How to retain your hunters before they hang up the gun

Opening day 2025, you counted. Three members fewer than last year. No falling out, no visible conflict. A phone call in mid-August: “I’ll give this season a miss.” Then silence. Two others simply did not renew their membership fee. No explanation given.

This is the most common and hardest type of departure to anticipate: silent, with no clear reason stated. You will never know exactly why, and nobody will really tell you.

This guide will not explain why hunting is declining in France. You already know that. It will give you what you can do, at your society’s level, to stop it happening.

The numbers behind what you see on the ground

France had 1.1 million hunters in 2014. In 2022-2023, 963,571 validated their licence, according to the national survey by the Fédération nationale des chasseurs (FNC), based on 85,000 questionnaires.1 Net loss: around 140,000 hunters in ten years.

20,000 new licences are issued each year, according to the Office français de la biodiversité (OFB).2 Mathematically, this intake does not offset the departures. And 50% of licence candidates in 2022 were under 25: the profile renewal is happening, but it is not enough to maintain numbers.1 The core problem is not recruitment. It is retention.

In a society of 35 members, losing 3 or 4 people a year is 10% of the group. Ten years later, the society no longer exists or runs on 15 members. Not enough to organise proper driven hunts. Membership fees cover fewer expenses. Agreements with neighbouring communes become harder to maintain.

87% of hunters volunteer their time, an average of 27 days per year.1 When these people leave, that many working days disappear with them. Volunteer work cannot be replaced with a cheque.

Why they don’t come back: the real reasons

The top reason for quitting is not anti-hunting pressure. It is cost.

In the Centre region, a hunter estimates the minimum at 1,000 euros per season: licence, membership fee, insurance, basic equipment, travel.3 The national licence alone exceeded 205 euros in 2025-2026.4 Add the departmental federation fee, your society’s membership fee, the annual licence renewal. For a retiree on a modest pension, the trade-off becomes difficult by the second or third year. And 46% of French hunters are retired.1

The five main reasons that emerge from the FNC survey and field testimonies:

1. Total cost: each item seems manageable on its own. Added up over a season, the total becomes a deterrent for part of the membership.
2. Feeling like an outsider: a member who is not very active or recently joined and who is not included in decision-making circles ends up feeling out of place. They come, they leave, nobody asks for their opinion. By the third season, they do not renew.
3. Declining game, especially small game. A partridge hunter who has not seen a partridge for three seasons inevitably questions the cost-to-enjoyment ratio.
4. Health and age: a structural factor you cannot reverse. It does, however, explain part of the natural attrition. Planning for renewal ahead of time, before departures pile up, is your only response.
5. Administrative burden and new digital obligations: the arrival of ChassAdapt as a compulsory declaration tool since June 2024 has created resistance. A Chasse Passion poll reveals that 37% of hunters know at least one person who would not renew their licence because of this obligation.5 “If they have to go through these new technologies, they feel overwhelmed and put off,” say senior hunters in the same survey. Poorly supported digital tools push away precisely the members most at risk of leaving.

A common misconception to correct: “they leave because of anti-hunting campaigners.” The reality is different. Cost comes first, well ahead of activist pressure. A hunter who feels at home in their group and believes their membership fee is justified does not leave because of an online petition.

What your members really want from your society

Contact with nature is cited by 67% of hunters as their main motivation, followed by companionship (61%) and the bond with their dog (59%), according to the FNC 2023 survey.1 The harvest tally does not appear in this top three.

This fundamentally changes how you should think about your role. A hunter who cites companionship as their main reason for hunting will not stay because the hunting ground is rich in game. They will stay because they feel comfortable in the group, because hunt days are enjoyable, because the post-hunt meal exists and nobody leaves without a word.

One hunter in three goes out fewer than three times a month according to the FNC.1 Overall average: 8 Sundays and 8.5 Saturdays per season on driven hunts. They are not all disengaged: some have work or family commitments. But they are the most at risk of dropping out. The less they come, the fewer people they know, the fewer reasons they have to renew the following season.

