Efforts to recruit and retain new hunters will achieve greater success by learning from those who already participate in the outdoors. Target archery participants are an ideal audience to understand more about participation and interest in hunting, reasons for interest, and how they may learn more about hunting. Target archers are overshadowed by the number of firearm shooters and in turn are underserved in retention, recruitment, and reactivation (R3) efforts.

To close the information gap between hunting and R3 efforts for target archers, USA Archery along with the four major partner archery associations led an effort to conduct a comprehensive survey to understand target archers’ participation in the outdoors, hunting, their spending and buying behavior, equipment preferences, and demographics. The results are designed for use by the associations and state wildlife agencies to better serve target archery participants and help increase interest and participation in both bowhunting and firearm hunting.