Similar to other recreational activities, hunters include diverse participant subgroups with varying backgrounds, skills and equipment. The available HDW-literature explains their variation, for example, by personal... [ view full abstract ]
Similar to other recreational activities, hunters include diverse participant subgroups with varying backgrounds, skills and equipment. The available HDW-literature explains their variation, for example, by personal motivation (orientation) and the extent of prior hunting experience. In this study we explore and characterize the variety of grouse hunting tourists’ activity-specific styles or behaviors under opportunities provided and resources constrained. We hypothesize that different hunting activity subgroups exist that differs in their personal background, motives, experiences and impacts in the social-ecological hunting landscape. We also assume that hunting tourists’ activity styles are associated, in addition to the specific experiences gained in a given trip, to perceived satisfaction with the trip.
We collected survey data among all the Finnish hunting tourists who bought grouse hunting permits to state-owner land in 2017. The response rate after two remainders was 43% (n=5727). We used eight binary responses, each reporting the hunting tactics or technique used, as indicators in latent class analysis (LCA) for defining grouse hunters’ activity styles. We used multiple covariates (e.g. variety of demographic variables, hunting region id, extent of lifetime hunting experience and past year activity, and experiences from the last trip associated with the frequency of encountering other hunters or game birds in the field, and with the reported personal bagging of bird(s)) to predict membership in identified segments. We used both the activity styles and it’s predictors as independent variables to explain the subgroups’ members’ level of perceived satisfaction with the most recent hunting trip to state-owned land.
Based on the data, the Finnish grouse hunter tourists could be reasonably identified at minimum into four activity-style-subgroups. We named the largest subgroup (39%), consisting of persons hunting without dog and in solitary or in small-group, as specialized “active grouse-searchers without dog”. The second largest subgroup (26%), named as “avid generalists”, had a probability higher than 70% to apply at least four technics and tactics, including the active searching of game birds by walking, or in contrast, standing with or without decoys around the black grouse lekking (display) sites. Other two major subgroups were specialized to actively searching for the game birds on the hunting ground with certain breed of dogs (namely “hunters with pointing dogs” (18%) or “hunters with spitz-type dogs” (17%).
The prevalence of the two subgroups that specialized to hunting with dogs showed distinctive regional pattern. As hypothesized, there existed also many characteristics in the hunters’ background and experiences distinct from all the other subgroups. The extent that activity style subgroups perceived the last grouse hunting trip to state land as satisfactory showed differences, but varied only to minor extent between the subgroups.
The results demonstrate the diversity and the context-specificity for the prevalence of the hunter activity types. The subgroups identified varied in their probability for encountering other hunters and game birds, and also bagging birds. The results indicate that subgrouping of hunting styles may serve valuable information in attempting to meet the Finnish tourists’ needs and ensuring of the sustainable harvesting in the state land.
Topics: Natural Resource and Conservation Stakeholders: Managing Expectations and Engageme