Hunter Education changes

[Special T]

NB you are right, unfortunately... Many other states promote hunting, so I guess its just wishful thinking... I mean more hunters could mean more $$$, bigger budgets, and a well manged animal population....

[lokidog]

"A variety of firarms with different features for the student to experience is far better training than only seeing five guns by the same manufacturer."

This, to me, is the key part of why this is a bad idea.  It makes me wonder who is getting kickbacks from the company that will supply the non-functioning guns to the Dept.? 

Many HS students do not grow up in hunting households and many did not even grow up in a house where guns were present.  These are the students that will lose the most by not being able to see/handle a wide variety of firearms in a controlled classroom setting.  It is not as much of an issue in a house like JLS's or my own where the kids have grown up learning about firearm safety.

It appears, by looking at the previously posted requirements for firearms training, that a private group should be able to administer a hunter/firearm safety class as long as when tested, the students can demonstrate that they meet the state's expectations.  Maybe the state needs some competition? 

[JLS]

Regardless of the type of action, or whether a firearm is fully functional vs. inert, the four basic rules of firearm safety never change.  I honestly don't care of Little Johnny next door sees a Marlin lever action .22, so long as he learns and strictly obeys the four rules.

If I give a kid a gun he or she has never seen before, and that kid obeys all four rules, there should be no issue in talking them through how to work the firearm.  I care that they keep their finger of the trigger and show safe muzzle control.

Law enforcement professionals use inert firearms for training exercises all the time. I teach with "red guns" and don't feel I've lowered myself because of it.

I am not saying that exposure to many different makes/models is a bad thing.  I don't see it as a huge issue in the grand scheme of things.  Your mileage may vary.

[ghosthunter]

Regardless of the type of action, or whether a firearm is fully functional vs. inert, the four basic rules of firearm safety never change.  I honestly don't care of Little Johnny next door sees a Marlin lever action .22, so long as he learns and strictly obeys the four rules.

If I give a kid a gun he or she has never seen before, and that kid obeys all four rules, there should be no issue in talking them through how to work the firearm.  I care that they keep their finger of the trigger and show safe muzzle control.

Law enforcement professionals use inert firearms for training exercises all the time. I teach with "red guns" and don't feel I've lowered myself because of it.

I am not saying that exposure to many different makes/models is a bad thing.  I don't see it as a huge issue in the grand scheme of things.  Your mileage may vary.

Law enforcemet and military do not train 7 year olds.

[ghosthunter]

If the state is so afraid of this it might be time for them to get out of Hunter Ed and let private contractors do the instruction.

[Cascade_fisher]

I agree with GH.  LEO and military training is for older people.  The young children in HE would not benefit from RED guns as that would, in my opinion, keep the video game aspect of the gun in their mind which is a key component to dismiss.  Real firearms have that mystique which holds their attention. 

[Special T]

I think the WDFW may also be missing a key part to there plan... VOLUNTEERS do things for many different reason, not all of them are for Master hunter hours. People volunteer for organisations like Boyscouts, sports, 4H, and other things for a wide variety or reasons. The main one is ususally family or your own kids. So if you give your time away for a reason other than your kids or family, you likely feel quite passionately about what you do. My guess is that the WDFW decision makers have not thought this through very well. My hope would be that instructoer that feel strongly make their feelings known BEFORE the WDFW makes up its mind. 

[ghosthunter]

I agree with GH.  LEO and military training is for older people.  The young children in HE would not benefit from RED guns as that would, in my opinion, keep the video game aspect of the gun in their mind which is a key component to dismiss.  Real firearms have that mystique which holds their attention.

Well said

[buckfvr]

They will continue to push us in different directions to fragment us as a group, eventually making it easier to just end it all........

[ICEMAN]

CF In understand where you are coming from... The WDFW seems to not pay attention to the slow demise of the sport due to recruitment. Do you think they would pay more attention to a large scale walk off?

I don't think that is necessarily the best course of action, however how do we get OUR WDFW to recognise our needs as hunters?  I feel a strange disconnect between me the hunter, and the organisation WDFW that is managing and "promoting" our sport.  I am often at a loss how we can send them a loud clear message that they will listen to for more than just one second, on one issue...

I worry about this too. The last thing I personally want to see is a mass "up yours" to wildlife, with herds of instructors deciding to sit it out or quit altogether. You instructors are the life blood of our sport, awfully patient and exercise the utmost of diplomacy IMHO. I cringe at the thought of longtime instructors hanging up their vests.

