Changing minds starts at a very young age. Kids are bombarded by advertisements all day long. Eventually they believe what they are told. We need to spend more time with kids and show them the truth about managing animals.

How many people are dead from heart attacks and lung cancer caused by smoking they started after seeing the cool Marlboro man sucking smoke on a billboard? Advertising works. As stated earlier we don’t need to change everyone’s mind , just get the truth out there or loose the war. Why is it that takes loosing everything before people finally say we should have done something, wish I could go back and get off my duff. I guess that’s the reason the a an average life span of a country is 250 years. Apathy the great killer, just saying.

Advertising works.

It also costs money The opposition is awash in it where we struggle to raise it. They know they can generate MILLIONS pulling on the heart strings even though most what they proclaim is lies. Hunters and trappers by nature are loners by and tight with their money. Once stung they give new meaning to once bitten twice shy.

Without going into detail the bottom line is, trappers refuse to change! After a decade of fighting inside board rooms trying to change things i finally like many before me just walked away. Rather than debate idea's and look for new ways to do thing the old guard always takes it as a threat/insult/ who know's what to them personally so the fight begins to ensure NOTHING changes but we keep doing things this way cause 'its how we've always done things'. Thus if you keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result ................................

At one time NTA could of been turned into the power house for trappers it was envisioned to be at it's beginning but sadly scandal after scandal after scandal for the past 40 years has kept it crippled and ineffective, this latest fiasco isn't anything new, it's just what happens every 20 years. It could of been restructured and turned into what it needs to be BUT once again you go talking about totally restructuring the place to where it is effective and fiscally responsible and instantly your trying to destroy the whole place and everyone ignore's anything you say from that point forward, your an enemy of the state from that point on.

With trapper retention and recruitment not even on anyone's radar I doubt you get a new younger generation to step in with new idea's and drive to take us where we should of already been 25 years ago.

You got the right part right. Raising money from the average trapper is near impossible.

Indeed. Most every kid has seen Bambi at some time in his/her life. Walt Disney knew what he was doing . . .

As an extremely small segment of our society and with considerably less financial means than most organizations, we as fur harvesters need to develop a stragegy and or plan to put our limited resources where we get the most bang for the limited resources we have at our disposal. We as a group need to focus on who and how to impact the influencers and quit thinking about broad spectrum ways to get our message out. We don't have the time or the resources to do that. We need to quit dissing all the organizations we don't have control over. Maybe we should find ways to compensate educators better so that we can draw people with wider views then many say is where we are at today. We are not going to fix it by saying how bad things are, or a few remove their kids from these institutions where 80% or more of our youth attend.

Bryce

The marketing problem is the why modern people harvest wildlife.

BINGO across the board!

Trapping organizations should have long ago transitioned away from fur trapping as a tradition, transition not abandon, and embraced the biological management model. By holding to tradition in the absence of a viable economic model, fur market, trapping is now a sport not an economic activity. What is an economic activity now is nuisance trapping and I despise the word nuisance as it devalues the resource.

IMO, trapping organizations missed the boat. NWCOA is now bigger than any of the old guard groups and has a seat at the table with the regulators that matter. In my own experience in my own state when I sit down as a NWCO I get exactly what I ask for while the GTA doesn't even bother to show up and lose.

Quick story. A few years back I was helping a friend butcher pigs. My friend's brother was attending our local liberal arts college and was also helping that day. He brought two college girls from the Environmental Science Department that had never butchered or been around that kind of thing before. But they were interested and helped and wanted to learn. Even the messy parts. Sustainable agriculture and environmental science interest is huge with young people. These are the types of young people that go on to take positions with non-profit, state, and Federal environmental organizations. They would hear, recognize, and understand the trapper's message if it could get to them. Anti groups are professionals at reaching these demographics with constant propoganda via the use of technology, and so that is all they know. We need to catch up, but I believe their are willing ears in younger generations when you start talking about environmenmtal sustainability, pesticides, monocultures, Amazon deforestation for the sake of soybeans, asian sweat shops, shipping clothes across the world with fossil fuels, biodegradability and life span of clothing, etc.

Because every time to mention doing something that's not the norm it gets shut down and people well continue to go "well idk why noting will work !"
I know there a had full of states that don't want to have anything to do with the NTA or similar because of it.

Change bad ,if it ain't broke don't fix it yadda yadda. Just wait till it's blatantly obvious and way too late to try and change and by then your way behind. People don't want to face the fact that what worked for them is not invalid or ineffective so you just get a lot of excuses about how we've tried XYZ and how it's all bambis fault , something something liberal snow flakes.

As a community we just have not kept up with the times where as the antis have people in the age group they need to understand how to do stuff to get people on there side. For every one we get I wouldn't be surprised at all if they get 10. And honestly it really just takes the right person to say the same thing and everyone will follow.

That and all the DAG BLASTED in fighting and victim mentality that people like to act like doesn't happen .

Being proactive takes actual effort past sending in a check to your stat association or staying in your comfort zone and most people have no desire to do that.

These animal right people know very well how to use "facts" how to use emotions, social media ECT to get a certain result and their constantly changing and adapting. We don't . The idea of change or trying something different is almost always met with " well if it would work somone would have done it " . Seems most newer ideas just get pushed aside till someone goes and does it themselves makes it work then everyone jumps on board mean hole the antis are picking up new tools for the box and trying them constantly.

We really need to get out of a lot of mind sets like trying to get everyone to just drop $1200-$6000 on a luxury fur coat that ,lets be honest most people honestly don't even like . Mabye later down the line big body fur garments might come back by just not right now. And before someone says it..yes my phone is $500-1200 but at this point their kinda actually a necessity. Not some special garment that takes all this special care and storage. Need to brain storm how we could make stuff low cost and marketable casual or work wear or something.

But anyhow

Beat me to it

How about a marketing campaign like this?

Love Animals? Thank a Trapper.

A line like that hits so many emotional buttons for people. You could do lots of ads around that. Healthy animal picture on one side, and then on the other side.... Rabies, Mange, Starvation, Road Killed critters.

Billboards in a rural area are in the $1000/month range. Cities probably $2,000-3,000. There are lots of interstates in rural areas. I don't think it's too big of a reach money wise. Non-profits that hold gun raffle fundraisers in my area can clear $20,000-25,000 on an event.

Very good points.