davidmil

Bloodbro, you're using one set of facts to falsely blame the cause on something else. The number of hunters(percentage wise for the numer of Americans) have fallen long before hunter safety classes. They fell because we've become more city folks. Land access is harder. People don't need it for food. Society as a whole has gotten lazy. The population of young people per family is down. Baby boomers are dying off. It's not as PC as it once was to hunt. People have more leasure time and money to do other things like golf. All sorts of reasons for the decline. Having to take an 8 hour class isn't the reason. The classes teach safety first and foremost, ethics, game laws, etc. Maybe we can twist your arguement to say it is such a safe sport BECAUSE we make them take the classes. There are far fewer people getting shot hunting than there were 10-20 or 30 years ago. Years ago there were a lot of people getting shot. Now most injuries are treestand related. We didn't have treestands like we do today 30 years ago. Everyone just walked out and flopped on the ground a logor sat on a bucket. Another example of your premise being wrong, New York State had hunter safety back in the 50s. It certainly didn't drive hunters away then and it was 15 hours I believe when I took it in 56. Dads don't hunt, kids rarely get to it on their own. It's not the kids won't take a course, they simply don't have mentors in most cases.