Last year at around this time I was urging my hunting buddies to get their Pennsylvania hunting licenses and apply for non-resident doe tags. With limited vacation time and a stressful work environment, a couple of them bit for the opportunity to take a bit of a working vacation in the woods, away from the hustle bustle of the digital life we all live back in the world of IT.
One of my buddies was a non-hunter, but a stellar marksman and military man. He had fished and camped growing up and always wanted to hunt. After seeing pictures and hearing stories of exhausting hikes and great camp grub, he threw down the coin needed to get a license in the summer, bought a rifle based on our recommendations for a good, cheap, first rifle that would serve him well, and started looking for gear.
The time to start mentoring is the spring and summer months. A new hunter has to recognize that there is prep work all year long, and that while you can switch on and off like many of my relatives have done for decades, your success is greatly improved by learning habitat, honing your craft, and teaching the next generation of hunters. In a future article I look forward to interviewing my new hunter friend to get a feel what it’s like being an adult jumping into this new hobby and taking in the firehose of knowledge. For me, it helped to explain my reasoning to someone willing to question the hows and whys that I came to my conclusions. Sometimes further research was necessary on my part to make sure that I wasn’t passing down oral tradition that was inaccurate or flat out wrong.
So what are some things to focus on for your new hunter? First gauge where they are in their life. Sometimes it’s the kid of a buddy who doesn’t hunt. Sometimes it’s a long time friend who has the urge to be in more control of where their meat comes from. No matter what you should go over some of the basics with them. First things first.
- Have they had any weapons safety training?
- Have they taken a hunter’s safety course? It’s never a bad time to go for a refresher yourself. For youngsters it’s always nice to have your mentor right there beside you to field questions they’re too afraid to ask in a public forum. No question is stupid.
- If the course doesn’t go over it, educate your new hunting partner about taking ethical shots, be it a kill shot on a bruiser buck or seeing blue sky under your barrel before pulling the trigger on that cackling cock rooster so as to not injure the dogs.
- What species are you focusing on for your first time out? Many hunters who have grown up doing this with family members have had a natural progression of moving from small game up progressively larger to deer and bear or elk for Western states. The new generation coming up wanting to learn to hunt maybe never had that opportunity, some even turn their nose up at a little squirrel hunting (don’t, it’s seriously fun, and pretty tasty). While friends may be in it for the backstraps, make sure to cook them up a little bunny, duck, or squirrel in order to show them the wide array of tasty critters their new hobby opens them up to.
- Do they have appropriate gear or do you have some to lend out? I’m a lefty so it makes lending out firearms a difficult process for most of my friends. However I’ve been in the woods since before I could walk with my family. I’m pretty sure we’ve got blaze orange at our cabin that will fit anyone from 6 to 60, and there’s probably a camo bib overalls for a baby somewhere. Many first timers want to go cheap because hunting kit is a huge investment in the cold weather, it takes years to amass the quantity of stuff that is right for you, and a lot of trial and error or a want to suffer. My buddy last year found out that skimping in some areas, like layers is not fun, but he learned his lesson and modified his pack out on the fly.
- Take them with you while scouting. Walking into the woods day one knowing what to look for, being able to tell the direction of travel of an animal, knowing the browse and habitat is something that people can pick up into the season but it’s amazing what one or two cram sessions during the spring and summer do to inform the questions that they ask in the fall.
- I leave this until last because it’s probably the one that should resonate the most. Make sure they have a positive experience. I don’t mean make sure they get something, that wouldn’t really be hunting if it was a ‘sure thing’. What I mean is be encouraging, help their morale whenever possible. Be humble in your own desires on the hunt where you’re mentoring someone new to the sport. Your reward should be minimally getting someone new into the sport to share your adventures with and teaching someone to provide for themselves in a way that seems quaint in an era where we can literally grow meat in a petri dish. Seeing their eyes light up when you reveal to them that there is a herd of deer just over the next rise, just where you expected them to be loafing in the midday sun is like revealing a secret world they’d never thought existed. Last season we didn’t put any meat in the freezer, but my buddy was hooked. The day after the season closed he was already talking about modifications of what he wanted to do for ‘next season’.
