Report: Hunting Is a Bigger Economic Driver than Starbucks and McDonald's

Eli Fournier Oct 23, 2024

Let’s face it: hunting can be a relatively inexpensive sport, but for most of us, it isn’t. Once you factor in guns, ammo, binoculars, clothing, gas, truck maintenance, and the whole slew of other bells and whistles, all the spending really adds up. A new economic report released by the Sportsmen’s Alliance has put those numbers into wide focus, and they’re pretty staggering. In 2022, American hunters spent $45.2 billion on equipment, licenses, trips, and other hunting-related expenses.

“It’s important that people—the general public, and state and federal legislators—understand that America’s hunters and sport shooters are an incredibly important force when it comes to our national, state, and local economies, as well as providing an outsized share of conservation funding at both the state and federal levels,” President and CEO of the Sportsmen’s Alliance, Evan Heusinkveld, said in a press release.

Overall, the goal of the report was to demonstrate, in numbers, just how much of an impact hunters have on the economy—numbers that can be used both by legislators and sportsmen to educate family, friends, and the general public.

In terms of the raw data, the Sportsmen’s Alliance relied on the 2022 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, conducted by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The survey was conducted in two phases: an initial screening round and a more detailed subsequent round asking participants (about 106,000) about their specific hunting and fishing related expenditures. And while the survey—conducted every five years since 1955—provides a good overall snapshot, the USFWS admits that “the survey has faced mounting challenges with rising costs, declining response rates, and concerns about coverage error in rural areas.”

Still, some numbers are better than no numbers, and the Sportsmen’s Alliance contracted with an economic modeling company to interpret the data in terms of economic impact (i.e., tracking the money through a local economy) in addition to gross spending.

The data for these models came from IMPLAN, which is "the gold standard for economic impact studies across all U.S. industries," said Rob Southwick, who compiled the report for Sportsmen's Alliance.

"IMPLAN is built using U.S. Department of Commerce data collected from US businesses," Southwick explained. "It provides data that explains how various industrial sectors spend their dollars. For example, for every $1 million spent by hunters on restaurants, the IMPLAN data explains how much is then re-spent by restaurants on other sectors such as wholesaler, utilities and support such as accountants, employees, paper goods, maintenance and more."

After crunching the numbers, the report indicates a total economic impact of hunters and sport shooters to be $107.9 billion—a number higher than the GDP of 121 countries. Relative to the US, though, all that spending resulted in a $56.3 billion contribution to the national GDP, which was around $25.5 trillion in 2022.

In terms of the conservation impact from all that, the USFWS estimates that hunters spent $1 billion on hunting licenses in 2022 and contributed an additional $283 million to conservation organizations. On top of that, hunters spent nearly $1 billion on private land-related expenses, much of which likely went toward conservation or habitat improvement projects.

Equipment was far and away the biggest expenditure. Hunters spent $1.5 billion on guns and $1.2 billion on ammo. Clothing was close behind at $1 billion, but all three were dwarfed by the $2.5 billion that hunters spent on their off-road vehicles. Overall, that spending supported an estimated 540,000 jobs in 2022.

“Many people may not care about hunting, the Second Amendment, or conservation, but everyone is impacted by the economy, and this report clearly illustrates that hunters and shooters provide an important—and consistent—economic engine for national and local economic health,” said Southwick.

In addition to the big-picture findings, the report also has a handful of interesting statistics to put things into perspective: more people went target shooting in 2020 than participated in golf, tennis, basketball, or soccer. The revenue generated by migratory bird hunting (5.9 billion) is more than the revenue of the top 10 most valuable NFL teams combined (4.5 billion). The retail sales produced by hunting are nearly equal to the combined system-wide sales of both Starbucks and McDonald’s.

In addition to the nationwide report, the Sportsmen’s Alliance also released state-by-state reports, detailing the impacts of hunting and shooting on local economies. The reports are available in printable, one-page documents that hunters can hang on their fridges, hand out to friends, or use for target practice.

“With this information, sportsmen can educate friends, family, and their representatives at every level by clearly illustrating in dollars and cents what they bring to the table and mean to the bottom line,” Heusinkveld concluded. At the end of the day, it’s about making the impact of hunting known, so we can continue the long-storied tradition for years to come.