Looking forward to more fun in the outdoors

Since my shoulder is doing much better because of the physical therapy I’m currently in the third week of, instead of doing fun summer things, I’m slowly trying to get caught up on yard work and house upkeep to make up for months of not being able to do much.

That’s a long-winded way of saying I haven’t gone fishing or shooting, boating, or RVing or anything fun, yet. But those times are coming before too long. I did get to do something fun last week – fun for me anyway. I assisted in teaching a Hunter Education (HE) class for crossbow certification at the Grouse Ridge facility north of Wasilla.

I was scheduled to help teach a HE class in muzzleloading back in May. However, I had my shoulder surgery two days before the scheduled class and had to back out of teaching. In over twenty years of teaching HE classes, this was the first one where I had to cancel. This crossbow class was the other class I had scheduled to help with this summer. I’m glad I was able to do it.

Something I’ve noticed over the past few years is a decline in the number of students signing up for either the crossbow or muzzleloader certification classes. The basic and archery classes often have a fair number of younger folks enrolled. The crossbow and muzzleloader classes tend to have “older” folks without many or any teenage or younger students involved.

When the crossbow and muzzleloader classes were first offered, there were often full classes because folks needed to get the certification to be able to keep hunting with their chosen hunting tool. As time went on, the “backlog” of students needing the certification was reduced and now we’re dealing with fewer “new” students.

There aren’t that many new crossbow shooters or muzzleloaders because both hunting implements are more of “niche” interest rather than mainstream hunting interest. Quite often, the students in a crossbow course are older and there to get the certification so they can apply for a methods and means exemption because of age or disability which allows them to use a crossbow during an archery only hunt. That’s how I originally got into crossbows, because of my shoulders.

This last crossbow class was, unfortunately, typical of how these classes seem to be going. There were only three folks who signed up and of those, only two people showed up. Surprisingly, neither of them needed the methods and means exemption. They were interested in hunting with crossbows and not worried about the archery exemption.

One student was primarily interested in being able to legally use his crossbow while baiting bears. That would be an effective use for hunting with a crossbow. I’ve thought about that approach myself. The other person was interested in possibly going on a hunt with her boyfriend and wanted to be able to actively participate and not just tag along.

The other instructor who originally signed up to help cancelled a day before the class and the Southcentral Regional Coordinator ended up driving out from Anchorage to assist with the instruction. The HE Program prefers to always have at least two instructors doing a class, so Luke came out to fill the vacant instructor slot.

I had to be on my best behavior because “the Boss” was helping teach the class. I hope you can see my tongue in my cheek as I say that. I don’t worry about that sort of thing because I figure if there’s a problem with how or what I’m doing, I’ll be told – not that I would necessarily listen (I do listen, really, but you might not always know it!).

With two instructors and only two students, the class went fast. Both students had completed all the classroom work and passed the online testing and knew their stuff. When we went out to do the proficiency shooting the lady had to hold high with her sights because she was shooting about 8-10 low to start, but once she realized that she adjusted her sight picture and passed the shooting test.

The HE program is always looking to recruit new instructors to the program in the four different disciplines. The male student expressed some interest, so Luke spent time after the class explaining the requirements and making sure he had the necessary paperwork to apply. I think this guy would make a good addition to the crossbow instructor’s cadre. Hopefully, I’ll have some fun stuff to talk about soon.