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Wildlife and
the Outdoors
Mentoring Young Hunters – Returning to a Path Less
Traveled
By Bill Gray,
Supervising Wildlife Biologist
For some time
now, state wildlife agencies and private
conservation groups have focused much attention on
the recruiting and retention of hunters. Naturally,
this effort has been focused on youngsters who,
according to demographic data, still provide a
window of opportunity for introduction and
initiation into the hunting fraternity (or sorority
if you prefer). Events such as the Alabama
Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’
Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries (WFF) Division’s
youth dove hunts have been successful in providing
opportunity for many first time hunters for many
years. Collectively, state agencies and their
private conservation allies have done an admirable
job of exposing first time hunters to the societal,
personal, and resource associated benefits of
hunting. Individually, many hunters, the author
included, have not done such a good job of mentoring
and meeting the rudimentary needs of first time
hunters. In my estimation, the real culprits in this
failure are the lack of time and deer hunting.
We live in
a busy world. For as much as we all lament the
lack of adequate time, we somehow manage to find
the time to participate in the things that are
important to us. Where we have erred most
egregiously is in our failure to truly recognize
the vital importance of bringing new hunters
into the fold. It is not enough to give an
afternoon here and there to some organized
hunting or shooting event. While we may feel
good about the “sacrifice” we’ve made, the few
and far between hunting excursion is hardly
sufficient to ignite the kind of fire that burns
in all who consider themselves hunters.
It is
foolish to believe that our own children, those
born into hunting families and immersed in
hunting cultures, can sufficiently replace
ourselves as the next generation of hunters.
While the overwhelming majority of these
children may indeed be hunters – there are
thousands of other youths who, without
deliberate effort on our part, will never be
counted among those who consider themselves
hunters. Though our time is jealously guarded,
we must resolve to find at least one boy or girl
and give them a fair chance at discovering a
world and a way of life that is sadly, and at
great societal cost, disappearing before our
very eyes. As a hunter, it is our obligation to
make the time necessary to shepherd at least one
youngster (not our own) through the long journey
required to stir and transform the soul into
that of one who, as Leopold stated, “cannot live
without wild things and wild places.”
The making
of a hunter is a progression of steps and
experiences fostered under the watchful eye of a
mentor. In my own experience, such a mentor is
credited with taking an inexperienced boy and
patiently suffering through my lack of
knowledge, clumsiness, and general wide-eyed
obliviousness. I progressed from vine shaker to
shotgun caddy and finally, to squirrel hunter,
in the course of one hunting season. This took
place over the course of dozens of hunting
trips, not a single cookie-cutter “event”. From
the onset, I was part of a band or one might
even say a tribe. It was acceptance into and
initiation through the strata of this tribe that
stirred in me, the soul of a hunter. Within this
framework I assumed the lowliest of roles as a
vine shaker and finally earned the right to sit
alone with my shotgun, assuming the role as an
equal in the tribe as a squirrel hunter. I
learned how to clean and cook squirrels as well
as other game. I learned how to always be safe
with a gun in my hands. I learned how to
properly clean a gun. I learned that I was a
hunter and I could not foresee a time when my
desire to hunt would ever wane.
I would
imagine that most hunters aged 35 and older
became hunters in much the same way. While their
mentor may have been a father or an uncle, their
journey as a fledgling hunter likely traversed
the same stretch of territory. As I view the
landscape before us today, the impediments to
cultivating young hunters are far more numerous
and challenging. In addition to the lack of
time, an unfortunately disconnected and
urbanized culture is producing youngsters that
have neither appreciation for a land ethic nor
any real sense of what they stand to lose should
they live out their lives as one that doesn’t
hunt.
For many
of us today, our hunting is focused on
white-tail deer. The simple pleasures once
afforded by a 40-acre woodlot have yielded to
pursuit of the wariest of game animals. I have
made my living providing advice on how to grow
big healthy deer with big antlers. For that I am
not ashamed. I am ashamed that I have let my
zeal for this apex quarry seduce me to the point
of neglecting my duty to mentor a new hunter. To
eventually gravitate toward the pursuit of deer
is probably natural in the progression of a
hunter. The means and methods required to
effectively hunt white-tails is anything but
natural to a youngster. There is no need to
examine this incongruity in detail. Anyone who
has taken an eight-year old deer hunting is
painfully aware that sitting perfectly still,
not talking, and not shooting is absolutely not
fun to the typical boy or girl.
While
there are exceptions, the general rule remains
that we will never make hunters from the young
by taking them deer hunting. Deer hunting should
be part of the evolution and not the genesis of
hunting for our youth. First, there must be the
vine shaking and the wonderful smell of gun oil.
They must have someone to teach them, someone to
take them and some place to go. They must be
given the opportunity to belong to a tribe. As a
mentor, we must be willing to forego our
precious time in pursuit of antlers so that some
boy or girl can know the pride of sitting alone
with a shotgun, searching the canopy in hopes of
that first squirrel.
The Alabama
Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
promotes wise stewardship, management and enjoyment
of Alabama’s natural resources through five
divisions: Marine Police, Marine Resources, State
Parks, State Lands, and Wildlife and Freshwater
Fisheries.
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