Taking matters into their own hands: effects of effort and success on duck hunter satisfaction

Due to the steady decline of duck hunter participation, several studies have investigated means to bolster the duck hunter population. Fulfilling satisfaction will likely promote continued participation and research suggests that seeing ducks and harvesting ducks are among the most important attributes to duck hunter satisfaction. We explored how hunter effort and success affected hunter satisfaction during five duck-hunting seasons in the Central Flyway. As part of this exploration, we investigated how efforts such as hunting multiple days of the season, hunting at multiple locations, and scouting for ducks prior to the hunting season affected duck-hunter success and satisfaction. Hunter success was positively affected by hunter effort. We found that overall satisfaction with the season was partially affected by a combination of hunter effort and hunter success. Our findings suggest that hunters are at least partially responsible for achieving satisfaction from their duck-hunting experiences.