Where do you honestly think the future of this sport is going to lead?
Today’s youth do not seem to be interested in hunting. When I travel back home many make comments on how the highschool boys are not interested in going hunting. I know that I have seen some of the disinterest myself. This can’t play well into the future of hunting or our nation as a whole, in my opinion.
My dad went hunting nearly every day when he was in High School. I went when I could, but that really only worked out to be a couple weekends a year, and I lived in the country. Now, it seems that kids are not even getting out and doing that.
Statistically, they say that women are taking to the sport, and I think we need to encourage it.
With the increase in hunting lodges and the decrease in open private land the sport appears to be headed toward elitism, too, where only the rich will be able to participate. With pressure to increase taxes on firearms and ammo, coupled with the increasing regulations and permitting on hunting and shooting equipment it seems that the trail can only lead to one end. Only the elite or politically privileged will be able to hunt.
However, re-engaging youth in outdoor activities is critical to the future of hunting.
Surveys tell us the the youth are becoming less involved in natural resources-based outdoor activities.
The youth have a variety of other activities these days. Their social network, that one time included hunting and fishing, simply doesn’t exist in the form that it did in that past. People say that we need to face up to the facts that the young people are busy, have money, and have an overwhelming and exhaustive litany of events, electronics and distractions.
We need to do something. We need to have more youth programs teaching skills and build a better sense of outdoor ethics.
We could create programs in the schools, in the parks, in the clubs and in the lives in a way that really connects with the youth of today. And we need to do this for the future of hunting.
As the keynote speaker at the National Wild Turkey Federation’s annual convention, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told attendees that the best thing sportsmen and hunters can do for hunting is to refute the fallacious stereotype that guns are used only for evil purposes.
An avid hunter himself, Judge Scalia told the assembled group, “The attitude of people associating guns with nothing but crime, that is what has to be changed. I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms. I hope [the hunting culture] can be preserved & the hunting culture, of course, begins with a culture that does not have a hostile attitude toward firearms.”