It’s trade show season! It’s also squirrel, rabbit, coyote, bobcat, and waterfowl season too. Hopefully, yours truly will dabble in all the seasons over the next month.

One of the more exciting tasks ahead of me is waterfowl hunting with a sweet local gun store find, a Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne (MAS) 16-gauge side-by-side shotgun built in 1946. The gorgeous case-hardened, French walnut-stocked shotgun was built with a set of fixed-choked full and modified barrels, so I’ll be using Boss Ammunition’s copper-plated, non-toxic, non-steel loads for waterfowl. In the upland fields, I’ll chase quail, chukar, and pheasants with Fiocchi’s fantastic Golden Pheasant loads. I’m also looking forward to chasing turkeys with the MAS this Spring.

The author’s old-school French-built MAS 16-gauge shotgun will work the Virginia skies for waterfowl and upland game in 2022.

For 2022, we travel to New York for the second Mossberg/GPO All-Rookie story in our new series. We are also alternating Larry Weishuhn and Luke Clayton’s Hunting Wire Radio and Kenny Corder’s American Signature Podcast every other issue. We’re excited to tell you LSU professor Bret Collier will start a new Collier’s Corner column next issue. He’ll teach and inspire hunters of all levels about how wildlife biology impacts us as hunters and conservationists.

I’d also like to give a Hunting Wire shout-out to Tom Ryle, the Sales and Marketing Manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife who reached out to me via email to let us know that they’re launching a new R3 effort there soon. Tom’s an accomplished hunter himself. Here’s a story about Blacktail hunting he wrote. Thanks for reaching out, Tom, and keep up the good fight for all hunters in Washington!

We’re looking forward to a terrific 2022! If you have questions, concerns, or ideas to improve The Hunting Wire, feel free to contact me directly jay@theoutdoorwire.com

Delta Waterfowl’s University Hunting Program teaches wildlife students about hunters’ critical contributions

By Cyrus Baird

When I was an undergraduate student at Clemson University majoring in wildlife and fisheries biology, most of my classmates naturally grew up hunting, fishing, and spending time in the outdoors.

We would routinely skip class to hunt (sorry, Mom), and I assumed that was the norm for people in similar situations as us. After graduation, friends in my graduating class went on to work in state fish and wildlife agencies, federal agencies, conservation non-profits and other places where, in just a few short years, we would be in leadership roles making decisions that directly impact hunters and conservation on a large scale.

However, it was a few short years into my professional career that I started realizing more and more that my experience, and that of most of my classmates, might have been unique. Today, more and more students are graduating with degrees in wildlife, fisheries, natural resources, and other key areas with little to no experience, or even a basic understanding, of hunting and the critical role it plays in wildlife management and conservation funding in the country.

Luckily, Delta Waterfowl has developed our University Hunting Program in response to this brewing crisis: Increasingly, wildlife management students do not come from hunting backgrounds.

According to the Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow (clft.org), “Today, more than half of the students graduating with wildlife and natural resources degrees … have never hunted and know little about it or the reasons why people hunt.”

Anecdotally, many professors participating in Delta’s UHP take this sentiment even farther, estimating that as many as 70 percent of wildlife students — who’ll one day determine how the dollars generated by license fees, Pittman-Robertson funds, Duck Stamps and other self-imposed hunting fees are spent — have little to no knowledge of our beloved hunting culture. That is a dramatic shift from previous generations, when practically every aspiring biologist owned a rifle and fishing rod.

“We believe the trend is a serious problem, especially because we’ve already seen what can occur when wildlife leaders lack an understanding of hunting’s role in managing North American wildlife,” said Joel Brice, chief conservation officer for Delta Waterfowl. “For instance, in recent years many state, provincial and federal agencies have shifted their emphasis from game animals to ‘at-risk’ species — a policy change with tangible consequences for wildlife and hunters. Delta’s University Hunting Program is among the solutions.”

Here’s how UHP works: Students at participating universities receive hunting instruction as part of their regular wildlife coursework. Program components include a hunter-safety course, a range day, an actual waterfowl hunt, and a post-hunt waterfowl dinner. Ultimately, UHP helps ensure that future wildlife managers recognize hunting as a critical conservation tool, in many cases become hunters themselves, and support the hunting tradition now and in the future.

Launched in 2017 at five partner universities, Delta’s eventual goal is to deliver the University Hunting Program at all North American universities with wildlife management curriculums, including 494 priority institutions. Interest from professors is fueling rapid growth — during the 2019-2020 season, a whopping 24 universities participated. This season, a total of 39 schools participated.

The experience has been palpable for nearly all attendees.

“I definitely felt a rush of adrenaline,” said Selah Phillips, now a wildlife graduate of Millersville University in Pennsylvania, of her experience. “I always wanted to try hunting, because I like the idea of harvesting my own food.”

