Matt Dunfee recognized that the young woman he was mentoring in a learn-to-hunt program wasn't a typical recruit.
She didn't believe in posing for pictures with slain animals. Pink camouflage clothing was sexist to her. She didn't care if she shot a buck, and she deplored trophy hunting. But she shared the desire to harvest a wild deer for the wholesome goodness of its hide and lean, high-protein venison.
"At one point I said to her, 'It's kind of a bummer you don't have a mentor who is not a middle-aged white guy,' " Dunfee recalled saying to his student.
Her reply? "That's OK. Just don't act like one!' "
It was an experience Dunfee has shared over and over as he preaches the importance of recruiting hunters and anglers from diverse, nontraditional groups. He was a featured speaker Saturday in Minneapolis at a statewide summit on the three "Rs," recruitment, retention and reactivation of outdoors men and women.
"There's a bunch of different groups that don't look like you, but they'd love to stand shoulder to shoulder with you to learn to hunt," Dunfee said in an interview before his address. "But they just want to hunt with you, they don't want to be you."
With so much at stake for natural conservation reasons, Dunfee said, wildlife agencies, nongovernment groups, the outdoors industry and hunters themselves must change the heavily white/male dominance of hunting and fishing. That's the only way to come back from a relentless decline in outdoor activities that fund protection of habitat and wildlife conservation.
For starters, Dunfee said, 30 years of declining participation in hunting and fishing on a per-capita basis has left the country with about 13.7 million people who hunt. That's less than 6 percent of all people over age 15. And for hunting, 89 percent of participants are male and 94 percent are white, Dunfee said.