The Influence of Socio-Demographic Characteristics on Hunter Safety Decision Making Ability

Abstract

To determine the influence of various environmental and sociodemographic variables on sage hunter decision-making ability, 3431 subjects were tested on the Duelatron Electronic Target System at seven Wisconsin county and state fairs. The System consisted of 10 poster-sized targets depicting four Wisconsin game animals in safe and unsafe hunting situations. Five of the original ten targets were modified to improve their validity as testing tools and a questionnaire was used to record environmental variables, the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, and System results. During System development, a 4-second face time, 6-second interval time, and a random sequence of targets were chosen as the standardized test course. Although natural lighting resulted in higher test scores, artificial lighting was used at six of the seven test sites to maintain consistency. Sample size tended to increase as the population of the sampling site increased, however, target scores decreased as the number of subjects increased. Lowest mean System scores were recorded at the Wisconsin State Fair, the location with the greatest population and largest number of subjects sampled. Many socio-demographic characteristics evaluated influenced the subjects' scores including: age, education, community size before age 18, present community size, ownership of a shotgun, rifle, handgun or bow, membership in a Sportsmen's Club, completion of the Wisconsin Hunter Safety Course, previous experience with the Duelatron, hunting frequency and experience, and participation in upland game bird, waterfowl, small game, and big game hunting with a gun or bow. Ownership of a shotgun explained the greatest single amount of variation, 3.7%, and was not' significantly confounded by the influence of other variables. Although age and hunting frequency also contributed significantly to the variation, their correlation to total score was spurious and actually due to the confounding effects of education, shotgun ownership, and hunting experience. Of five hunting participation categories, only upland game bird hunting remained significantly correlated to total score when the remainder of the categories were constant. Only 6.7% of the variation in total target system scores could be explained by these variables. Because approximately half of the subjects scored incorrectly on at least one unsafe target and to avoid penalyzing subjects who did not shoot at the safe targets, analyses were re-run considering only the scores on the unsafe targets. The result of selected socio- demographic variables were similar, except that the influence of the community size a subject resided in before age 18, ownership of a handgun, and participation in small game hunting were not significant. Ownership of a shotgun contributed to the greatest percentage of variation, while the relationship of education and hunting frequency was spurious. Subjects who participated in upland game bird, waterfowl, small game, or big game hunting ~cored higher on targets relating to those wildlife species. Waterfowl and upland game bird hunters made significantly more correct decisions on the mallard and pheasant target sets, respectively, although the latter scored poorer than non-upland game bird hunters on the two unsafe pheasant targets. In contrast, big game-gun hunters made fewer correct decisions on white-tailed deer targets. Additional research is warranted to identify factors which remained unmeasured by this study, but accounted for the majority of the variation in System scores. Visual characteristics of the subject are suspected to be responsible for much of this variation.