Her classmate, Phuong Le — who’d never held a firearm prior to participating in Delta’s University Hunting Program — agreed.

“In class we’re learning about the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, so I wanted to learn about hunting and hunters,” Le said. “It was interesting to hunt a pond. I thought all hunting took place in the forest.”

Their professor, Dr. Aaron Haines, appreciated those sentiments.

“(Delta’s University Hunting Program) is exactly what I’ve been looking for, because today most wildlife students don’t come from rural backgrounds,” said the associate professor of conservation biology. “Part of my job has become teaching students about hunting and fishing. How does a hunter think? How does an angler think? Teaching students about different perspectives helps them become better communicators. It leads to bipartisan conservation. And what better way to take students hunting who may have hesitation than through Delta’s program?”

That, indeed, is the purpose of Delta’s University Hunting Program: ensuring wildlife students — future conservation leaders and decision-makers — are equipped with the knowledge of hunting’s role in conservation, have an opportunity to become hunters themselves, and will in turn make informed decisions to benefit wildlife, hunters, and the general public.

Cyrus Baird of Richmond, Virginia, is senior director of government affairs for Delta Waterfowl, a member of The Hunting Wire’s Voice of Leadership Panel, and an avid hunter

2021-2022 The Hunting Wire Voice of Leadership Panel

The Voice of Leadership Panel is an appointed group of outdoor industry leaders who have volunteered to contribute their voices on key hunting and outdoor recreation issues to inform, inspire, and educate participants within our community.

• Cyrus Baird - Senior Director of Government Affairs, Delta Waterfowl
• Karen Butler - Founder/President, SLG2, INC DBA: Shoot Like A Girl
• Haley Fitzgerald – Conservation Leader & Hunting Enthusiast
• Eric Morris – Producer & Host - N.onT.ypical Outdoorsman TV
• Ken Perrotte - President of the Association of Great Lakes Outdoors Writers (AGLOW)
• Brenda Weatherby - Director of People and Culture, Weatherby, Inc.

Facilitators

• James “Jay” Pinsky, Editor, The Hunting Wire
• Peter Churchbourne, Director, NRA Hunter Leadership Forum
• Jim Curcuruto, Executive Director, Outdoor Stewards of Conservation Foundation

Forward by Hank Forester, Director of Hunting, National Deer Association

Deer seem to be everywhere. The white-tailed deer is the #1 big game species in the world. There's no other big game animal that can match its number, its range, or the number of hunters who pursue it. Deer populations are just off an all-time high, and they inhabit not only our wild spaces but our backyards and urban green spaces almost equally well.

Also everywhere, but seemingly harder to make out, are aspiring hunters. Making Mentorship Work, recent research from Wildlife Management Institute, Southwick and Associates, and D.J. Case, suggests as many as 24.7 million Americans want to hunt and currently don't participate. That's more than double the 11.5 million licensed hunters in the U.S., according to the 2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation.

Hunters list many motivations for hunting, but community brings us back. Current hunters usually found community in their families hunting traditions or deer camps. Aspiring hunters need a community to gain the confidence to become a hunter, and many come from outside our current hunting cultures. (Also, according to the 2016 Survey, hunters were 90-percent male and 97-percent Caucasian)

We walk by these aspiring hunters every day and don't realize it.

This fall, The Hunting Wire and National Deer Association, with the sponsored support of Mossberg and GPO, USA set out to identify new hunters, take them afield, and tell their story from their point of view. We organized hunts in different regions of the U.S. from the woods of New York to the fallow farm fields of Michigan, to Kansas cornfields, and along Virginia's Blue Ridge skylines. We thought these regions would offer a blend of unique challenges and opportunities to the new hunter and mentor alike. We're putting you in the blind and the mind of these new hunters. We hope you'll learn from these profiles, but ultimately, we hope you'll be inspired to identify and mentor a new hunter next season.

By Hank Forester – Director of Hunting, National Deer Association

“Before the Field to Fork event, I was reading and watching various items on hunting. I estimated that it would have been at least two (2) years before I would even venture out to go hunting.” – Avery Toledo

A group photo from the Field to Fork event

It seems natural to say we met on the back deck of a Nature Conservancy office in Schenectady, NY, but it’s 2021, and like the start of many Field to Forks, we hosted a Zoom meeting first. Avery Toledo, a Contract Specialist for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, has a prominent personality, a deep New York accent, and usually sports a Sherlock Holmes hat which fits him very well.

Luckily for Avery, a group assembled that evening, Veteran’s Day 2021, from all around the country to take eight Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) new hunters and New York residents on their first hunts.

