"Take me hunting"

[Mr. October]

Some thoughts I've had around the direction of hunting these days. https://bringitonblog.com/2025/09/29/teach-me-to-hunt/

 

[Andrew12gauge]

Hunting license sales are not declining nationwide. Nice try


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[Mr. October]

Hunting license sales are not declining nationwide. Nice try


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I'm not sure where you are getting that information but hunting license sales have declined every year since 1982 except for the pandemic years of 2019 to 2021. 2023-2024 saw ~5% decrease across the country in license sales.
* https://wildlifeforall.us/resources/decline-of-hunting-and-fishing/
* https://congressionalsportsmen.org/policy/hunter-recruitment-retention-and-reactivation/

 

[Burnsie]

Sounds a lot like my childhood. Out the door in the morning - just be back by dinner time. We spent most of our days wading through creeks and swaps, building forts in the woods, terrorizing sparrows with our BB guns, catching garter snakes and bull frogs...etc. You name it - we were out doing it. Same as the author, our bikes were our ticket to adventure - I must have logged 100,000 miles on that thing with my friends - we were always into something, usually arriving home filthy from head to toe. Most days Mom wouldn't even let us in the house - made us strip down to our underwear first, and head directly to the basement shower. I wish every kid got to grow up like I did.

 

[Steve300xcw]

I'm not sure where you are getting that information but hunting license sales have declined every year since 1982 except for the pandemic years of 2019 to 2021. 2023-2024 saw ~5% decrease across the country in license sales.
* https://wildlifeforall.us/resources/decline-of-hunting-and-fishing/
* https://congressionalsportsmen.org/policy/hunter-recruitment-retention-and-reactivation/

And yet it is harder to draw tags than ever before. And I trip over way more people than I used to out in the woods these days...

 

[Steve300xcw]

Sounds a lot like my childhood. Out the door in the morning - just be back by dinner time. We spent most of our days wading through creeks and swaps, building forts in the woods, terrorizing sparrows with our BB guns, catching garter snakes and bull frogs...etc. You name it - we were out doing it. Same as the author, our bikes were our ticket to adventure - I must have logged 100,000 miles on that thing with my friends - we were always into something, usually arriving home filthy from head to toe. Most days Mom wouldn't even let us in the house - made us strip down to our underwear first, and head directly to the basement shower. I wish every kid got to grow up like I did.

yup. 'cept we had quads an dirtbikes. Take the quad about 5 miles across the hill on the back roads to pick up a buddy (aka only kid my age on that mountain) cart his azz back to the house, pick up a dirt bike and then it was on!! Kept an alarm clock in the tank bag on the quad. You had better be headed home when that thing went off...

 

[GSPHUNTER]

Since 1980 hunting license sales in Ca. have seen a dramatic decline. 1980 1.2 million license hunter in Ca. currently 250.000. I'm one of the hunters who no longer hunts in Ca. Out of state only for me. Ca. does not want hunters in the state.

 

[Blackcow]

Look up the USFWS National Survey of Fishing,Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. I believe it comes out every 2 years? Goes back to 1955. Draw your own conclusions. I will say this about it. In 1965 there were 13,583,000 hunters of all types ( big game, small game, waterfowl and upland). In 2022 there were 14,400,000. Pretty sure there were more acres per hunter available to hunt on in 1965. Interestingly, of the 13.5m in 1965 only 6.5m were big game hunters, compared to 11.5m out of 14.4 million in 2022. Just an observation.
One thing to note, historically a hunter would have a license for their home state, maybe one or two more. These days, it’s pretty easy to have licenses for 5-10 states, depending on how sucked in to draws in other states you are. I’m sure that skews the numbers and I’m not sure if anyone knows how to accurately account for it.

 

[Mr. October]

Look up the USFWS National Survey of Fishing,Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. I believe it comes out every 2 years? Goes back to 1955. Draw your own conclusions. I will say this about it. In 1965 there were 13,583,000 hunters of all types ( big game, small game, waterfowl and upland). In 2022 there were 14,400,000. Pretty sure there were more acres per hunter available to hunt on in 1965. Interestingly, of the 13.5m in 1965 only 6.5m were big game hunters, compared to 11.5m out of 14.4 million in 2022. Just an observation.
One thing to note, historically a hunter would have a license for their home state, maybe one or two more. These days, it’s pretty easy to have licenses for 5-10 states, depending on how sucked in to draws in other states you are. I’m sure that skews the numbers and I’m not sure if anyone knows how to accurately account for it.

Seems hunting license sale peaked in 1982 at 16.5 million. And I suspect you are correct about both the number of big game hunters vs. small game and number of hunters with licenses in multiple states. I suspect there are far more of the latter now than there were in earlier years.