HUNTERS CONNECT - A new platform for new hunters

[dirtclod Az.]

thatsjet...No hunter Education?I have taken 4 Hunter Ed. courses over the years and recently finished an
online course.Online course was by far the most informative.I'm suprised in this day and age they allowed you
To buy a Hunting Licence without taking one.
P.S.-Hunter Ed. courses Are Not Full of Kids.

 

[kenton]

I have to disagree. My guess is prior father/son, father/daughter, grandfather/uncle/etc/child exposure to hunting has the single highest correlation to life long hunting and the advocacy and activities that follow. Sure it take longer for that seed to grow vs grabbing some 35 year old off the street, but that family bond around the outdoors is much more powerful and longstanding than an individual’s personal interest of the moment.

But in the end, I do not think of it as an A OR B question. It is an A AND B question. We need both. We need to help onboard adult onset outdoorsman/woman while still promoting youth outdoor activities. And I use the term outdoors purposefully, I find that a person who loves fishing or camping or hiking is more likely to also see the joy of archery or rifle hunting. Some may go from paved parking lot to great hunter, but many take a more meandering journey that began with a general love for engaging the outdoors.

I 100% agree with every single word of this.

My point was why are youth hunters counted in hunting participation numbers? I looked up the numbers and found that I was wrong. The 2016 survey counted hunting participation as 16 years and older. I thought it was 6 years and older which they did count but wasn't included in the participation statistics. My bad.

 

[HuntTalk Freak]

Seen the YouTube video this morning and liked the Facebook page. I myself didn’t really start hunting until my late twenties. I had a uncle that took me camping and small game hunting when I was a kid but he himself only killed maybe two deer in his life; he died while I was still in grade school.

My father took me deer hunting but was a poacher, drug addict and overall deadbeat. When I was seventeen I shot my first doe and had to figure out how to gut her....after gut shooting her. I didn’t hunt again for a decade.

I started hunting again on my best friends family ranch after he took over operations. Killed a young eight pointer my first day out and was hooked! My free time has revolved around hunting ever since, I turn 39 soon. I’ve killed around twenty deer since, hundreds of hogs, dove, one turkey, rabbits and squirrels. Learned how to process and cook them.

The best man at my wedding this year was a guy I met through a gun forum that wanted to learn to hunt. I took him on his first few hunts and was there when he killed his first buck, same for his son too. We are lifelong friends now.

I’ve made some great friends taking people on their first hunts and teaching them what I’ve learned the hard way through trial, error, frustration and tears.

I intend to keep helping others and intend to do so through this platform. I myself am still new to hunting as I’m doing my first western hunt this year and learning new species and terrain.

 

[dirtclod Az.]

Seen the YouTube video this morning and liked the Facebook page. I myself didn’t really start hunting until my late twenties. I had a uncle that took me camping and small game hunting when I was a kid but he himself only killed maybe two deer in his life; he died while I was still in grade school.

My father took me deer hunting but was a poacher, drug addict and overall deadbeat. When I was seventeen I shot my first doe and had to figure out how to gut her....after gut shooting her. I didn’t hunt again for a decade.

I started hunting again on my best friends family ranch after he took over operations. Killed a young eight pointer my first day out and was hooked! My free time has revolved around hunting ever since, I turn 39 soon. I’ve killed around twenty deer since, hundreds of hogs, dove, one turkey, rabbits and squirrels. Learned how to process and cook them.

The best man at my wedding this year was a guy I met through a gun forum that wanted to learn to hunt. I took him on his first few hunts and was there when he killed his first buck, same for his son too. We are lifelong friends now.

I’ve made some great friends taking people on their first hunts and teaching them what I’ve learned the hard way through trial, error, frustration and tears.

I intend to keep helping others and intend to do so through this platform. I myself am still new to hunting as I’m doing my first western hunt this year and learning new species and terrain.

Good on you,we need more hunters/mentors like yourself.Keep up the good work!

 

[dirtclod Az.]

Went through my first Hunter Safety coourse at 11yrs and 10 months.Legally
in Az. you had to be 12yrs old to hunt.They made me take the course over again at 12yrs old.
AND my Dad was the Instructor.Still had to take the course a second time.(missed the hunting season that year.)
But we digress lets get back to Hunters Connect clharr is on the right track.

 

[HuntTalk Freak]

Went through my first Hunter Safety coourse at 11yrs and 10 months.Legally
in Az. you had to be 12yrs old to hunt.They made me take the course over again at 12yrs old.
AND my Dad was the Instructor.Still had to take the course a second time.(missed the hunting season that year.)
But we digress lets get back to Hunters Connect clharr is on the right track.

I took my hunters safety class when I was 26. It was more enjoyable than attending college in my thirties that’s for damn sure.

