In 1961, when the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission conducted a study of outdoor recreation in America, they found almost 90 percent of Americans participated in at least one outdoor recreation activity. Today, the percentage of Americans who say they participate in an outdoor recreation activity is about 50 percent.
There are approximately 60 million anglers in the U.S. of which 46 million are estimated to fish in a given year. Those numbers are growing. However, a recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report found hunting participation nationwide has declined 16 percent from 2011 to 2016, dropping from 13.7 million to 11.5 million.
The number of sport shooters nationwide has slightly increased. In 2017, the number of participants (aged 6 years and older) in shooting sports with firearms amounted to approximately 9.38 million. This is up from 2006, when it was 7.08 million, but there could be a lot more.
All across the US, people are coming together in the R3 movement that aims to pump new life into hunting, fishing and sport shooting. Great idea. There are some very good hands-on programs to help kids and adults get outdoors more often and participate in hunting, fishing and sport shooting. Imagine what participation would be like without these programs!
But there’s something else that needs to be considered in our efforts to support outdoor recreation activities. We live in the Information Age when the average person spends 7 hours a day looking at electronic screens, and many pay for it psychologically and physically. A recent Pew Research Center survey reports 68 percent of U.S. adults believe fake news is a more serious problem than sexism, racism, illegal immigration or terrorism.
Mainstream media isn’t going away. With Netflix, Amazon and Hulu joining the potential film and TV shows available, there literally are hundreds program now available to the viewer, many airing world-wide. So, we need to find ways of taking advantage of mainstream media to help encourage more people to get outdoors and enjoy fishing, hunting and sport shooting, including archery.
Making the Most of Mainstream Media
What I think should be done is based on my own background. I’m a former college professor of environmental studies and psychology who has been involved with film production since l970. I chose to create a Ph.D. combing ecology and psychology when I read Aldo Leopold’s classic conservation treatise, “A Sand County Almanac,” where he said, “The real substance of conservation lies not in the physical processes of government, but in the mental processes of its citizens.”
I started out as a college professor, helping create the fields of environmental psychology and environmental education. Today, I’m a writer, TV and film producer and an actor (www.jamesswan.com). I work in mainstream media. Based on the reality of life today, we need to recruit people to let go of their electronic devises and get outdoors more often, and to do this we must work with mainstream media as well as offering introductory hands-on programs.
There used to be feature films and TV shows on network channels where hunters and fishermen were heroes, and they had influence. One example of their power is 2 years after the 1992 debut of the feature film “A River Runs Through It,” there were 100,000 more fly anglers nationwide, the number of times people went fly fishing doubled, and so did the fly fishing industry’s business.
Another example: In 2007 California game wardens asked my son and me to produce a documentary about the shortage of wardens in California – 192 in the field. For 2 years we rode along with wardens on land, water, in the air and in very wild places where there was no back-up. The resulting film, “Endangered Species: California Fish and Game Wardens,” was shown all around the state, and copies were given to all CA lawmakers. Thanks to Hollywood, the documentary inspired the docu-reality show “Wild Justice,” which ran for 3 years on National Geographic Channel. By the end of that time, there were 364 wardens in the field in California.
Some of my favorite feature films show hunters as heroes. In recent years, the number of films and TV shows that show hunters as heroes has declined. The films that do deal with hunting recently are when father and son go hunting, and the son accidentally shoots someone.
In “Walking Out,” a father talks his son into coming along with him on a moose hunt in Montana. Reluctantly, the boy agrees. They venture off into the woods. When they come to where the moose has been seen, it’s been poached and a grizzly bear has taken up residence on the dead moose. The bear charges. The boy climbs a tree and his rifle goes off, accidentally shooting his father. The rest of the film is about the boy trying to carry his badly wounded father out of the woods. This film got some good reviews, and it’s very professional, but it didn’t draw many to the box office. It’s domestic box office was only $101, 947.
More recently, Josh Brolin starred in “The Legacy of the Whitetail Deer Hunter.” Father and mother spilt up. The father has his own hunting TV show. Father wants the son to come on a hunt. Reluctantly, the boy comes along, and the father has his cameraman shoot video about his son’s first hunt. The boy spends more time on his cell phone talking to his girlfriend, but finally he does some target shooting with his father and they enjoy it. They chase a huge buck and finally get close to it. The boy struggles with buck fever. Finally he shoots, misses the buck, but wounds the cameraman. The rest of the film is about father and son getting the wounded cameraman back to a hospital.
Considering the fact that thanks to Hunter Education requirements, hunting is now as safe as ping pong, and the biggest danger is falling from a treestand, these films are not helping with R3.
Millions of Americans are watching wildlife, a 20 percent jump from 2011. Some schools and youth groups offer field trips, etc. but a lot of environmental education today is focused on crises. However, if you ask why the numbers have been increasing, people thank David Attenborough, PBS, National Geographic, Animal Planet, Discovery, Netflix, etc. because their shows are very entertaining. Some of these folks will hunt and fish inspired by these shows, but others may form different attitudes toward hunting, fishing and sport shooting.
As the readers of Archery Business know, in recent times there’s been a significant increase interest in archery. One reason is the National Archery in the Schools Program. Since being founded in 2002 in Kentucky, NASP has involved more than 18 million students in over 14,000 schools in 47 states, nearly all Canadian provinces, and in 10 different other countries including Africa and Australia. Currently, more than 2 million 4th-12th grade kids participate in NASP every year. It’s the largest youth archery program in history, and it’s growing at 9.3 percent per year – about 1,000 new schools join every year.
