Hunting and Fishing
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50 free Hunting and Fishing trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hunting and fishing are among the oldest things people do outdoors, and they have left their mark far beyond the field and the riverbank: on the dogs we keep, the words we use, the shops we buy from and the stories we tell. This quiz covers both pursuits. On the fishing side there are methods and tackle, the long history of rods, reels and lines, record catches and the writers who made angling famous. On the hunting side there are game animals and how they behave, gun dogs and the jobs they were bred for, rifles and bows, safari history, and the myths, cartoons and films that feature hunters. It is written for anyone who has spent time in a blind or a boat, and for quiz hosts who need a ready-made round for a lodge night, a camp weekend or a family game. Most questions can be reasoned out, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US president's refusal to shoot a tied-up black bear on a 1902 Mississippi hunt inspired a famous toy?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt called shooting the exhausted animal unsportsmanlike, and a newspaper cartoon of the scene led toymaker Morris Michtom to name his stuffed bears after him.
Q 02Which German liqueur's label shows a stag with a glowing cross, the vision of hunters' patron Saint Hubert?
Jägermeister
Jägermeister means master hunter in German, a title used for centuries for the high official in charge of hunting and gamekeeping.
Q 03Noodling, legal in only some US states, means catching which fish with bare hands from underwater holes?
Catfish
Catfish guard their eggs in submerged holes, so a noodler reaches inside and waits for the fish to latch onto the hand before hauling it out.
Q 04Which Canadian island, rather than the mainland region in its name, is the true homeland of the Labrador Retriever?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland fishermen prized the breed's ancestor, the St John's water dog, before British aristocrats imported it in the 1830s and turned it into a gun dog.
Q 05In which city did Bass Pro Shops turn a pyramid-shaped basketball arena into a megastore with a hotel inside?
Memphis
Memphis opened its Pyramid as a 20,000-seat arena in 1991; it reopened in 2015 with a bowling alley, an archery range and an observation deck beside the apex.
Q 06Which light gun did 1980s players point at the television to shoot the birds in the NES game Duck Hunt?
Zapper
Zapper shots register only on old CRT televisions, which is why Duck Hunt and its smugly laughing dog cannot be played on a modern flat screen.
Q 07Which catch do the Bering Sea boats chase each October in Discovery's long-running series Deadliest Catch?
King crab
King crab fishing off Alaska is considered even more dangerous than other commercial fishing, with most deaths caused by drowning or hypothermia.
Q 08Which giant fish does the aging fisherman Santiago struggle to land in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea?
Marlin
Marlin and old man earned Hemingway the 1953 Pulitzer Prize, and the novella was the only work named when he received the Nobel Prize a year later.
Q 09Which animal joins the lion, leopard, elephant and rhinoceros in Africa's Big Five, a list coined by big-game hunters?
Buffalo
Buffalo made the cut because hunters coined the term for the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot, not the five largest.
Q 10Which word for the illegal taking of wild animals also names a gentle way of cooking eggs in simmering water?
Poaching
Poaching was once mostly the work of impoverished peasants feeding their families, in defiance of the hunting privileges of the nobility.
Q 11Which Looney Tunes hunter keeps failing to bag his archenemy Bugs Bunny, usually humiliating himself instead?
Elmer Fudd
Elmer Fudd anchors Chuck Jones's hunting trilogy, three shorts in which Bugs and Daffy Duck argue over whether it is rabbit season or duck season.
Q 12In Richard Connell's story The Most Dangerous Game, which prey does General Zaroff hunt for sport on his island?
Humans
Humans shipwrecked on the island get food, a knife and a three-hour head start, and any who evade Zaroff for three days go free, though he has never lost.
Q 13Which constellation, known for the three bright stars of its belt, is named after a hunter of Greek myth?
Orion
Q 21Which angling method draws baited lines or lures through the water behind a boat moving at a steady, low speed?