 

[dirtclod Az.]

Hunters Safety in Cal. was 50% safety and 50% conservation,really an enjoyable experience.

 

[JTHOMP]

Going to check out the videos when I get off work this evening. Sounds like a great idea, and hope to see small game incorporated as well. I just recently became a hunter ed instructor. Definitely seems like a good idea to have an adult focused hunter ed course. Something that is a little more hands on, and talks about conservation to an audience likely to retain the information more than a group of young teens and preteens.

 

[dirtclod Az.]

JTHOMP don't know how it is now but back in the 80's,mixed bag of 20 somethings and teens.Some mid-aged.
What are you seeing in the classes?Most seem to think it's youngsters only nowdays'.

 

[iiiNelson]

Over the last year we have been helping the International Hunters Education Association build a digital platform to communicate with new hunters. The premise of the idea is based on what I try to explain below.

We hear R3 a lot; recruit, retain, reactivate. Tons of money is being spent on these three efforts.

We do a good job of recruiting. We bring 650-700K new student into Hunter Education each year. That far outpaces the number of hunters leaving the ranks each year.

The downfall comes with retaining these new recruits. Depending on the state your survey, over half of hunter ed graduates may never buy a license. And in some states, 90% of them are out of hunting within five years. To spend so much time and effort, with so little long-term recruitment, is not acceptable.

The platform we have helped with is designed for the new hunter who has taken the online course, usually 30% of Hunter Education grads, with that percentage taking online courses growing each year. Those folks are mostly older, mostly come from a non-mentored environment, usually less rural, and have a lot of comfort absorbing information from digital platforms. That makes this group of people perfect for reaching with digital content.

The content is very basic. We who have grown up in a hunting culture take for granted the mass of important information we have acquired via osmosis. Just being raised in a hunting environment, going on trips as a youngster, hearing stories, have given us a lot of information that a new hunter has to gather from scratch. So, the old gray hairs like me will find much of this content to be too basic to retain our interest.

My experience, and that of most people I talk to, finds that we lose a lot of these non-mentored hunters due to lack of basic information. They have raised their hands and self-identified that they want to learn about hunting. Yet, we have not yet found ways to lower the hurdles for this increasing segment of the recruited hunter population.

Hunters Connect is an effort to do that. It won't solve all the problems, but it will hopefully give new hunters information that lowers some of the hurdles, especially new hunters coming through online hunter education and lacking a mentored situation.

Here is a link to a video with an overview.

I know many on here are already active in hunter education, some formally and some informally. If you know a new hunter who might benefit from this basic content I hope you would share. If you want to help build the momentum for this digital platform, you can subscribe to any of the Hunters Connect platforms below.

Website - https://huntered.com/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDCcFMYiqO4LOruabbqVQJg

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/huntersconnect/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/huntersconnect/


If you have content ideas for these new Hunter Ed grads, we would love to hear them. We have a long list, with a new video coming out every Monday morning. We would like to add to that list the information most helpful to these new online Hunter Education graduates.

The reality is that someone like myself is likely a key target audience. Ive has the big for some year but situations have delayed me getting into the woods in any meaningful way but shows like Fresh Tracks, MeatEater, Solo Hntr, The Hunt, etc. have pushed me to get more serious about taking the HunterEd course which I ironically just bookmarked the other day with the intentional of song this weekend most likely. Also there are R3 programs like Field to Fork in the state I live in (Kentucky) that are doing a great job of planting the big in the ears of many adults.

I grew up fishing most of my life and went on a couple hunting trips with my grandfather and uncle (somits not a completely foreign concept for me) but was too young to actually shoot something back then. I’m an avid gun enthusiast/collector and I’ve had a growing interest in big game, bird, and possibly even certain types of small game hunting as well. I imagine that it’s a skill that I’d like to pass onto my children. Seeing many of the documentaries that are out there and what is done in some meat processing plants - well that’ll make you want to go the original free range and organic route to meat sustenance for your family.

I will “co-sign” what others have said about the relational aspect being key to expansion of the outdoors and sporting world. Thinking back over my adult life (12 years in the military and 8 years contracting) I’ve only been invited on a hunting trip twice (duck hunting) from someone outside of my family (and just last week by a current co-worker that lives down in Florida). I couldn’t go on the dick trip because of a prior engagement I needed to attend... but I’m seriously am considering a trip down to Florida for sure (assuming the wife signs off on me being gone for upwards of a week or so).

One of the barriers I feel is in fact the mentorship element missing and the comfort level of going into the woods with firearms with a nearly complete stranger. Ideally the mentorship can start 6+ months before the hunt to either grab a drink, ensure the rifle is sighted in properly for someone unfamiliar with shooting, and to just get to know one another to make sure that y’all would want to even hang out together in the woods or a blind. The reality is that I have many friends and family (we’ve even talked about purchasing some land to make into our own little hunting grounds) that have an interest but just weren’t taught the skills or grew up in big cities where hunting was seen more as a luxury excursion more than a way of life. I’ll definitely pass on the information to them as I think they’ll enjoy the videos and will help them get going in the right direction.

