CHAPTER IV 

 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS 



The Montana Deer hunting survey contained many questions 

 regarding characteristics of the hunters, the areas in which they 

 hunted, and the last deer hunting trip which they took. The 

 large sample size of this survey allowed the entire sample to be 

 broken down into hunter subgroups and regional subgroups while 

 still retaining large enough sample sizes to ensure meaningful 

 interpretation of both descriptive statistics and economic 

 models . 



Hunter Characteristics 



In addition to examining the sample in its entirety the 

 responding hunters were categorized according to two 

 dichotomizations; residents v. nonresidents and guided hunters v. 

 nonguided. Table 1 shows the relationships between these four 

 classifications. Guided hunters in this sample were 

 predominantly a subset of nonresident hunters with roughly 25% of 

 nonresidents employing big game hunting guides. Very few 

 residents (less then 1%) employed guides for their hunts. 



Table 2 summarizes the similarities and differences between 

 hunters in the four subgroups. While the vast majority of all 

 hunters were male, resident hunters had a lower percentage of 

 males (85.5%) then did nonresidents (94.8%). Nonresidents and 

 guided hunters spent significantly more time hunting deer each 

 year than did residents. Those nonresidents and guided hunters 

 also were twice as likely as the resident and nonguided hunters 

 to belong to a conservation organization. Two characteristics, 

 average age and percent who hunted with rifles, were fairly 

 stable across subgroups. The percentage of hunters who were 

 successful in killing a deer also is relatively stable across 

 groups, but the information in Table 3 suggests some important 

 differences between groups. While 15.9% of residents bagged 

 other big game species on the same trip, the same statistic for 

 nonresidents was 28.3% and for guided hunters 40.7%. These 

 numbers suggest that a significant number of guided hunters in 

 the sample were primarily guided for other species, elk in 

 particular. One final comparison from Table 2 shows that average 

 income varied widely between subgroups. The average income of 

 guided hunters was nearly twice that of resident hunters. This 

 differential would have surely been greater if response 

 categories on the questionnaire had allowed for reporting of 

 incomes in excess of $100,000. 