The "we know better than you" attitude from WDFW on this is maddening. Risk management teaches us to weigh the associated quantitative risk associated with any task. My fear is that their risk assessment has been fused with political bias, allowing this bias to contaminate the resulting changes; the end of functional guns in the classroom. 

Why would a school district ever allow kids to play sports, or a playground be installed at a school? Baseball has kids throwing a hard ball directly at each other. Ever go to a track meet and watch a javelin or discus throw? Imagine how wildlifes mentality would change this.  How many kids have dropped dead from heart failure as they round second base? Nationally, how many kids have been killed in an automobile accident on their way to firearms instruction class? For safety sake maybe the classes can be eliminated altogether and turned into an online resource? (Of course I am kidding.)

My point is that life does have it's risks. I still hold that safety is the point of the class for a reason. That to properly teach safety, there is no better way than to hand a real gun to a child, and let the instructor do their job, not to pretend that they are teaching about it.

[Bob33]

"Why would a school district ever allow kids to play sports, or a playground be installed at a school? Baseball has kids throwing a hard ball directly at each other. Ever go to a track meet and watch a javelin or discus throw? Imagine how wildlifes mentality would change this.  How many kids have dropped dead from heart failure as they round second base? Nationally, how many kids have been killed in an automobile accident on their way to firearms instruction class? For safety sake maybe the classes can be eliminated altogether and turned into an online resource? (Of course I am kidding.)"

Unfortunately our society does not view all deaths as equal.  Hundreds if not thousands of Americas die everyday from automobiles, forks, sports injuries, and all sorts of other causes, and yet go unnoticed except by a few.  However, a single death by a firearm gets national attention.  The "if it saves just one life" line is a crock, because they really don't mean it.  It's only "if it saves a single death by something I don' t like".

The shooting of a the hiker by the 14 year old bear hunter a few years ago had far reaching effects on the view of hunting and hunters by many.

The "devils advocate" argument about this issue will be something like this: if you are given responsibility to teach a group of individuals how to safely handle firearms, and yet you do not have functioning fireams to work with, are you not creative enough or capable enough to do so?

I understand why there is a concern.  Firearms must be handled with extreme caution.  In my opinion the solution should not be a complete ban on working firearms, but rather a reasoned set of policies and guidelines that reduce potential risks to a very low level yet provide students with appropriate learning experiences.  I'm convinced that is possible to achieve.

[danderson]

   I have been a certified hunter education instructor for 9 years and lead instructor for the last 6,  we have a great teaching team that combined has around 50 years experience teaching hunter education, theres one thing that everyone can agree on and that is we don't like change, if its not broken don't mess with it, our classes are full of excited  Young adults wanting to learn safe gun handling skills and practices, and everything else that goes into the required content of the class, we have the local wildlife enforcement officer attend our class and he helps instruct the wildlife laws, rules bag limits etc. section of the required elements, and of coarse has his service weapon, another one of my instructors is a state patrolman, he also carries his, I had a federal agent as an instructor for a few years, if there on duty of coarse they have a firearm. For a few years we held our class in a school, that had a zero tolerance for guns, we were allowed to bring guns into the school because of the importance of education, we need to educate young people on the safe handling of firearms and what better way is to expose them to lots of different models, rifles, handguns, shotguns, and actions, what a concept, it works theres nothing to fix.
   The new on-line  registration process for students is in effect this year and I have some real issues with the overall process, its real confusing,, my students are having a hard time with it , my class enrollment is way down because of it and I blame the new computer on-line process for this, again if its not broken don't mess with it, not everyone has access to a computer. We instructors volunteer our time to teaching because we want to pass on our skills to a new generation, and without new generations of educated hunters we loose.
   We will adopt to the new format and registration process whatever it ends up being because were not willing to throw in the towel not yet, knowing how the state operates and the fact that changing times with everything going to electronic computerized gizmo's for getting anything done these days is the future, but don't throw out everything that's worked in the past.

