Before she went hunting for the first time, Crystal Egli practiced walking around with a replica rifle, feeling its heft while "on the verge of tears." Egli had discovered the appeal of hunting _ but had serious qualms about holding a rifle due to a lifelong fear of guns.
"Why don't I hunt?" the 35-year-old Coloradoan asked herself. "That's a great source of organic, free-range, grass-fed meat. What's stopping me? The answer was firearms."
With the help of friends and mentors, Egli became more comfortable handling a rifle and found she was a good shot. When she bagged a deer for the first time, she took a knee over the animal and gave thanks.
"I put my hands on her and talked to her," she recalled. "I told her she's beautiful and she's going to feed my family, and she was going to be the first meat that my daughter eats."
Egli's story is one that state wildlife agencies are hoping to replicate. The number of hunters has fallen sharply in recent decades, and data shows that most hunters are older, white men even as the country's demographics shift. With less money coming in from hunting and fishing licenses and sales taxes, state officials realize that to keep their conservation and wildlife agencies afloat they must recruit hunters for whom the activity is not a passed-down tradition.
States have begun targeting new groups to fill the ranks of hunters: foodies, city-dwellers, young adults and women. Rather than counting on family heritage and cultural ties to carry the hunting message, they're preaching the gospel of ethically sourced food, healthy protein and respect for wildlife.
Taniya Bethke, who coordinates recruitment and retention efforts for the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department, said she has experience with the cultural challenges.
"There's this dichotomy between the hippies with tie-dye T-shirts and these stereotypical rednecks wearing doe urine and camouflage," she said. "I didn't fit into either one of those communities."
Bethke, who took up hunting as an adult, said it wasn't until she found a group of "hipnecks" _ rural young adults who shared a commitment to sustainable food _ that she felt comfortable trying it.
"I've always wrestled with if I can intentionally end the life of another living thing," she said, "but I did not want to be a hypocrite and let somebody else kill animals and just eat the meat."
Bethke has incorporated those lessons into the agency's efforts to recruit more people like her. That includes putting more diverse faces on the state's promotional materials, while visiting colleges, breweries and farmers markets to sign people up for training classes.
A new state program, Harvest South Dakota, teaches adults to hunt, process and cook game. The state also offers outdoors programs targeted toward women. Last year it began selling a $5 apprentice license (regular licenses are $40) to get novices into the field. Nearly 5,000 people bought them. And the state has a digital app to help hunters connect with mentors to answer questions such as where to find land to hunt, what calls or decoys to use and how to process the meat.
