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Teaching kids to hunt requires parents to put their fears aside
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Teaching kids to hunt requires parents to put their fears aside Monday, December 3, 2001 http://www.concordmonitor.com/stories/front1101/hunter_for_monday_2001.shtml In another era, Charlie St. Jacques would have beenthe boy who slept with his favorit gun. He is a regular kid, a standout actually. Loves basketball, dirt bikes, school dances, girls. Has a Shania Twain poster behind his bedroom door, is learning to crochet.But part of Charlie belongs in an old storybook, with a coonskin cap and a name like Natty Bumpo. He loves to hunt most of all, makes his own bullets, knows his guns inside and out. They reside not in his bed, but in a locked cabinet at the foot of it - a fact that itself has raised some eyebrows. "Some school people were really upset when they heard that," said Charlie's mother, Heidi St. Jacques.In a society far removed from sharpshooting heroes and more familiar with the horrors wrought by firearms, young hunters handle a highly explosive topic when they tote a gun."Kids and guns are often a dangerous combination," said Sen. Burt Cohen of New Castle, who helped pass a recent law requiring safe storage of guns in homes with children. "I recognize that hunting is one of the traditional values here in New Hampshire. But it's a special responsibility that gun owners have." In hunting families, this tradition can be so strong, this responsibility so sure, it can overcome a nightmare that would turn others from guns forever. In others, the mere idea of guns in a home is an offense to their sense of security and responsibility.Every weekend, Charlie, 11, takes one of his guns and heads down to his shooting range, halfway down the long dirt driveway of his Andover home. He's already shot his deer, but there's next year to think about. Today, a school holiday, Charlie and his dad go together to the range, Charlie with his .44 rifle, his clip and his bow. It is a frigid morning, and Charlie's orange hat, which presses his ears into elfin curls, is salted with the season's first snowflakes. Charlie tacks a fresh target onto an old pine turned spongy with bullet holes and decay. "Probably in another month or two it will have fallen over," he notes. He walks back to the driveway, 100 feet at least from the paper target. Art St. Jacques produces ear protection, two orange cups connected like earmuffs, and fits them to his son's head. Charlie kneels in dirt and shards of frost and positions his rifle - the same one that killed his first deer. "Gets the job done," he says, with a click of his tongue at the edges of his molars. One arm propped on one knee, Charlie rests the gun barrel in the curve of his left hand and wraps his right around the junction of butt, barrel and trigger. He peers through his scope, pauses for a count of two. Shoots.The noise is sound itself, sharp, unbearably loud, like something thrown from the heavens. Charlie is never ready for it; his first shot is always a little off. "I think he likes to get that bang out of the way," Art St. Jacques says. The explosion leaves a gray scribble in the air, and a smell like sharpened pencils. Charlie takes another shot, collects the empty brass to be refilled with homemade bullets, then goes to check his target. The paper is unblemished. "I was really low," he says. The next two shots are truer, pocking the lower edge of the target. "Let's see one right in the bull's eye, kid," says Art St. Jacques, hair like broomcorn beneath a Husquvarna hat, a bandanna stuffed in his back pocket.Charlie takes two more shots, then two more, then two more, puncturing the paper all around the center. Some days he will crouch here for hours, fiercely focused on the bull's eye, the butt of the gun pummeling his shoulder muscles into a wincing knot. But with two archery tags yet to fill, he wants to practice shooting his bow from his tree stand. And so the gun is put away for another day.
