IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Sharp, R.; Wollscheid, K.-U. | |
| An overview of recreational hunting in North America, Europe and Australia | |
| 2009 Book Chapter | |
Recreational hunting is a significant social and economic phenomenon in most countries where leisure activities are fully developed, principally the richer countries of the world. Within these countries recreational hunting takes diverse forms with differing sets of regulations and norms governing where, when and how hunting takes place. This chapter begins by noting some of the distinctive features of recreational hunting in North America, Europe and Australia. It then moves on to summarise, for these areas, what is known about the number of people hunting, which animals they hunt, how much the hunters spend and where that money goes. In spite of the importance of recreational hunting as a leisure activity, there is very little consolidated information at the international level about recreational hunting and only limited information at national level. Until a full picture is available one can do no more than present an assortment of data about hunters and their activities, assembled at different times over the last few years and using statistical methods of hugely variable quality. Nevertheless, even this limited and uneven information indicates the scale of recreational hunting in many developed countries. Most of the hunting considered in this chapter is done from home, but some hunters travel within their own countries to hunt. In addition, a relatively small and often wealthy elite travels abroad for specially organised shoots or safaris. This latter type of 'tourist hunting' is outside the scope of this chapter, but is discussed in other chapters in this volume (Frisina & Tareen, Chapter 9; Jones, Chapter 10; Lamprey & Mugisha, Chapter 13; Booth & Cumming, Chapter 17). |
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