First congrats to your son for his success in passing the test. Congrats to you for taking the time to go with him and experience this with him.

Second if you expect the hunter safety courses to teach you anything about hunting then you will be disappointed. The course is a safety course not a hunting course. The test is not made to fail people only to make them pay attention to the material that is covered during the course. In Iowa you can not fail the test but they do not tell you that they allow you to think that it is pass or don't hunt. If you sent people into the course with the understanding that they only had to put in thier time without a test they would not pay as much attention.
Some of these people are being exposed to gun safety for the first time. What seems easy to us may be hard to them. How many times have you seen someone cross a fence without handing thier gun to someone or placing it on the ground then crossing? I hunt with some very safe people and we can all use alittle reminder now and then.
Don't take the class so literally they are not trying to teach any sort of hunting skill only expose as many people as possible to hunting safety.
How many of you have been in a class when someone has not passed? Ever see the instructor take them aside and talk to them to find out why? Most 11 year olds will pass this class with flying colors but there are those out there who have not been taught safety prior to the course or need some help to understand it. These courses help find those people. It is like the drivers license test you can not learn how to drive by taking it but it makes you study to pass it.

" Anyone can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a Dad"

Badluck,

Be sure to pass on a big "CONGRATULATIONS!" to your boy for a fine job.

Oh yea, congrats to his old man, too!

I took the hunter education course when i was 11 yrs old. I feel that that the hunter education course is a good thing to have because it teaches the a person what to expect in the feild. I am only 19 now and i am going to take the course again. i think a person should have to take the course to get any kind a license no matter how old the person. I feel this way because where I hunt is on public ground which is walkin only and all i see this year during deer season were people on four weelers driving throught the public land pushing deer through and trying to run them down. And I know from see that they are going to kill someone. If a person would have to go and get a hunter saftey card some of the hunting miss treatment would stop because people probably would appreciate hunting more. And could make the hunting enviroment safer for the young kids trying to get involved.

Badluck, congrats to your son on his passing the test. I do believe the course is worthwhile. I have seen too many of the kids in my area go out with guns and act/shoot irresponsibly. Part of this problem is not the course, but with the parents for allowing them to do so.

The best of luck in all your hunting endeavors!!!

God Bless,
Dave

When I took it, I'd been hunting for probably a decade already, and around guns and shooting all my life, the class was an eight hour waste of time. I did not learn a single thing, other than that 96% of Nevada is public property, and only 1.7% of Kansas is publicly owned, and what T.R.E.A.D. lightly stood for, which I can't remember now, but the rest of the class is common sense, for guys like me at least. Nowadays, the classes are designed for city guys who don't know a thing about hunting or guns. In my class, the instructor had me hold up a 870 wingmaster and point to different parts, so the class could say what I was pointing at, he tried to throw a monkey in the wrench and told me to point to the chamber (figuring I'd point in the breech and people would say that was the chamber, tricky guy huh) so I half stripped the 870 and pulled off the barrel, and pointed in the chamber, kinda got his goat. If your dad ever did anything with you with a gun, then you already know more than that class could teach you, but a buddy of mine who is about as city as they come said he learned a ton about guns and hunting from the class, a lot of things went unsaid <img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>. I'm sure the class does a good job of teaching guys like him not to shoot eachother crossing fences and getting in and out of trucks, and it teaches someone who's never touched a gun what the muzzle is, but it's a bit too basic for someone who has ever handled a gun with some sort of supervision.

BTW, the &quot;shoot or don't shoot&quot; movies were absolutely hilarious...

Screw the 10 ring, keep them in the zero!!!

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talk to the instructor and explain your thoughts that it is a little over the kids heads.see if you can help him with the class.
then go over everything with your kid to help him understand what he will need to pass.
In Fla. you have to have the class to be able to hunt.

I am not a hunter I am a whitetail population reduction specialest

remember keep your back to the sun, your knife sharp, and your powder dry.
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' size=2 id=quote>if the kid cannot understand the material cover in course he/she is not read to become a hunter and may cause a danger in the field