Mobilizing R3, Shooting Sports & Cook Wild KY Programs

Summary: The major source of conservation funding at the state level either directly or indirectly relies on hunting and fishing license sales. These sales have been declining the last several decades as human populations have shifted to a more urban centric lifestyle, individuals are less connected to the land, have lost the ability to access hunting and fishing locations, or no longer have time to participate in these activities. In addition to these issues, one of the major barriers to recruiting hunters is that traditionally recruitment has occurred within families or close friends, commonly the older generation family members mentoring youth and help them participate in the activity during holidays or other trips. The shrinkage in hunting families means this pool to recruit from is significantly smaller and is no longer large enough to maintain hunter populations. Impacts from hunter declines under current funding models for state wildlife agencies means that conservation funding is decreasing at the state level which in most cases is already limited. Another complication is the indirect losses to state agencies in terms of dealing with negative human-wildlife interactions such as hunters being an essential tool in dealing with wildlife damage management within agriculture and suburban environments so hunter decline may lead to more crop damage issues, deer-vehicle collisions, and landscaping problems. Recent research in hunter recruitment, reactivation, and retention realms, commonly referred to at R3, shows that University students and those interested in using wildlife as a nutrition source offers potential sources of new hunters. With this in mind, Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources in partnership with University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service will fund three extension positions to help facilitate interactions of the public and university students with KDFWR Learn to Hunt Programs and also provide programming support to the Cook Wild Kentucky program. These positions will aid in providing 20 different Cook Wild Programs throughout the state each year and help facilitate at least 15 different Learn to Hunt programs at either the County Cooperative Extension Service Offices or through the College and Universities in Kentucky, conduct 15 shooting sports extension programs, evaluate and produce scientific and extension publications that focus from the new and prior programs from Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources related to R3, cooking and processing wild game and fish, and shooting sports.