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Shooting for a New Generation



By TATIANA BONCOMPAGNI

Published: January 9, 2004



Long out of favor, hunting is fast becoming a hip way to spend the weekend for the young and upwardly mobile. According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the number of hunters with household incomes of $100,000 or more increased more than 25 percent, to 1.3 million, from 1991 to 2001 (taking into account inflation and population increases). And over the last three years alone, upscale hunting clubs like the Mashomack Preserve Club in Pine Plains, N.Y., and Pintail Point in Queenstown, Md., report that business has grown as much as 20 percent, while high-end gun manufacturers and specialty clothing retailers say that sales of hunting jackets and other gear are up 10 percent or more.



Most of the growth, industry watchers say, comes from an unlikely group of newcomers: adults in their late-20's to mid-40's who did not grow up hunting � and who may have friends and family who are appalled by it. That has not stopped the new hunters from spending thousands of dollars on Barbour hunting coats and Beretta shotguns to use in the woods near their weekend homes or to take on guided trips to hunt upland game (pheasant, partridge and other birds) in places like South Dakota.



"Traditionally, you'd be introduced to hunting by your father or an uncle, but what's happening far more these days is younger people are taking it up and getting their friends to come along," said Daryl Greatrex, a New York-based director of Holland & Holland, a nearly 170-year-old British hunting outfitter.



Helen Nigg, a managing partner at an Internet services company in San Francisco, grew up in Irvine, Calif., and had never held a gun until last year. But on a recent weekend excursion to a private ranch in Sun Valley, Idaho, she shocked her friends by bringing down a chukar (a bird similar to a partridge) with one shot. "I guess I just had this stereotype of hunting as just a bunch of big, burly guys who wear plaid and N.R.A. caps and say, `Let's go out and kill some defenseless animals,' " said Ms. Nigg, who is planning to go bird hunting next year in Northern California. Her friends still think it is a "rednecky thing to do," she said.

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Indeed, gun makers and hunting outfitters are increasingly pushing high-end goods designed for the new hunters. Kimber, a New York-based manufacturer, and the Remington Arms Company of Madison, N.C., are introducing new shotguns featuring checkered stocks for an enhanced grip and more aesthetic appeal (the priciest are $6,000). And the U.S. Repeating Arms Company, of Morgan, Utah, maker of Winchester rifles and shotguns, recently reintroduced stack barrel shotguns, which are frequently used by clay sports shooters and bird hunters, and which the company had not sold in the United States in more than a decade. The top model of the new line sells for $2,227

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