Home › Forums › Campfire Forum › Why the increase in hunters? Study results
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This was sent to me earlier today. These guys really turn out some good stuff.
I’d never really considered the slack in home building being a driver in hunter numbers. Makes sense.
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Clay, I’ve known and at times worked with Dudda for nearly two decades (he contributed a good bit of info for “Heartsblood.” When I worked for TU we hired him to do a survey on hunter and angler attitudes toward ATVs (most rightly hate them and can say why), so I know him well enough to respect the thoroughness and honesty of his work. Yet I never fully trust statistics and especially mistrust stats based on questionnaires, since most such (the worst are political polls) are designed to elicit the answers the pollsters want. Even when they’re not biased and when they’re designed to be as fair and revealing as possible, as in Duda’s organization, most surveys still limit respondents to answering questions presented in gross terms, mostly yes or no, giving no opportunity for folks to explain and express the fine points of why they answer as they do. And too, esp. when it comes to hunters, there’s a strong tendency to answer questions the way we want the world, and ourselves, to think we feel, rather than how we actually feel. And finally, an alarming number of adults don’t have a clue about who they are, what they stand for or why. For example, the previous Duda report I posted here showed that of those hunters surveyed, fewer than 1% claimed to hunt primarily for trophies, while the majority claimed to hunt for meat. If that’s the case, then why are almost all commercial hunting magazines focused heavily on trophies? Same for the Outhouse channesl and most videos. Where are all the meat-related articles the alleged majority of meat hunters should be demanding? In that case at least, it seems clear that the horn porn rags and their advertisers know what most hunters really want, better than the hunters themselves know, or are willing to admit. And so on. Still, it’s nice to see good news about anything these days, even if we have to fool ourselves to get it. Maybe?
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Yes, I remember you citing some of their work in Heartsblood. Good stuff back then, good stuff now. The motivation of hunters fascinates me and I agree that most folks don’t really know themselves, or really why they hunt. Heck, I’m convinced that most people rarely think of anything deeper than how they’ll pay the cable bill. Nevertheless, surveys like this are still informative. They’re also necessarily limiting. Why we hunt is as individual as, well, the individual. But, you can’t draw statistical conclusions based on everything under the sun, so you have to narrow the variables. I hate being lumped based on standardized answers, especially when asked about something like why I hunt. But I understand why it’s necessary.
As to the hunting media, maybe their failure to take notice of the shifting cultural values is why their ratings are headed south (or so I hear). Also, notice the uptick in media featuring hunters and food. Georgia Pellegrini, Steven Renella (great writer and show btw, even if he does hunt with a rifle), etc. The culture is shifting; outdoor media will follow…Eventually.
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Unabashed plug: BacklandTV.com is another good program with Scott Anderson. He uses all weapons, but gets pretty fired up about making his “willow shoot arrows” and knapping & phasing a stone point right there in the field to use…
I trust a few good trads who know him up close who say he’s a real deal guy.
As for surveys, I worked with a heavy hitter researcher in Survey Research, who proved to me that most folks, will let their bias show in how they write questions. Then he turned our shared experience on it’s ear by taking things I feel passionately about, and wrote questions in a way that if I were HONEST in my answer, I’d end up counter to what position I truly have on that topic! Amazing.
Reminded me of a book back in the 70’s “How to Lie With Statistics” Intriguing book of the moment back then…
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