50 free Hunting trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
41 free Hunting trivia questions with answers. Hunting trivia questions for deer camp, the duck blind or a hunter-education class. The quiz covers the game itself - whitetail antlers and the rut, jakes and gobblers, feral hogs and de Soto's pigs - and the gear: how a shotgun gauge is defined, why a compound bow has let-off, what a muzzleloader is, why hunter orange works. It also covers the laws and people who built American conservation on hunters' money: the Lacey Act, the Duck Stamp, Pittman-Robertson, Ducks Unlimited, Boone and Crockett, Aldo Leopold and Fred Bear, plus falconry, England's fox-hunting ban, Jim Corbett's tiger and the goddess Artemis. Easy questions any weekend hunter will get come first; the later ones will separate the people who read the regulations from the people who guess. Neutral in tone, no gore. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and carries its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 funds state wildlife programmes through a tax on what?
Guns, ammunition and archery gear
The 11% excise tax, signed by FDR, has paid for much of America's wildlife recovery; half of later handgun tax receipts fund hunter safety courses and ranges.
Q 02Under Pittman-Robertson, states are reimbursed for what share of an approved wildlife project's cost?
Up to 75%
The state pays up front and claims back three-quarters, so licence fees still matter.
Q 03Who designed the first Federal Duck Stamp in 1934?
Jay 'Ding' Darling
The Pulitzer-winning cartoonist drew two mallards landing on a pond; the stamp now costs $25 and its proceeds have bought or leased more than 2.6 million acres of wetland.
Q 04Money from Federal Duck Stamp sales goes where?
The Migratory Bird Conservation Fund
Since 1934 the stamps have raised over $700 million and secured more than 5 million acres of habitat.
Q 05Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell founded which hunting-conservation group in 1887?
Boone and Crockett
North America's oldest wildlife-conservation organisation, it wrote the 'fair chase' ethic and keeps the big-game record book.
Q 06Roosevelt's 1887 conservation club is named after which two frontiersmen?
Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett
Its scoring system for antlers and horns is the standard measure of a North American trophy.
Q 07Which bird, once North America's most abundant at up to five billion, was extinct by 1914?
The passenger pigeon
Market hunters shipped them by the barrel; Martha, the last one, died at Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.
Q 08The Lacey Act of 1900 made it a federal crime to do what?
Poaching game in one state to sell in another
Introduced by Iowa's John F. Lacey and signed by McKinley, it was aimed at market hunting; a 2008 amendment extended it to timber.
Q 09Which forester and hunter, author of A Sand County Almanac, is called the founder of wildlife management?
Aldo Leopold
His 1933 textbook Game Management got him the first professorship in the field, at the University of Wisconsin.
Q 10In the essay 'Thinking Like a Mountain', what does the author watch die after shooting it?
A wolf
The 'fierce green fire' fading in its eyes changed his view of predators and fed his 'land ethic'.
Q 11Who developed the compound bow in 1966?
Holless Wilbur Allen
He worked in North Kansas City, Missouri; the patent came in 1969, and the cams' 'let-off' let hunters hold full draw with far less effort.
Q 12What does a compound bow's 'let-off' describe?
The drop in holding force at full draw
A 70-pound bow with 80% let-off holds at about 14 pounds, which is why bowhunters can wait so long for a shot.
Q 13Fred Bear, the bowhunting pioneer, moved his archery company in 1947 to which Michigan town?
Grayling
Q 21In turkey-hunting terms, what is a 'jake'?
A juvenile male
He has a short beard and uneven tail fan; a full-grown male is a tom or gobbler and a female a hen.
Q 22A male wild turkey's 'beard' is what?
A tuft of hair-like filaments on its chest
Some hens grow one too; the length is a common hunter's brag.
Q 23Ducks Unlimited, the wetlands conservation group, was founded in which Dust Bowl year?
1937
Publishing tycoon Joseph P. Knapp started it; it has conserved at least 15 million acres and is based in Memphis.
Ted Nugent, his friend, wrote the song 'Fred Bear' about him; his museum collection now sits in the Archery Hall of Fame at Bass Pro in Springfield, Missouri.
Q 14How is a shotgun's gauge defined?
Bore-sized lead balls per pound
So a 12-gauge bore, about 0.729 inches, is larger than a 16-gauge; the .410 is the odd one out, named by calibre.
Q 15Which shotgun gauge is by far the most popular?
12
Its bore is roughly 0.729 inches; the smaller the gauge number, the bigger the hole.
Q 16A muzzleloader is loaded how?
Down the open front of the barrel
Black powder or a substitute like Pyrodex, then a ball or bullet seated with a ramrod; many states run special muzzleloader deer seasons.
Q 17What is the most hunted native big-game species in the Americas?
White-tailed deer
About 300,000 survived in the US around 1930; by 2005 there were an estimated 30 million.
Q 18When do bucks of the most-hunted deer species shed their antlers?
Late December to February
They regrow a new set every year; the rut, when hunters most want to be in the woods, runs late October into November.
Q 19Why does a whitetail buck or doe raise its tail?
To warn a predator it is seen
The white 'flag' tells the hunter the game is up; the US herd rebounded from about 300,000 in 1930 to some 30 million.
Q 20How low did the US wild turkey population fall by the late 1930s?
About 30,000
Trap-and-transfer restocking took it to 1.3 million by 1973 and around 7 million today, including western states where it never lived before.
Q 24What kind of shot must US waterfowl hunters use?
Lead-free, such as steel
Lead pellets poisoned ducks that swallowed them off the bottom; the ban also applies in Canada and the EU.
Q 25What is a hunting 'blind'?
A structure hiding the hunter
Blinds and decoy spreads are the core of waterfowling; a punt gun once let market hunters kill dozens of birds in one blast.
Q 26What is the daily purpose of hunter-orange clothing?
Visibility to other hunters
It is required in most US states; deer, with their limited colour vision, take little notice of it.
Q 27Roughly what share of Americans have ever hunted, according to the figure cited on Wikipedia?
6%
A 2006 poll nonetheless found 78% of Americans support hunting; regulation is primarily a state matter.
Q 28How many US states require a safety course before a big-game hunt?
49 of 50
Hunter-education classes are largely paid for by the Pittman-Robertson excise tax on guns and ammunition.
Q 29Which state has by far the most feral pigs, around 2.5 million?
Texas
Hernando de Soto brought the first pigs to Florida in 1539; Texas allows 'heli-hogging' from helicopters, which can take 9 to 27 animals an hour.
Q 30Which Spanish explorer introduced pigs to Florida in 1539, ancestors of today's wild hogs?
Hernando de Soto
An estimated 6 million feral pigs now do billions of dollars of damage a year across 38 states.