Maybe Western Hunting Isn’t Dying After All.

The consistent narrative regarding hunting is that it is dying. However, over the last five years, Western states have outpaced the rest of the nation with increasing numbers of paid hunting license holders.  According to the National Fish and Wildlife Service data, Western states saw a 14.67% increase while the rest of the nation only saw a 3.14% increase. 

Specifically, the FWS data shows that, 9 of 12 Western states have actually seen an increase in paid hunting license holders over the last five years.  Arizona had the largest increase with 55.12%, while Wyoming had the largest decrease of -1.12%. 

This comes as change when during the previous 5 years (2009-2014), only 5 of 12 Western states saw an increase in paid hunting license holders.  Utah saw the largest increase with 31.45% and Washington saw the largest decrease at -8.54%.  During that time frame, Western states as a whole saw a decline of -1.96%, while the rest of the nation saw 1.48% growth.

Of the seven states that had an overall decrease from 2009-2014, all had a positive change from 2015-2019.  Four changed to see an increase, and the other three all experienced a significantly smaller decline.

Of the five states that had an overall increase from 2009-2014, all kept a positive trend for 2015-2019, with three having an even greater increase.

For years, the story has been that the hunting population has been rapidly declining every year since the 1980’s.  However, over the last decade 9 Western states have actually managed to flip that, and create positive growth.  While these numbers do not illustrate the growing difference between the hunting and non-hunting population, Western states have at least managed to control the exodus. 

It is important to note that these numbers are all paid hunting license holders, and does not separate large and small game hunters.  This could explain why the ratio between resident and nonresident tag sales has managed to remain consistent Additionally, data may be suspect as some states saw a dramatic increase in total licenses, tags and permits sold (for example, Arizona increased total sales by 103,645 from 2015-2019).