How many hunters are in America? Sounds like a simple enough question. Unfortunately, the answer to one of the most commonly asked questions in the outdoor industry is anything but straightforward.

Having managed 50+ research projects on all things hunting, fishing, target shooting and the outdoor industry since 2009, I have a good understanding for what information is available, and, how reliable the data being reported is.

Research for the outdoor industry has come a long way over the past 15 years. We have gained valuable insights on participation and participants, built customer personas, identified sales trends, calculated economic impacts and have gone from having almost no knowledge to a solid understanding of how to best increase overall participation in hunting, fishing, trapping and target shooting through recruiting, retaining and reactivating millions of willing Americans.

Even though we have a vast amount of reliable research and data, we still need to be careful as misinformation can sometimes be distributed. For the most part, this is not happening deliberately but more so being done without in-depth knowledge of a data source.

When it comes to determining the number of hunters and trends of hunting in America, there are a few sources that are referenced quite frequently. Two of the most common sources come from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS); the Annual Certified Hunting License Sales and the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation report.

These two data sources are among the best available; however, problems can occur, not with the data itself, but with folks that reference the data without including disclaimers associated with them.

The first source to review is the USFWS Annual Certified Paid Hunting License Sales.

Each year, the 50 state wildlife agencies are required to report the number of hunting licenses sold to the USFWS who then uses those figures as part of a calculation to apportion Wildlife Restoration Act funds to each state. These ‘Certified Paid Hunting Licenses’ can be a good source to better understand how many folks go hunting on an annual basis, however there are several caveats to be aware of.

USFWS does a good job with disclaimers on this data including posting the following:

1) USFWS disclaimer 1: “Apportionment year is two years after states issued licenses, so costs and number of license holders for 2023 represent license sales that occurred in 2021.”

This is a frustrating one as, even though this disclaimer is available, the vast majority of folks referencing these data do not read the “fine print” and miss this statement so the data is passed along as 2023 when it is really 2021. Using data that is two years older than assumed can be a mistake when making business decisions.

2) USFWS disclaimer 2: “Not everyone buys a license; depending on the state or territory, youth, seniors, handicapped, commercial charters, landowners, and military veterans may be exempt. Thus, the dashboard of historic hunting license data does not represent the entirety of those who hunted in a particular year. Moreover, some hunters buy licenses in multiple states and not every license buyer goes afield.”

Again, this disclaimer is available but it is very rarely passed along when the data is referenced. Additionally, hunters that purchase a lifetime license are counted differently by agencies so the overall actual number of hunters may vary greatly from what is reported.

3) The third item to be aware of with this data does not come with a disclaimer from USFWS but it is important to know. If you look closely at the historical state-by-state data, you will see instances where there are tremendous increases in license sales from one year to the next.

A few examples:

Alabama hunting license sales went from 265,000 in 2008 to 540,000 in 2009.

Georgia hunting license sales went from 395,000 in 2013 to 605,000 in 2014.

Arizona hunting license sales went from 215,000 in 2014 to 325,000 in 2015.

Oklahoma hunting license sales went from 431,000 in 2015 to 530,000 in 2016.

In my opinion, these four states did not gain 700,000 hunters overnight. They simply changed the way they sold licenses and these changes represent a five percent increase in hunters on a nationwide basis which is most likely not accurate. Again, be careful with what others say about this data and look to see if they are including disclaimers.

The second USFWS data source that is referenced frequently is the USFWS National Survey Report. This report has been published every five – six years since 1955. The latest report (2022 Survey) was released in late 2023 and identified hunting participation in 2022. This is a large, multi-million-dollar study that was conducted by NORC out of the University of Chicago.

NORC is the third different company to conduct this study in the last three iterations with the Rockville Institute and the U.S. Census Bureau taking part in the 2016 and 2011 National Surveys. With changes in organizations come changes in methodologies. Sometimes those methodology changes are drastic which means that trend data should not, and cannot be accomplished from one survey to the next. This is the case with the 2022 Survey.

Representatives from NORC presented findings at many wildlife conferences throughout 2023 and warned attendees not to use the data for trending. Page ix of the 2022 Survey clearly states the following:

“Comparability with Previous Surveys: As a result of major changes to the questions and methodology, the results from the 2022 Survey should not be directly compared to results from any previous Surveys.”

Unfortunately, some folks that did not attend the meetings or read the disclaimer are using this data to show tremendous percentage gains in hunting between 2016 and 2022. Again, this was most likely not done on purpose, but out of haste to be among the first to report on what they thought was good news.

There is an old saying among the research community that states; “Bad information is worse than no information” so please be mindful of folks using this data source to show trends in hunting participation as it simply cannot be relied upon for this use. When something doesn’t sound right, it usually isn’t.

There are several other sources of data for the number of hunters and trends in hunting that include the National Sporting Goods Association’s Annual Sports Participation Reports and the relatively new, Hunting License Data Dashboard but, each of those sources has some caveats to be aware of as well.

So how many hunters are in America?

After in-depth analysis of a variety of data sources, including a detailed review of hunter churn data and identifying the frequency of hunting license purchases among hunters (not all hunters buy a license every year), I estimate that there are 21 million hunters in America. Not all these folks hunt every year but they consider themselves to be hunters as they have purchased a hunting license at least once within a five-year period.

If you would like to learn more about hunters and hunting in America. Feel free to reach out to discuss this topic in more detail. Jim Curcuruto, jim@stewardsofconservation.org (203) 450-7202.

2023-2024 Voice of Leadership Panelists