Public Schools and Hunting

[Curmudgeon]

In my time on this forum, I have occasionally read blanket statements saying public schools teach anti-hunting. I have argued that this is certainly not true in our rural town. Today my Special Ed Teacher spouse brought home the class copy of Outdoor Life for me to read. Yes, she subscribes for her students, and has done so for some time. I just didn't know. She needs reading material that interests her students and Outdoor Life fits the bill. When I expressed some surprise, she told me the school library has subscriptions to a couple of hook and bullet publications. Taxpayers pay for this. There are a number of teachers who hunt and they discuss their experiences in class. This is rural life in NYS. I don't doubt that the anti attitude can be found in urban areas.

BTW - The article she wanted me to see is called "Shoot a Coyote, Save a Fawn?" (September issue). It is good to see Outdoor Life attempting to explain the complexity of trying to manage game species by shooting predators.

 

[grampy]

I too work in a public school district. Not rural but not urban, I guess you could say the burbs. I talk hunting and fishing all the time, to both students and staff. There is definitely an anti hunting minority. But mostly I've found the majority to be neutral and uninformed because they have never participated or had the opportunity to participate. I try to convey hunting in a positive light and give accurate information. Also dispelling the myths and hype that comes with communication with the anti hunting faction. I never use the "in your face" approach. But calmly and subtlety get my point across. I have mentored a few people and got them started as well. We also had a middle school science teacher, who retired awhile back, that writes hunting articles for a north country publication. And is involved with getting young people involved in hunting on a state level. So, at least in our school district, hunting is not a taboo subject. We are even working on getting an archery class and team!

[ATbuckhunter]

I think grampy hit the nail right on the head! Having gone through middle school and high school a littler more recent than many on here I can definitely say that majority are just plain old uninformed. I did catch some flack by a few who were anti's, but most were fascinated to hear about hunting and many didn't even know you can hunt in NY. Some were actually quite interested in hunting as well. I think some outreach programs could do wonders for our sport...the only problem is getting them to allow those kinds of programs in school. I actually had a vegan engineering and physics professor who's wife's family survived on hunting in the mountains of Montana. I used to think he was against hunting for obvious reasons, but was pleasantly surprised when he came to my aid and supported me when a couple anti's were expressing their views about my hunting activities. Needless to say I gained a lot of respect for him at the time. 

[Adkhunter1590]

Rural towns and schools are all about hunting. My high school I graduated from used to expect most boys wouldn't attend school on opening day of gun season....and they were right lol.

Now where I'm originally from in Orange County (Monroe). I had a few elementary teachers back in the early 1990s that actually made a huge stink over me telling hunting stories and drawing pictures of me and my dad hunting. They had to have a big meeting with school superintendents and other staff it got so heated. My parents went ape shit on them and threatened to sue if they didn't remove me from my class and put me with a different teacher who wasn't a anti hunting vegan tree hugging whack job. All of my friends in the Monroe Woodbury school district thought I was a redneck hillbilly for hunting. After we got the hell out of that area and moved up north, I was considered normal again by my peers


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[Bowguy 1]

10 hours ago, grampy said:

I too work in a public school district. Not rural but not urban, I guess you could say the burbs. I talk hunting and fishing all the time, to both students and staff. There is definitely an anti hunting minority. But mostly I've found the majority to be neutral and uninformed because they have never participated or had the opportunity to participate. I try to convey hunting in a positive light and give accurate information. Also dispelling the myths and hype that comes with communication with the anti hunting faction. I never use the "in your face" approach. But calmly and subtlety get my point across. I have mentored a few people and got them started as well. We also had a middle school science teacher, who retired awhile back, that writes hunting articles for a north country publication. And is involved with getting young people involved in hunting on a state level. So, at least in our school district, hunting is not a taboo subject. We are even working on getting an archery class and team!

Grampy look into NASP archery. Stands for national archery in the schools program. Training/certification for teachers is free. More kids shoot Nasp than play little league baseball so they say by the numbers. It's already been tested in courts as to being a sport w with instructors so that's out of the way. Contact the state Fish n game they should have coordinator in charge of setting it up

Edited September 9, 2016 by Bowguy 1

[stoneam2006]

Shoot the school in my town has an archery team with legit bows and school down road has a skeet shooting team

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[Core]

2 hours ago, Bowguy 1 said:

Grampy look into NASP archery. Stands for national archery in the schools program. Training/certification for teachers is free. More kids shoot Nasp than play little league baseball so they say by the numbers. It's already been tested in courts as to being a sport w with instructors so that's out of the way. Contact the state Fish n game they should have coordinator in charge of setting it up

From what I can tell there is basically no negative stereotype about archery. It's a "clean" sport and even the special snowflakes among us don't take offense to it.