The group included The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Hunters of Color (HOC), Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA), the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC), and the National Deer Association (NDA). We have been motivated by the 2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report, the 11.5 million hunters in the U.S. were roughly 90% male and 97% Caucasian. Representatives from these groups had been meeting for almost a year, convened by TNC, who wanted to open up hunting access to some of their lands, offering more equitable access. Each group brought their expertise to the cooperative program:

• TNC brought the land.
• HOC recruited the hunters.
• BHA served as our mentors.
• NYDEC helped get everyone licensed.
• NDA helped with the replication of their Field to Fork program.

This replication would be a “destination model,” as we call it, condensing the training and hunting into a four-day event with follow-up hunting opportunities after the organized event.

Avery was recruited online. He saw a post on Twitter and applied for our program via a Google survey. From the excel results, our group selected our candidates -- Avery, 44, male, Hispanic of Caribbean descent, from New York City, NY, among them. Avery had indicated he had no family or friends who hunt, and although he’d never been hunting, he was interested in “learning and continuing the hunting tradition”. He’d also indicated a connection with nature, self-reliance, and that recreation and meat were his motivations for learning to hunt. In conversation, Avery elaborated on why he wanted to learn to hunt, “Several reasons, primarily to satiate that primal feeling within me, to get in touch with nature, to become more active, to accomplish something challenging, to develop new skills, and to harvest my meat.”

Avery is not alone. Additional research, Making Mentorship Work by Wildlife Management Institute, Southwick and Associates, and D.J. Case reports there may be as many as 24.7 million Americans who want to learn to hunt. That’s more than twice as many potential hunters sitting on the sidelines than currently licensed hunters.

Before showing up to the event, we offered all of our new hunters free access to online hunter education and our Deer Hunting 101 online course through our partners at Kalkomey (better known as Hunter-Ed.com). Avery had already completed his hunter education course, which we see with many aspiring hunters.

On that November evening, all of us met, with Paul Gallery of the TNC hosting that evening’s proceedings. Paul also supplied the pizza oven and fixings for make your own pizza night with beer donated from the Westkill Brewery. (After all, this was an event for grown-ups.) We focus on new adult hunters as they’re the most efficient audience. Adults have cars, checkbooks, calendars that they fill at their choosing. They can learn to hunt today and replicate the process tomorrow recruiting and mentoring their friends and family – including kids. Far too often, hunter recruitment programs have mistakenly focused on inefficient audiences and often those from a hunting culture or background. We make sure to identify our targets.

Creating a hunter comes down to building confidence, which is best done through education, camaraderie, and community. Our programs are built to give our participants the knowledge to continue as hunters but ultimately empower them through social support, i.e., community. You probably found this community in a family or a hunting camp if you hunt. New hunters need to be invited into this community, or it must be created for them. The best part is, time and time again, we’ve seen diverse groups come together over a shared passion for wild food and wild spaces. And that’s exactly what happened.

After pizza, with some venison for toppings, and a beer or two, we gathered for introductions. Avery said he grew up in NYC, which offered adventure and built character but took “decades to overcome”. He is a father and hopes to make hunting a family tradition. Also gathered are all the mentors and others helping facilitate the event.

Mike Poulopoulos would serve as Avery’s mentor. Mike is a volunteer for BHA and knew the mission of this event was something he wanted to support. “That sounds like a ton of fun. I want to be a part of that and help out,” said Mike. “At root, though, I’m a social person and enjoy sharing my passions with the hope of sparking an interest in others. I also remember how excited I was to get my first season afield. What a great way to experience that fresh excitement again.”

Mike’s story is not too different than Avery’s, even though they come from diverse backgrounds. “I’m pretty green,” Mike said, “and I’m also pretty proud here. I started in my mid-30s, about six years ago. Around then, I dedicated time and energy to attend the safety courses and then get out in the woods and hunt whitetail. The way I saw it, I was running out of time to make it a tradition in my life, and I went for it. No one in my immediate family hunted; I had never gone hunting as a kid, no one had offered to take me hunting.”

That evening we sat around a campfire, and Lydia Parker, the co-founder of HOC and the Mohawk Wolf Clan, shared the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, a traditional thanksgiving address about the importance of relationships in all life forces in Creation. Its purpose was to bring the minds of everyone there at the gathering as one.

Early the following day, we all met at a private residence for our education and training portion of the event. The morning began with breakfast, then with safety and shot placement education. We trained all the new hunters on both crossbows they’d be required to use on the TNC property and rifles we planned to use on follow-up hunts where rifles were allowed. The NYDEC also joined to discuss regulations and hunting opportunities in the state.

Avery gets comfortable on the crossbow with Mike, his mentor.

Mossberg was gracious to send Patriot rifles, in both 30-06 Springfield and 450 Bushmaster, and German Precision Optics (GPO, USA) supplied the optics, a Passion 4-12x42mm and a Spectra 1-6x24mm to mount on the respective rifles. Both rifles and optics shot and functioned exceptionally well, and with the light/crisp “Lightning” triggers on the Mossberg rifles, everyone shot well. Most new hunters preferred the 450 to the 30-06 as the recoil was more manageable for the new hunters. We requested the 450 Bushmaster because of its straight wall cartridges required on our next stop on tour – more on that later.

