7 Benefits of Hunting – The Effects on Hunters and Community

While too many people are discussing the hunting lifestyle results on wildlife circle, there are also some benefits of hunting as well.

Archaeological evidence of the first appearance of stone tools is based on nearly 3 million years ago…

In this period of time, human beings have been hunters and gatherers. Thus, hunting has been a part of our evolutionary history.

Quick Summary

Wildlife has an incredibly important role for American culture. Especially for North Americans.

Despite thousands of years of exploitation by humans, the population of wildlife is consistent across the North American continent.

The change from hunting lifestyle to sedentary village life caused a decline in physical and mental health on villagers.

The studies recently have been put forth the negative effect of nutrition and physical activity changes on community and personal health.

Hunting is still a viable lifestyle option for some cultures.

◊ I won’t praise the benefits of hunting but there has been lots of academic research on this topic. I just tried to compile them and make a list in this article.

Let’s dive right in…

Physical Benefits of Hunting

Hunting is great adrenaline-boosting sport. Considering adrenaline has an important effect on the muscles and physical health, hunting can be a good option for human health.

There is no other sport (except fishing) which provides both nutritional and physical benefits.

Here’s some medical information about our modern lifestyle;

• Recent studies have shown a decrease in physical activity and consequent increases in ill-health, finding that 60% of Americans are not regularly active, and 25% are not active at all.
• Native Americans in the U.S. are 770% more likely to die from alcoholism, 650% and 420% more likely to die from diabetes than the general population.
• Yet, physical activity is known to reduce the risk of dying from coronary heart disease. Besides, it also reduces the risk of developing diabetes, hypertension and colon cancer. These are also a leading cause of death in industrialized countries.

Energy Expenditure Example

In a hunting lifestyle, typically days would begin with daybreak to benefit from daylight while hunting. This could mean 12–15 h of walking a day, which during the spring and summer would require 19–25 MJ of energy expenditure, and up to 38–48 MJ in winter because of the tough conditions.

Activiy	Energy Expenditure (MJ / hour )
Sitting or lying (Watching TV)	0.42
Writing	0.54
Cooking	0.88
Shopping	1.21
Walking	1.42
Walking at 6.4 kph (4 mph)	1.46

Economic Benefits of Hunting

Hunting has incredible importance for the economy like other outdoor sports.

Especially during the hunting seasons, they revive and provide financial support to create thousands of jobs like gear stores (sales and services), hotels or other areas.

In general, every hunter spends around 2,000 dollars each season including every expense (hotels, restaurants, travel, gas, equipment shopping).

◊ Considering hunting bows are expensive equipment, you may want to read our Mathews vs Hoyt comparison which are the top bow brands.

Money spent by U.S. hunters in 2011 supported an estimated 700.000 jobs and $26.4 billion in salaries and wages. Estimated of overall economic input from hunting expenditures, salaries, wages, and taxes was $87 billion in 2011. This is an enormous figure even within the huge economy of the United States.

The 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation in the United States reported that 13.7 million people aged 16 or older hunted that year and spent $33.7 billion in total expenditures. This included an estimated $10.4 billion for trip-related expenses, $14 billion for equipment expenditures, and $9.3 billion on other related expenses.

In addition, several billion more was spent on products used for hunting and fishing, such as vehicles, boats, binoculars, coolers, and more.

In-direct Cost Effects of Hunting

• The costs of the treatment of the illness caused by sedentary lifestyle are huge. Social and health problems arising from modern lifestyle are likely to far exceed the costs of restoration of country-based activities suggested.
• Hunting also reduces some traffic accidents. In the USA every year nearly 200 people die in accidents because of deer collisions. If it’s considered around 4 billion dollars paid by vehicle owners to the insurance companies. It has an economical effect, too.
• Hunters can bring a lot of food for their families. It can cut unnecessary market costs. They can also sell fresh and healthy meats to the local markets for their family budget as an additional income.

Mental Benefits of Hunting

Hunting provides a powerful connection to the outdoors and does so in unique ways not available in other outdoor activities.

It requires individuals to become intimately knowledgeable of the landscapes, habitats, and species they hunt; hunters must also gain an understanding of how these agencies interact with each other.

Hunters have to know how to track. Discovering outdoors with hunting purpose is more than walking along a well-known hiking trail.

The enjoyment of a feeling of freedom while you carrying your bow into the woods, social aspects that remain important parts of hunting today.

Modern hunters speak more often to the hunting experience – their connection with nature, the physical and mental challenges of hunting, and the connection with family and friends – than to the act of taking the game.

