Access for Hunting and Shooting Sports

What is it?

In a basic sense, access means the ability to gain entry to a place or opportunity to pursue an activity. You can’t participate if you do not have a place or opportunity to do so. Besides the legal right of entry, other important factors influence the real and perceived opportunity to access property for participating in hunting or shooting sports. Social science research shows that access means more than simply having the legal right to enter property for an activity. It also includes people’s perceptions about the safety, convenience, and desirability (amenities, availability of game, etc.) of places that are available to them to participate¹. Proximity to home is also a significant predictor of hunting and shooting sports participation²³⁴. Access can also include issues such as ramps, trails, parking areas, and other features that may be of particular importance to older participants or people with disabilities. Finally, access can be more than a physical place—it could be access to an opportunity, such as the ability to get a limited-availability tag or privilege or a space at a crowded shooting range. The bottom line is that access is more complicated than simply providing places to participate in hunting and the shooting sports; it means providing places and opportunities that people find desirable, convenient, safe, and welcoming.

Hunting Access

There are many categories of public lands (e.g., federal, state, county, and municipal) where hunting is allowed⁵. These include national wildlife refuges, national forests and wilderness areas, state forests and game management areas, metro or suburban archery zones, and many others.

Research on hunter retention shows that hunters prefer private lands, and those can be accessed by outright purchase or through hunting leases, both of which may require substantial investment and are a barrier for many participants⁶². Private lands can also be accessed for free with permission of the landowner, but people with no connection to landowners are less likely to gain access than family members and friends.

Some state wildlife agencies and their partners have established private land access programs (sometimes called “walk-in programs”) where the agency pays landowners to allow public access to their land for hunting/shooting sports purposes.

Shooting Access

There are many categories of public lands where unsupervised recreational shooting is allowed. These include Bureau of Land Management lands, national forests and wilderness areas, state forests or game management areas, and county and city lands. In addition, many state conservation agencies have invested in building and maintaining public shooting ranges that are free to use or charge a nominal fee for annual or daily permits.

It is estimated that there are nearly 12,000 private gun range businesses operating in the United States⁷. These include outdoor and indoor ranges, the latter more likely located near metropolitan areas. Private shooting ranges, including hunt clubs and conservation clubs, may require membership or daily use fees.

Archery target shooting may be the most accessible of the shooting sports because ranges can be set up nearly anywhere and often at minimal cost. Many sporting goods stores that sell archery equipment have indoor ranges. Outdoor 3-D archery target ranges are available at many hunt/conservation clubs. Many county and municipal parks departments have developed archery parks. Many of these sit right alongside ball diamonds and tennis courts in urban settings. Archery parks can offer great partnership opportunities. Often, the state agency can assist with design and/or construction funding, and then a partner (local parks department, etc.) manages and operates the range.

Why is it important?

Human dimensions research has consistently shown that lack of access is the most important barrier to hunting and shooting sports participation other than time constraints⁸⁹¹⁰. Research further shows that loss of access to hunting lands is a significant drain on hunter retention¹¹. Many potential and lapsed hunters say they are not interested in hunting public lands because they cannot easily identify what areas are open and closed, do not feel safe not knowing who else is out there, and/or because they do not think game populations are high enough to warrant the effort. Similarly, many say they are seeing shrinking access to private lands as landowners have become more concerned about liability, require lease fees, or have reserved exclusive access for friends and family. A comprehensive report compiled by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Responsive Management provides a good overview of the access issue and its role as a constraint to participation.

Shooting sports participants face similar constraints. The National Shooting Sports Foundation/Responsive Management report determined that lack of access to places to shoot prevented many shooting sports participants from going as often as they would like. The number of people who shoot firearms for recreation far exceeds those who hunt (although these are not mutually exclusive groups). Shooting sports participants provide the largest share of excise tax dollars under the Pittman-Robertson Act¹²¹³ Those dollars support wildlife habitat, hunter education, access programs, and other important conservation benefits.

In summary, access ranks near the top of all documented barriers to participation in hunting and shooting sports. Declining participation has huge conservation impacts. Access is something that agencies and organizations can positively impact. Addressing access issues should be a keystone of R3.

How Can Your Organization Help Its R3 Practitioners?

• Communicate the importance of the access issue throughout the organization.
• Establish and facilitate connections between R3 staff and the many other staff and partners necessary to implement access programs and improvements.
• Allocate resources (staff time, money, support) to improve access.

Helping people locate and identify places to hunt near them

Hunters participating in R3 research efforts say they need help identifying places to hunt. They also say that signage on public lands is not always clear¹⁴. This section will highlight examples of model tools for helping people find land open to hunting.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation sponsors a comprehensive web tool for hunters in every state. The tool shows critical information about hunting, including maps of public lands. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also hosts a web page that shows hunting opportunities across the National Wildlife Refuge system.

Many state fish and wildlife agencies have developed map tools for hunters. These allow users to identify public lands that offer hunting and/or private lands that allow hunter access. A few examples are listed in the table of resources below, but many others can be searched online.

Several commercial providers offer mapping tools for locating and navigating hunting areas on private and public lands.

Helping People Locate and Identify Places to Shoot Near Them

Regardless of why people participate in shooting sports, convenient places to shoot are in high demand. Just as with places to hunt, people need to know where they can go.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation sponsors a web tool that identifies shooting ranges in every state. Many state agencies also post maps on their websites showing shooting range locations.

