Becky and Frank Orfin epitomize hunting culture in Michigan.

Their honeymoon two decades ago was a hunting trip. They own 60 acres near their Schoolcraft home that they cultivate as a private hunting area. For years, the centerpiece of their Thanksgiving holiday has been a five-day hunt involving extended family.

“It’s something that our family does together. That’s one of the main reasons I like hunting,” Becky Orfin said. “Besides, I just enjoy being in the woods, especially when you’re out there and the wildlife has no idea that you’re there and you get a glimpse into an environment that you don’t normally see.”

For decades, hunting has been as much of Michigan culture as the Detroit Tigers and Mackinac Island fudge. Especially in rural communities, Nov. 15 -- the opening of firearm deer-hunting season -- is traditionally a day of higher-than-average absenteeism from workplaces and schools.

But in Michigan and nationwide, hunting is on the decline. In the 1970s, ’80s and into the ’90s, Michigan had as many as 1.2 million hunters. By 2018, fewer than 675,000 individuals had at least one hunting license.

That decline can be traced to multiple factors: The Baby Boomers who fueled the popularity of hunting as a recreational activity are aging out. Today’s young adults are more likely to be minorities and/or urbanites, groups much less likely to hunt. Hunting now competes with a wide variety of recreational activities.

"There really isn’t one single thing that we can point to this, say, ‘Oh, you know, we just fix this, then everything will be fine,’ " said Dan Eichinger, director of Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Fishing also is on a downward trend, although its decline has been less steep. Between 2013 and 2018, the number of individuals obtaining a Michigan fishing license dropped 5% compared to a 18% drop in hunting licenses during that same period.

Eichinger said those trends should concern all Michigan residents, whether or not they hunt or fish.

The biggest reason is the impact on state conservation efforts: Hunting and fishing fees account for more than 90% of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ $42 million wildlife conservation budget.

For instance, “when we do coastal wetland restoration work, waterfowl hunting dollars are helping to facilitate that,” Eichinger said. “A benefit is certainly supporting waterfowl, but there are a whole host of other ecosystem benefits provided by that work.”

The decline of hunting and fishing also has an economic impact on communities. Eichinger points to a 2018 study by Michigan State University that found hunting and fishing generates $11.2 billion a year in the state.

“I mean, $11 billion is a big deal," Eichinger said. As it shrinks, “it’s going to disproportionately impact communities in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula” that rely on hunting- and fishing-related tourism.

Yet another factor is wildlife management. Hunting is one “of the best tools that we have for maintaining balanced, healthy populations," Eichinger said.

That’s especially true in urban and suburban areas where deer and coyotes can cause problems. In 2018, deer accounted for one of every six vehicle accidents in Michigan -- more than 53,000 collisions, including 14 deaths.

“We’ve all been beneficiaries of having a really strong, robust, active and engaged hunting and fishing communities in Michigan,” Eichinger said.

“As the number of people who participate in those sports decline, we’ve got a real difficult question that we’re going to have to contend with, not just in our state but across the county,” he added.

“How do we pay for conservation if we lose the folks who are paying the freight? That’s a real problem and should be deeply concerning to folks, whether they have any interest in hunting or not.”

Factors driving the decline

Hunting as a recreational activity started to take off in the 1960s, as Michigan households became more prosperous and more people had the means and the opportunity for recreational trips.

“There’s a generational effect," Eichinger said. “We saw rapid increases shortly after World War II that sort of sustained us for a lot of years.”

But the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers who fueled hunting’s popularity “are now aging out of active participation,” Eichinger said. "So that cohort effect sustained us really well, but now we’re on the other side of that.”

And the fact is, people in subsequent generations have less enthralled with hunting, said Matt Dunfree, director of special programs for the Wildlife Management Institute, a national nonprofit conservation group.

It’s not just an age issue. As America becomes more racially diverse, an activity where 90% of the participants are men and 97% are white becomes easy to stereotype as a “middle-aged white-guy thing,” Dunfree said.

“Hunting no longer looks like America," he said.

This map shows the per capita number of individuals with at least one hunting license in 2018. You can put a cursor over a county to see the number of licenses for 2013-18.

Further complicating matters, rural communities -- where the hunting culture is strongest -- are losing population in Michigan and elsewhere, and young adults today are gravitating to urban areas, where hunting is far down on the list of popular activities.

