BIG GAME HUNTING PRACTICES, MEANINGS, MOTIVATIONS, AND CONSTRAINTS: A SURVEY OF OREGON BIG GAME HUNTERS Suresh K. Shrestha, Ph.D. (Brown 2009, Brown et al. 2000) and many wildlife Recreation, Parks and Tourism Resources conservation programs are funded through the sales of West Virginia University hunting licenses (Anderson et al. 1985, Floyd and Lee
[email protected] 2002). Robert C. Burns The trend data, however, indicate that the participation West Virginia University of Americans in hunting has been declining over the past decade (USDI and USDC 2006). Similar downward trends have been noted in the number of Abstract.—We conducted a self-administered mail days spent in general hunting and big game hunting, survey in September 2009 with randomly selected and in hunters’ expenditures. Considering the Oregon hunters who had purchased big game hunting dependence of wildlife managers on regulated hunting licenses/tags for the 2008 hunting season. Survey to manage populations of game species as well as pest questions explored hunting practices, the meanings wildlife species, a decline in the number of hunters of and motivations for big game hunting, the will have tremendous direct and indirect managerial, constraints to big game hunting participation, and the social, economic, and environmental implications effects of age, years of hunting experience, hunting (Anderson et al. 1985, Floyd and Lee 2002, Lauber motivations, hunting meanings, and hunting success and Brown 2000, Sun et al. 2005). on overall quality of experience. The study found that although hunters gave high scores to the emotional The situation in the Pacific Northwest, including the and traditional meanings of hunting, their quality of state of Oregon, is even worse with respect to hunting experience depended largely on hunting success.