Awareness of where opportunities exist is the first step toward getting people to hunt or participate in shooting sports. Efforts to increase awareness should dovetail into other marketing strategies. Programs designed to teach hunting or firearm skills should help participants find and use the mapping tools in their state.

As online technology and digital apps have become more sophisticated, user expectations for their experience have risen. Showing locations on a static map is a start, but websites that offer zooming features, site descriptions, lists of amenities, and pictures are preferred. In other words, there are always opportunities to improve the support tools available.

Improving the Perception of the Quality of Public Lands for Hunting

Public hunting lands can get a bad reputation. One bad experience with crowding, poor behavior, or shots fired close by can be enough to turn people off permanently. Research shows that negative experiences on public lands can affect other hunters who have never set foot on public lands. People tend to draw conclusions based on secondhand information¹⁵¹⁶. Organizations need to confront some of the negative stereotyping that hunters sometimes perpetuate. One good way to do this is to partner with or tap into resources available in today’s hunting media.

“The Hunting Public” is one example of digital media whose mission is to educate hunters about how to hunt public lands. They have a website with resources but also post video episodes on YouTube about hunting (usually deer or turkey). The videos feature a lot of information about using maps, and other tools. They portray public land hunting as positive and accessible. A link to their website is featured in the resource links. We also include an example of a video they made for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which is an excellent example of how to teach and promote public land hunting.

Steven Rinella’s Meat Eater Franchise has also elevated the allure of public land hunting. In some recent interviews with new adult hunters, participants called out Meat Eater episodes on Netflix as the reason they developed an interest in hunting. Undoubtedly, other examples of web content can serve R3 efforts by elevating the opportunity available on public lands.

Alleviate Intimidation Newcomers May Feel When Accessing Shooting Ranges

First-time visitors to shooting ranges can be intimidated if they do not understand the culture or rules of etiquette. There are many good resources available online addressing the topic and providing guidance. Below is an example from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Land and Game Management to Improve Hunting Access

Access to hunting land is a multifaceted issue. It includes whether available lands have opportunities that hunters perceive as desirable. Management decisions about hunter density, habitat availability and quality, game populations, signage, and other factors can improve hunter perceptions about access.

The table of resources below highlights a variety of articles and case studies where management decisions influenced hunter interest and/or satisfaction with available public land hunting opportunities. This section draws primarily from peer-reviewed academic literature and can be a lot to wade through. This reinforces the need for state agencies to align their R3 objectives with wildlife management decisions and available human dimensions research.

How to Open Private Lands for Hunter Access

From a marketing and R3 perspective, it seems clear that there is a sizable segment of hunters and potential hunters that are not interested in hunting public lands¹¹¹⁶¹⁷. Therefore, increasing the “carrying capacity” of hunters (the number of hunters a given area can support) on the landscape–especially in states east of the Mississippi River–will often require expanding access to private land.

This is increasingly difficult as landowner willingness to allow access to people they do not know has declined from a generation ago¹⁸². This section will highlight some initiatives that can help provide greater access to private lands.

One example of a successful public access program is the USDA’s Voluntary Public Access-Habitat Incentive Program (VPA-HIP). The program offers grants that support habitat management improvements on private lands. In return, the landowners make the lands available for public hunting. A report from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership in the table of resources below describes how the program works.

The fear of liability is one reason landowners are less willing to allow people they do not know onto their lands for hunting¹⁹²⁰. To address this, many states have enacted laws that provide landowners immunity from liability except for injuries resulting from willful or malicious acts. The table of resources below includes a link to a Vermont Fish and Wildlife web page that addresses landowner rights as well as mitigating liability concerns. This is just one of many examples available from state agencies.

How to Create More Access by Investing in More Shooting Ranges

The demand for shooting ranges exceeds the supply in the United States, according to numerous industry reports. Research by Southwick Associates shows that most people prefer to visit ranges within 30 miles of where they live²¹. R3 efforts focusing on hunter recruitment should work hard to expand the number of facilities where people can shoot archery and firearms. Some states have implemented range improvement and range construction grant programs for this purpose. Such grant programs are typically used to fund the construction of public shooting ranges, but they can also be used to buy access for the public at privately owned gun clubs.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a Partner with Payer program that includes a range grant program. Its website has informative videos showing range projects in Ohio and Alabama as well as a lot of other valuable resources. Numerous other industry and conservation organizations offer grant programs to support range construction and improvement projects. These include the MidwayUSA Foundation, the National Rifle Association, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, to name a few.

Beyond funding, tremendous resources are available to assist with the physical aspects of range development. Technical manuals of how to site and build shooting ranges from the Archery Trade Association and the NRA are listed in the table of resources below. Many other similar guidebooks and information are available with a Google search.

Land Acquisition to Increase Available Acres Open to Hunting and Shooting

States and the federal government have land acquisition programs to preserve and protect natural resources and expand lands available for public recreation. For example, states receive funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to acquire lands for recreation. Some states have legislation establishing funding mechanisms to purchase undeveloped lands. Two examples are the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Act and the Wisconsin Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Act. See details in the Table of Resources below.

In addition to outright land purchases, states and their conservation partners like Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever/Quail Forever, National Wild Turkey Federation, and others can purchase conservation easements that create permanent access to private lands. The Nature Conservancy also allows hunting on some of the lands it purchases for conservation objectives. Developing partnerships with these groups and other land trusts is another way to open access to more public land.