Social scientists, including Thomas Heberlein of the University of Wisconsin (now professor emeritus of community and environmental sociology), have been examining and documenting a decline in hunting in the U.S. for decades.
The rate of decline in gun deer hunting was predicted 16 years ago by a team of University of Wisconsin and Department of Natural Resources researchers.
The researchers, Richelle Winkler and Jennifer Huck of UW’s Applied Population Lab in Madison and Keith Warnke of the DNR, released a draft of their study in 2007 titled “Deer Hunter Demography: Age, Period, and Cohort Analysis of Trends in Hunter Participation in Wisconsin.“