In support of Youth Hunting Originally posted 3/06

May 27, 2006

I was reading Tom Remington’s post over at the Black Bear Blog about Michigan’s bill to lower the hunting age from 14 to 12. http://mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/?p=403
This is important to encourage young folks to participate in the sport. Currently there are 20 states that are considered family friendly for hunting according to NSSF. [quote] Lawmakers in Ohio and Pennsylvania recently eliminated legal barriers—minimum age restrictions and coursework mandates—that once prevented some families from hunting together. Those two states now join Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia as safe, family-friendly oases for residents of everywhere else.
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I’m glad to see North Carolina is on that list. We need to work to encourage more states to lower the age and to give more opportunities for young people to hunt. The antis know [quote] Studies have shown that if a young person has not started hunting before age 18, it is unlikely they will ever hunt. With that in mind, the $21-billion-a-year hunting industry works with state wildlife agencies to recruit young men and women before they graduate from high school. A 1995 Fund for Animals survey revealed that three out of four states offered “hunter education” classes in public schools. These classes, which teach children how to kill animals in the name of so-called “sport,” are often funded by the very state agencies mandated to conserve and protect our wildlife. Funding also comes from hunting groups such as the National Rifle Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Safari Club International, and Ducks Unlimited. On the federal level, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has joined state wildlife agencies to sponsor regular Youth Hunts and “Becoming an Outdoors Woman” programs across the nation. Moreover, such programs work directly against efforts to decrease youth violence by desensitizing children to animal suffering, and by extolling killing as entertainment
[/quote] [quote] Most states actively recruit children into hunting through special youth hunts. Sometimes these youth hunts are held on state lands or even on National Wildlife Refuges. “At a time when youth violence is a nationwide epidemic and our children already face many threats every day, we should not put them in more danger or teach them that killing defenseless animals is wholesome entertainment,” said Prescott.
Wildlife agencies and sport hunting groups are trying to recruit children because hunting is declining so rapidly that its demise by mid-century has been widely forecast within the hunting community
[/quote] Gun control is not the answer if it was then we should have far less problems because in the history of our country there has never been a time when owning a gun was so restrictive. The days of seeing guns hanging above a fireplace in someone’s home or children being able to buy firearms or ammunition are in a bygone era. Teaching a child to respect firearms and how to safely handle them is a much better way. Despite the effort on the anti hunters and anti gunners there is no correlation between youth hunting and violent acts.
[quote] We will not make inroads into the gun-violence problem until we acknowledge the underlying causes of youth behavior today, compared to yesterday. We must come to the realization that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society. It’s morality that is society’s first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.
Moral standards of conduct have been under siege in our country for nearly half a century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. We’ve been taught not to be judgmental-that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another.
More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and liberals. School shootings just might represent chickens coming home to roost where they were born.
If we refuse to seriously ask why young people weren’t shooting one another at a time when guns were far more accessible than they are today, we do so at our peril. Walter Williams
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We need to work to expand hunting opportunities for young people and spend quality time with them to instill values that will help produce productive citizens whether they are our kids or not. I hope this bill passes in Michigan and I hope many other states will change rules to encourage youth hunting. For us we need to work to make these changes happen. Also why not commit today to take a kid hunting or fishing at least once in the next year and see how it brightens not only their life but yours as well.