In the past few years there has been a focus on how to get more people into outdoor recreation. The average age of the hunter in the United States is increasing instead of holding steady, which means less young people are getting into hunting to offset the increasing age of hunters. A similar trend can be seen in shooting sports, archery, fishing and trapping. Why is this important? Remember how the Pittman-Robertson Act collects excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment that is then given back to the wildlife management agency of each state. Similarly, the Dingell-Johnson Act does the same thing for fishing and boating equipment. The money is given based on license sales numbers for that state. So, a decrease in hunters leads to less sales of the things that get taxed and then based on lower license sales, the state agency gets less money. This means the state’s wildlife management will get less funding to operate.
To combat this, the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model was conceived and it explains the process of becoming an outdoor recreationalist. The model has been given the nickname of R3. This is because it describes the three phases of becoming engaged in outdoor recreation as recruitment, retention, and reactivation.
Recruitment is the very beginning of becoming involved. It covers things from seeing television shows to seeing information booths at shows to taking Hunter Education. In general, recruitment is when awareness and interest are generated. This includes the first opportunity to try the activity.
Retention is the phase when the new hunter/shooter is given the opportunity to learn and build on their new foundation. This is the most critical of the R3 phases because without the proper support, a new hunter may give up hunting after an unsuccessful hunt.
Reactivation covers getting hunters/shooters who have had a lapse in participation. This can include people who hunted until they had children and then stopped, it can also include people who developed disabilities that made it more difficult to continue participation.
The ability to define these phases of becoming an outdoor recreationalist helps state and federal agencies as well as non-government organizations make decisions that can help increase new participants. The hard part is helping new participants go from the recruitment phase through the retention phase. This is because many places have specific youth days for either hunting or fishing but once that is over, many adults resume the activity on their own. The main way to combat this has been determined to be mentored hunt/fish/trap programs. In a mentored program, a new participant (not always a youth) is paired with an experienced participant who acts as a mentor. This means continued interaction throughout a season or multiple seasons so that the new participant has someone to guide them through unsuccessful hunts or mishaps that are bound to occur.
As time continues to march on, we as outdoor recreation participants owe it to ourselves and the outdoors that we love, to introduce more people to the outdoors so that they can enjoy it and so that the outdoors can enjoy the increase in funding put back into it.