This time of year, what with having relatives who live in the wilds of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, pictures of people posing over deer they've shot becomes a frequent site on my personal Facebook feed. What I also see every year is articles reminding me why most of you won't be seeing the same thing.
For the umpteenth year in a row, newspapers and outdoors publications are kicking off the fall shooting season with stories about how there aren't as many kids -- or people in general -- as there used to be out in the woods and fields looking for game. Beyond the wistfulness of kids not getting into an American way of life, there is an economic impact to this decline for any area whose tourism depends on hunters, any store that sells hunting gear or any state whose conservation programs are predicated on fees collected for hunting licenses.
There are myriad reasons hunting advocates give for the decline: growing urbanization that puts more kids out-of-touch with the land; landowners' increasing unwillingness to let hunters onto their property; an inability to compete with video games, cell phones and other accoutrements of modern life; and increasingly busier activities schedules that take free time from kids -- and parents -- that could be used to hunt. The result, according to a report released by multiple hunting organizations, has been that there aren't enough young hunters to replace the current population of adults. (Biggest surprise to me was the state that had the lowest replacement rate: Michigan.)
There's been no lack of effort in trying to attract youths to hunting. Hunting organizations have been successful in lobbying state legislatures to reduce the minimum age a child can go with a licensed adult on a hunt; at least 30 have done so, including the unexpectedly woebegone hunting state of Michigan. Many states also have programs that allow youth hunters to start their season ahead of schedule, when wildlife would be at its most plentiful. Yet the declines remain unabated.
It seems to me there is one factor being left out in the discussion as to why fewer youths are hunting -- the current American gun culture. In my lifetime -- I'm 44 years old -- gun culture has turned from the hunters I see on my Facebook feed to the Second Amendment, stand-your-ground absoluteness I think many more of us also see on our Facebook feed.
Actually, the turnaround in gun culture, based on these numbers from Pew Research Center, has happened in the lifetimes of my 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter:
About half (48%) of gun owners said the main reason they owned a gun was for protection, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in February 2013. About three-in-ten (32%) said they owned a gun for hunting. That was a turnaround from 1999 when 49% said they owned a gun for hunting and 26% said they had a gun for protection in an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Pew notes this turnaround came as the National Rifle Association shifted its emphasis from hunting and marksmanship to gun control (or lack thereof). In 1977, the NRA, which had a long history of advocating for gun control, was set to move its headquarters from Washington to Colorado Springs, Colo., and get out of the lobbying business completely. But during its annual convention in Cincinnati, a group wanting to ramp up lobbying and put the organization's efforts into self-defense against criminals staged a coup, and, well, you know what's happened since.
The NRA hasn't completely abandoned hunting, and it has been involved in helping to make sure that youth-hunting initiatives have passed. But it didn't become the most powerful association when it comes to lobbying by making sure hunters got the resources they needed. For the organization, the coup of 1977 was the best thing that ever happened; it may well be that the NRA would have otherwise sunk with the hunting ship.
On the other hand, the evolution of the gun culture from shooting prey to arming yourself to the teeth so you don't become prey (a declining number of Americans own guns, but those who do buy a lot of them), I think, has made guns and ammo bad words among people who might otherwise casually participate in hunting. Actually, there's no casual in guns anymore. As the Washington Post noted in 2013:
“We must declare that there are no shades of gray in American freedom. It’s black and white, all or nothing,” Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said at an NRA annual meeting in 2002, a message that the organization has reiterated at almost every opportunity since.
When the gun culture is all or nothing, it makes it harder for occasional participants, like many hunters, to feel drawn to the use of firearms. It also can make landowners think of hunters traipsing with guns to be a bunch of nuts, rather than regular people participating in a long American tradition.
It's hardly the NRA's fault that hunting, especially among youth, is on the decline. However, the NRA's recasting of what it means to be a gun owner isn't helping the sport.
