Internet program impacts youth interest in hunting

Demographic trends in the United States suggest that the general public wil l become increasingly isolated from traditional consumptive uses of wildlif e. This is correlated with nationwide decreases in hunter initiation and co ntinuation. Because most state wildlife agencies derive a large portion of their funding from hunting-license sales, a decline in this source of reven ue could have dramatic implications for future wildlife management programm ing. The International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (IAFWA) de veloped the Hunting as a Choice (HAC) project to help its member state fish and wildlife agencies effectively address these trends. HAC products targe t nontraditional constituents (suburban 10-12-year-old children). As a mark eting study, we assessed the effectiveness of HAC to determine whether comp uter-based educational products (website and computer game) could increase the interest of 10- to 12-year-old suburban children in hunting or hunter e ducation classes. Nearly half of the 91 suburban school children in Jackson ville, Florida, exposed to the website and computer game requested more inf ormation about taking a hunter education course from the Florida Fish and W ildlife Conservation Commission. Participants also became more tolerant of other people who hunt.