These slides examine license sales and demographic trends in Massachusetts. We'll look briefly at freshwater fishing license sales, but most of the presentation focuses on our resident hunter population in Massachusetts.
Mass Wildlife has been tracking license sales since the early 1950s as part of its annual reporting process. This graph pulls from that information and shows the number of resident hunting licenses sold each fiscal year from 1954 to the present.
This graphic illustrates three general periods of resident hunting license sales: a period of high volume relatively stable sales, a period of decline, and a period of lower volume relatively stable sales. Between 1954 and the late 1980s, on average 130,000 hunting licenses were sold each fiscal year.
Following peak sales in the late 1980s until the early 2000s, Massachusetts experienced a steady decline in license sales. More recently, a period covering the last 20 years, sales have stabilized. During this period, on average about 65,000 resident hunting licenses were sold each year. That is about half the number sold each year on average prior to the decline. This is while the population in Massachusetts has grown by over 2 million residents between 1954 and 2023.
Many states have experienced a similar pattern in hunting license sales. Nationwide declines in both hunting and fishing participation have been attributed to a broad range of environmental, economic, and societal factors. Among the most frequently cited reasons for lower participation in hunting and fishing in the United States are the rate of population growth, development and urbanization, lifestyles that result in less free time, and lower participation rates among growing racial and ethnic minority populations.
This is a similar graphic illustrating the number of resident freshwater fishing licenses sold in Massachusetts. Unlike hunting, freshwater fishing license sales are driven largely by a single license: the resident annual freshwater fishing license. Also unlike most hunting licenses, the resident annual freshwater fishing license is purchased inconsistently. Most anglers lapse in their purchases from one year to the next.
That inconsistency is at least partly to blame for the more erratic sales year to year. But broadly, we do see a similar pattern in fishing license sales as we saw in the previous slide examining hunting licenses. Beginning in the early 1970s, sales increased each year. During this period in the late 1970s and 1980s, sales were frequently over the 195,000 mark each year.
Just as with hunting, fishing license sales peaked in the late 1980s. That peak was followed by a period of decline, which leveled off somewhat in the early 2000s. Average sales during this more recent period are about 180,000. This is a 17% decline compared to the previous period. Again, this is while the population in Massachusetts has increased by about 2 million people over the same period.
So although the decline is not dramatic, the percent of freshwater anglers in Massachusetts has decreased significantly.
In addition to examining long-term license sales, Mass Wildlife also has the ability to analyze the demographics of our licensed buyers. One of the things we frequently examine is the age of our hunters and anglers. We know, for instance, that the average age of our hunters in 2023 was 52, slightly younger for anglers. Looking back, we know that those averages have been increasing.
We also collect information on gender, and although we've seen increases in the proportion of hunters and anglers who identify as female, females are still a very small proportion of our hunter and angler populations today.
This is another way to examine the age of Massachusetts hunters. This graphic illustrates the distribution of ages of all of our hunters, in this case looking at the year 2012. It's actually made up of points, and each point along the line indicates how many hunters are of a particular age.
For example, we know that in 2012, 681 of our hunters were age 25. Just over a thousand were age 40. One of the single largest groups of hunters was around age 50, about 1,700 individuals. In 2012, after this point, we have fewer hunters at older age categories—about 1,100 at age 60, fewer at age 70, and the numbers continue to decline in these older age groups.
So this line and the shape of this line represents the ages of all of our hunters for the year 2012. Graphics like this help our staff understand more about hunting participation in Massachusetts, which age groups dominate our hunters, which age groups might be less represented, and what the trends are over time.
Thirty years from this time period, how many of those in their late 20s will be hunting when they reach 50, and how will that impact the total number of hunters and wildlife management decisions?
When hunters and anglers ask why they stopped hunting or fishing, lack of time and health reasons are the most mentioned. Part of what is happening here, part of what influences the shape of this curve, can be explained by life cycle or life stage—entering the job market, starting and raising a family, entering retirement age, and health issues. These different life stages cause people to have more or less interest in and time for hunting.
Also part of the shape of this curve might be explained by characteristics of a generation. There are likely key differences in how Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and the Silent Generation view hunting and fishing in their lives. So life stage and generational differences should be considered in planning, developing, and providing recruitment, retention, and reactivation activities in Massachusetts.
Of course, this is all just a snapshot in time from 10 years ago. Another useful component of this information is to track it over time to understand trends.
This graph has an obvious peak: a large group of hunters who are around the same age. We’ll focus on this because of its size and importance. All of these hunters were born between 1955 and 1970. This group, or that 15-year time span, represents over one-third—37%—of all our hunters in the year 2012. Over 24,000 hunters are right here.
Imagine this group as a wave. Five years later, in 2017, that age cohort has gotten smaller. It’s down 1,500 individuals—that’s a 6% drop from 2012 to 2017.
In 2023, this group, all born between 1955 and 1970, are now between the ages of 53 and 68. It’s still a dominant cohort, but it continues to decline, losing another 3,500 hunters between 2017 and 2023. In total, that’s a loss of over 5,000 hunters in this 11-year period, or a 21% decline from where it was in 2012.
Predictably, fewer hunters from this particularly strong cohort will return each year. Not the only age group, but it has been one that has been dominant and accounted for a disproportionately large number of our hunters for as long as we’ve been able to track demographic data like this.
Behind this leading wave of hunters is a much smaller wave of Millennial and younger Generation X hunters, which we'll see in the next couple of slides. Because the majority of hunters purchase hunting licenses consistently year after year, we know that as we move forward in time, we're tracking many of the same hunters year after year.
The movement of this line is explained mostly by how groups of hunters who may share many of the same characteristics as their generation move through different life stages. What ultimately determines the total number of hunters in Massachusetts is the size of each of these groups and how changing conditions influence their decision to continue to hunt.
What is also important are those personal and societal factors that may include opportunities around them, their support networks, encouragement from family and friends, and the training and educational opportunities and events that can help keep hunting and fishing central to their lives.