By Charles “Swanny” Evans, USFWS
One of my earliest memories was squeezing the trigger on an old Winchester Model 61 while my father steadied the rifle at a tin can. What I didn’t know at the time was that the production of that Winchester, and the 40gr CCI we were sending down range, supported not only wildlife conservation, but also the future of shooting sports. I wouldn’t learn this until 15 years later when I was pursuing my degree in wildlife biology. Despite being an avid archer, firearms enthusiast, and hunter throughout my youth, I had never heard of the Pittman-Robertson Act and certainly was not aware of its wide-reaching implications. Today I want to focus on some of those implications as they pertain to shooting sports and where we are with participation; after all, about 74% of the firearms and ammunition that generate Pittman-Robertson funds via a federal excise tax paid by the manufacturers are sold for non-hunting purposes.
Thanks to a change in data collection methodology new to the 2022 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation, we can dive into data on target shooters for the first time since the Survey started in 1955. The hot off the press addendum, Target Shooting in the United States, reports that 47 million firearms and 19 million archery target shooters aged six and older fired or flung projectiles in 2021. You’ll notice that both of those numbers make the hunting population look small. Shooting sports are alive and well, and there are some particularly interesting insights when it comes to youth.
Recruitment, retention, and reactivation initiatives around the country have historically focused on hunting and youth. That can be a significant challenge due to the skills development, time, and location aspects of hunting. Additionally, if you teach a child how to hunt, but their parents don’t participate, who is going to take them? Shooting sports are a completely different opportunity. With so many organized youth shooting sports programs, it isn’t that much different than dropping your child off at soccer practice. There is a structured environment with a coach, and you can come back to watch the match when they compete. Target shooting is also unique in that anyone regardless of age, sex, background, or stature, can compete and have fun. I can look at someone and have a pretty good idea if they are going to be good at football, but I can’t say the same for shooting sports, and to me, that makes it special.
Given the above, it is no surprise that we had almost six million youth participating in firearms target shooting and nearly five million in archery. We can’t definitively say that youth target shooting is growing from the Survey data culled for this addendum since we only have one year, but growth in individual programs like National Archery in the Schools Program and USA Clay Target League suggest that it is.
Over the past few years, many signs point to an increased interest in shooting sports across segments of society, not just youth, but there is a limiting factor: access. Access was identified as a top barrier by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Responsive Management in a report a few years ago, and state natural resources agencies have taken this seriously. The majority of the states are using a portion of the nearly a billion dollars generated annually by the firearms, archery, and ammunition manufacturers through the Pittman-Robertson Act, to build and maintain shooting ranges. In fact, there are over 800 shooting ranges supported by these dollars all over the United States, and that number is growing rapidly. The demand is there, we have the funds, and the future of shooting sports is looking mighty bright.
I may have gotten off on a little bit of a tangent there and strayed from some of the data that are presented in the Target Shooting in the United States addendum. Was this on purpose? Maybe, maybe not, but it works to my advantage either way because I want you to go check it out for yourself. Our staff put significant time and effort to digging through the data to pull out the most relevant information to you on firearms and archery target shooting. Humor me, click the link, and enjoy!
To read Target Shooting in the United States: Participation, Demographics, and Relationship with Hunting and Fishing, click here. For more information on the Survey and other addenda, click here.