 

[kansasdad]

(I have intentionally added to this thread with my story of mentoring "A" to getting her first deer. It seems to me that the previous discussions were worth reading by the folks who might have missed it, and for the onslaught of new HuntTalkers to get a chance to read and think about how all of us might keep hunting alive by assisting new folks discover the benefits we enjoy with hunting.)


Last night we came so close....."A" was lining up the shot on a broadside doe 90 yards down the foodplot, as my phone alarm sounded that legal shooting light was over. At the sound of the alarm, 5 other deer started bounding away, thumbing their collective noses at us with their white flags waving. The target doe stood still for a few moments longer. "A" wanted so badly to be the first person in her family to get a deer, but she knew that we were going to not shoot outside of safe and legal parameters.

Aiming practice



Back at the house with the other youth hunters and their mentors, story sharing commenced over some steak chili with homemade chocolate chip cookies. I shared that my most memorable moment happened about an hour before the end of the Saturday hunt when we watching a couple of deer across a cut corn field. The lead doe turned just enough that the waning evening sun caught her white throat patch and she lit up like a Christmas wreath. With a gasp and a WOW, "A" said, and I thought, "what a beautiful sight".

The Outdoors Mentors organization sponsoring this hunt had arranged for a second opportunity to get it done if the youngster wanted to have another crack at it on Sunday morning and "A" said she wanted to give it a go.

We met at O'dark thirty at the base of operations and put our gear into the pickup truck for a lift to the drop off spot for the walk to the blind. Walking down the Kansas prairie under a half moon and fully starred sky, the red light of my headlight was enough for us to find our way towards the "foodplot blind". Stealth mode fully engaged, we made in into the ground blind without hearing any blowing deer announcing predators in the darkness. Setting up our chairs "A" told me that normally she is scared to go out into the dark, but this morning was not a scary time for her.

As legal shooting time slowly ground into nearness, we pulled down the blind shades, just enough to observe the lightening from the east. We had already heard two owl species hooting, coyotes, and spotted far off deer possibly in view of the blind to our west. A part of the winter flock of turkeys had roost-gobbled up and down the watershed. While I had binoculars up and scanning to the cut corn field, I heard "A" say WOAH! A deer had come out of the woods 25 yards downwind from our blind, and bolted down the green foodplot fast enough that I never saw it before it made the far tree line. "A" got a good case of the shakes from seeing this closeup deer.

Sharp eyes



"A" saw the group of deer down a level from our foodplot. They were tangentially headed our way, and then they cut into the woods. Watching with binoculars, we could see them eating and moving on the other side of the creek, heading up the slightly sloped field. Three deer moved across the far field, and then crossed over into the furthest field, all the while the clock was ticking, and the golden hour had passed.

Hope rose again as I spotted the trio of deer on the other side of the nearest treeline, and I thought that perhaps they were heading back to bed, and might be using the same general path they had previously walked. Five, then ten, then fifteen minutes passed, and still no deer. We had pre-arranged that 9 a.m. would be the end of the hunt, and it was 8:57. Dennis, the program leader on this farm had just texted me asking if we were done hunting. I was in the process of replying that we had had a great morning, but indeed we were finished.

"A" said "there they are!" Two deer had emerged from the trees into the lower field, and were feeding and moving into the cornfield. I asked "A" if she wanted to try, as it was obvious that this was not going to be a 40 yard chip shot. I had taken off my ear protection, and was getting ready to start gathering my gear so we went into scramble mode just a bit. Previously I had seen some classic buck fever shaking and breathing, but this time she was all business. We moved the shooting stick over, and I told her that if the deer were within 150 yards, and she felt rock solid, she should take the shot. I suggested that she should hold an inch or two high and asked her to wait as I ranged the deer. 143 yards.

"Are you steady?

"Yep"

"Squeeze it when you are sure"

I put my fingers into my ears......watching the bigger and easier to see doe......BOOM!

Immediate drop, and twitching hind legs!

"Where did she go?"

"Dropped right there"

I asked her to load another one into the chamber.

"A" asked more than once...."She went straight down?"

"Yes, I replied. Great shot". Double fist bump. As we watched where she had dropped, we saw twitching legs. I reminded her that even mortally wounded deer will often move more than 100 yards before collapsing.

"Are you sure she is dead".

"We need to go make sure, and tag her to be legal"

On our first walk in the previous afternoon "A" told me that she had several goals for her hunt. She wanted to make sure the deer didn't suffer, and she wanted to get a mature deer.

