Hunter ed classes should be required in my opinion and heres why.

First-Some don' t need it and some do cause common sense ain' t very common. Some boys are brought up by mentor or a father who teaches them what they need to know. Whos gonna decide who does and doesn' t need it? Simple answer is require everyone to do it. Don' t like testing out of it for my second point.

Second-Nobody knows everything. So by making a class manditory you make sure to the best of your ability everyone knows all the essentials. It serves as a level because everyone knows that there are rules and everyone knows them. You don' t have to worry as much about Billy Joe Bob on the hill living some sort of mountain law and shooting at you for taking his spot.

Third-You have a bunch of people running around with guns and I feel we do need some sort of safety course primarly for my first point.

My last point is this. I think there is ethics in these courses that are taught and should be taught more. Hunting is some in danger of being ousted and its mainly due to lack of ethics. I don' t care as much if a guy can hit a target constistently at 300 yds or track a deer 5 miles as much as if he has ethics on the hill. We need to be aware of the little things we don' t think of and a class can give us that. What if you shoot an animal and it runs on private property? What do you do? A fight broke put last year because a land owner mistook tracking hunters as trespassers. Last year a guy killed and gutted a moose close to local mountain restaraunt and the story made local headlines, thats great publicity for hunting. People will kill deer and drag them through other peoples driveways. People cut the heads off and leave the rest. They take bad shots and leave wounded animals. These are things that are destroying our image and a class should be manditory to teach these things. In Utah you can no longer hunt the Wasatch Front area bordering Salt Lake City without a special course because of the above reasons.