Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What is the future?

In a previous thread MuleDeer mentioned how the average age of hunters is growing older. If so what do you think hunting will look like in the next 50 years or so?

Will we look more like the European model of today? Will Kids ever again grab a rifle/shotgun and just be able to go and hunt?

What will future adults preceptions of hunting look like?

For any in the know, is there a present day think tank that is giving consideration to where we will be?

Who cares ,most of us will not be here.

I do.

And while I will be dead, my DNA will still be alive, and hopefully will have the opportunity to experience some of the same things that I found enjoyable. Perhaps that same DNA will resurface again. Much the same as occurs in Birddogs.

Battue, I am not a pessimist in the long run being a practicing Christian, but I would venture there will be no or little hunting in fifty years and that guns of all types will probably be banned, or nearly so; except for the elites maybe. Maybe it'll be here in twenty-five years; maybe a hundred and fifty but that's the direction I see we are moving in.

I see us progressing down this continuum a degree or two at a time. The Bible references (according to many evangelical theologians) an end-time, totalitarian, world-wide regime where personal freedoms will be completely lost outside of one politically correct one. See any hints or foreshadowing of that now?

I bet you weren't expecting this..

I never thought I'd see a reciprocal carry law here in Iowa, as they were all "shall issue", which meant go pound sand.

All across the country there are more states that have protected carry laws, way more than just 25 years ago, and except in a few liberal criminal cesspools, folks don't trust politicians.

Hunting though, is going the route of Texas or Africa, meaning it will be strictly a business participation.

Hunting has changed so much over my life that I can hardly believe it as it is, much less fifty more years down the road.

I grew up in houses with loaded guns on the back porch. When I wanted to go do some range work or go hunting, I would strap a gun on my bike and go. A 12 year old wouldn't make it a mile down the road today before he went for a ride in a police car if he had a gun strapped to a bike.

I killed four deer last month in my neighborhood instead of at deer camp because there were so many they were eating everything. If a person wanted to go inside 30 miles of St Paul/Minneapolis you can get unlimited antlerless permits because there's way too many deer.

Gun production is now at least 2/3s being other than hunting guns (shotguns/rifles).

I'd say there's a decent chance that as many deer will be taken with suppressed .223s by licensed population control employees shooting over bait as there will be by "hunters". If you add the vehicle kills likely more.

Today in Minnesota, we run something like 20-30 percent success rate deer hunting. With the huge numbers of deer we have now, that doesn't speak well of the skill of hunters. That isn't going to translate well to the next couple of generations acquiring the skills. Less mentors, less highly skilled hunters, is going to equal less success, not more. Not many people keep doing something that's hard and expensive that they aren't successful at. That means less hunters still.

I think the hunting will always be around...it's a big country with a long tradition in hunting.

But I see less, not more, youth participation (million reasons why);fewer opportunities for tags;more limited access;greater expense at all levels from license fees to lease costs,outfitter fees etc.

Large blocks of western/mid western land are being bought up and closed off by wealthy interests;even happening in some New England strongholds as well....on some places you will continue to hunt but it costs a bundle. I have never seen good hunting get any cheaper.

Hopefully we will still be able to access public lands but likely under increased regulations,limited draws etc.as those same lands fall into more "multi-use" categories, or hunting gets banned altogether.

Cost is a huge barrier for many if they live any distance from the prime stuff. I see landowner contacts and connections becoming increasingly important in the future. For many it will be a "who you know " proposition.

I have seen all of these things and more serve as barriers in the 40+ years I have been hunting; I don't anticipate any improvement.Still, for those determined, where there's a will, there will be a way. For some, the logistics will be too daunting...they will drop out of the picture.

I had a good, but long and depressing, post that i erased. The last three guys stated it for me.

No, that is a very plausible chain or series of events. I believe, however sometimes I don't agree with the conclusions of theologians nor do I have the personal capacity to interpret the conclusive meaning of the word. But no doubt your thoughts have merit.

I encountered a rather interesting statistic after hunting in Europe a few times in the 1990's. Hunting is alive and well over there, for the most part, but as you can imagine its more highly regulated than in the U.S., both in terms of who can hunt, where they can hunt, and what they can hunt.

I discovered that both Germany and Norway had similar areas to the state of Montana, where I live, but very different populations. Montana hadn't even reached 1 million back then (now it's a little over), Norway was about 5 million, and Germany 80 million. As far as I could determine, however, there were the same approximate number of hunters in each country as in Montana.

The percentage was obviously different. In Germany far less than 1% of people hunted, while in Montana the percentage is very high, about half of adult males and over 10% of females. But the total number was about the same, as it was in Norway.

This may indicate that hunting is a very area-dependent activity. On one level this is obvious, because if there's no place to hunt then people won't hunt. But apparently it may work the other way as well: Hunters only tolerate a certain number of other hunters, partly because if country gets too crowded there's not as much room for the game itself.

Much of Germany reminded me very much of certain parts of the eastern U.S. The hunting was intensely managed, with a lot of high-stand (hochsitz) sitting, often over relatively small openings. In fact, almost every small opening visible from the highways had a hochsitz on the side. Kind of reminded me of once driving through Pennsylvania during deer season and seeing a guy in climbing stand INSIDE a turnpike cloverleaf, where there were a few trees.

