I grew up in a rural area of SW TN where hunting was a big part of Local black culture, especially small game and rabbit hunting. There’s a certain black owned BBQ joint (that sports Michelin stars) where you will routinely see black hunters come in with deer quarters to be smoked and bags of squirrel to be made for stew. I’m not sure if these meats are for personal consumption, but I suspect that it is for a free, black only menu option.
Anyway, I think much has to do with an area’s demographics: if you live in rural WI, for example, you’ll probably be hard pressed to see a non white hunter. If you live in AZ or rural coastal GA, seeing non white hunters is likely a regular sighting. In some sense, a person who goes to bowling alleys in rural White areas without having visited Detroit or Memphis or Atlanta, might easily conclude that bowling is a “white sport” and be very wrong about that survey.
I would say that there is also the larger consideration of non White participation in outdoor pursuits in general. When is the last time you saw a non White riding a Mtn Bike or Road Bike? Rocking climbing or backpacking? Trail running? Dirtbiking? Recreational horseback riding (even though most “cowboys were Black or Hispanic and still super common in South Louisiana)? Surfing and fishing are the most significant exceptions that come to mind.
There is also a certain perception, and it’s not entirely unfair, that if you hunt, you are too poor to buy food at the grocery store, or you are rich, white, fat and otherwise bored and will spend a lot of money to hunt animals in the most enhanced and narcissistic way possible.
The reality that settles with the dust of all of this is that hunting is more difficult than ever to pursue from scratch if you don’t have the social infrastructure to support it and a Black kid from urban Detroit isn’t any more likely to seek out a hunting mentor than a white kid from the Upper Peninsula is to show up to learn the ins and outs of street basketball in the inner city.
