State wildlife agencies are always looking for ways to increase hunting participation, and several groups and organizations believe the best way is to reach out to minorities, particularly African Americans.
Jonathan Wright runs a deer camp in eastern Pennsylvania called Pocono Browns, and his outfit has garnered media attention in recent months for its outreach to the black community.
“I had a guy drive here all the way from Columbus, Ohio, to hunt here because he was a black hunter who was new to hunting, and he wanted that level of comfort,” Wright told the Pittsburg Post-Gazette. “One of my passions is to get more blacks into hunting.”
He says he wants “people of all backgrounds” to come to his camp, “but [it’s] an interest to get more black hunters to come here, particularly young kids and their dads. It’s a form of wellness and peace. Whatever has kept minorities away from that needs to change.”
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Hunting and conservation advocates have for years been reaching out to demographics that have traditionally been underrepresented in the American hunting community. Some programs target college students, which tend to be more racially diverse. Others target women and mothers looking for locally sourced, free-range meat.
Others, like Outdoor Afro, encourage black Americans to get into the outdoors in whatever way they’re comfortable with – including hunting and fishing.
“I was tired of seeing how blacks were viewed and were viewing themselves in nature. I was ready to change the visual narrative,” Rue Mapp, Outdoor Afro’s founder, told Thrive Global earlier this year. “The work of Outdoor Afro is working toward the ordinary. We know we have won when we see black people outside and in nature, in proportion to their population and their opportunities, and it is NO big deal.”
Not everyone believes the hunting community is doing everything it can to welcome non-white demographics.
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Lamar Gore, who manages the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, has taught young hunters from Philadelphia and surrounding areas how to take a whitetail deer with a crossbow.
He told the Post-Gazette that hunting has a marketing problem.
“We have groups that are lamenting the decline of hunting and the remedy is to continuously reach out to the people who are already hunting,” Gore said. “I’m not saying all of it is an intentional, exclusionary tactic, but I think there’s people out there who are definitely trying to keep folks out.”
The vast majority of hunters in the U.S. are white, but that may be changing. According to a recent report, high percentages of racial minorities expressed interest in learning how to hunt. Future interest in hunting among blacks was 18%; Hispanics, 16%; whites, 15%; and Asians, 11%.