exposed to the outdoors, catching snakes and lizards and trapping bird, fishing etc...It was not a popular past time in this surfing-skateboarding culture, and is even less so today. Urban sprawl has destroyed the places I hung out in as a kid.

My 12 and 14 year olds have no desire to hunt, though they have both been shooting and have their own guns.

It's a shame

Good topic. I have to echo much of what has been related so far and perhaps add my canadian maritime perspective.

I was raised in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. I was born 50+ yrs ago. My mom and dad where both from farming, livestock families with mixed in carpentry and shipbuilding, the wooden boat kind.

Every fall someone in the neighbourhood would kick off the season with killing and buchering "the pig". We would all be in-it as spectators and participants. Usually we did not know it was pig buthering day until uncle so and so had killed it early in the morning as killing the pig had its issues. It had to be killed with out alot of spectators and it was not to be anounced to the kids the night previous, for obvious reasons. A lot of us had fed it "the pig" from piglet days and in some cases had sort of made friends with it!!! Like scratching its head, feeding it, and even sometimes taking rides on its back, without volunteering this info to parents of course.

Every one had chichens for meat and eggs. I recall my mom fighting off the chicken hawks from the yard, only to invite us when the time came to her chicken slauther! This lady who would rant at the hawks would proceed to have a pail of hot water behind the house and next she would get chickens, one by one, from the coop, by the wings, and lay their heads on a wood splitting block and "wack!" off with their heads. We would marvel at the antics of headless chickens. Then mom would soak all the headless chickens, after they had quieted down, and into the hot water and say to us, "Pluck.". We did. ( I had six brothers and one sister.) All the carcases were washed and frozen.

Soon it would be potato picking time. When all the top of the plants died off for the autume cold. And after they where dug out of the rows, it would mean that the pheasants and deers would be after the small and damadged tubers left behind. It meant the firearms would be out soon...for snipe, grouse, deer, hare, pheasants.

Their was not much else to do after school, after feeding the minks, my parents were mink farmers for a while, than to go hunting. The only sporting equipment my parents ever got me were hockey skates, a hockey stick and a beagle.

All hunting was still hunting. In the woods their were no clear cuts by large corporations and their were no ATVs. You walked, because that is the way it was. The old timers still logged with horses, some with ox. There was the odd tree farmer tractor you came onto, but they were rare.

The fields, streams and woods were everything. It provided livelyhood and sport. It gave me role models and I learned there the wholesomeness of hard work. I learned to kill, a nessesity for my folks and I mean learned. It did not come easy and quickly. I learned to kill while respecting the game animal and livestock. I learned to kill so that the least amount of meat was wasted and yet a quick death was manditory. Therefore I leaned to shoot hare in the head and deer in the chest. I got to know range and safety. I learned to aim at birds, so they would not fly off wounded and lost. I learned to seach for lost game. I learned from my mistakes. I learned the about fear and buckfever. I leaned about panic and instinct.

Hunting was a life lesson in those days, which probably sounds corny today. It was serious recreation and lifestyle back then. The priest and pastor were duck hunters. The doctor and the business folks hunted moose and deer. Dad hunted deer and hare and did a little pheasant hunting. The young girls and old men picked berries. Hunting back then was an occation where brains ( what little you had), brawn( what little you had) and effort (work ethic)which was required, could make scrany little kids have a sense of purpose and accomplishments by the praises of mothers and grandmothers and the example and stories of fathers, uncles and grandfathers.

I hunt because it is associated with my family and community's culture. My dad was a good shot and a good hunter, so were his brothers.

I might add here that the generation before my father, his father and his grandfather were NOT hunters. They were farmers and tradesmen. These folks were teenagers in the 1870 and 1890s and they did not hunt. Only a few of these generation did. I think the days of labour were long for them.

After "Hitler's" war, as dad use to say, people started hunting alot.

On the other hand today, I have a 22yr old son and a 20 yr old dauther. They do not hunt. They don't like to shoot firearms. My dauther loves animals as pets. As she grew up she had chickens as pets. She watched the chicks being born. But their is no way she would have me kill any of them. ( I did to thin them, without here knowing.) My son is into mixed marshall arts, music and welding. No hunting thanks just the same.

Their parents are nurses. Not farmers, not mink ranchers. Today my spouse, instead of asking for a mink coat for christmas, whats to go down south on vacation. And that is why my parents got out of mink farming. Tropical vacations got cheaper than mink coats and a better insulator of canadian winters... And so it goes.

Now in Europe. They have hunting clubs. Perhaps there is study here.

It is the responsibility of FATHERS to teach their sons (and daughters) to handle firearms and to hunt. Just as it is the responsibility of PARENTS to teach their children about sex and STDs (I heard today the Fedaral Govt spends $170 million doing this for us.) We increasingly turn to government to take over the responsibility of parenting...not only is the government a poor subsitute for a parent, they need $10 to do what we can do for ourselves for $1 or even for free.

Jeez, here in the WILD WEST we now need GOVERNMENT to pronounce our kids SAFE HUNTERS; to pronounce us SAFE BOATERS; SAFE DRIVERS; and so on. All of these things should be taught by FATHERS and/or MOTHERS. We don't need half of the people the government employs to take our money and then do a lousy job of foster-parenting for us (and in some cases saving us from ourselves).

Back to hunting. Now since not all kids have FATHERS, and some FATHERS have their priorities all screwed up, make a point of taking your kid AND HIS FRIEND hunting.

That's the simplest and most effective solution to a LOT of the problems we have in society. The only thing you don't need the government's blessing to do is to become a FATHER...that's really ironic.

I think this is what Bush is talking about when he says "FAMILY VALUES".....

Next time someone says "There should be a law...." tell them "There are already too many laws, and not one of them is a substitute for good parenting..."

That's my take on the situation.

It is a very sad topic actually.

I was lucky to become a hunter on my own trough some farmer friends no-one in my family hunted and I took it up when I was 14. Then it was possible to get a license for a firearm with parents consent when you were 16, then they moved it up to 18 and now it's 21.

So basically the only yong people who will be hunting is if their family hunts as they are not allowed firearms and 500 gunshops has closed down since changing the law on firearms. People feel threatened and rathwer give in the firearms than going trough the whole licensing process.

So in the end we are left with hardy hunters who hopefully have young children who would like to go hunting and not sit infront the TV the whole time and play games.

So what do we do ? Even if we get a friend of a young one to come along on a hunt and he or she enjoyes and would like to take up hunting there is no way that I can see that he or her parents will go trough all the trouble obtaining a firearm and then according to the law will have to be present when used.

So the only solution I can see is that if possible and you have the finance see how many kids you can and are willing to take on a hunt everytime you go.

Peter Flack has got some kind of hunting school going on on his farm but very limited number of children go. But that is a start.