Online hunting forums identify achievement as prominent among multiple satisfactions

Abstract

Understanding hunter satisfactions can lead to improved wildlife management policy and practice. Whereas previous work has suggested that hunters often seek multiple satisfactions (achievement, affiliation, appreciation), little is known about how satisfactions might vary with target species. Additionally, past research has mostly gathered data using interviews and surveys, which might limit scope as well as introduce strategic bias for potentially provocative subjects such as hunting. To address these gaps, we analyzed data from online hunting forums, which provide an open-access source of peer-to-peer discussion that is geographically and taxonomically broad. We used directed qualitative content analysis to analyze hunting narratives for satisfactions by coding 2,864 phrases across 455 hunting "stories," and compared patterns of dominant (most frequent) and multiple satisfactions between target species type (ungulates and carnivores) using forums from 3 regions: British Columbia, Canada; Texas, USA; and North America-wide. We found that achievement was the dominant satisfaction in 81% of ungulate and 86% of carnivore stories. Appreciation was nearly absent as a dominant satisfaction in carnivore stories. We found that 62% of ungulate and 53% of carnivore stories had multiple satisfactions present, indicating that appreciation and affiliation play important secondary satisfaction roles even when achievement is dominant. If these data are broadly representative of hunters on a larger scale, management policy instruments that ignore achievement may not evoke change in hunter behavior, particularly involving carnivore target species. Despite limitations associated with online forums (e.g., nonrepresentative of all hunters), they provide a new and valuable resource for wildlife management research. Ó

Clarifying how hunt‐specific experiences affect satisfaction among more avid and less avid waterfowl hunters

“…Studies have not clarified when actual harvest is predictably more influential to hunting satisfaction than other motivations (e.g., harvest opportunity motivations like seeing game, activity‐specific motivations unrelated to harvest like developing skills, or activity‐general motivations like enjoying nature or spending time with friends). Hunting provides social, psychological, emotional, and physical benefits beyond harvesting game, but recent studies have clarified the importance of harvest opportunity and actual harvest to satisfaction (Hrubes et al , Ebeling‐Schuld and Carimont , Schroeder et al ). Activity‐specific experiences related to pursuing and bagging game may relate to satisfaction far more than general motivations (like enjoying nature or spending time with friends) given the relative ease in satisfying the general outcomes of the hunting experience (Gigliotti , Wynveen et al , Schroeder et al ).…”

Large carnivore hunting and the social license to hunt

“…These satisfactions include “appreciation” (enjoyment of experience), “affiliation” (enjoyment of other's company), and “achievement” (enjoyment relating to performance) (Hendee 1974 ). Recent analyses of stories posted to online hunting forums from across Canada and the United States showed that although hunters often express multiple satisfactions in hunting stories about varied taxa, achievement satisfaction (which aligns with trophy taking) is particularly common in stories about large carnivore hunting (Ebeling‐Schuld & Darimont 2017 ). Collectively, these patterns suggest that large carnivores, such as bears, cougars, and wolves, not only have characteristics that make them attractive trophies ( Darimont et al.…”

The elephant (head) in the room: A critical look at trophy hunting

“…And yet, though at first glance hunter motivations may seem highly salient to the ethics of (trophy) hunting, this intuition can be deceptive (List, ). Hunter motivations are known to be multiple and mixed, such that any individual hunter can be motivated by a diverse set of goals, for example, to provide meat, to enjoy immersion in nature, and perhaps also to collect a trophy (Ebeling‐Schuld & Darimont, ; Fischer et al., ). For this reason, efforts to draw a conceptual or moral distinction between any two instances of hunting are bound to be frustrated when based on hunter motivations, except in rare and exceptional cases where hunters are singularly motivated (List, ).…”