Hunters comprise multi-faceted public

By Rory Aikens, public information officer,

Arizona Game and Fish Department

Arizona’s hunters do not share a uniform view of what hunting opportunity should be.

An online survey and a telephone survey of recent hunt applicants conducted for the Arizona Game and Fish Department by Responsive Management of Harrisonburg, Virginia, last year showed that the majority of this state’s hunters just want to get a hunt-permit tag, especially for elk, and the quality of the animal is not a major concern.

But another segment of the hunting public is very interested in managing for conservative, quality hunts.

The challenge facing the Arizona Game and Fish Commission and Department is to achieve that delicate balancing act and provide opportunities to meet the desires and needs of all hunters. It’s not an easy balancing act, but it does require quality information to achieve with any degree of success.

The Arizona Game and Fish Commission invited the director of Responsive Management, Mark Damian Duda, to meet with them in a work session during its summer meeting in Flagstaff to discuss the survey, its methodology, its validity, and its applicability to wildlife management in the state.

Duda told the commission that Responsive Management has conducted hundreds of such surveys in 30 or 40 states during the past 20 years. “We have no dog in this fight. We just use scientifically sound methods to gather information.”

If the Arizona survey had shown anything different than all the other surveys across the United States, Duda said, there might be some reason to question the validity. It did not. “The surveys show the same pattern here in Arizona that we are seeing across the country.”

Duda said he understands the dilemma facing the Game and Fish Commission in Arizona. “Bottom line, you are confronted with how to please two divergent publics or markets. It’s not an easy decision facing you.”

Duda said there is one public of avid, knowledgeable hunters who care deeply about the state’s wildlife, and who are tremendous supporters of the department and its mission, and who can wield a lot of power in the process. “They are at the higher end of the hunting spectrum. They want trophy animals. They are the well-informed and influential minority.”

Then there are the average hunters who are the silent majority. “The surveys show that most hunters just want the opportunity to hunt. Harvesting a quality animal is not at the top of their list.,” Duda said. “I am not making any value judgments. That’s just what they do and what they want. This is really not an issue of surveys, but what different markets want.”

For us as researchers, Duda said, it is a relatively easy process to get the answers. “For you as decision makers, it is a difficult process. I can’t tell you what decisions to make, only what the valid surveys show in the marketplace. Our role is to simply gather the information.”

Duda explained that in conducting the surveys, his company used the multiple satisfaction approach where the respondents make choices or rate what is most important to them.

The respondents are simply provided a list, and they choose from that list on what is most important to them. Most Arizona hunters overwhelmingly chose the opportunity to go hunting as most important, and rated harvesting a quality animal quite a ways down the list.

Duda said there are some who will not like a survey just because its results are contrary to deeply held belief systems, such as a survey Responsive Management did in Maryland, where 75 percent of the residents said they support hunting. “There was only one question on the survey that an animal protection group liked.”

“We’ve seen it time and again. These questions that support our views are valid and those questions that don’t support our beliefs are not valid,” Duda said.

All surveys are designed to do is reflect the varying opinions in the marketplace. “One of my professors said that science seeks questions, policy demands answers. Seeking the questions was the easy part of this. You face the tougher task,” Duda told the commission.