Course offers wingshooting instruction, field walks
PRATT — The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks will offer a one-day hunter education class on Saturday, April 17, at the Pratt Gun Club, North Highway 61 in Pratt. About two hours of the day will be in the classroom. The course is designed to get kids — and anyone who has not taken the course or needs a refresher — out of the classroom and onto the range for hands-on training.

Several days before the class, students must log on the International Hunter Education Association's (IHEA) home study website, http://homestudy.ihea.com. Here, they are taken through several pages of information regarding hunter education, including introduction to hunter education, hunting safety, hunter responsibility, outdoor safety, wildlife conservation, and hunting opportunities. An online test accompanies each segment, and each test must be taken until the student gets every question correct. The whole process takes just a few hours and is done from the comfort of home. After each section is completed correctly, the test is printed out. Students must take these tests to the course on Saturday.

The next step is to show up at the shooting range. 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, but 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.

The rest of the day, the students rotate through several hands-on outside learning stations, including safe gun handling, field obstacles and 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 course students take.

To register, phone 620-672-5911 and ask for Hunter Education.
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