Lots of hunters feel that they receive therapeutic feelings.

Nutrition Benefits of Hunting

Once we changed our lifestyle toward sedentarisation, then people had no constant access to country food throughout the year. And they became to rely on store-bought food derived from distant agricultural systems.

This becomes a health problem as hunted and gathered foods are very different in nutrient content and density than store-bought foods.

The table below shows the energy, protein, fat and vitamin content of different types of wild meat and fish compared with domestic meats available in local shops.

For this sample of foods;

• Store food has 75% more energy content than country food.
• 37% less protein and more than four times as much of saturated fats.
• Country foods also contain more iron. Iron deficiency is now a recognized problem for an increasing number of mothers and children worldwide following the adoption of modern diets.
• There are more than three times the vitamin C in this sample of country foods,
• 50% more riboflavin, 67% more niacin, though less than half the thiamine. These high concentrations of vitamins in country foods are important for hunters

Another table contains details of the recommended daily allowances for adults and children and shows for minerals, vitamins, and energy can be reached with relatively modest quantities of country foods.

Wild game is an important source of subsistence meat, particularly for some. The nutritional value of hunted, fished and gathered foods is magnified still further because almost all edible parts of foods are consumed by northern peoples.

◊ Some 200 g of country food supplies the recommended daily protein requirement for adult males, while 175 g is sufficient for adult females.

Every hunter consumes grass-fed animal’s organic meat. It’s far beyond unhealthy chemicals or coloring additives.

◊ Clearly, continuing to consume country food will be good for physical health. The hunter-gatherer nutritional instinctive regime is the oldest human diet and is well-suited to human physiologies.

The recently expanded interest in local, natural, and humanely raised meat may be resulting in rising hunting participation among population segments not traditionally engaged in this activity.

◊ Public attitude surveys in North America consistently indicate that hunting for meat is considered by a vast majority of the public to be the most acceptable rationale for modern hunting.

Relationship Benefits of Hunting

Hunting is activity which can be done alone or with friends, families.

Hunters seek and enjoy social relationships and interactions inherent to the activity of hunting. They connecting with one another at profound levels and carrying on traditions in social and cultural relationships with family, friends, and community.

Hunting traditions are often passed down within families; older generations deliberately teach skills to younger generations preparing them for either subsistence and/or recreational hunting purposes. In addition, individuals often seek out friendships with other hunters. Thus, hunting promotes social cohesion within families and across extended social networks and generations.

Modern-day hunters frequently volunteer for participation in wildlife habitat improvement projects, hunter education programs, or wildlife surveys, and engage in other conservation-related activities. These not only provide positive social interactions among participants but also opportunities to connect with professional wildlife managers. Such interactions undoubtedly strengthen hunter conservation knowledge, ethics, and motivations.

Hunters have a great engagement in outdoor education. Every hunters are prone to teaching this ability to their children. These children grow up with these activities, have ethical conservation, recycling, and consciousness about saving the planet.

Social and Cultural Benefits of Hunting

Hunting provides a great way for social interaction of cultural traditions, while it encourages connections within families and communities.

The proportion of hunters in the total population has been declined continuously over the last 40 years. While it was around 11% in 1960, 30 years later it was 8.3% in 1990. After just 10 years in 2001, it drops around 6%. Of course, the general population also increased.

But even so, lots of statistics and surveys support that fact in that time of period. Yet, recent studies have shown that hunting participation in the U.S. rose 9% between 2006 and 2011.

The recently expanded interest in local, natural, and humanely raised meat may be resulting in rising hunting participation among population segments not traditionally engaged in this activity.

Benefits of Hunting Wildlife

Lots of evidence indicates that hunters have consistently supported wildlife conservation, and also provided a majority of the funding for wildlife management. They’re made it with their specific taxes, license fees, and funding organizations that support hunting and other wildlife-related recreation.

The taxes collect from hunter licenses mostly goes to the federal government to protecting wildlife habitats, maintaining the national parks, etc.

As a result, any decline in hunting and hunter participation will be detrimental to wildlife, and ultimately, biodiversity in North America.

Furthermore, hunting keeps wild animal populations manageable for human safety. It provides a healthy balance between nature and human World.

Conclusions

Hunters report lots of personal, psychological, physical, nutritional, economic and social benefits from hunting.

But the most powerful benefit of hunting is the collective stewardship effort to preserve, and improve habitats used by all species of wildlife. Hunting has a magically important role on the effect of this awareness on hunters.

References

• https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/health_benefits_of_hunting
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306919206000145
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207233.2015.1033944
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3782222.pdf