[Gencountyzeek]

I live in a semi rural area. My son is in 2nd grade. Last year all he ever wrote about was hunting, along with full illustrations of deer being shot or dead deer that dad got. His teacher thought he was a great story teller however thought he should try to expand the things he writes about. Which I thought was fine because everything he wrote was about hunting.  So we had him do a story on fishing. He was in a excellerated reading program also and his teacher for that loved him and his stories. She nicknamed him hunter. We talked with her many times and her and her husband hunt. She is now a kindergarten teacher and teaching my daughter. We love it out here.

[Four Season Whitetail's]

Years ago opening day was like a local school holiday..More kids out than in. Maybe thats the real reason they changed the dates for the Tier?

Its not real complex when it comes to yotes and fawns. The more ya take out the more ya save. In some areas of the state these days that can make a big positive impact on the herd. Others. Not so much!

[grampy]

3 hours ago, Bowguy 1 said:

Grampy look into NASP archery. Stands for national archery in the schools program. Training/certification for teachers is free. More kids shoot Nasp than play little league baseball so they say by the numbers. It's already been tested in courts as to being a sport w with instructors so that's out of the way. Contact the state Fish n game they should have coordinator in charge of setting it up

That is exactly the program being implemented, NASP. Excellent program!

[Padre86]

15 hours ago, Adkhunter1590 said:

Rural towns and schools are all about hunting. My high school I graduated from used to expect most boys wouldn't attend school on opening day of gun season....and they were right lol.

Now where I'm originally from in Orange County (Monroe). I had a few elementary teachers back in the early 1990s that actually made a huge stink over me telling hunting stories and drawing pictures of me and my dad hunting. They had to have a big meeting with school superintendents and other staff it got so heated. My parents went ape shit on them and threatened to sue if they didn't remove me from my class and put me with a different teacher who wasn't a anti hunting vegan tree hugging whack job. All of my friends in the Monroe Woodbury school district thought I was a redneck hillbilly for hunting. After we got the hell out of that area and moved up north, I was considered normal again by my peers


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I'm not at all surprised by this.  Hunting, and anything firearm-related, is considered taboo by a small, but very vocal, minority in Monroe.  The rest of the population is either neutral, like Grampy was talking about, or is part of a yet smaller, and mostly quiet, minority of hunters and firearm enthusiasts.  The thing I've learned about hunting and firearm culture in Monroe is that it's there, but you need to be subtle in how you bring up those topics.  Once you get a feel for who is and isn't into these activities, you'll find there are like-minded people you can converse and even hang out with.  But if you just start blabbing about your hunting and shooting experiences, you risk getting some very weird looks from people.

It's not like the rural counties, where you can pretty much take it for granted that many, if not most, people you run into have either hunted or shot a firearm at some point in their lives.

I think it's unfortunate, because I suspect there are a lot of young people, especially young men, in Monroe who would absolutely love to get into hunting, target shooting, or both, but there just isn't much of a culture there to mentor and introduce these young people to these sports.  I think those that do get into those sports slowly figure things out on their own, like I did.  

It would be awesome if there was more outreach from the firearm and hunting community to those areas of NY.  Something like an elective course at high school or even a presentation in the auditorium would be great, though politically, that might be a bridge too far.  People like Grampy are much appreciated and sorely needed in those areas.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Padre86

[Padre86]

3 hours ago, Four Season Whitetails said:

Years ago opening day was like a local school holiday..More kids out than in. Maybe thats the real reason they changed the dates for the Tier?

Its not real complex when it comes to yotes and fawns. The more ya take out the more ya save. In some areas of the state these days that can make a big positive impact on the herd. Others. Not so much!

I've seen a lot of articles discounting the need to hunt coyotes.  The basic gist of them is that hunting coyotes doesn't decrease their population, and in some cases, it even causes the population to go up (the female yotes are genetically inclined to birth more pups when the hunting pressure goes up).  This is all true, but what a lot of "experts" fail to realize when citing this study, is that hunting them can have an affect on a local level.  And more importantly, hunting them right around the spring, will give fawns a bit of breathing room....yes the yote numbers might recover or go up when the next litter comes around, but hunting them in the spring will ensure there are less jaws to snatch up young, vulnerable deer.

Unfortunately, coyote season only runs through part of the spring...a longer season would be more helpful.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Padre86

[Rattler]

The reason it's accurate to say public education is against firearms and hunting is because the US Dept of Education is against it and actively attacks it.  Same can be said for many state Depts of Education.

Individual schools and teachers may not be against it and may even support it, but they often find themselves on the wrong side of the DOE when they do.

