Completing a puzzle with only two pieces isn’t too hard, provided you’ve got both pieces.

It’s when you’ve only got one that trouble starts.

That’s the situation, with efforts around the country, to create a new generation of hunters, shooters and anglers. They are working well at retaining would-be sportsmen, according to a new national study. But when it comes to the second piece of the puzzle — recruiting new participants — they’re struggling, it adds.

Responsive Management, a Virginia-based research firm specializing in the outdoors, was commissioned by the National Wild Turkey Federation to measure the success of recruitment and retention programs around the nation. Its resulting report — “Effectiveness of Hunting, Shooting and Fishing Recruitment and Retention Programs: A Final Report” — concludes there are strides being made.

Youth hunts, women in the outdoors events, youth fishing clinics and the like reach many people, raise awareness of conservation, increase knowledge and generate spending, said Mark Damian Duda, director of Responsive Management.

“On the other hand, the one thing with a lot of these programs is that they’re hitting kids who we think we would be hitting anyway,” Duda said. “They’re getting a lot of people, kids especially, whose families already include parents and grandparents who hunt or shoot or fish.

“What they’re not getting so much is people who don’t already look like us anyway.”

That’s what’s often seen locally, said Denny Tubbs of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s southwest region office. He participates in family fishing events, fish for free days and learn-to-fish programs run by the agency, and in youth field days sponsored by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and local sportsman’s groups.

Some of those events draw single parents or other newcomers to the outdoors, he said.

But many others are full of children “who would have been exposed to those things anyway,” he said.

“My experience has been that, all of the kids who come to those things, their parents belong to the sponsoring clubs already. And we see the same kids coming every year,” Tubbs said.

That’s been the trend throughout the 25-year history of youth days, said Joe Stefko, a wildlife education supervisor in the Game Commission’s southwest region office.

That said, participating children sometimes bring friends from different backgrounds, and the events have proved to be avenues for getting girls involved in the outdoors, he said. And they link potential sportsmen with like-minded organizations, he added.

“Most of the clubs that host youth days encourage the kids and their parents to come back and join the club. And many of them have ongoing youth programs,” Stefko said.

That’s good, said Duda. It’s important for sportsmen to pass on what they know to their own families, he said.

“But I think we need to do that and more,” Duda said. “Right now, we have a lot of rentetion programs. But we need to look at recruitment, too. We have to have both.”

Additional Information:

The recommendations

Responsive Management’s report on recruitment and retention programs offered some recommendations on how to get better. They include:

• Refocusing. Right now, many state fish and wildlife agencies look at what they have to offer, then seek markets to fit that product. They should reverse that and look for untapped, potential customers and develop programs to interest them.

• Diversify. Would-be hunters, anglers and shooters identify most with and learn best from instructors who look like them. Agencies need to recruit and train more women and minority instructors.

• Educate. Right now, a lot of programs teach kids to shoot a bow, cast a lure or fire a rifle. After that, they’re on their own. There needs to be continuing education programs that help interested students move from, say, learning to shoot a bow to becoming an archery deer hunter.

• Entertain. The most successful programs are those that promote the social aspects of hunting, fish and shooting, the report concludes. Atmosphere is as important as instruction.

• Source. ‘Effectiveness of Hunting, Shooting and Fishing Recruitment and Retention Programs: A Final Report’

• Bob Frye

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