New surveys indicate 34 percent of active hunters and 43 percent of active recreational shooters took at least one child hunting or shooting in the past 12 months.
“Mentors and mentoring programs are the best way to grow the next generation of sportsmen, and it’s encouraging to see this role carried out by many hunters and recreational shooting enthusiasts,” says Rob Southwick, president of Southwick Associates, which designed and conducted the surveys.
At least 17 percent of those who mentored children took more than one in that same timeframe. On the shooting side, 26 percent took more than one child. Most of the youth being mentored were the children or the grandchildren of the person teaching them, but not all of them were.