‘R3’ initiative shows promise for outdoors recruitment
By now I would be surprised if anyone reading this hasn’t at least heard “R3” mentioned somewhere, but what is it and what does it do? R3 is a national program to Recruit, Retain, and Reactivate individuals to hunting, fishing, trapping, shooting sports, and other outdoor activities. It’s a collaboration between private organizations, industry partners, and government agencies like the DNR.
Most of the big conservation organizations are involved, the usual manufacturers and retailers, but the major research and coordination is handled by the Wildlife Management Institute and Council to Advance Hunting and Shooting Sports.
It replaced the movement to eliminate the minimum hunting age requirements that was supposed to save hunter numbers and, well, didn’t. R3 also addresses the need to focus on all traditional outdoor lifestyle activities and recognizes hunting as the most difficult activity to recruit new members to its ranks.
R3 is a positive, contemplative, well designed initiative based upon actual study of human behavior dating back to the 1950s that centered on farming of all things.
That research has been used in countless initiatives and marketing campaigns since the 1950s because it works.
These groups created a National Hunting and Shooting Sports Action Plan. They set out to develop a workforce of coordinators and experts within the collaborating entities to create a model for outdoor lifestyle promotion.
The Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model — ORAM for short — became the birthplace of R3. The workforce was already employed by the vested agencies, businesses, and nonprofi t organizations.
Most of them would focus around one or two parts of R3. Examples include a Learn to Hunt coordinator with the DNR, a Youth Day director with a national fishing organization, the marketing innovator for a bow manufacturer.
This all involves a lot of work. You think that this is a lot of information so far. I’m here to say it’s like one word from Moby Dick. I’ve spent almost the equivalent of a half a week of work listening to the R3 advocates simply explain it. There’s countless more hours on web based learning material.
There isn’t space to even outline R3 here. Volunteers are part of the puzzle, but this requires a much larger effort than volunteers have time to follow through on, especially considering it takes almost a year, sometimes two, to recruit a new hunter into the ranks. A new fisher person could be done in a day or two. Different activities are more involved and require more planning. You can find all the information you want in detail at NationalR3Plan. com.
Several of us are already volunteering or even working in certain segments of the R3 model and may not know it. Volunteer Hunters are hunters ed instructors, fishing has No Boundaries volunteers. A high school trap coach, or an officer for a local hiking club, would also qualify. Even vendors at booths for sports shows play a part in the R3 model. No one person can be involved in all aspects or do everything in the model, whether in a paid position or as a volunteer.
A lot rides on this initiative — much more than being able to trap, fish, or hunt deer. Wildlife management as a whole depends upon traditional outdoor lifestyle activities remaining not just viable but vibrant and socially accepted. Even the parks, hiking trails and public lands are largely funded by fishing and hunting license sales, Pittman Robertson Funds, and dollars donated by those users.
In my lifetime I see this initiative as being most promising. The vested entities work for consensus and most of the time quite sensitively.
It’s spawned numerous new small concerns from YouTube channels, new sporting publications, and serious growth for some outdoor organizations.
Obviously businesses want to make more money by selling more product; state wildlife agencies need license dollars to operate and they need users to buy those; and private organizations need members who donate money – less users means less dollars to all. And if the pie gets smaller, it’s the resource that loses the most.
Outdoors people bear a responsibility here. Too few outdoors people and opportunities will begin to erode our traditions, as we have seen in California. I believe that as a user group we exceed our responsibilities the majority of the time.
As much Greek as this may sound like, introducing someone to your outdoor lifestyle often just means inviting the new person at work to go fishing on the weekend.
THROUGH A
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CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL O UTDOORSMAN
