Webinar – Hunting and Trapping Part 2: Human Dimensions

Does mixing hunting and non-hunting recreation create potential for visitor conflict?

Brian Joubert and Howie Harshaw

Spaces for nature-based recreation, especially those that are nearby and accessible, are in high demand. Part of this growth has been an associated rise in hunting participation. As this demand increases, it becomes important for participants, and land managers, to better understand how sometimes seemingly incompatible types of recreation can be accommodated on a shared landscape; with an eye to offering high quality, and safe experiences. While anecdotes about ‘walking in the woods during hunting season’ abound, little to no empirical work on how hunters and non-hunters share the fall landscape has been done in Alberta.

Using the Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area as a case study, we are aiming to understand and characterize the potential for tension that will help to identify sources of conflict before they become major issues there, and elsewhere.
This presentation will aim to:

• Provide an overview of the research design and methods
• Report on some preliminary analyses we have done with data from our hunter sample (n=362).
• Discuss the theoretical framework used to understand recreation conflict
• Discuss early lessons learned from hunting HD work: for example a mistrust of study among some hunting community. Lack of familiarity with human dimensions (applied social science) research approaches; hesitant to participate as unsure of veracity of investigators. Suspicion about some questionnaire items… the perception that we were going to close hunting down.
• Discuss the HD and its future more broadly in Alberta.

Women in Hunting

Katie Morrison

While women have likely been hunting since the beginning of time, hunting is still seen as a male dominated activity. As part of this webinar, I will discuss hunter demographics, gender differences in motivations to hunt, hunting culture and stereotypes of women in hunting, engaging more women in hunting, and why we should care. I’ll also talk about the whole process of hunting and share some of my personal experiences of how hunting connects me to the rest of nature and to my food.

Bio

Katie Morrison is a professional biologist and outdoor enthusiast. Growing up, Katie and her family spent much of their time outdoors: camping, horseback riding, canoeing and fishing. This led her to obtain a B.Sc. in Environmental and Conservation Sciences from the University of Alberta and a Masters of Environmental Design from the University of Calgary. While Katie has worked throughout western Canada and in Latin America for university research projects, nongovernmental organizations, and environmental consulting companies, she now spends her days working on public lands conservation in Southern Alberta. Her connection to nature and sustainable food are fueled by hunting and fishing Alberta’s amazing lands and waters.