New statistics concerning Americans’ approval or disapproval of recreational hunting are based on a random telephone survey that was conducted between Aug. 31 and Sept. 9. The margin of error is plus/minus 3.44 percentage points. The national pollsters, Responsive Management, conducted the study under a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Poll questions:
Do you approve or disapprove of legal hunting?
77.6 percent approve (45.4 percent strongly approve, 32.2 percent moderately approve); 16.3 percent disapprove (8 percent strongly disapprove, 8.3 percent moderately disapprove); 6.1 percent neither approve nor disapprove, don’t know.
When the same question was asked in a national survey in 1995, the results were slightly less favorable.
73 percent approve (40 percent strongly approve, 33 percent moderately approve); 22 percent disapprove (11 percent strongly disapprove, 11 percent moderately disapprove); 5 percent neither approve nor disapprove, don’t know.
— Gene Mueller
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