Note that the article is in the “Outdoors” section. The spin of the title is glaringly obvious. It could just as well have said “Less than half of Americans support killing for fun”.
That would certainly be a better description. A more complete statement would be: According to a study funded by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, less than half of Americans support killing for fun. It is interesting that even game agencies have trouble presenting hunting as a popular activity.
As Brenna pointed out, the study does not define trophy hunting (which is not surprising for game agencies), which they measure as having even less support than “sport hunting” in general.
Another undefined term is “Hispanic.” The Census Bureau, which compiles game agency data every five years, goes out of its way to point out that “Hispanic” is not a race. There is, of course, no…
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Exposing the Big Game 
I dunno, still too many IMO:
“Hunting to bring home food, for example? The report says 82 percent of people — four out of five across the nation — are OK with that.”
“Eighty-one percent of Americans approve of recreational shooting. Sixty-five percent say it’s “perfectly acceptable” compared to 9 percent who say it’s “inappropriate nowadays.””
People’s attitudes about hunting may be changing (sloowwwwwlllyyyyy), and I hope that the animal populations will hold out till then (when I suppose they will make an unlikely dramatic recovery?), with all the other challenges that face wildlife survival because of human dominance.
It’s not that I am not hopeful (or tenacious), but I try to be realistic. Hunting is not necessary in today’s world, and I wonder if people really think about that, or just that people are ‘entitled’.
The latter.
“The overall results are consistent with previous findings dating back as far as 1995, said Mark Damian Duda, president of Responsive Management. Most Americans — a large majority, in most cases — support the activities, even if they do not plan to participate themselves.”
These are the thing that bother me the most – 1, the results have been consistent over time and haven’t changed that much if at all, and 2, the higher percentage nonparticipants support the hunting small percentage.
3 – What is the difference between not supporting hunting for sport, but supporting recreational shooting? Tin cans?
Fair chase matters, but that is more and more becoming romanticized fiction, as ‘hunting to put food on the table’ is. In today’s world, fair chase isn’t that fair, especially with more so-called wildlife refuges being open to hunting.
We seem to carry on with our delusions.
The other thing I forgot to mention is the poll says people support the use of trapping for ‘population control measures’?
Do people even really understand this stuff, or have any knowledge of it at all?