Who's Going to Take the Next Generation Hunting?

In 1980, about one in fifteen Americans hunted. Today it’s closer to one in twenty. That sounds like a minor statistical shift until you sit with it for a minute and think about what it actually means — fewer people in the field, fewer license dollars funding conservation, fewer voices in the room when politicians start talking about what to do with wild land, and fewer kids growing up with any connection to where food comes from or what it means to earn a meal.

Fishing isn’t doing much better. Licensed anglers dropped more than 8.5 percent between 2021 and 2023 alone. Not over decades — in two years. Montana, one of the most hunting-dense states in the country, is struggling to find enough volunteers to teach hunter education. The people who built this culture are aging out, and there isn’t a clean line of younger people ready to take their place.

This isn’t abstract. This is the tradition we grew up in slowly running out of people to carry it forward.

How We Got Here

The easy answer is urbanization — more people in cities, less access to land, less exposure to hunting and fishing from a young age. That’s real, and it matters. But it’s not the whole story.

A big part of the problem is that we’ve made this world feel exclusive. Between the gear culture, the gatekeeping in online communities, and the general sense that you need to already know what you’re doing before you show up, we’ve built a higher wall around something that used to have no wall at all. The person who’s curious but doesn’t know anyone who hunts or fishes doesn’t just lack access to land. They lack access to a world that often acts like you have to earn your way in before you’re welcome.

Think about what it looks like from the outside. You want to try hunting. You go online to figure out how to start. You find forums where people argue about calibers with a ferocity usually reserved for politics. You find gear guides that suggest you need $2,000 of equipment before you set foot in the woods. You find content that assumes you already know the vocabulary, the regulations, the unwritten rules. And somewhere in there you quietly decide that maybe this isn’t for you after all.

That person didn’t leave. We pushed them out before they ever walked in.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Programs

Every wildlife agency in the country has some version of a recruitment program. R3 — Recruitment, Retention, Reactivation — is the framework most states operate under, and there’s real money and effort going into it. Expos, youth camps, mentored hunting seasons, introductory fishing clinics. All of it is well-intentioned and some of it works at the margins.

But here’s what the data keeps showing: the single most reliable predictor of whether someone becomes a hunter or angler is whether someone they personally know took them out when they were young. Not a program. Not a YouTube channel. Not a clinic at a fairground. A person. Someone who loaded them in a truck before sunrise, handed them a rod or a rifle, showed them what to do, let them mess up, and made them feel like they belonged out there.

No government program can replicate that. It’s not scalable in a spreadsheet. It’s one person deciding that their Saturday morning is worth sharing.

I Think About the People Who Did It for Me

My father took me. That’s the whole story of how I got here.

My earliest memories aren’t just holidays and birthdays — they’re cold mornings in the woods with him before anyone else was awake. Creeks in the summer with a rod in my hand before I knew what I was doing. He didn’t teach me by sitting me down with a manual — he just took me, and I watched, and I figured it out the way you’re supposed to. We still go. That part hasn’t changed.

I think about that when I think about what this article is actually asking. Because not everyone has that. Some people had a father who never took them anywhere. Some people didn’t have a father at all. The person I’m describing — the one who loaded you in a truck before dawn and put a rod or a rifle in your hands and made you feel like you belonged out there — that’s not a given. For a lot of people, that person never showed up.

Which is exactly why you need to be that person for someone.

If you had what I had, you know what those mornings were worth. The only way to honor that is to pass it on. And if you didn’t have it — if you found your way here on your own or later in life — then you know better than anyone what it would have meant to have someone open that door. Go open it for somebody else.

The Next Generation Isn’t Going to Find Us. We Have to Find Them.

There are more people curious about hunting and fishing than the participation numbers suggest. The locavore movement — people who care deeply about where their food comes from and how it’s raised — is enormous right now, and those people share more values with hunters and anglers than either group usually realizes. People are leaving cities in larger numbers than they were a decade ago. Outdoor recreation participation is at an all-time high — 181 million Americans went outside for recreational purposes in 2024. The interest in nature isn’t dying. The connection to hunting and fishing specifically is what’s fraying.

That gap is a door, and someone has to open it.

If you hunt or fish, there is almost certainly someone in your life — a coworker, a neighbor, a friend’s kid, a cousin who mentioned it once — who is curious but doesn’t know how to start. They’re not going to ask. The barrier feels too high and they don’t want to look like they don’t belong. You have to be the one who says something first. You have to be the one who says it casually, without making it a big production, the way it was said to you — hey, I’m going out Saturday morning, you want to come?

That’s the whole program. That’s all it takes.

And When They Come, Make It Easy

Don’t hand someone a reading list before their first morning in the field. Don’t overwhelm them with regulations and gear requirements and the twelve things they need to know before they can call themselves a real hunter. Don’t let the first experience be intimidating when it doesn’t have to be.

Let them use your gear. Show them the basics in the truck on the way there. Tell them the goal for today is to be outside, and anything else is a bonus. Let them see the way the light changes when the sun comes up over the tree line. Let them feel what it’s like to be completely still and completely present in a way that almost nothing else in modern life demands. Let them have that, and worry about the finer points later.

The details can be learned. The first time is the only thing that can’t be replicated. Make it count.

This Is How It Survives

The culture we love — early mornings, cold coffee, rivers and timber and the weight of a good day on your feet — does not survive because a government agency ran a recruitment campaign. It survives because enough people decided it was worth passing on and actually did the passing.

We can write about it. We can post about it. We can argue about the best gear and the best methods and the best season until we’re out of things to argue about. None of that matters as much as one person, one truck, and one early morning that changes the way someone sees the world.

Go find your person. You already know who it is.

At HFH Outfitters, we believe the outdoors belongs to everyone willing to show up — not just the people who grew up with access to it. If you’re bringing someone new into this world, outfit them simply and affordably and get out there.