of the more active and substantial sport fishermen and hunters, 

 as did its predecessor in 1955. 



The estimates developed from the National Recreation Survey 

 represent the total number who fished or hunted in I960, whether 

 incidental or substantial participants, but provide onlv limited 

 information about the details of fishing and hunting activities 

 such as cost of bait, tackle, travel, and the like. From the stand- 

 point of the main objective of this report — the presentation of 

 detailed information on type and scope of fishing and hunting — 

 the statistics for more substantial participants, developed from 

 the National Survey of Fishing and Hunting, are the more com- 

 prehensive. These substantial participants, while constituting 

 about 60 percent of all participants, account tor close to 95 

 percent of recreation days of fishing and hunting and around 

 99 percent of the expenditures for these activities. Furthermore, 

 valid comparisons with the 1955 results can be made only for 

 the more substantial participants as measured by the National 

 Survey of Fishing and Hunting. 



Overall participation in fishing as measured by the National 

 Recreation Survey and the special follow-up studies was esti- 

 mated at 35 percent of the population 12 years old and over, 

 whereas substantial participants as measured in the National 

 Survey of Fishing and Hunting represented 19 percent of that 

 population group. After deduction of incidental participants — 

 defined, for this purpose, as unlicensed persons with only one or 

 two days of fishing and either no expenditures or expenditures 

 of less than $5 — the gap between these estimates narrows to 4 

 or 5 percentage points, a large part of which could have resulted 

 from sampling variability. In the case of hunting, the overall 

 participation rate from the National Recreation Survey and the 

 rate for substantial participants in hunting from the National 

 Survey of Fishing and Hunting were 16 percent and 11 percent, 

 respectively. The exclusion of incidental participants eliminates 

 entirely the gap between these two figures. 



72 



