It has GOT to be a labor of love. Why else would avid hunter Ben Jenkins of Baldwin, Md., subject himself three or four times a year to teaching hunting and firearms safety to dozens of students, most of them youngsters? He teaches the Maryland Hunter Education Course, required of all new hunters before they can buy a license.
It is the kind of thing that you would expect from a teacher or Boy Scout leader. Oh, that?s right ? Jenkins was the former and is the latter. In his day job, he is a vice president with Monumental Life Insurance Company. But he loves hunting and kids, and it shows.
“My heart?s there,” he said. “I?m a lifelong hunter. I want to see the hunting tradition passed on to the next generation.”
He gets all ages in his classes, from pre-teens to those 70-plus. There were 71 students in his recent class held at the Loch Raven Skeet and Trap Center ? 69 new students and two holdovers from an August session.
Jenkins works with a team that includes Steve Hossbach, who demonstrated archery and tree stands, and Mike Parrish, who headed the overall review before the final test on the last day of the four-day (three hours a day) course.
Other team members helped on the range, as students shouldered shotguns after taking their 50-question test. A passing test grade is 80 ? not the 60 of the school system.
To get the card necessary for a hunting license, it is a must for students to demonstrate safe gun-handling under the watchful eyes of instructors. Those under 16 also get their first hunting license free, although a parental signature is also required.
Jenkins is representative of the 850 volunteer instructors (no pay) who team-teach the Maryland Hunter Education Course throughout the state. Last hunting season, they collectively gave 245 classes and taught 7,607 students.
Hunter education courses were begun in Maryland in 1966. Since 1977, anyone who wants to hunt must have completed and passed a course to obtain a Maryland hunting license. Those who hunted prior to 1977 are grandfathered, with the course not required.
The course, with funding through federal excise taxes on hunting equipment (Pittman-Robertson Act), has made a difference in accidents.
In Maryland, hunting accident totals for the past four years (fiscal year 2003-06) number respectively, 27, 26, 15, and 10. The numbers are going down, much as a result of this education, according to Natural Resources Police spokesman Sgt. Ken Turner.
Courses are run all year long, in all counties. You can find out more about them and listed dates and places by going online at www.dnr.maryland.gov, then click “Hunter Safety Classes,” then click the class desired from a county-by-county listing.
On Tuesday, more on details of these classes and what they teach.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting, and the outdoors, and he has more than 20 books to his credit. He can be reached at cbpfeiffer@msn.
