Alternative delivery class offers hands-on outdoor training
PRATT -- The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks' Hunter Education Section is offering a women-only hunter education course beginning at 8 a.m. and ending at 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 24, in Pratt. Class enrollment is limited to girls and women wanting to obtain hunter education certification. The course will use an internet-supported alternative format that involves just one day of class work and less than two hours in the classroom. It is designed to get students out of the classroom and onto the range for hands-on training.

Here's how it works:

Several days before the class, students log on the International Hunter Education Association's (IHEA) home study website . Here, they are taken through several pages of information regarding hunting safety, hunter responsibility, outdoor safety, wildlife conservation, and hunting opportunities. An online test accompanies each segment, and each test must be taken over until the student gets every question correct. The whole process takes a few hours and is done from the comfort of home.

The next step is bring the printed internet tests to the Pratt Gun Club clubhouse for a short class. First, students take a 15-minute, 25-question quiz to make sure that they have gone through the IHEA website material. To continue with the course, students must correctly answer 22 of 25 questions; this should be easy for anyone who has gone through the online material.

Following this short quiz, the students will be given about an hour and one-half review on material from the website, hunter ethics, laws, game identification, and safe firearms handling. Then the real fun begins.

The rest of the day, the students rotate through several hands-on, outside learning stations such as safe gun handling, trail walk, and live shotgun fire on the range. Each student receives basic wingshooting instruction.

After the stations have been completed, students return to the clubhouse to take the same final test that all hunter education students take.

To register and get special instructions, phone Stacy Hageman in the Pratt Operations office at 620-672-591. Participants will need to bring their lunch if transportation is not available.
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