# Hunter safety courses.



## Ardie/WI (May 10, 2002)

Recently, my DGD18 took a hunter or gun safety course. She told her mother something that really puzzled her mother so she asked another person who took the course.

According to these young adults, they were NOT taught to look beyond their target! OMG! Can that be????

I never hunted but I did some target shooting and my ex is an avid hunter and gun collector. There were rules he grew up with and one was to always always always know what was beyond the target.

Is this someting new in gun safety??? If it is, I"m amazed.


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## tallpines (Apr 9, 2003)

I think the current gun safety classes continue to put emphasis on looking beyond your target.

If your DGD's instructor failed to mention it, then he was negligent.......and should be corrected before he teaches any more classes.

AND-----all of his past students should be contacted to impress on all of them the importance of ALWAYS looking beyond the target BEFORE pulling the trigger.

I would place a call to the District DNR office regarding this matter and ask them to follow up on correcting the situation before any more serious damage occurs as a result of this instructor's inadequate teaching style.


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## Ardie/WI (May 10, 2002)

tallpines said:


> I think the current gun safety classes continue to put emphasis on looking beyond your target.
> 
> If your DGD's instructor failed to mention it, then he was negligent.......and should be corrected before he teaches any more classes.
> 
> ...


I'm going to mention it to my DD as soon as possible.

My DGD will be hunting soon with her grandfather and, if I know him, he will teach her well.


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## OkieDavid (Jan 15, 2007)

One of the ten commandments of gun safety (it's even usually posted on the back of the hunter safety card) is "identify your target and what is beyond it".


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## JJ Grandits (Nov 10, 2002)

In our safety courses the students hear "Target and beyond" so often they mutter it in their sleep. How long are your courses? When I took mine it was four hours. Now we start on a friday evening and finish up on saturday for about 12 hours total.


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## Clifford (Aug 14, 2004)

As a Hunter Safety Instructor in Wisconsin, we are required to ALWAYS stress that students should be "Aware of their Target and beyond." We even have specific videos which present Shoot or Don't Shoot scenarious for students. It's in the TAB-K mantra that we teach. As your DGD is she remembers hearing TABK...

T reat every weapon as if it were loaded.
A lways point the muzzle in a safe direction.
B e aware of your target and beyond.
K eep your finger out of the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.

I cannot imagine going through 12 hours (our classes total 18 hours = 6 3hr classes) and not hearing a mandated training item such as TAB-K.


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## Ed Norman (Jun 8, 2002)

I used to try to hunt with a guy who was a sloppy gun handler. I could not stay clear of his muzzle when we were walking down a two track. I get on his left, he goes port arms. I get behind, he goes over his shoulder. I would slap the muzzle and say keep it away from me, he didn't even know why I was mad. Then when he tried to shoot me, I quit hunting with him for good.

Now he is a Hunter Safety instructor. No kidding.


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## EDDIE BUCK (Jul 17, 2005)

:flame: Sometimes when you have done everything right,things can still happen. Once I was deer hunting with dogs and my stand was between two curves on a pulpwood road. There was no one between those two curves but me. I was listening to the dogs as they were coming my way, and then a nice buck jumped out in the middle of the road and stopped. I don't shoot down a road, so I waited till he was going in the woods when I shot. I don't think I hit the deer but I saw movement right passed where the deer was when I shot and it turned out to be a hunter that had walked around the curve and sat down in the edge of the woods when I was listening for the dogs. I told him I was sorry for shooting in his direction and asked him why he walked around the curve and put himself in that position,and didn't he see me?He said yes but It did'nt seem to bother him. It did me, I stopped dog hunting and only still hunt now. He dosen't seem to see the danger he was in or how close I came to killing him. You would think he would have learned from that, but I don't think it even bothered him. Some folks can't see danger even when its stairing them in the face. I try to stay as far away from people like that as I can, but even when you do your best things can still happen, Thanks to all these Nuts walking around calling themselves Hunters. YES SAFETY COURSES HELP, Have you ever met anyone who failed the course and can't hunt? Wonder where they are at. Most of these folks lack COMMOM SENSE and without that nothing else will register. :doh: :doh:


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## bumpus (Jul 30, 2003)

.
The best hunter with all of the best training can make a mistake, but they learn and do all they can to be safe.
For every hunting accident there are hundreds of mistakes that just did miss., which did not hit someone but did come real closem and you never see it in th news paper but you hear about it in the conversations of other hunters.

Remeber you can be the best and safest hunter 
but the other hunter can hurt you quickly ! ! !

It's like driving you can be the best and safest driver and here come another driver who crashese right into you and it's his fault, but........................

bumpus
.


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## zookeeper16 (May 10, 2002)

It was my daughter who took this course, which was a week-long course; Monday through Thursday was 4 hours every night and Friday was a review and then the testing. All in all, it was 20 hours. 

Another teenager who lives an hour from us took the course last year and said the same thing...He was never taught to look beyond the target after he took aim.

Thankfully, my father is an avid hunter so I was raised with the respect for firearms. I went over a lot of her course material with her and added a few bits and pieces myself. Plus she has shot with her grandpa and has learned well.


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

zookeeper16 said:


> ....He was never taught to look beyond the target after he took aim.....


I never look beyond the target "after I take aim." IMHO, the time to look beyond the target is before you aim. When my crosshairs are on the target, I pull the trigger. If my crosshairs were on target, and then I decide to look around and beyond the target, I can guarantee you that action will take my aim off target and I'd have to aim all over again.


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## JJ Grandits (Nov 10, 2002)

I think safe hunting habits are acquired through practice. I never realized it until a hunter training class. We have dummy guns made up for the students to practice safe handling. It's plastic pipe mounted on a piece of wood and is painted black. The problem was that in showing "handling errors" I had a hard time pointing the dummy gun around. Sub-conciously it was a battle and actually made my heart pound.


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## diamondtim (Jun 10, 2005)

T reat every weapon as if it were loaded.
A lways point the muzzle in a safe direction.
B e aware of your target and beyond.  

I also used these sentences in my "birds and bees" talk with my kids along with "The Economics of Sex".


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