The Future Of Hunting

If there are only 1.3 million hunters in Canada and not all of them are voting age, who do you think will ensure we hunters can keep on hunting?

In 2023, there were 102,796 licensed hunters in British Columbia, making up 3.3 per cent of the province’s registered voters. The number of licensed hunters was up 17,163 or 20 per cent over the 2005/2006 season, which does seem to indicate that hunter numbers are on the rise.

Brace yourselves! It will be tough for some of us outdoors folks to wrestle with this, but it won’t be hunters alone that decide whether you can continue the hunt into the next generation and beyond. Let me explain.

Hunters Are In The Minority

While hunters are in the minority, and maybe because we are in the minority, we need to work extra hard to ensure opportunities to hunt continue. Share the harvest with friends and family, and while doing that make sure folks understand the role hunters play in wildlife management and conservation. Share the fact that those millions of dollars that flow from our pockets annually for licenses and tags create opportunities for non-hunters to enjoy wide-open spaces too. Further, we need to be on our best behaviour in private and in public.

We live in a public relations-driven, social-media-drenched society where a well-funded minority can get traction and influence a swing in decisions. By design, we vote on decisions as part of our (pretty darn good) democratic society. This means that while your vote gets counted with the others, it is not your decision alone whether we continue hunting or not.

In the meantime, there are myriad things we can do to screw up our chances for good hunting in the future and there are even more things we can do to ensure we can hunt for generations to come. Let’s focus on avoiding some significant pitfalls and grab hold of some substantial opportunities.

Remind yourselves about our own out-of-reach grizzly hunt in the face of solid science (and under the guise of stopping trophy hunting) showing grizzlies are in good shape in BC. Next door, the Alberta grizzly hunt has been closed since 2006 and has yet to reopen despite evidence of healthy populations of grizzlies on the landscape. This is a great example of incrementalism, a stepwise process of anti-hunters marching toward banning all hunting, one micro-step at a time.

A good place to start is with all of us hunters sticking together. This means not arguing about legal hunting practices. There are plenty of topics to debate about: hunting with hounds, baiting and hunting methods. Some of these arguments serve only to fragment hunters on more important issues and give anti-hunters an opportunity to step closer to an all-out hunting ban. Baiting bears is a great example of an incremental reduction in hunting opportunities. Baiting bears is no longer legal in BC. If you don’t bait bears, fine, it’s still legitimate in some jurisdictions and a legal way to attract the largest bruins in the woods. Keep your negative opinion to yourself, especially when in public. While you’re at it, remind your fellow bear hunters and your dinner guests that bear is delicious. Brag about your harvest and share it on the backyard smoker with your neighbours. And as a community of hunters that sticks together, we will not get sidetracked into a battle over things like traditional bows versus compound or crossbows either, right? Seasons will sort themselves out — do not give the antis any foothold from within our hunting community.

Actionable Advice

Here is some advice for each of us as hunters, five things we can do to help ensure our lifestyle continues and our great, great grandkids have the opportunity to hunt if they choose to.

Quit bickering, support each other: Turns out, hunters don’t agree on everything. Don’t talk negatively about other types of legal hunting. It’s just that simple. If you feel strongly about crossbows versus traditional bows, take one for the team and say, “I’m not going to talk negatively about crossbow hunters.” Go ahead and argue about gear, methods and your personal limits with your hunting pals, but keep this bickering out of the public eye. We must be unified, stick up for each other and not talk negatively about each other. I would, however, argue there’s room for us to challenge each other on how we tell our stories. (See the last point.)

Speak up, take some political action: Sign that petition. Write your member of legislation or parliament about important conservation and hunting-related issues. If you have a particular concern, speak up, and do it on more than a social media rant. Do make your voice heard in this democratic society we live in. Sometimes we need to take a stance on a particular subject, even if it doesn’t affect us. For example, I have heard some firearms owners say, “It’s a handgun, I don’t care about handguns, I don’t have one.” This would be a good example of not speaking up on an issue that doesn’t directly affect you. (Or so it appeared on the first draft.)

Open your wallet and back up your voice with cash: Find a conservation group or lobby group that aligns with your goals and join up. Ask the chair what you can do to assist. Start with Hunters for BC and the BC Wildlife Federation, then look for your local fish and game clubs. Join your local shooting range and offer to help with clean up. Have you joined the National Firearms Association yet? Or the Canadian Coalition of Firearm Rights? Protecting firearms ownership is related to our ability to hunt. Go ahead and become lifelong members of these organizations, if that is an option. Look beyond the provincial borders with Ducks Unlimited or consider joining the Sportsman’s Alliance. These organizations are focused on many aspects of conservation that align well with hunting; your financial support helps them and, in the long run, helps you and the future of hunting.

Become a herald: Be intentional about how you portray yourself and your hunting so folks you know understand why you do what you do and why it is important to continue. Tell your story. We all have a circle of influence, and our authenticity goes a long way to promote the hunting life. It is up to you to make sure your influence is portrayed in a positive light.

Take a good look in the mirror: This is a tough one. What? Who? Me? We need to clean up the hunting community, clarify our narrative and improve our public perception. Those external things reflect something internal. It would be a good investment to think about (and maybe even write out) your own perspective on the issues of what it means to be a hunter in 2023, what you are concerned about for the future of hunting and what you are going to do to help the cause. Each of us needs to be living the values behind closed doors that we’re proclaiming because there is one thing that human nature will never refute and that is authenticity. If I talk about how I use every bit of the animals I take, my neighbours need to see me making sausage and smoking whatever I brought home from the hunt.

Some days it seems like there is pressure all around against hunting. The question is, what can I do? These five actionable things are a good place to start to protect hunting opportunities for future generations. So, let’s get at it.