Youth, Missing In Action?

As an avid youth hunter I try to spend as much time as possible in the outdoors. I have always loved to be out hunting and fishing with my friends and family, but lately I have been noticing an upsetting fact in society today. That fact is that youth involvement in these activities has been a declining factor for years now and is continuing to become less and less popular in our society. I recently did a pole on my blog to see how much time students spend hunting and out of 18 teens that completed the pole, twelve of them had said that they have never gone out hunting. This put a little belief in my heart that my opinion of a decline in youth involvement was true, but 18 high school student could not stand as enough proof. So then I researched this issue on line and came to find that it was not only in my area that this was an issue, it was nation wide. Each site I went to went on to explain that youth hunting as well as participation in shooting sports is at a steady down fall, youth numbers have been an issue since the year 2000 (http://www.nwtf.org/images/Youth_Hunting_Report.pdf). I wenton to find that adult hunters now had been hunting at early ages and were introduced to it by there parents/families and today many of our "technology-pampered" children/teens do not find the sport amusing and would rather be doing something at home. Because of this many parents do not force this upon their children which allows them to avoid going out.

All across the nation, states have programs and have set up youth categories when purchasing tags. They have done this so that youth participants do not have to pay the same price as adults and so that if

a youth had to draw for a tag they would almost be guaranteed the license to hunt that animal. This increases the amount of animals the youth are able to hunt allowing them to have a chance to be apart of a successful hunt. When this happens the young teen or child usually wants to take part of the experience again. After years of this process the hope is that as youth participants mature they will continue to hunt. States are trying to promote youth involvement but even with these strategies applied the numbers of youth tags are still not increasing.

The current predicament is that the youth is growing up in a different world than they did in the 1980's. Surrounded by this vast world of technology they have other ways to occupy there time that they find more amusing then to go out hunting or fishing. Whe

re a kid in the 80's did these activities for fun, they did not have all of these activities such as video games and computers to spend their time on. In conclusion the only way hunting can live on is through the youth because they are our future. With out youth involvement in the outdoors today, hunting and fishing will fall into a memory and will not be able to continue. But the issue is not as easy to address and it would seem otherwise the decline in youth involvement would not be happening.

References:

U.S. Sportsman's Alliance, National Shooting Sports Foundation, National Wild Turkey Foundation

-http://www.nwtf.org/images/Youth_Hunting_Report.pdf

Blogger Pole

Division Of Wildlife

-http://wildlife.state.co.us/Pages/Home.aspx