Why an individual hunts is often a very personal question. Like asking a mountain climber why he or she goes to such lengths to scale a mountain, sportsmen head afield for a variety of reasons. Here’s a survey taken by a nation-wide sample and reported by Ben Moyer in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The phrase “what’s old is new again” sums it up. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans hunted animals for food. Later, in modern affluent societies some continued to hunt but for less urgent reasons like recreation, camaraderie or a break from industrial routine. Now, research indicates that hunting to acquire meat is, once again, rising to the top among hunters’ motivations.

Responsive Management, a natural resource research firm based in Harrisonburg, Va., conducted two random surveys, seven years apart, of adult hunters nationwide to learn their primary reasons for hunting. The researchers ran an initial survey in 2006 and another in 2013. In both studies, respondents were asked to identify their single-most important reason for hunting in the year prior to the survey… [continued]

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