Hunters Love Video Games

Every Fall across the US people start getting excited for hunting season. Hunters start practicing their calls to attract the animals. The Cabela's stores across the country fill up with people buying camouflage outfits and new shotguns. And State Wildlife Divisions start issuing hunting permits. Through all of this preparation for the new hunting season, hunters still find time to buy a bunch of video games. The prices for all the hunting video games shoot (pun intended) through the roof starting in August.

Cabela's Video Game Price Charts for 2007




In each of these historic price charts, the price of the game has decreased most of the year and then come August the price starts increasing only to accelerate in December. There are many more examples of this including Cabela's Deer Hunt 2005 for Xbox, Cabela Outdoor Adventure for Gamecube, and all the Big Game Hunter games.

Wikipedia says that hunters spent over $20.5 billion in their industry in 2001 and hunted for an average of 18 days. 18 days must not fulfill the hunting urge for most of these people because they seem to buy quite a few hunting games with this $20+ billion.

The price increases might also be due to wives buying the games for Christmas presents in hopes that their husbands won't leave on more hunting trips (I know women hunt too). This would explain the even bigger price increases right before Christmas time.

Whatever the reasons for the price increases. Hunters start paying about twice as much for their electronic hunting fix in December as they do in August. But its still a lot cheaper than a hunting license.