Program focus on recruiting hunters
MCFARLAND - What’s the best way to recruit hunters?
It’s the single biggest question in the hunting world.
There’s no one answer or “silver bullet,” as Christine Thomas, dean of the UW-Stevens Point College of Natural Resources and founder of “Becoming an Outdoors Woman” program has often said.
And it doesn’t happen in a single event. It takes multiple exposures before someone self-identifies as a hunter and is likely to “stick”, said Keith Warnke, hunting and shooting sports coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
But one initiative that has yielded positive results was on center stage last Sunday at Hope Rod and Gun Club in McFarland.
Fourteen novice hunters and seven instructors and mentors gathered for a program called Learn to Hunt for Food – Rabbit.
It brought into focus three of the bright spots on the hunting recruitment landscape: food, females and adults.
The program was sponsored by the DNR, National Wild Turkey Federation and Pheasants Forever.
“Food is a great motivator for humans in general,” said John Motoviloff, Wisconsin R3 coordinator for the NWTF. “For many interested in acquiring local, natural protein, hunting is the best means possible.”
Motoviloff organized and led the event, with assistance from Emily Iehl, DNR R3 and shooting sports program specialist, and Marty Moses, Wisconsin state coordinator for PF.
The mentors included me and my friend and colleague Jason Stein of Madison.
When I was growing up in Wisconsin, hunting was as natural and nearly as common as playing baseball. I sometimes joined friends to hunt small game after school in Racine County.
Things are very different today, in a world dominated by hand-held electronics and planned after-school activities.
Some kids are still taught by family members and become hunters as has happened for generations.
But it’s clear that model isn’t sufficient to sustain hunting. The latest national indicator showed the continuation of a long-term slide in hunter numbers. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, 11.5 million Americans hunted in 2016, a drop of 14% from 2011, the previous survey.
The agency has monitored hunting, fishing and wildlife watching every five years since 1955.
Sociologists have predicted the decline in hunting for several decades. Wisconsin is doing better than most states.
From 2011 to 2016, for example, gun deer hunting licenses in Wisconsin fell just 4%, according to DNR figures.
And Wisconsin experts in the field of R3 – Recruitment, Retention, Reactivation – have found notable success with aspiring hunters in other, untraditional demographics.
The Wisconsin DNR “Hunt For Food’ effort, initiated by Keith Warnke, is being copied by other state agencies and is considered a model of how to reach new groups of potential license buyers.
“Survey after survey has shown us that locavores or other food-motivated adults are very likely to be interested in hunting,” Motoviloff said. “And many of them are women.”
The DNR began offering Learn to Hunt for Food classes in 2012. It recognized the connection and potential crossover between hunting and the emergence of local food, farm markets, and sustainable living, key values of the millennial generation, according to a DNR report.
Sunday’s program reinforced this trend. All of the participants were adults; the age ranged from 20 to 60something.
And eight of the 14 (57%) were female.
Some of the participants had never held a shotgun before, while others had hunted before and had even taken other Learn to Hunt for Food programs.
For the returners, the event provided another “touch” of a hunting experience, Motoviloff said, a critical means of maintaining interest as a novice is deciding whether to become committed to the activity.
The DNR has no trouble finding participants in the programs, Iehl said. The agency uses an email list and word-ofmouth, partly through the Badger Hunting Club at UW-Madison.
About 10% of Wisconsin hunting licenses are sold to females overall, but females make up closer to 30% of new hunters in recent years, Motoviloff said.
Most adults, because they have transportation, disposable income and can make independent decisions, are good targets for Learn to Hunt events.
What’s more, attendees at Learn to Hunt for Food programs become license buyers at a much higher rate than other new hunters.
About 40% of Learn to Hunt for Food graduates buy licenses each year (considered avid participants), more than double the rate for other new hunters, according to DNR statistics.
A winter storm, single degree temperatures and a Super Bowl to be played later didn’t deter the 14 novice hunters from showing up last Sunday.
The program started inside the Hope Rod and Gun Club clubhouse at 10 a.m.
Basic instruction was given on hunter and firearm safety, ecology, hunting techniques and cleaning and meal preparation of wild game.
Information on the state’s Voluntary Public Access program, in which private landowners are paid a fee in exchange for allowing public access for hunting, was also presented.
About 11:30, the group ventured outside for target practice with shotguns on the club’s trap range. The DNR provided firearms, shells and blaze orange clothing to class members.
Jillian Landeck, a 32-year-old physician who lives in Madison, proved to be a natural with a shotgun. Shooting for the first time and with a borrowed, toolarge gun, she broke two of three clay pigeons at the trap range.
By 1 p.m. mentors and novice hunters ventured out to one of more than a dozen properties selected in Dane County for a few hours of rabbit hunting.
I mentored Kimbrin Cornelius, 40, and Casey Scott-Weathers, 37, both of Madison, on an outing on a state-owned property south of Cottage Grove.
In the hunting world, the cottontail rabbit, averaging three pounds in weight and ubiquitous across Wisconsin, doesn’t meet most definitions of “big game.”
But it’s large in many respects, including hunting opportunities and as table fare.
“Oh, rabbit is so good,” said Motoviloff author of “Wild Rice Goose,” a book of wild game recipes, and several articles on small game hunting and food preparation. “It’s as fine and versatile on the plate as any game animal out there.”
The storm that passed through earlier in the day deposited six inches of drifted snow in the area.
Cornelius, Scott-Weathers and I walked three abreast and stomped through snow and brush in a standard rabbit hunting technique.
About 25 miles away, Lucas Olson, president of the Badger Hunting Club, was mentoring UW-Madison students Lucas Allen and Dustin Li at Dorn Creek Fishery and Wildlife Area near Waunakee.
Under the bright afternoon sun, a rabbit flushed and presented a good shot to Li.
It turned out to be the only rabbit taken Sunday by a member of our class.
The rabbits, we decided, were mostly hunkered down in their warrens due to the storm.
They might have been, as one of us said, playing cards. Or resting up for a Super Bowl party later that evening.
These are the types of yarns hunters sometimes spin to explain empty game bags.
Stories – factual or embellished – are a significant part of hunting.
Like all days afield our group reaped a harvest of experience.
We spotted the tracks of an American otter along a creek, including two belly slides.
And though the temperature was in single digits and the breeze added a bracing windchill, we were comfortably warm with the exertion of walking and stomping through the field.
We walked perhaps two miles, burned plenty of calories and breathed fresh air deep into our lungs.
“This feels more like our type of hunting,” said Cornelius, who had previously hunted deer from a fixed spot. “It feels great to be out and active.”
Despite not firing a shot, I could tell Cornelius and Scott-Weathers had made another step forward on the hunters’ path.
To participate as a novice hunter or become certified as a mentor for future programs, contact Motoviloff at jmotoviloff@nwtf.net.