Proceedings of the 2010 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium

We conducted a self-administered mail survey in September 2009 with randomly selected Oregon hunters who had purchased big game hunting licenses/tags for the 2008 hunting season. Survey questions explored hunting practices, the meanings of and motivations for big game hunting, the constraints to big game hunting participation, and the effects of age, years of hunting experience, hunting motivations, hunting meanings, and hunting success on overall quality of experience. The study found that although hunters gave high scores to the emotional and traditional meanings of hunting, their quality of experience depended largely on hunting success. In addition, seeing/finding big game animals was the biggest constraint for hunters in Oregon.