Future Wildlife Managers, hopefully future Hunters.

[406LIFE]

This past Sunday I was invited to be part of a new program being developed by Delta Waterfowl, The Wildlife Society, MTFWP, and the University of Montana. The idea is to offer hunting instruction and hunting trips to students who are in a wildlife management program (future decision makers) but have never hunted before. With everything that is surrounding R3 and hunter decline, this is a really good idea. A lot of push is to get kids into hunting, which we should certainly be doing. But there should be other prongs to our approach and reaching millennials, who could start hunting and pumping PR dollars in the system now, is also worthwhile. Since my passion is adult onset hunters, I jumped at the chance to help. The first half of the day was classroom with waterfowl ID, basic duck hunting strategies, and specifically layout blinds. Then they were guests at the local trap and skeet club where they received instruction on mounting, point vs aim, and live fire on the skeet range. In December they will be hunting geese out of layouts in Forsyth.

The plan is to scale this up next year and expand into other areas, spring bear, turkey, archery. The response from the students was excitement and positive. They had twice as many applicants as they could take. That kind of interest is very good for our future state agencies and hunting being part of their tool set in management.

We talk a lot about R3 and what we need to do to keep our traditions and this is a great and easy way to get involved. If the traditional hunter ed isnt for you, maybe a program like this can be.

 

[JLS]

Cool stuff. I wish this type of program was more prevalent.

 

[Irrelevant]

Great idea. Hats off for making the time to be a part of it.

Mind me asking who's the instructor in the bottom two photos? I don't know a ton of Montanans but he sure looks like one I do.

 

[TrickyTross]

So cool man! Our BHA board just helped for the 2nd year doing a similar thing with NC State BHA and NC Wildlife Resource Commission! A great tool for sure!

 

[Hunting Wife]

US Fish and Wildlife has offered a similar course for employees for a few years now.

The R3 aspect is good, but to me the greater importance is educating the new wildlife professionals on one of the major tools in their toolbox, in this new era where they have zero understanding and sometimes a negative perception of that tool before they get a job.

The Wildlife Society has been much more engaged with both hunting and trapping lately, and putting out lots of positive articles. I’m liking the direction they’ve been going.

 

[Nick87]

That's great! Delta is a great organization as well!

 

[kenton]

Awesome

 

[Sytes]

Fantastic approach to a future necessity~!

 

[Doublecluck]

Awesome, y’all ever need another decoy spread, some blinds, or someone to put some birds on the deck and in the face of some new hunters gimme a call.