Recreational game hunting: motivations, satisfactions and participation

Abstract

New Zealand recreational hunting management is on the cusp of major change with the possibility of the New Zealand Game Animal Council (NZGAC) gaining responsibility for managing hunting on much of the public estate. In order to manage hunting effectively the NZGAC will need to, amongst other things, understand the aspirations of recreational hunters, which raises the question of why people hunt and what makes a successful hunting trip. Other questions are important too: How many people hunt? What species do they hunt? Are they hunting for meat or trophies? What constitutes a trophy? These might seem like simple questions, but New Zealand data are extremely sparse, probably because of the “pest management” philosophy of hunting administration in recent times. Several of these matters are left for later study. This report reviews the international and New Zealand literature on hunter motivations, factors influencing hunter satisfaction, and participation. The objectives of this report are to review New Zealand and international literature to identify the main motivations for participating in hunting, to identify the factors that influence hunter satisfaction, and to make an initial assessment of New Zealand participation levels. Section 2 briefly reports the methods employed to analyse the literature. Results are reported in Sections 3‐5 and conclusions are drawn in Section 6.