Willy Schraen, chairman of the FNC, said at the March 2025 general assembly in Avignon: “The primary recruitment channel remains human, direct and relational.”6 What he says about recruitment applies equally to retention. Bonds are built between people, not between a hunter and a membership renewal notice.

Four practical ways to retain your members

1. Reduce administrative friction

The workload on the secretary or chairman of a medium-sized society is real: calling members, keeping lists, collecting fees, managing hunt logbooks, liaising with the federation. When this burden becomes too heavy, the quality of organisation suffers. Invitations go out too late, information is missing, participants arrive unprepared.

This is not just a comfort issue for the organiser. It is a problem experienced by the members. A hunter who receives their invitation the night before with incomplete information does not feel their time is respected. They end up not coming. And after not coming enough times, they stop renewing.

What you can do before next season: centralise participant management in a single tool, send invitations at least a week in advance, make sure every member receives the same information at the same time. No chain texts, no list on a scrap of paper that gets lost.

2. Actively welcome less active members

A member who comes once a month often barely knows a handful of people in the society. They arrive, take their stand, leave. Nobody has taken the time to ask what they like to hunt, which days they prefer, whether they have particular constraints.

Integration does not happen naturally. It has to be built. The societies with the best retention often have an informal mentoring system: an active member looks after a newcomer or a less active hunter for two or three outings. Same stand, same sector. Invitation to the post-hunt meal.

The FDC 30 (Gard) has formalised this principle with a “return to hunting” mentoring programme: both the mentor and the mentee receive a 50% discount on the departmental federation fee if the mentee has not hunted for at least three years.7 The financial incentive doubles the effect: the mentor has a concrete reason to invest their time, the mentee returns with a financial safety net.

What you can do right now: identify your five least active members. Call each of them before the season. Not to chase up the membership fee. To ask what might make them come more often.

3. Make hunt days memorable

A harvest tally shared within hours of the driven hunt, a group photo sent to all participants, a short report with the harvest and notable moments: these actions build a sense of belonging to a group.

The hunter who was not there that day still receives something. They see that things are happening. They have a reason to come next time. Conversely, a confused day (poorly defined stands, unclear safety instructions, no shared debrief) leaves a neutral impression. The less committed members have no particular reason to come back.

This is not hard to set up. It is a matter of consistency, not resources.

4. Be open about finances

The membership fee needs to feel fair. Not necessarily low: fair. A hunter who understands what their money is used for (land lease, federation fees, hedgerow maintenance, possible restocking) rarely questions the fee. A hunter who receives a payment request with no explanation starts questioning value for money after two or three seasons.

A simple annual financial summary, presented at the general assembly and emailed to those who could not attend, is enough in most cases. The broad lines: income, main expenses, balance. A few figures, not an accountant’s spreadsheet. This gesture of transparency is also a sign of respect towards your members.

Dashboard: what you can put in place before next season

How day-to-day organisation makes the difference

When a driven hunt day is well organised, hunters come back. It is that simple.

It is not about the hunting ground or the harvest tally. It is about the lived experience. A hunter who waited two hours at the meeting point with no information about the stands, who did not receive clear instructions, who ended up confused about which zones were allowed: that person does not come back. And they tell the people around them, which does not help your recruitment either.

There are 70,000 hunting associations in France, roughly two per commune.1 Most will never run a communications campaign. Their only tool for retaining their members is the quality of what they organise.

Mes Chasses is designed to remove the friction that makes members feel poorly served: invitation and attendance management, stand allocation from the app, real-time harvest tracking, payments between members for shared costs. Not an extra layer of complexity: a way to remove repetitive manual tasks that take up the chairman’s time and frustrate participants when they are done badly.

A chairman who spends less time on administrative logistics spends more time calling members, welcoming them, thinking about the group experience. That is where retention really plays out.

The hunting ground is your business. Organisation can become simple. Try Mes Chasses free.

References