What Moves the Industry

Everyone is talking about how hunting no longer is driving the firearm industry and firearm interest. It’s shifting to target shooting and CCW and such.

I agree.


And the comments galore on Tam’s post on the subject are a good read.




And now I am just bandwagonning

The only reason I was able to include hunting in my firearms exploration journey is because all the stars were aligned.

A small bug was buzzing around when I casually mentioned to My Buddy the Gun Enthusiast that I had no place to shoot a rifle, and he mentioned he knew a close-by place. It just snowballed from there.

Before that, it was a once every other year trip to the range to shoot a revolver. After that it was at LEAST once a month trips. And this blog. Then training and more practice and CCW, &c. &c.

But as to hunting…

Again, if MBtGE wasn’t a hunter I might be shooting more right now, but I certainly wouldn’t have hunted. And not because I didn’t have the desire.

MBtGE himself didn’t hunt much at all in his youth. He didn’t start deer hunting until he was 30, 10 years before I met him. He grew up with guns on a farm, so it was easier for him to take up the hobby than it would be for me. Plus he had many people he knew locally with land they’d let him hunt.

THAT is a big critical factor, and it was for me. A place we/I could hunt by knowing someone with the land.

Without the mentor (MBtGE) to show me how, and the place (through MBtGE), then I’d have never bothered taking the Hunter Safety class.

You want hunting to come back to its former glory among shooters? ALL current, experienced Hunters need to mentor a person and they all need to have a 50 acre farm/woodlot somewhere close by. Once that apprentice has bagged a couple and cleaned a couple, THEN find another apprentice to introduce. In a few years I may be able to teach someone. I need to find some land to buy, though.


[update: Ya know... if interest in the target shooting continues to increase we may come full circle, with regular folks wanting to get back into hunting. I mean hunting virgins. It may take 20-30 years, and the n00bies may all hunt with AR heavy rigs, and all the old hunters that could teach folk how may be scarce on the ground due to die-off, but it could come back...]