Entertainment, sports, tradition….all undergo change…and now a big shift has apparently taken place regarding hunting: it is on the wane:
Along Indiana’s highways, 50-foot billboards pitch: “Take a Kid Hunting Day.” They depict father and son ambling down a country road – two dead ducks drooping from one of the boy’s hands, a shotgun in the other.
Trying to appeal to youths’ instincts for fun and family, Indiana state officials and national hunting advocates are banking on a phalanx of sophisticated promotions to lure a new generation of would-be hunters into the fields, or woods.
As the Christian Science Monitor piece quoted above notes, hunting — a sport some would argue goes back to the cave-man (or should we now say “cave person?)days — is not winning over the new generation. More:
Indiana’s first statewide youth hunt is one of many state and private initiatives emerging this fall that aim to ensure that hunters don’t become an endangered species.
With the urbanization of America, there’s simply less nearby land available for hunting. Moreover, competition for kids’ time – from cellphones, television, and other modern diversions – has diminished ranks of young hunters. The result: Few kids learn to hunt and go on to hunt as adults.
To reverse the trend, state and private efforts range from trying to repeal laws that limit youth hunting to psychology-based campaigns aimed at getting young people familiar with gun use.
Such moves are setting off alarm bells with hunting watchdog groups. Long-established safeguards governing the sport are being undercut, they say, and state agencies are aligning with the hunting industry as never before.
Anxious to reverse the decline in the sport – and the resulting drop in state revenues from hunting licenses – hunting and gun groups and state wildlife and conservation departments are pursuing several initiatives.
The Monitor details them.
Actually, none of this is too surprising. As the paper notes, 21st century America is vastly different in terms of how the country itself is now set up and the growth of urban areas. And today even kids in rural areas now have gadgets and edifying Internet pursuits that can greatly improve their minds (THE MODERATE VOICE WELCOMES TEEN READERS).
Still, there have been stories throughout the years of youths spotted hunting in rural areas, hunting clubs, etc.
And, of course, youths have also been spotted hunting in urban areas — mostly in high school corridors.
So no one should get ready to mount hunting’s head on a trophy just yet. Demographic shifts, the growth of technology, changes in the entertainment business and the information explosion have all conspired to weaken it. If you have X amount of time and take Y away from it you have Z. And right now the quantity of the Z is less than it was 10 years ago. The key question therefore is: will biting the bullet to woo young people to hunting succeed or fail? The trends don’t suggest it’s going to be a growth industry as this century progresses…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.