There are some places in Germany that are far more wild, and Norway is even more so, but again the number of hunters in Norway is very similar to the number in Germany and Montana.

Hunting land in Germany is obviously in very high demand, and despite the socialistic aspects of much of German government, it's also a very capitalistic nation. As a result, prices for hunting land and leases are very high, the reason most German hunters have much higher than average incomes. This also results in the average German factory-made rifle being higher-priced than ours, but they're also more accurate. Despite the generally good accuracy of many American factory rifles today, the average German factory rifle shoots more like a good American custom rifle--and is priced more like it.

Norway is somewhere between Montana and Germany. There's still some public hunting land, or even private land open to hunters for little or no fee. Hunting rifles aren't as expensive as in Germany, in fact I saw plenty of a cheaper version of Remington 700's in the sporting goods stores I visited. (I hunted with a bunch of different Norwegians, and some even carried slightly altered military rifles, though the .308 Winchester was far more prevalent than the 6.5x55!)
There was also more of a meat-hunting attitude, which is still more common in Montana than avid trophy hunting, despite what you might read on the Campfire (which is a somewhat skewed representation of hunters in general).

Our right to keep and bear arms is actually being reaffirmed in many ways at this moment, despite inroads in some states (which may be struck down with the help of the NRA and other organizations). But inevitably we're losing hunting land, the reason prices are going up for both hunting land and hunting leases. That can't be helped, as long as the U.S. population keeps rising. But I suspect the overall numbers of hunters here are actually stable or rising, despite the percentage of the population which hunts dropping.

One of my hunting mentors grew up in New York City, and when in high school hitch-hiked to the Catskills to hunt deer with his Savage 99 slung over his shoulder. That was only a little over 50 years ago, and would be impossible today. Even back then he couldn't stand the hassle, so moved to Montana, because of the greater hunting freedom it offered. A lot of other people did too, or to Idaho or Colorado, and nowadays a lot of the private land we used to hunt when I was in high school is now leased, either to hunters or outfitters. But a third of the state is still public, and unless somebody figures out how to change that, either by switching ownership or banning hunting, we'll be able to hunt it. But even here hunting is becoming harder and more expensive, though it's nothing compared to Germany or Pennsylvania.

Yes, hunting is going to become more expensive and involved in the future, but as long as we retain the right to bear arms, and some land is available somewhere, we'll still have hunting. It won't be the same as it was now, but then nothing ever is.

Thanks and my inclinations for the most part follow yours.

BTW, the hunter inside the cloverleaf was illegal unless it was a huge cloverleaf. However, the ones that are thick have been known to hold some nice Bucks.

It was pretty big! I wouldn't have even noticed him except for his orange jumpsuit.

Pa has millions of acres of public Deer hunting land that goes unused and we are losing population. German hunters would love to have what the average Pa hunter has at his fingertips.

Make tha a couple million.

Things about the future that seem to bother my mind are the Pakistani's having over 100 "devices" and the ability to make more; and the inability to suppress an open outright shooting civil war within their nation. I think eventually it is only a matter of time that one or several of our cities burns under a mushroom cloud; and in the not too distant future.

During WW2 I read you could not beg borrow or steal hunting ammunition; not even 22LR. It was all swallowed up for the war effort.

Then last year the last lead smelter in the US was shut down?

I worry about the ammunition supply pipe-line.

Again I agree unfortunately.

It is easier to NOT hunt than hunt. Reasons are numerous...some are stated herein. I see the future bleak as I don't see the fire in the belly of many hunters and after teaching 14 years of hunter education I don't see it in a lot of the youth.

Perhaps there is some value in the hunting/Alaska type reality shows. In that at work I have college kids asking if I would take them deer hunting. Didn't happen before the advent of of this type of programming.

The DNA may need exposure to surface.

My gun club no longer hosts hunter education classes. It was becoming more apparent each year that the kids were being pushed into it by parents that only wanted additional antlerless tags.

When Michigan began lowering the age requirement for hunting and adding ways for the kids to hunt with mentors prior to having the hunter's safety classes, we viewed it as a good thing. When I started having to sit on the ground to look the kids in the eye when talking to them, I began to see that certain issues were developing. Each year we saw more young females that obviously had no interest. These idiot parents don't realize that with a little cultivation they can have the best hunting partner possible, but they were only interested in short term benefits.

Yet I see an obvious trend of women in their 30's and up taking serious interest in shooting sporting clays. Non-hunters, but with exposure the majority come to accept it.

I saw a statistic for Virginia hunting licenses. In the 1970's Virginia sold approximately 500,000 licenses annually. Guess how many they sold in 2012? Only 220,000. Less people hunting and fewer places to go.

In my opinion, if we want to save hunting for the future, forget about the kids and youth days and all that nonsense. Get women involved, the ones who are old enough to vote. Women go to the polls and hold alot of influence. If a woman is involved the husband and the kids will be involved. Just my 2 cents.