Avery enjoyed shooting the Mossberg Patriot 450 Bushmaster with the GPO Spectra 1-6x24.

After plenty of time to become comfortable and proficient at shooting, we had lunch, geared up, and gathered for a group photo before heading out. That afternoon, we sent the new hunters afield with crossbows on the Hannacroix Ravine preserve in ground blinds we had put out a couple of weeks prior. The weather was cold, we saw deer, but we fired no shots.

After the hunt, we all gathered back at our host cabin. We shared stories and dinner, including venison dishes prepared by Brian Bird of BHA, corned venison Rubens, venison goulash, and venison tacos.

Mike recounted the hunting vividly, “Our heart rates skyrocketed a few times as deer came into sight. The first deer was a doe, trotting off at about 60 yards, tail flagging. It looked to me like a buck would be on her trail soon enough. I told Avery to be ready, and then a small buck came along, nose down on the same trail. I bleat called quick and then grunted once, which caused the buck to turn and start coming right down to us through the briar thicket, nose still down. Before he got to our clearing, though, he realized he was off her scent and headed right back up and picked up her trail. I grunted again to give him something to think about for later.

“About an hour later, I happened to look across Avery and see a small buck on the other side of the blind. He was milling about at about 20 yards, right in the clearing. 'Deer, deer, deer, deer, deer!' I said, sounding like a machine gun. Avery jumped to attention, but he couldn’t position himself to get a clean and clear shot before the buck walked off, getting as close as 10 yards from the blind. Man. I was grateful he was excited for the opportunity because I was disappointed that I hadn’t seen the deer sooner. As we left the blind later, he mentioned how glad he was to be out in the woods hunting. I became so focused on the missed opportunity of the kill that his reminder that we were in the woods hunting all the while placed me in a better perspective. I value that moment. It was sincere and meaningful.”

Avery and Mike’s blind selfie. We ask all mentors and new hunters to take a selfie in the stand and send it to a group text thread.

The next morning came early with ‘grab and go’ breakfast and coffee and everyone returning to their blinds. Deer were seen, including some rut activity, but again no shots were fired. When everyone returned to camp, we ate lunch and returned to shooting while others had the opportunity to relax.

We had a local NDA member drop off a hunter-harvested deer between hunts to demonstrate if we did not harvest a deer during the organized event. Spirits were high for the evening hunt, but Mother Nature had a different plan. Severe weather hit the hunting property just about the time our hunters settled into our blinds. We decided to recall the hunters and err on the side of safety. The challenging weather helped form more camaraderie. Our hunters remained in high spirits and returned to camp for cleaning and processing demonstrations and a warming dinner of venison stew.

Avery helps break down a deer with mentor Brian Bird of BHA.

Avery wrote after the season, “Although I was not able to harvest a deer. My two follow-up outings after my initial hunt produced many learning opportunities and good fellowship and camaraderie.” His plan moving forward is to “continue learning through knowledgeable sources like books, hunting organizations, and reading through the National Deer Association information (that is why one of the first things I did after my first hunt was to become a member). Continue participating in local hunting organizations, learning archery, & practicing my shooting. Last and most important, getting out in the field as often as possible.”

Mike reiterated Avery’s testimony in a separate conversation, “Avery is eager to learn and open to the experience of spending hours in the woods. I know he’s been researching on his own as he would pepper me with questions and listen if I was offering up detail on what was happening in the woods. He now knows that if a blue jay is squawking, something is walking. It took me a few years to put that together.”

Later Avery sent a “Thank You”: “It was a perfect event; from arrival to leaving, everything was just perfect. Also, please thank the vendors who helped sponsor the event, from First Lite to the Mossberg rifles, the excellent crossbows, and everything else you could put together to help induct a new set of hunters into the hunting fraternity.

“It is impossible for me to explain adequately what you, the National Deer Association, and your vendors did for me and my other fellow mentees. From the technical aspect of hunting to the understanding of the responsibility we have as hunters and stewards of the People’s vital resources, all the way to how you treated us, I am genuinely thankful. For me, you took a longtime dream and made it a reality.

“Field to Fork is helping me start a family tradition. My adult daughter will be joining me next hunting season. That is great by itself, but the Field to Fork program will also allow me to bond with my second, who is on the way. I look forward to sharing the new Toledo hunting tradition with my family. Already your Field to Fork program is impacting three different generations while helping to strengthen family ties.”

Now a question for you: can you help us create more hunting traditions with aspiring new hunters?

By Larry Weishuhn and Luke Clayton

Luke Clayton and Larry Weishuhn

Radio File: Hunting Wire Radio - Episode 39