[ghosthunter]

   I have been a certified hunter education instructor for 9 years and lead instructor for the last 6,  we have a great teaching team that combined has around 50 years experience teaching hunter education, theres one thing that everyone can agree on and that is we don't like change, if its not broken don't mess with it, our classes are full of excited  Young adults wanting to learn safe gun handling skills and practices, and everything else that goes into the required content of the class, we have the local wildlife enforcement officer attend our class and he helps instruct the wildlife laws, rules bag limits etc. section of the required elements, and of coarse has his service weapon, another one of my instructors is a state patrolman, he also carries his, I had a federal agent as an instructor for a few years, if there on duty of coarse they have a firearm. For a few years we held our class in a school, that had a zero tolerance for guns, we were allowed to bring guns into the school because of the importance of education, we need to educate young people on the safe handling of firearms and what better way is to expose them to lots of different models, rifles, handguns, shotguns, and actions, what a concept, it works theres nothing to fix.
   The new on-line  registration process for students is in effect this year and I have some real issues with the overall process, its real confusing,, my students are having a hard time with it , my class enrollment is way down because of it and I blame the new computer on-line process for this, again if its not broken don't mess with it, not everyone has access to a computer. We instructors volunteer our time to teaching because we want to pass on our skills to a new generation, and without new generations of educated hunters we loose.
   We will adopt to the new format and registration process whatever it ends up being because were not willing to throw in the towel not yet, knowing how the state operates and the fact that changing times with everything going to electronic computerized gizmo's for getting anything done these days is the future, but don't throw out everything that's worked in the past.

I agree with your concept. I have accepted all the changes over 17 years and made them work for me. And I cannot think of another change that riles me more than No Working Fireams in class. I have made the on line work but you are right students call me all the time about trouble with it. I refer everyone to the dept. Because they created it they should handle the problems with it. Instructors who are teaching in rual areas may not have the problems but anyone along I-5 gets a lot of Students wanting in. I turn folks away every class. And Dan Boes has said that he gets a larger volume of requests for Skagit Classes than any other.
I too taught in schools, senior center,sporting goods store, never ever a problem with working arms. And with the exception of  one guy in this state who couldnt hold up his end there has been no problem.
They are running from shadows and that dosent sit well with most gun guys. They could have handled this with a lighter hand as far as policy. No working firearms is over kill in my opinion and I can  not work under it.
There are guys like you that will. But sooner or later a unnessary change will come along and you will have had enough. I have two grandsons to get thru. If they hold off till July 2013 for full impelment of this policy I will be able to get one of my boys through. After that I will not step into a hunter ed class again except to get my 2nd grandson through.
They could have saved all the money they spent . You can buy five straw brooms for gun handling for $30.00. I am not teaching with a $300.00 clubb.

[ghosthunter]

The other problem is that there are key instructors in any county. Who have teaching teams. Many of the team will not put on a class. They are there one or two sessions. If chief instructors call it quits it could very easily equal several instructors.
For me I have put my team on notice. They will make their own minds up. But right now it looks like half and half

[woodswalker]

I see this potentially as making the classes less educational as well is making the instructor's job more difficult.
I dont know what happened to my lengthy post back about page 3...

But the short version is that i have more than 5 kids at a time in the field course.  Usually have 3-4 groups of 3 outside with another minimum of 3 students on the handling drill stations - EACH of which has a selection of rifles and shotguns to cover all the action types....on the days when i have heavy student handling usage I have no less than 25 of MY guns on deck as well as a few from other instuctors..  Most of those are MINE, many purchased solely for the HE classes but some that i use regularly for myself.

I cant imagine the bottleneck and strangulation of the class flow with 1-2 sets of finely machined clubs.  I have purchased or made up a comprehensive set of dummy rounds for every caliber represented (kids will have 300 Savage, .308, 30-06 and 7/8mm dummy cartridges in one dish for the handling drills where they identify the caliber and ammo...and firearms in those calibers too.)  I want the kids to HAVE the similar calibers and have to READ the chambering information from the firearm and also the HEADSTAMP.

The electronic signups have impacted class sizes as has the demise of the hardware and sporting goods stores locally (who used to handle signups for alternating classes and sell licenses and tags) and I dont see things getting any better.

I'm seriously considering sitting this out a bit and NOT being a chief instructor for a while.  Just teach some segments and go home.  Or just hang it up all together.  The tighter the noose on teaching methods it gets, the less fun and spontaneous the classes...and more boring for the students. I'm waiting for us to have to teach the book in chapter order and basically read it out loud to the class.  I'll be quit for sure then.

I'm not sure how to make Oly LISTEN to the instructors, they sure have seemed tone deaf since Mik and Tom left...Dan is decent about most things and Chuck on the east side is pretty cool to work with..but still...we seem to have no real voice.