 The Countryside Alliance has launched a ground breaking survey to investigate the number of young people coming into shooting, and how they are being introduced. Read on to take part.
Many column inches have been written about getting young people into shooting; it is an extremely important issue. The ideal is that every young person is trained by a family member in the old fashioned way. But for various reasons in today’s society, it appears there are not enough young people coming though this route. If we relied purely on the children of shooting people, every gun would have to bring a child into the sport just to keep the numbers static.
Without young people, fewer inherit the sport and shooting will face a demographic time bomb. We have all sorts of distractions for the younger generation. Computer games, the internet and other (less regulated) sports all compete for the attention of the youth of today. Nowadays, few and far between are the children who get the opportunity to become interested in nature and natural history. If they happen to become interested, many fall prey to the anti shooting attitude that conservation and shooting are diametrically opposed. This was recognised by “BB” many years ago. He himself encouraged the young into shooting, taking boys from Rugby school on shooting trips to Scotland. I doubt this happens much now. So what is being done about this? Well, National Shooting Week is an initiative run by the Countryside Alliance that allows young people to try shooting for the first time. There are also many exemplary people around the country who help young guns try shooting for the first time. These routes provide entry points for some to the sport. However, we feel that not enough youngsters are coming into shooting. Does shooting suffer from too much regulation? Is it lack of available land? Is it too expensive? Are shooters simply too busy to help? Our survey aims to answer these questions and get to the root of the problem.
How you can help
The Countryside Alliance wants to get to the root of this problem. As part of this, a ground breaking survey is investigating the number of young people that are coming into shooting, and how they are being introduced. As the recent census demonstrates, the only certain way to find answers is to ask questions. For us to assess the makeup of the shooting population, the Shooting Campaign is asking members to spend a few minutes of their time to fill in an online form. The results of the questionnaire will allow us to identify areas which prevent young people entering the sport. These can then be specifically targeted to ensure that shooting is an option available to all young people. This also ensures that money and resources are spent in the most effective and efficient ways possible. We also want to identify those dedicated people who do help young people, and reward them for their hard work and dedication. So if you, your club, syndicate or shoot are involved with young people, please do take the time to fill in the survey. The future of our sport depends on it.
This survey is open online until February 2012. |