Today, “there’s a pretty wide menu of outdoor recreation opportunities” that compete against hunting, Eichinger said. "The buffet table is pretty long.”

In addition, millennials are more likely than older generations to have grown up in households without guns, which means they are less likely to have been exposed to hunting as a child and less likely to consider it as a recreational activity when they reach adulthood.

“I think would be fairly safe to say that, among younger generations, there’s definitely a different awareness about firearms," Dunfree said. “I don’t believe it’s a barrier, but it needs to be addressed.”

The firearm issue also helps explain why declines have been steeper in hunting vs. fishing, Dunfree and Eichinger said.

“Fishing is something that you can reasonably start from a position of knowing nothing to actually catching a fish in a matter of hours," Dunfree said.

By comparison, hunting requires a much bigger investment of time and money: Participation requires not only a firearm, but learning how to use it and acquisition of other hunting skills.

Plus, “there’s just less stigma” about fishing, Dunfree said. “You might call it the Bambi effect: Killing a fish just doesn’t have the weight of killing a deer.”

Casting a wider net

Eichinger and Dunfree would like to expand the number of hunters, but acknowledge it’s easier said than done.

It’s particularly challenging because hunting is a skill that typically requires a mentor. Traditionally, people have learned hunting skills from older family members or friends. But an increasing number of young adults don’t have any family members or acquaintances who hunt, and thus have no exposure to the sport.

In changing the trend line, “a lot of our efforts have been youth-focused. That’s certainly good and important," but it also tends to cater to families already interested in hunting when what’s really needed is a wider net, Eichinger said.

But the process of getting adult who has never gone hunting to the point where they identify as a hunter is “time-intensive,” Eichinger said. "It happens at a very personal level.”

Dunfree urges every hunter to take up that mission.

“I can sum it all up in one statement: All of us who are hunting, we should all seek to replace ourselves with someone who doesn’t look like us,” Dunfree said. That includes drawing in more women, more minorities and more city-dwellers.

It also means, perhaps, rebranding hunting to fit millennial values. That’s not a stretch, Dunfree said.

“What gives me hope about the future of hunting" is that many millennials and hunters have similar values, Dunfree said. Those include “the values of adventure, the values of unique experiences, the values of locally sourced, ecologically responsible protein sources.”

But time is short to engage those young adults and rejuvenate hunting, he said.

“We’ve got about 10 to 15 years,” he said. "There’s a critical need right now for active hunters who have this unbelievable wealth of knowledge and experience to share that with others in Michigan, those that you might not expect but are dying to get their hands on it.”

Millennial hunter

Stephanie Ray is exactly the kind of new-generation hunter that Dunfree promotes.

A 36-year-old physical therapist who lives in the Irish Hills area of Lenawee County, Ray was introduced to hunting by a boyfriend and quickly became enamored of the sport.

Stephanie Ray, a Lenawee County resident, during a waterfowl hunt last week. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Ray)

“It’s probably the only time I sit still," she said about her love of hunting. "I’m a very active person who is always on the go, and I like being able to be in the woods and be in nature and just relax.

"I just love being outside. I love the challenge of it -- figuring out the patterns of the deer, the waterfowl and that sort of thing,” Ray continued. "It takes a lot of thought; it’s not something where you can just show up and be successful. It takes a lot of preparation and patience.”

Hunting is now a passion, a lifestyle, she said. “I couldn’t tell you the last time I bought beef in the store. My freezer is full of venison and trout and salmon and catfish. That’s where I get my food from.”

It’s a much more ethical and healthy way to eat, she added. Her food is organic and the animals live in nature before a quick kill compared to “a cow that rode in a semi hundreds of miles to a slaughterhouse."

Ray’s enthusiasm for hunting has her promoting the sport on social media and participating in workshops geared at women hunters.

On Thursday, Ray was one of five women at a class on hunting waterfowl. She was thrilled that a couple of the girls were new to hunting.

“If we can just get people out there one time,” she said. “That’s all it took for me, being exposed to it one time to see it as something that would be fun and adventurous.”

Becky Orfin also loves introducing people to the sport. This year, her Thanksgiving hunt will include a 16-year-old relative.

“This will be his first year hunting,” she said. "He’s finally like, ‘Oh yeah, I really want to hunt,’ and he didn’t start from a young age going out with his father.

“So we’re really excited that this year there will be one more of us,” Orfin said. “I totally wish more people would get involved in hunting.”