A certain nervousnessOrdinarily, the family's firearms are locked in gun cabinets, the ammunition stored separately. But this time of year Charlie and his dad sometimes leave them leaning against the wall in the family room. Heidi St. Jacques cringes a little to see them there. She has strict household rules regarding guns: No touching of guns or bows without an adult around, no touching of guns or bows when friends are over. At the same time, she trusts her son. "I'm completely confident in Charlie's ability with guns and his respect for them," she said.There are those who would question the wisdom of such trust. "The average hunter is very responsible," said Chuck Drew, director of New Hampshire Ceasefire, a gun injury prevention organization. "We're just saying that unfortunately children are getting unauthorized access to firearms, and tragedies occur because of that.""There's an awful lot of accidental injuries that involve a kid getting a hold of a firearm," said Concord Police Chief Jerry Madden. "And that includes kids who have had training. . . . There's no way to know how many near misses there have been either."According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, approximately 18,500 Americans are unintentionally shot each year. Of those who died in unintentional shootings in 1998, 30 percent were 19 or younger. The two most common activities causing accidental shootings were cleaning a gun and hunting.Fear of such incidents partially explains the rate at which New Hampshire land is being posted against hunting. No one keeps track of how much is posted, but wildlife experts say the practice is becoming more common.Margaret Furnari admits she was nervous watching her 12-year-old son, Joseph, head into the woods with a shotgun for the first time this year. "You hear stories about people getting shot," she said. "Things like that make you worry."Some seasoned hunters even confess to a certain nervousness. Brent Minery, a lifelong hunter who is fastidious about gun safety with his three young children, isn't so confident about other people's practices. "I don't feel very safe in the woods during rifle season," he said. Hunting officials say such fears are unfounded. New Hampshire is one of the few states with no minimum age at which children can hunt with a supervised adult. Yet there has not been a single hunting-related shooting fatality in nine years, according to the state Fish and Game Department. With 84,000 hunters in the woods each year, there have been fewer than eight hunting-related shooting injuries annually since 1994. "Is hunting safe? The records speak for themselves," said Eric Aldrich, director of public relations for Fish and Game. Aldrich attributes the state's record to a strong hunter education system that emphasizes safety above all else. "Those courses don't teach you how to hunt," he said. "They teach you how to hunt safely."Aldrich says he's observed little controversy in recent years over the topic of young people and hunting weapons. But in other states, the issue has triggered some debate. In September, the Pennsylvania legislature killed a bill that would have allowed 10-year-olds to hunt under the supervision of a licensed adult. A man whose son was killed by a 12-year-old in a hunting accident spoke out against the bill. And State Rep. Bruce Smith, who proposed it, said the letters and e-mails he received ran 4-1 against it.
Teaching respectGun safety activists are less concerned about homicides and suicides involving hunting firearms. Handguns, which account for roughly one-third of all firearms owned in America, are responsible for 80 percent of all homicides. But news of school shooting sprees in idyllic communities and inner cities alike have added to society's queasiness over firearms. And despite child access prevention laws, people still worry about children getting their hands on guns. "I don't like having guns in the house," said Madden. "Nothing's perfect in the way of security."Minery is familiar with such sentiments. His 6-year-old has a friend whose mother won't let him come play because there are guns in the house, even though he keeps them locked up at all times.If there is a clash between hunting tradition and gun safety awareness, Minery, like many hunters, believes it is based in misunderstanding. The best way to prevent the misuse of firearms is to raise children with a knowledge and respect for them, he said. "I feel more comfortable with them knowing about it," he said. In fact, making firearms taboo is the surest way to lure children toward them when adults aren't around, many gun owners say. "The biggest mistake made by the Clinton administration was taking guns out of schools," said Brad Marshall, owner of Marshall Firearms in Boscawen, referring to the Safe Schools Act of 1994. Back in his day, school kids got a half day off the first day of hunting season, he said. Throughout the season, students were allowed to bring their guns to school and leave them in the principal's office, picking them up to head straight from the classroom into the woods. "We had no problems," he said. It is the logic of that bygone confidence that leads Heidi St. Jacques to look the other way when the guns are propped against the wall. "If you raise a child up properly around guns, they're not going to abuse that," she said.Last spring, when Chris and Margaret Furnari got Joseph his first gun, they focused on his attitude ahead of his aim. "It's a respectful thing," Margaret said. "He was like 'woo-hoo, a gun,' and his dad was like, 'no.' " The gun would go right back to the store, they told Joseph, if he was cavalier or macho about it. "Handling a gun involves a lot of self-restraint," Chris Furnari said.
