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EVENTS
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Hunter
Safety Certification Course
Sanctioned
By Texas Parks & Wildlife
 Jim
Gardner (Texas Hunter Safety Instructor and pilot for the Texas Farm
Bureau) invited me to participate in the Texas Hunter Education program
put on by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept. that is held in Waco, Texas.
I know Jim from the Wildlife
Alliance for Youth event and Texas Parks & Wildlife Department's
Youth
Shooting Sports Events. He is one of the hard working volunteer workers
who does everything he can to help introduce wildlife conservation, the
shooting sports, and hunting to tomorrow's hunters.
My job at the event was to cover the archery and bowhunting parts of the state's program. I phoned Brent Jones, the Bosque Bowhunters president and asked if he want to help out also. He did. July 10 - First Session
Jim Gardner headed up the program. He welcomed everyone and distributing
the Texas Hunter Education Manual and course materials. Jim introduced
the topic of Hunter education and cited it as a movement to improve hunting.
Today there are Hunter Education programs in all 50 states and over 22
million people have graduated from state programs since 1949. In Texas
everyone who was born after 1971 must have the certification so they can
legally hunt.
The sportsman's role as a Wildlife Management tool was introduced. In the early 1900's laws were passed with the intention of protecting wildlife. Deer and other animals were protected by law, people could not hunt them, but predators such as bears, wolves and mountain lions were annihilated by government hunters. Arizona soon saw their mule deer herd explode from 4,000 to over 100,000. In 1924 and 1925 heavy snows food shortages 50,000 deer died of starvation and disease. Similar die-offs occurred in Pennsylvania and many other states. Wildlife managers learned from these disasters. Nature's way is to produce surplus wildlife each year. That way enough of them will survive to reproduce the following year. More babies are born than will survive. And when excessive populations occur disease and starvation follow. Wise management allows hunters to be a tool to control the harvest of the surplus and keep the herd healthy. Then Jim showed a short movie about Hunter Safety & Responsibility. One of the issues the movie addressed was that we are in a new era for hunting. Today, only 10% of the population hunts, 80% are unconcerned or disinterested, and the remaining 10% is against it. The people who oppose hunting are led by groups which are well organized and funded. And they are aggressively working to ban hunting by legal means. Generally, hunters are not part of an organization but every hunter can still do their part by representing hunting positively when they are around the 80% that don't hunt. The movie showed some good, as well as bad, examples. A bad ones was two successful hunters in a restaurant. Their graphic descriptions of their kills leaves the folks eating around them wide eyed, especially the elderly ladies sitting at the next table. It was a point well made. Following the movie the first meeting ended. Brent Jones and I return Thursday and do the Bowhunting part of the program. NEXT: Day 2, Archery,
Bowhunting & Primitive Arms
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