MA Jay - before the compound bow how many people bowhunted ?

Its a known fact hunter numbers are going down, isn't it ? Yet bowhunting numbers climbed bigtime in the past 2 decades. Why ?

Hint - it wasn't them using recurves that did it. It was the ease of use the compound bow afforded people. With the compound camne hundreds of thousands of bowhunters. If it went away it makes sense to believe the sheer numbers would too.