Test of faithSandy Hanley is the type of person you'd expect to find leading gun control rallies, holding a poster with her daughter's name, date of birth. Date of death. Instead, she's listening to her 12-year-old son, Mitchell Cummings, tell hunting stories, suppressing a fear as loud as a gun blast in her head, as vivid as spent blood. Hanley knows better than anyone what can happen when a gun gets in the wrong hands. Yet her belief in the rightness of the hunting tradition is enough to supplant a throbbing memory.On Tuesday, Feb. 18, 1997, Hanley's daughter, Dawn Gagne, was shot and killed with a shotgun. The 21-year-old mother of three had had her husband, Roland Gagne, arrested a few days earlier for hitting her and threatening to kill her. The police took his guns away but let him free on bail. The next day, he borrowed a shotgun, blew the lock off his front door, and shot his wife while she pleaded for her life. Hanley's son, Brent Minery, had grown up hunting. Hanley was used to the sound of gunshots, the sight of a burnished gun barrel. She remembered how Minery had thrilled to tell his hunting stories. But after that day, those stories, those sights and sounds brought bile to her tongue. And then: a new fear. Her 12-year-old wanted to hunt. "I asked Brent, I said, 'You're the big brother. He wants to go. What should I do?' " Hanley said. "I trust Brent. And Mitchell's a smart kid."She decided to let him go - even though the sight of him with his borrowed rifle probed at her worst fear."When I think of Mitchell going out in the woods with this big gun . . ." she said. "It's scary for me. I couldn't lose another one."But she hugged him and sent him on his way, and paced all day on her short legs while she waited. Over and over she reached for the phone, thinking she'd call Minery on his cell phone, thinking better of it. "He spoke with me about that," she said, mother turned child. In the end, when her boy returned home safely, Hanley felt surges of relief turn to ripples of enthusiasm. "I was happy that he was able to hunt," she said. "He was so excited I had to be excited for him." http://www.concordmonitor.com/stories/front1101/hunter_for_monday_2001.shtml
A certain nervousnessOrdinarily, the family's firearms are locked in gun cabinets, the ammunition stored separately. But this time of year Charlie and his dad sometimes leave them leaning against the wall in the family room. Heidi St. Jacques cringes a little to see them there. She has strict household rules regarding guns: No touching of guns or bows without an adult around, no touching of guns or bows when friends are over. At the same time, she trusts her son. "I'm completely confident in Charlie's ability with guns and his respect for them," she said.There are those who would question the wisdom of such trust. "The average hunter is very responsible," said Chuck Drew, director of New Hampshire Ceasefire, a gun injury prevention organization. "We're just saying that unfortunately children are getting unauthorized access to firearms, and tragedies occur because of that.""There's an awful lot of accidental injuries that involve a kid getting a hold of a firearm," said Concord Police Chief Jerry Madden. "And that includes kids who have had training. . . . There's no way to know how many near misses there have been either."According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, approximately 18,500 Americans are unintentionally shot each year. Of those who died in unintentional shootings in 1998, 30 percent were 19 or younger. The two most common activities causing accidental shootings were cleaning a gun and hunting.Fear of such incidents partially explains the rate at which New Hampshire land is being posted against hunting. No one keeps track of how much is posted, but wildlife experts say the practice is becoming more common.Margaret Furnari admits she was nervous watching her 12-year-old son, Joseph, head into the woods with a shotgun for the first time this year. "You hear stories about people getting shot," she said. "Things like that make you worry."Some seasoned hunters even confess to a certain nervousness. Brent Minery, a lifelong hunter who is fastidious about gun safety with his three young children, isn't so confident about other people's practices. "I don't feel very safe in the woods during rifle season," he said. Hunting officials say such fears are unfounded. New Hampshire is one of the few states with no minimum age at which children can hunt with a supervised adult. Yet there has not been a single hunting-related shooting fatality in nine years, according to the state Fish and Game Department. With 84,000 hunters in the woods each year, there have been fewer than eight hunting-related shooting injuries annually since 1994. "Is hunting safe? The records speak for themselves," said Eric Aldrich, director of public relations for Fish and Game. Aldrich attributes the state's record to a strong hunter education system that emphasizes safety above all else. "Those courses don't teach you how to hunt," he said. "They teach you how to hunt safely."Aldrich says he's observed little controversy in recent years over the topic of young people and hunting weapons. But in other states, the issue has triggered some debate. In September, the Pennsylvania legislature killed a bill that would have allowed 10-year-olds to hunt under the supervision of a licensed adult. A man whose son was killed by a 12-year-old in a hunting accident spoke out against the bill. And State Rep. Bruce Smith, who proposed it, said the letters and e-mails he received ran 4-1 against it.
