Hunting and fishing takes a different mindset than what is common today. Everything is instant and seemingly effortless. Want information on something? Google it. 20 years ago, you had to actually RESEARCH and READ to find the answer, not spend 2 seconds online. Think of the age bracket that make up hunters and fisherman. It mostly consists of an age group who had to actually work for what they wanted. You can't just go out in the woods, pick a random tree and shoot a buck. It takes effort, time and skill that takes years of experience (and a little luck) to get the deer you want. Same with fishing. Years of being on the water, learning, experimenting and once again, EFFORT. I've been hunting and fishing since I was 10. I've experienced both worlds where I had to look up information i wanted in encyclopedias and books and search for answers, up to today where I develop software to get a year's worth of data in a matter of seconds. Like MCF stated about the decline of interest 25-30 years ago, what in that time frame was on the up and up? The internet. Leaving us where we are now with everything being instant and the loss of patience in the younger generation. Perfect example...I told my friend's two boys (5 and 9) i would take them fishing, so we got the gear and headed out. We were fishing all of 5 minutes and they were already on whatever electronic devices their mother had brought, stated fishing is boring because we hadn't caught anything yet and were pretty much done. I understand the attention span at those ages, but......
/rant.
Sorry for the long post. Also, there is a second reason that attributes to the decline of hunting and fishing, the initial and continuing cost of getting into and maintaining these hobbies, but that's a whole other bag of worms I won't get into.