(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is exploring ways to address a national decline in the number of hunters, and to prevent the drop from happening here.
D-N-R wildlife biologist Matt Dollison says Iowa has seen its number of pheasant hunters -rise- by almost 20-thousand in the past few seasons, and they now number 83-thousand, but he says national hunter figures have been falling for decades. In the 1980s, about nine-percent of the population hunted, while he says it’s down now below four-percent.
The focus in the past was on hosting youth hunting events across the state, but Dollison says they’ve started turning to young adults in recent years.
