Some of you are confusing ethics with the law. These are two different issues. I do believe you can can instill ethics in individuals at an early age and hope that the seed takes.
I am an instructor for the Montana Bowhunter class here in the state and ethics are a very important part of our classroom discussion and how/ what you do will reflect on whether or not our sport will survive. Ethics is what I try to instill in the class room and hope that the students will take it to the field with them, if you don't influence these students then who will? If one student learns something in my class it, I hope its ethics and how to conduct oneself as a hunter because we will be representing a group. There is 10% of the population that are hunters, 10% anti-hunters and 80% of the people who are sitting on the edge of the fence and are undecided and your ethical actions will influence these other 80%. There is no law that keeps you from displaying your deer with a beer can/ or ciggarret in its mouth as you take it to the cheque station but what signals do you think that that sick humor projects as us being a class of hunter? The laws are there for all of us to abide by but ethics is more respect that an individual has on a personal level for the game they are taking/attempting to take, in which there may be no law.
Every state has its own set of guidelines that the instructor has to stick prettty close to and time is always a factor in tring to provide so much imfo in such a short period of time. For those of you that think the course should devote more time on a certain topic, than I suggest that you give back what you have been taking all these years and become an instructor yourself as we are all volunteers tring to help the sport out and we need all the help we can get. If you can improve something or have something to give, then give it. You'd even be surprised on how much an instructor can learn from the students also. Bobby