On the range and on the field, young people are taking up hunting and shooting sports in record numbers. Hunting licenses alone have shown a 29% jump in new hunters in 2020, over 3.2 million, compared to an estimated 2.3 million in 2019.
“The onset of coronavirus and the historic firearm sales spurred by it increased America’s gun-owning population across all demographics,” explained Larry Keane, NSSF’s senior vice president and general counsel. “Simultaneously, that boost also reversed a trend that will have lasting effects for outdoorsmen and women and conservationists for generations. Americans in big numbers took to the fields and woods to hunt and that included kids discovering an outdoors lifestyle.”