A Survey of Iowa's Fishing and Hunting License Vendors

Like other states, Iowa has a long history of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation. Although facing challenges regarding recruitment and retention of the next generation, overall the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has seen record fishing license sales over the past few years.  A portion of those sales are made by partners called license vendors, including local businesses, chain stores, gas stations, and others.  License vendors may provide not only a license to a customer, but also fishing advice, information about DNR and its programs, and information about natural resource policy and issues, along with the necessary bag of ice and can of worms.  Therefore, license vendors can be powerful partners, and understanding their needs can help improve the agency-partner relationship as well as sell more licenses.  A paper survey was mailed to the majority of license vendors partnered with DNR during 2014 asking about the vendor’s preferences for communication with DNR, advertisement and promotional needs, interest in programs co-led with DNR, and satisfaction with DNR and Active Outdoors’ customer service.  During winter 2014-2015, a single round of follow-up calls were made to a random subset of partial respondents and non-respondents. Results of the survey will be discussed.