NAICS 114210Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

Hunting and trapping

SoftwareCommercial Fishing & Aquaculture Operations Software 114

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in commercial hunting and trapping, and operating and managing commercial game preserves. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 116
Under 10 employeesA: 91%
Establishments · USA: 434
Employment · USA: 1,899
Payroll · USA: $86M

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–48775%

5–91916%

10–1987%

20–4922%

50–990—

100–1990—

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 116 Canadian establishments with employees, 91% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Quebec3026%

Ontario2622%

British Columbia2118%

Newfoundland and Labrador119%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

71.7%

3 years

61.8%

5 years

53%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 114, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 114 Fishing, hunting and trapping

The licence is the business. Entry means buying a licence or quota from someone leaving, at a price that already capitalises the fishery's returns.

Who sets the price: Processors and landed-price auctions; quota and licences cap who may fish at all.
The software it runs on: Catch reporting, quota tracking and vessel compliance, much of it regulator-mandated.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 1142 Hunting and trapping covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 1142

Commercial Trapline & Game PreserveOne thing must be true

binding constraint: market size

The pre-screen said licence-bound and tiny; the numbers say tiny is the operative word. Entry is cheap — a trapper's course, a licence, a registered line or a landowner's permission, a snowmobile and steel. What is missing is revenue. The Fur Institute of Canada's compilation of provincial wildlife-agency returns puts all wild fur sold in Canada in 2023–24 at 330,710 pelts worth C$12.76M, down from 916,572 pelts and C$48.96M in 2012–13 [B]. That is the whole country's crop, shared among every licensed trapper, and it would not make one mid-sized business. The Northwest Territories, which markets its fur actively, reported 7,421 pelts sold for C$582,043 across the entire 2025 season — and pays trappers a start-up grubstake of up to C$2,000 to keep them on the land [A]. Price is set at a single auction in North Bay by a handful of international buyers; in June 2025 muskrat averaged C$1.99 and beaver C$15.18. Trapping persists as culture, wildlife management and side income, not as an enterprise, which is why 75% of the 116 establishments have one to four employees and none has fifty. The money adjacent to this code — guided hunts for non-residents — is classified with hunting and fishing camps at 721212 and was not screened here. Game preserves were not separately researched.

NAICS 11425 vendors named9 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 114 Fishing, hunting and trapping

Commercial Fishing Licence & QuotaStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

On the BC coast the licence and quota cost more than the fishing earns, which is the whole screen: quota has been capitalised into an asset held largely by non-fishing owners, and the active harvester leases it at a share of the landed value that leaves the boat with the risk and a thin margin. Entering means either buying an asset priced as a security or renting one from someone who already owns it. The sector's software is screened separately at the same code.

NAICS 1144 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 114 Fishing, hunting and trapping

Commercial Fishing & Aquaculture Operations SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

Incumbent AKVA group (Fishtalk) and Innovasea (Canadian — Halifax)

The value in a fish farm sits in cages, feed barges, sensors and boats — the software is a readout on capital equipment sold by the same vendors, and it is priced accordingly. Wild capture is worse: electronic monitoring is a regulatory obligation whose buyer is a fleet owner already resisting the cost. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 1143 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Managers in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture One industry 93.1%

Fishing vessel masters and fishermen/women One industry 92.4%

Workers in agriculture and fishing occupations One industry 88.9%

Agriculture, horticulture and harvesting labourers and related occupations One industry 85.4%

Logging machinery operators One industry 81.9%

Logging and forestry workers Mostly one sector 61.5%

Contractors and supervisors, agriculture, horticulture and related operations and services Mostly one sector 16.3%

Managers in natural resources production and fishing Mostly one sector 12.5%

Logging, forestry, landscaping and other related labourers Mostly one sector 6.5%

Tourism and amusement services occupations Mostly one sector 6.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 14.2%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 3%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 1.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 1.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 1.4%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 1.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 1%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 1%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 91% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →