The Changing Demographics of Upland Hunting

Maybe I’m the only one who’s noticed this, but I doubt it. There seems to be more young people out there following dogs and carrying guns than there used to be. Lately, when I stumble across a hunter I don’t already know—either in the field or through a personal or on-line connection—it’s quite likely to be a young person or a young couple. And I don’t mean just people younger than me—that would be too easy. I mean actual young people—less than 50-years old or so. And these aren’t just temporary enthusiasts spawned by Covid, they’re committed and invested. So, what’s going on?

A New Generation of Upland Hunters

The standard or “traditional” way people get into bird hunting with dogs is by growing up in a family where hunting is part of the routine. It’s most often males that do this I suppose, but that was of no concern to Deanna Witwer, a 38-year old dance instructor, choreographer, and mother of two boys. She grew up in a home with Brittanys, pointers, and setters, and started to shoot and learn about hunting with dogs with her father before she was a teenager. “I went out with Dad mostly to watch the dogs at first, but I took a hunter training course and learned about gun safety, and then started shooting clays. I shot my first bird—a sharptail—over a point from our Brittany, Mike, in 2003.”

She passed the passion on to her husband shortly after they met, and today, they have a three-year-old Britt and a year-old GSP. What’s at the root of the obsession? “I like that it connects me to land—places I get to know and become familiar with but that are still constantly changing and offer a different experience every time,” she says. “The walking takes me out of my head and into my body and gives space for reflection and presence. The dog-work connects me to another creature I love and who knows me. The birds remind me of the heritage they hold on the land and the many generations of people who have watched them and hunted them. Maybe that’s all a bit high-sounding, but connection and place are probably the real roots of why I love it. Doing it with people I love is the cherry on top, as well as having goofy dogs as companions for the other things in life too.”

Ben Fretz is a breeder of German wire-haired pointers and Hungarian wire-haired vizslas. He’s also a pro trainer of all pointing dog breeds, so I asked him about the demographics of his clients, and if he thought there were more young people in the sport now than previously. “Yes, for sure.” he said, “More young people, more women, and more couples. For a variety of reasons, some completely unrelated to hunting, people choose a pup from a sporting breed and then find themselves curious about seeing the dog do what it was bred to do. They seek out a trainer, and that’s when they’re exposed to the bird-finding part, and ultimately the shooting part of the equation. Quite a few of these folks jump in with both feet and end up trialing or hunting or both. Hunting used to start with the gun and progress to the dog, but these days it often happens the other way around.”

Darcy Toner and Timbre Pringle are in their 40s and might have been a more-or-less standard “new-age” outdoor couple that enjoyed hiking, climbing, biking, and skiing, but with no connection to fishing or hunting other than Darcy’s brother, who introduced him to fly fishing. This obsession settled first on Darcy, then on Timbre. Fly fishing led them into a photography business called Faceless Fly Fishing, and a long relationship with Orvis, for whom they provide authentic photos of the fly-fishing experience.

One of the early pushes toward bird hunting came from Orvis’s Charlie Perkins at a company fly-fishing event. “We were in the bar after a session and he just started telling us about it and said that we’d really enjoy it,” Darcy recalls. “I liked the idea because it seemed to have a mystique similar to fly fishing that fit with my desire to become proficient in the outdoors.”

Timbre resisted initially. “Growing up in the city, I was hesitant about the killing part of hunting until Darcy showed me a video about the lives—and deaths—of chickens at a commercial poultry operation. That made me feel better about obtaining some of our food by hunting.

“We took the plunge and hunted for a year without a dog, and we sucked. We found very few birds and when we did, we couldn’t hit them. Eventually, we met a new friend who helped with gun fitting and gave us some instruction at the local gun club. Then, one day in the field, we met a guy with a cocker spaniel. He clearly knew what he was doing and recognized our frustration and took us for a short hunt with his dog. That did it. The connection between him and the dog drew us in completely.”

Today they hunt every weekend of the season, chasing Huns, sharptails, and pheasants behind their first dog, a stunning four-year old liver Brittany named North. And to complete the circle so to speak, they’re finding that young people wishing to take up hunting are now contacting them. “We hunt with people in their ‘70s and people in their ‘20s,” says Timbre. “And we’ve had young people shoot their first birds with us.”

Like Ben and Deanna, Timbre’s and Darcy’s obsession with dogs and birds is complete: “Now when I drive by a piece of bird cover, I do pretty much the same thing I do when I cross a trout stream,” Darcy says. “I stare at it, nearly drive off the road, note the location, and think, I bet there are some birds in there…”

This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.