Teaching respectGun safety activists are less concerned about homicides and suicides involving hunting firearms. Handguns, which account for roughly one-third of all firearms owned in America, are responsible for 80 percent of all homicides. But news of school shooting sprees in idyllic communities and inner cities alike have added to society's queasiness over firearms. And despite child access prevention laws, people still worry about children getting their hands on guns. "I don't like having guns in the house," said Madden. "Nothing's perfect in the way of security."Minery is familiar with such sentiments. His 6-year-old has a friend whose mother won't let him come play because there are guns in the house, even though he keeps them locked up at all times.If there is a clash between hunting tradition and gun safety awareness, Minery, like many hunters, believes it is based in misunderstanding. The best way to prevent the misuse of firearms is to raise children with a knowledge and respect for them, he said. "I feel more comfortable with them knowing about it," he said. In fact, making firearms taboo is the surest way to lure children toward them when adults aren't around, many gun owners say. "The biggest mistake made by the Clinton administration was taking guns out of schools," said Brad Marshall, owner of Marshall Firearms in Boscawen, referring to the Safe Schools Act of 1994. Back in his day, school kids got a half day off the first day of hunting season, he said. Throughout the season, students were allowed to bring their guns to school and leave them in the principal's office, picking them up to head straight from the classroom into the woods. "We had no problems," he said. It is the logic of that bygone confidence that leads Heidi St. Jacques to look the other way when the guns are propped against the wall. "If you raise a child up properly around guns, they're not going to abuse that," she said.Last spring, when Chris and Margaret Furnari got Joseph his first gun, they focused on his attitude ahead of his aim. "It's a respectful thing," Margaret said. "He was like 'woo-hoo, a gun,' and his dad was like, 'no.' " The gun would go right back to the store, they told Joseph, if he was cavalier or macho about it. "Handling a gun involves a lot of self-restraint," Chris Furnari said.
Test of faithSandy Hanley is the type of person you'd expect to find leading gun control rallies, holding a poster with her daughter's name, date of birth. Date of death. Instead, she's listening to her 12-year-old son, Mitchell Cummings, tell hunting stories, suppressing a fear as loud as a gun blast in her head, as vivid as spent blood. Hanley knows better than anyone what can happen when a gun gets in the wrong hands. Yet her belief in the rightness of the hunting tradition is enough to supplant a throbbing memory.On Tuesday, Feb. 18, 1997, Hanley's daughter, Dawn Gagne, was shot and killed with a shotgun. The 21-year-old mother of three had had her husband, Roland Gagne, arrested a few days earlier for hitting her and threatening to kill her. The police took his guns away but let him free on bail. The next day, he borrowed a shotgun, blew the lock off his front door, and shot his wife while she pleaded for her life. Hanley's son, Brent Minery, had grown up hunting. Hanley was used to the sound of gunshots, the sight of a burnished gun barrel. She remembered how Minery had thrilled to tell his hunting stories. But after that day, those stories, those sights and sounds brought bile to her tongue. And then: a new fear. Her 12-year-old wanted to hunt. "I asked Brent, I said, 'You're the big brother. He wants to go. What should I do?' " Hanley said. "I trust Brent. And Mitchell's a smart kid."She decided to let him go - even though the sight of him with his borrowed rifle probed at her worst fear."When I think of Mitchell going out in the woods with this big gun . . ." she said. "It's scary for me. I couldn't lose another one."But she hugged him and sent him on his way, and paced all day on her short legs while she waited. Over and over she reached for the phone, thinking she'd call Minery on his cell phone, thinking better of it. "He spoke with me about that," she said, mother turned child. In the end, when her boy returned home safely, Hanley felt surges of relief turn to ripples of enthusiasm. "I was happy that he was able to hunt," she said. "He was so excited I had to be excited for him." http://www.concordmonitor.com/stories/front1101/hunter_for_monday_2001.shtml