Hunter education

The Hunter Education field season is winding down with the deteriorating weather. All the courses have a proficiency shooting portion and that’s hard to do in a driving rain or snowstorm. At this past Saturday’s muzzle loading class at the Elks Camp north of Palmer, we were lucky to have sunny skies with some, not so bad, wind.

I helped teach the course with two other instructors to a group of nine adult men. We were originally told to expect 12 students with two being women. Neither woman showed and one of the scheduled guys also failed to show.

Add to that, one of the originally scheduled instructors failed to show as well. Luckily, another instructor was present to help and, by default, became the third instructor for the course. I’ve found over time that the more instructors who are present, within reason, the faster the class moves along and usually finishes closer to the original scheduled times listed.

I’ve been an ADF&G Hunter Education certified muzzle loading course instructor since the state instituted a muzzle loader hunter education requirement. I’m also a certified National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association (NMLRA) instructor as well. There are overlaps between the two courses and some differences.

The state course emphasizes safe gun handling for both range work and in the hunting field but doesn’t spend time teaching folks how to load and shoot a muzzleloading firearm. It is assumed that the student already knows how to safely load, aim, and shoot his rifle. This same course doesn’t address shooting a muzzleloading handgun nor does it address shooting a blackpowder shotgun. The main emphasis is hunting oriented safety, shot placement on an animal, and knowing one’s effective range for hunting with a muzzleloading long gun.

The NMLRA course is more inclusive, teaching the same safety points but also how to load, aim and fire the muzzleloader. Proper techniques for handling and shooting both blackpowder handguns and shotguns are also a part of the NMLRA course. This course is all about safely handling and shooting the muzzleloaders, with little or no emphasis on hunting with a blackpowder firearm.

This past Saturday’s course was what the hunter education folks refer to as an online field day course, usually lasting about four hours. The student does all the bookwork online ahead of the class, including material reviews and written testing. Assuming successful completion of the written material, the student is issued a course completion certification form with a unique number. They are required to bring this form with them to the field day class.

The instructors then review the highlights of the material, usually asking the students questions to draw out whether they actually did the required work online. This doesn’t take more than an hour or two, depending on how well the students respond. Then the rules governing the proficiency shooting are explained and the group goes out to the shooting area to set up and shoot their proficiency scores.

The area where we usually shoot at the Elks Camp wasn’t available because of new construction and upgrades underway at the site. The group, Alaska Healing Hearts (AHH), recently purchased the facility from the Elks and are making these upgrades. AHH has continued working with the Hunter Education program to allow the use of the facility for hunter ed classes, but we had to modify the shooting portion to accommodate existing conditions.

The field course requires the individual students to supply their own rifles, powder, caps, and bullets for the shooting. Since these folks are shooting their own firearms, the instructors are directed to score the shooting groups around the bullseyes, since the rifles should be sighted in to hit where aimed. Four of five shots must hit within a predetermined size circle, depending on the shooting distance, around the bullseye.

After a twenty-minute delay to get a piece of equipment moved away from the firing area, the shooting began. Several of the rifles had “peep” or receiver sights mounted and one rifle had a red dot mounted as the sighting system. The law prohibits scopes and laser sights for muzzleloader-only hunts but doesn’t restrict red dots if no magnification is involved. A red dot is classified as a sight and can be legally used. Only one shooter was using a traditional, side-lock style rifle. All the rest were inline style rifles, one of which was a modified Remington model 700 for shooting blackpowder.

We had two perfect (all bullseyes) scores and everybody else passed easily.