Real Hunter Education

Wisconsin should develop a new hunters safety program that requires all hunters to take it. This includes all of the older hunters who were born before 1973 that previously never had to take hunters safety. The new program also should require kids to be at least 12 years of age, and it should have a pass fail ratio closer to that of taking your driver’s test.
The way it is now everyone passes on their first try. Hunter safety participants only have to go through 10 hours of class. So kids just show up to class with their phones, text most of the time, and hardly listen to what is going on. The little work that has to be done is sometimes done by their parents and that is unacceptable. It is the paperwork that counts in the hunters safety program now. All they have to do is pass a written test. So everyone always passes the coarse. Everything can’t be taught through a book. It is the hands on experience that people learn best from.
In order to make this coarse harder there should be a field examination. Yes there is a field exam now, but its only about a 20 min walk through of what it is like to physically have a gun in their hands. Kids are constantly doing things wrong during this and nothing is done about it. There needs to be way more time spent outside so people can participate in hands on activities. Then there needs to be a graded field test and points should be deducted for mistakes just like the driver’s test.
Kids under 12 should not be allowed to hunt whether they are with a parent or not. They are just too young to have a deadly weapon in their possession. They don’t have the real life experience to be aware of the consequences of what could happen after they pull the trigger. In today’s age, kids learn from playing video games, and young kids are used to having a restart button when they screw up. But once that gun goes off it is permanent.
Hunters that didn’t have to take hunters safety before because they were “old” enough when the DNR came up with the idea of hunters safety should still have to take it. Just because your old it doesn’t mean anything. A lot of older hunters are still hunting using unsafe methods that they learned from their fathers before hunters safety was even thought of. Now these harmful ways of hunting are being taught to this generation.
2 years ago a man mistook his own grandson for deer, and shot him. I have no idea how you mistake some body for a deer. Some people just shoot at anything that moves. This is why the older age class of hunters needs to take this new hunters safety coarse.
There is going to be some people that disagree with this new hunters safety program. The older hunters aren’t going to like that they have to take this new coarse. We’ve been hunting for years their going to say. The truth of the matter is that the younger generations are learning from them, by watching them, and listening to their stories. Then the younger age classes go out in the field and repeat what they have seen and heard. The older people grew up without things like harnesses that keep you from falling out of the tree. So when grandpa doesn’t wear his harness and little Jonny sees him not wearing one Jonny goes out the next day and doesn’t wear his, and falls out of his tree stand who’s fault is it?