[Four Season Whitetail's]

10 hours ago, Padre86 said:

I've seen a lot of articles discounting the need to hunt coyotes.  The basic gist of them is that hunting coyotes doesn't decrease their population, and in some cases, it even causes the population to go up (the female yotes are genetically inclined to birth more pups when the hunting pressure goes up).  This is all true, but what a lot of "experts" fail to realize when citing this study, is that hunting them can have an affect on a local level.  And more importantly, hunting them right around the spring, will give fawns a bit of breathing room....yes the yote numbers might recover or go up when the next litter comes around, but hunting them in the spring will ensure there are less jaws to snatch up young, vulnerable deer.

Unfortunately, coyote season only runs through part of the spring...a longer season would be more helpful.

Yeah that old time research has been proven not to always hold water. You wipe them off the landscape as adults and pups and it will take a long time before you have any issues with them again. Its been proven on some properties

[Buckmaster7600]

I'm not that old and I was in school when the gun craze started happening "after columbine" it never really changed our school. Us boys would all pull into school wearing camo during turkey season and change in the parking lot. It wouldn't have taken anyone with a lot of brains to know that if we didn't go home to change we also didn't go home to drop of our guns but no body cared our principal would sit on the picnic table by the entrance and ask all of us if we had any luck.

My daughter still goes to school in the same school district and all she talks about is hunting, fishing and dance and we have never gotten any complaints other than once she was told she couldn't draw a gun in one of her hunting pictures. Now I have taught her that when ever she is drawing a picture that should have a gun in it to draw a flag pole where the gun should be in the picture with an American flag on the pole. She thinks it's great and her teachers haven't complained about it.

The only issue we have had with her school being little wacky was when she was in 2nd grade and her teacher had the class reading a book about Iraq and my daughter raised her hand and told the class that her daddy went to Iraq. One of the kids asked her for what and she told them "to kill bad guys" long story short she was sent to principals. I went in and explained that I was an infantry marine and my wife and I never sugar coated why daddy was gone after the discussion with the principal every thing was good.


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[Padre86]

On 9/9/2016 at 10:27 PM, Four Season Whitetails said:

Yeah that old time research has been proven not to always hold water. You wipe them off the landscape as adults and pups and it will take a long time before you have any issues with them again. Its been proven on some properties

Well, that's the issue.  "Wiping them off the landscape" is easier said than done.  You take out one, the others are usually wise enough to disperse and stay out of sight for a while.  And they are genetically programmed to produce more offspring when under pressure.

That's why their range and population has expanded so greatly from what it historically was about 100 years ago.  At a localized level though, I agree you can deter their presence by putting a little hunting pressure on them.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Padre86

[Two Track]

Monore-Woodbury schools have issues with anything that is weapon related these days - no pictures, drawings, cartoons that look like any type of weapon (firearm, blade, or bow) is allowed in school.

Here is the irony,  they do have archery classes for the girls and the mascot..... is a Crusader, commonly shown carrying a lance.

For art classes (various types including: photography, film, painting ceramics, etc) the are pictures of deer skulls, and art pieces based around deer skulls/antlers.  Did they just happen to find a few intact skulls with antlers attached laying around?

Wonder if they are going to remove pictures/drawings from the history books next?

Or ban coins or monetary bills that have the Great Seal on it (the eagle is carrying arrows)?

There is some great stupidity with this whole scenario.

So my kids do not mention hunting, or the fact that there even is a gun in the house.  A few select non-family members know, plus the neighbor watching me clean pheasants, and the one seeing me pack up the car and carrying a gun case(he doesn't mind, he's packing a 9mm and badge himself).

 

[Four Season Whitetail's]

5 hours ago, Padre86 said:

Well, that's the issue.  "Wiping them off the landscape" is easier said than done.  You take out one, the others are usually wise enough to disperse and stay out of sight for a while.  And they are genetically programmed to produce more offspring when under pressure.

That's why their range and population has expanded so greatly from what it historically was about 100 years ago.  At a localized level though, I agree you can deter their presence by putting a little hunting pressure on them.

Trust me..If you want them gone and do what it takes to make them gone you can take care of a yote problem.

[LJC]

On Thursday, September 08, 2016 at 6:24 PM, grampy said:

I too work in a public school district. Not rural but not urban, I guess you could say the burbs. I talk hunting and fishing all the time, to both students and staff. There is definitely an anti hunting minority. But mostly I've found the majority to be neutral and uninformed because they have never participated or had the opportunity to participate. I try to convey hunting in a positive light and give accurate information. Also dispelling the myths and hype that comes with communication with the anti hunting faction. I never use the "in your face" approach. But calmly and subtlety get my point across. I have mentored a few people and got them started as well. We also had a middle school science teacher, who retired awhile back, that writes hunting articles for a north country publication. And is involved with getting young people involved in hunting on a state level. So, at least in our school district, hunting is not a taboo subject. We are even working on getting an archery class and team!

If not for hunting humans would not be here what else do you need to say .