The doe was as big as I had thought she would be when we got there, so I was happy to tell her she had met both of her goals. More fist bumps, and some photos. Quite a prolonged stroking of the deer, and I almost said out loud a la Big Fin...."thank you Mrs deer". I got to help her punch down through the skin over the hock (both bucks and does in Kansas get their tags applied here) and made sure that her carcass tag was properly completed.





The ground was firm enough that the pickup was able to pull right up to her, and Dennis and I grunted a little (ok,ok, I grunted quite a bit!) to get her up onto the tailgate. More fist bumps, and the first of many congratulations texts started coming into this newly minted middle school deer hunter.

Processing took place back at the headquarters of the farm where a hoist was used to field dress this deer while upright. I saw my first ever "Butt-out" in action, used by one of the mentors. It worked as advertised. "A"'s dad wanted to keep the heart and the liver from this very well nourished doe. I had a ziplock baggie for the heart, and a small game bag for the liver. All 3 of the youth hunters gathered around to watch as her entrails were removed, with a fine demonstration and anatomy lesson as well.



I truly enjoyed my time afield with "A". Seeing a serious case of the shakes when we first saw deer, and comparing it to her businesslike approach at shot time showed a lot of courage. Hearing her tell me that the coyotes howling didn't scare her as much as before, and how happy she was that walking in the dark wasn't a big deal meant a lot to me. Hearing her tell her dad that she was happy to be the first person in her family to get a deer was priceless!

PS: Note to self.............308 and 243 cartridges look very very much alike when grabbing a few shells for a hunt with a princess. It behooves one to examine said shells before handing a 308 to a 243 toting princess. (I have switched to an all copper bullet with a nickel case for the 308, but haven't yet run out of cup/core sight-in 308 ammo) Crises averted as it was discovered immediately.

 

[tamps102]

This is really helpful

 

[88man]

I have introduced a bunch of kids into hunting and shooting. Aside from finding a place to hunt most young adults " when they can hunt on there own" really want a hunting partner or hunting friends. Sorta don't see them hunting solo as much. Now most of the adult first time hunters seem to prefer to solo hunt. Just what I have noticed.

 

[bushman13]

Doing my podcast, I've learned three truths about new hunters.
1: It starts from an invitation. Whether its a kid invited by family or an adult invited by friend, neighbor, co-worker, ect. there is always an invitation.
A. I take the dictatorial approach. I simply let them know the airline confirmation number and/or the dates. Less opportunity for wiggle room that way
2: The invitation almost always is initiated by the mentor. Its easier to accept an invitation to go hunting than to ask to be taken hunting and feeling like a burden.
3: Its difficult for an adult to take the in class version of Hunter's Ed. Nobody would be comfortable being the only adult in a class full of children which is a real possibility. That's why the online version becomes more popular every year even though more can be learned from the in class version. We need adult hunter's ed classes.

I have no doubt that these videos will be very well done and informative but the trick is not to start basic, but rather stay basic. Keeping the info basic is easily the hardest part for me and I think video will be no different. I recorded an episode with a guy that I taught and he remembers being amazed at how you even walk different while hunting. I never thought to tell him that but that is how basic the info was that he needed. Now he has a mentee, that im recording an interview with this week and Im curious to see what questions he asked that I never would have thought to give answers to. My point is to find out what new hunters need to know, not just what experienced hunters think that new hunters need to know.

Im very excited to see this content and I applaud everyone involved.

 

[nontyp]

There's an app for that: Powderhook. Lots of mentors available there.

Connecting mentors with mentees, or mentees with mentors, seems to be the challenge. How do you connect individuals in meaningful ways, that build the lasting relationship needed to develop hunting skills over multiple seasons, and then have the mentee eventually become the mentor? Within a family unit, its all organic, Grandfather taught dad, dad teaches son. For AOH, though, it is difficult to break down the barrier to get into someone's circle; and with different styles and personalities, finding a connection is difficult. Two thoughts I have had in connecting the two groups:

1. Get state agencies involved at the hunter ed level. When an AOH comes through, make the mentoring part of the course, and help them connect right there.
2. Find a way for the various NGOs and independents to be able to work together. A onestop shop for a mentee to find resources, and the same for a mentor.

Also, FWIW, I mentor a handful of new hunters each year. Every one of them has come to be via a personal connection; Bob knew Fred wanted to hunt, so he gave him my number. I think its very important to remember how relational and personal hunting is; at some point that is when the deepest learning happens. Moving new hunters from computer screens to fieldtime with an experienced hunter should be an end goal.

I think Powderhook probably has a good concept. I just can’t bring myself to get over the fact that they push canned bird hunts and the owner likes to post pics of himself on canned hunts.