In the past few years there has been a focus on how to get more people into outdoor recreation. The average age of the hunter in the United States is increasing instead of holding steady, which means less young people are getting into hunting to offset the increasing age of hunters. A similar trend can be seen in shooting sports, archery, fishing and trapping. Why is this important? Remember how the Pittman-Robertson Act collects excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment that is then given back to the wildlife management agency of each state. Similarly, the Dingell-Johnson Act does the same thing for fishing and boating equipment. The money is given based on license sales numbers for that state. So, a decrease in hunters leads to less sales of the things that get taxed and then based on lower license sales, the state agency gets less money. This means the state’s wildlife management will get less funding to operate.

To combat this, the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model was conceived and it explains the process of becoming an outdoor recreationalist. The model has been given the nickname of R3. This is because it describes the three phases of becoming engaged in outdoor recreation as recruitment, retention, and reactivation.