Building the Future of Hunting, Shooting Sports and Conservation

CHATFIELD — After growing up in south-central Minnesota, Taniya Bethke went to college in Wisconsin, traveled across the country researching and teaching about the outdoors, spent a year in South Korea, and served as the recruitment, retention and reactivation coordinator in South Dakota. 

And now, happily settled in Chatfield, Bethke is drawing on those experiences to support her new job as Director of Operations for the Council to Advance Hunting and the Shooting Sports (CAHSS) – a job that again keeps her traveling across the country, both in person and virtually. 

A nonprofit, CAHSS organizated in 2007 and serves all 50 states and related industries. Bethke sees it as a major player because of its work behind the scenes with groups directly teaching shooting sports and hunting. 

In effect, it teaches the teachers. CAHSS helps groups set goals, think differently and measure progress.

“These are new times, with new challenges to obliterate and new customers to serve,” she said in the announcement of her new job. “There are bridges to be built, and I’m all-in.”

The council, in announcing her hiring, said she will “provide leadership for the Council’s efforts to grow hunting and shooting sports by innovative new approaches.” The final two words are critical, she said recently before target shooting with her compound bow at Bear Cave Park in Stewartville.

Taniya Bethke (left) shows her delight at her student’s success in cutting out a pheasant breast. (Photo by provided by Taniya Bethke)

A new look at an old sport

The old model of introducing youth, often children of those who are already in hunting and shooting, to the sports and then saying the work is done is wrong, she said. Bethke believes they need to reach out to more people, continue the work after the first introduction and give the novices mentors to help them along until they can go out on their own. 

One of the ways she’s helping locally is with the formation of a new Driftless Chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society where she is chair of education and partnerships. In that, she is helping with a dramatically different way to raise money and awareness, going away from the old model of holding banquets.

Bethke said she grew up as Taniya Fatticci “in a cornfield in Lake Crystal in southern Minnesota.” Her parents and grandparents encouraged a love of travel and a passion for learning, teaching, the environment and birding, she said.

She attended the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point where she majored in conservation biology and captive wildlife. Her skills for innovation showed up right away when, at age 18, she was elected to the Portage County Board. In college, she also worked summers for the Minnesota Conservation Corps.

After college, she researched small mammals in Lake Tahoe; golden-cheek warblers in Austin, Texas; black-capped vireos in Wichita National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma then taught English in South Korea at a time when it was hard to get wildlife research work. 

Bethke and friends at the Ruffed Grouse Society booth. (Photo provided by Taniya Bethke)

She then worked as a proofreader and support for sci-fi author Pat Rothfuss, went back to the outdoors as an environmental educator for the Houston, Texas, Outdoors Education Center and taught biology and environmental studies in Houston schools. 

“I had a lot of joy in creating relations with people and wild spaces,” Bethke said. “That was really powerful for me.”

Her summers around that time were spent driving bus and being an interpreter at Glacier National Park where she met Aric Bethke, and they married in 2016. He soon got a job in parks in South Dakota, and she was hired as archery coordinator for South Dakota. She worked with the R3 program – recruitment, retention and reactivation – a national push to get more people into the outdoors or get those who have quit to come back. 

While in South Dakota, Bethke also met hunting. “I grew up around firearms” but not hunting, she said. 

She found a few women who mentored her in hunting, showing her that it wasn’t only for older white men, is not just about killing, you don’t have to grow up hunting, and that it can deeply connect you to the outdoors and wildlife. 

Visible and diverse representation spur growth

“I saw my values represented in the community,” Bethke said. “Social support is incredibly important.” 

There is no way she would be where she is now, as a hunter and shooter, without help of those South Dakota women. She saw how those thinking about getting into hunting or shooting sports need to see role models who are like them. The way it’s said is “If I don’t see me, it won’t be me.”

She is now instilling those values in her children, Luca, almost 5, and Fio, 7. “We are a pretty outdoors family,” she said.

After several years in South Dakota, Bethke and her husband decided they wanted their children closer to their grandparents so they would get to know them. 

Bethke started with CAHSS in 2021 and her husband was later hired as assistant manager at Southeast Minnesota’s Forestville/Mystery Cave and Lake Louise state parks. She said they decided to live in Chatfield because of the good things they heard about its schools. 

Another top item on her list is working with shooting sports, not just hunting, she said. Hunters number around 14.4 million in the United States, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, but about 46.2 million people aged 6 or over have gone target shooting.

“Overall, the percentage of the population that hunts has steadily declined since the 1980s,” she said. “Rapid population growth, increased urbanization, decreased land access, increased reliance on public land, decreased relevance of hunting as a lifestyle, increased uneasiness about firearms . . . all play a role.” 

Taniya Bethke explains her beliefs about the need for more wildlife and wild places conservation. (Photo by John Weiss)

Still, participating in hunting or shooting-related sports is more than good for recreation – these are critical for supporting wildlife and conservation, she said. Every time someone buys shells, firearms and other similar items, a surcharge is added for the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act, federal funds returned to states based on their numbers in the sports. 

Originally established in 1937 as the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, it has collected $25.5 billion. That money, along with a similar fund for fishing, pays for 65 percent of state wildlife and fish conservation work, she said.

Three-quarters of the money now comes from shooting sports, not hunting, Bethke said.

Bringing the next generation into the plan

Also critically important is the huge amount of land, money and values held by Baby Boomers which they will eventually pass on. Younger people don’t always share those outdoor-conservation values, she said, so it’s important to find ways to keep people interested in wildlife, wild places and conservation. 

Part of Bethke’s job is to find ways to bring disparate groups together, to help them find that they do share at least some values. 

“We will always need people who participate in the maintenance of healthy wildlife populations,” she said. “Apathy is the biggest threat to the health of wildlife and wild spaces for generations to come. So, building meaningful relationships between people and the natural world that surrounds them is an investment in the long-term sustainability of our wild world.”

One part of that is to get fish and wildlife agencies more involved with shooting sports, she said. 

“How do we best serve a broad community that is coming up?” she asked – responding that “relevance will be a major issue,” building bridges and how to make themselves good partners.

All that work is what she said she loves. “I love to serve people in a way that matters to them,” she said. “I love shining a bright light on people who are exceptional.” 

Second, it’s working with people to overcome barriers. “Man, it gets my blood pumping,” Bethke said. “I absolutely love that.”