Trolling
Trolling is easily confused with its sound-alike trawling, which drags a net instead of lines and is mainly a commercial method.
Q 22Which English writer published The Compleat Angler in 1653 and kept adding to it for a quarter of a century?
Izaak Walton
Izaak Walton set the book on fishing trips up the Lea Valley, though it is thought to reflect his own days on the River Dove.
Q 23Which tool, hand-held or powered, do ice anglers use to drill a round hole through a frozen lake?
Auger
Auger in hand, many anglers then fish from inside a shelter known as an ice shanty, fish house or bobhouse, some built on wheels for towing.
Orion works as a signpost for stargazers: extend the line of the belt one way to find Sirius, and the other way to reach Aldebaran.
Q 14Which bony growths do male deer shed and regrow every year, unlike the permanent horns of cattle and sheep?
Antlers
Antlers grow and drop on a timetable set by the length of daylight, and they serve both as weapons against rivals and as displays to attract mates.
Q 15Which small British scent hound, the breed of the Peanuts dog Snoopy, was developed mainly to hunt rabbits and hares?
Beagle
Beagle packs gave their name to beagling, the hunting of hare or rabbit with a pack, and the breed resembles a much smaller version of the foxhound.
Q 16Which burrowing animal was the dachshund bred to flush out, the quarry that the German name Dachshund spells out?
Badger
Badger dog is the literal meaning of Dachshund, and the breed's earliest recorded names translate as badger crawler and badger warrior.
Q 17Which Ohio sharpshooter paid off the mortgage on her mother's farm at fifteen by selling game she had shot?
Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley supplied shopkeepers, restaurants and hotels across northern Ohio with game long before trick shooting on tour made her famous.
Q 18Which word for deer meat comes from a Latin verb meaning to hunt or pursue?
Venison
Venison once described the meat of any hunted animal, including rabbit, hare, wild boar and goat, before the word narrowed to deer.
Q 19Which animal, the tallest and heaviest living member of the deer family, is called an elk in British English?
Moose
Moose are outweighed in North America only by the bison, and there the word elk belongs to a different deer altogether, the wapiti.
Q 20Which curved Aboriginal Australian throwing tool famously circles back, though hunting versions did not return?
Boomerang
Boomerang originally meant only the returning kind; many Aboriginal peoples also carried non-returning hunting sticks, and some used those alone.
Q 24Which churchly name do anglers give the small club used to kill a landed fish quickly?
Priest
Priest comes from the notion of administering the last rites to the catch; the tool is usually a heavy metal head on a metal or wooden stick.
Q 25In which country do the earliest known pictures of a fishing reel appear, in a painting dated to about 1195?
China
China also has the oldest written mention of a reel, an ancient collection of immortals' lives that calls the device an angling lathe.
Q 26Tenkara, a reel-less style of stream angling whose name can mean fishing from heaven, is traditional to which country?
Japan
Japan kept tenkara largely to itself until 2009, when a company called Tenkara USA began popularising the method abroad.
Q 27Which diving bird have fishermen in East Asia trained for over a thousand years to catch river fish for them?
Cormorant
Cormorant handlers tie a loose snare at the base of the bird's throat, so it can swallow small fish but must surrender the large ones.
Q 28Which fish hatches in freshwater, lives as an adult in the ocean, then returns to its birthplace river to spawn?
Salmon
Salmon may owe their name to the Latin verb salire, to leap, which fits a fish that clears waterfalls and rapids by jumping.
Q 29Which giant grass, split into strips and glued, was the prized material for fly rods before fibreglass took over?
Bamboo
Bamboo rods had a heyday of about 75 years, from the 1870s to the 1950s, and makers favour one species above a thousand others: Tonkin cane.
Q 30Which US state is the setting of A River Runs Through It, Robert Redford's 1992 drama about two fly-fishing brothers?
Montana
Montana scenery helped the film win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, with Brad Pitt cast as Paul, one of the two Maclean brothers.