I've also been on this board for ~15 years now, including the 'big crash' in 2003 that sent everyone back to 0 posts and eliminated their 'rack status'. What a helluva ruckus that caused, you would think that some people lost limbs...

Anyway, I study various aspects of education and one of the current 'buzz topics' is information overload. The amount of information we have access to is staggering and has exploded, especially in the last 5 years. I don't have statistics, but my guess is that everyone that cruises hunting sites on the internet either has a smart phone, tablet, computer or (like me) all of the above. One can literally access anything at almost any time. The big point here is that more people now act in introverted manners, and shy away from human interaction, moreso than at any other point in human history. Thus, there are more people sharing stories and such, but not necessarily more interest in actually bonding with people as friends. Thus, many people are 'hit-n-run' on the internet and visit many similar sites within a few minutes.

The questions we need to answer are: how do you attract more people to HN AND get them to stay longer?

To even think about tackling this we need to consider the evolution of the web. When I joined HN, there were only a few places on the internet that openly supported hunting and forums. HN was, to me, one of the best for all types of hunting - and also one of the top 2 sites listed in any search engine. On the other hand, if you now search Google for 'Turkey hunting forums' you get 1.26 million hits, and there are 10 different sites listed on the first page of results. HN is now #5 - which means if I'm unfamiliar with any of the sites - I'm probably going to 4 other sites before I even make it to HN.

With the evolution of the web there are larger turkey-specific forums (like Oldgobbler and GobblerNation). I don't think we can say that HN is better than many of the other sites - different, yes, but not necessarily better...

There are now very popular hunting forums/websites for each state. For me personally, I'm much more active in the MI Sportsman site because the information I get there is much more relevant and useful to my specific hunting situation - I can literally compare notes with somebody hunting in the same county, compared to HN where we may be comparing notes from hunts in MI, NY, TX, LA, etc - which are fun but many times somewhat pointless.

So how do you improve? In the digital age, the only way to do that is to increase your profile to bring your website more traffic. More traffic = more interest = more contestants = bigger contestant pool.

1) As someone else said, the mobile version of this site is clunky. Improving the mobile platform would be the first step to increase traffic. HN developers - any thoughts about building a specific HN app and offering it on both the App/Android store? I would personally spend $1-2 for a mobile-friendly HN app that worked well on my iPhone...

2) Reducing the information on the site would - IMO - actually help. When HN started it was simple and concise - there are so many layers now that it's more complex than needed, and this is especially true on the mobile version. Thus, I would recommend a redesign to make it more user friendly.

3) Giveaways. To be honest, if I can enter a contest for bragging rights and enter a contest for giveaways, I'm more likely to enter and check-in more often to the site where I may win something. It's just human nature - we win, we want a trophy