{"id":1340,"date":"2024-05-24T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-24T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2024-06-03T23:34:28","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T23:34:28","slug":"why-minimum-hunting-age-limits-need-to-go-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/24\/why-minimum-hunting-age-limits-need-to-go-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Minimum Hunting-Age Limits Need to Go"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"A<\/div>
The author poses with his son, Anse, who took this dandy whitetail buck last fall. Will Brantley<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You could call me the archetypal proud dad. When I share a picture on social media, it\u2019s often of my 9-year-old son, Anse, with some critter that he\u2019s shot or fish that he\u2019s caught. Last month, the kid bagged his first Eastern longbeard after an epic fly-down hunt in the timber. Last winter, he shot at decoying ducks for the first time and afterward declared that he wanted to be a waterfowl biologist and work at Ducks Unlimited. Back in November, he went still-hunting with me in the rain, and made a perfect shot on a big Tennessee 8-pointer.  <\/p>\n

None of those experiences guarantee that he will go on to be a lifelong hunter, of course. He enjoys baseball, guitar, and playing video games with his buddies, too. But even if Anse doesn\u2019t want to hunt when he\u2019s older, I can rest easy knowing that I\u2019ve done everything I could to properly introduce him to it now. He\u2019s been tagging along with me since he could walk. I let him start practicing with a 22 rifle when he was 4, and he killed his first squirrel when he was 6. Later that same fall, he got his first two deer, and the next spring, he bagged his first turkey.<\/p>\n

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\"Learn<\/a>
Learn how to get the all-new Field & Stream journal!<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

No Kids Allowed<\/h2>\n

But in a number of states, Anse\u2019s introduction to hunting would\u2019ve been illegal. In New York, kids can\u2019t even hunt small game until they\u2019re 12, and they can\u2019t hunt deer with a firearm until they’re 14. Kids under 12 are also prohibited from hunting in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, while 10 is the minimum age in Minnesota and New Jersey. Many western states, including Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, prohibit kids from hunting big game until age 12. In North Dakota, there is no minimum age for hunting small game, but kids can\u2019t hunt deer until age 11\u2014and even then, they can only get a doe tag until they’re 14.<\/p>\n

Why do any of these regulations still exist? And why is the hunting community not raising hell about it? We are still wringing our collective hands over declining license sales, and still pouring money into R3 programs that focus on recruiting new adult hunters. In the short term, I understand that\u2014adult hunting licenses cost much more than youth licenses, and so state agencies get more bang for the buck by recruiting new adults. The hunting industry benefits more, too, since young kids are likely to use borrowed or hand-me-down gear, while adults are more apt to buy new stuff.<\/p>\n

But what about the long game of turning the kids of today into the hunters of tomorrow? There\u2019s an assumption that most of the youth hunters out there come from families who already hunt. Basically, we\u2019ve got them anyway, so why spend the extra money and effort?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just a terrible way to look at things. It\u2019s not a given that a kid is going to enjoy hunting just because Mom and Dad do. Kids become interested in hunting by having lots of opportunity and success early, and it\u2019s obvious that a minimum-hunting age\u2014especially one as old as 12\u2014does nothing except create a barrier to all of that. You don\u2019t even have to be a parent to realize that with all the distractions available today, getting a kid interested in going hunting is easier when he\u2019s 6 and still thinks his parents are heroes than when he\u2019s 12 and beginning to think they might be nerds (and, yes, the word \u201cnerd\u201d is coming back, same as mullets). Virtually every passionate teenage and young adult hunter I know started hunting when they were 6 or 7 years old, and sometimes even younger.<\/p>\n

\"youth
The author’s son, Anse, with his first turkey. Will Brantley<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Non-Hunters Aren’t the Only Problem<\/h2>\n

So what\u2019s behind the minimum-age laws? A lot of it seems to be nothing more than the usual hysterics from people who know nothing about hunting in general or about hunting with kids in partiuclar. In other words, people who think: We can\u2019t turn little kids loose in the woods with guns!<\/em> I\u2019d tell those people to relax because nobody\u2019s asking for that. Universally, young kids who haven\u2019t passed their Hunter Education course have to be within immediate supervision of a licensed adult hunter who can take control of the firearm. Even after that, in most states, it\u2019s not legal for a youngster to hunt alone with a firearm until age 15 or 16. Nothing wrong with that necessarily (even though I was hunting by myself at a much younger age and somehow survived).<\/p>\n

But a surprising number of objections to young kids going hunting come from within the hunting community. There\u2019s always the hypothetical concern about the guy who would put a rifle in a Bog Pod, line it up on a big buck, and then have his 3-year-old daughter squeeze the trigger on opening morning of youth season. Are there some sh*theads out there who actually do that? Maybe, but if you\u2019ve done much actual hunting with a little kid, and seen the patience it requires, then you understand why it\u2019s not many.<\/p>\n

Most of the time, the above hypothetical is introduced by someone who opposes the very idea of a youth-only hunting season because it takes opportunity away from adults. If you don\u2019t like the idea of a kid going hunting because you\u2019re afraid he or she will kill your target buck before you do, then you just might be the sh*thead yourself.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also my favorite: Young children can\u2019t possibly understand the gravity of life and death at that age! <\/em>OK, so where should they learn that from instead? Netflix? Fortnite? I\u2019ll decide when my kid\u2019s ready for that lesson without the state\u2019s help, thank you. The world would be a better place if more kids were exposed to firearms in a safe, controlled way, and maybe also taught that every chicken nugget once had a little blood on it.<\/p>\n

Is every kid ready to go hunting at 6 years old? Of course not. But mine was, and the best moments I\u2019ve ever had in the woods\u2014and in life\u2014have been in the past few years, right by his side, teaching him the ropes. I can\u2019t imagine some arbitrary law having interrupted that.<\/p>\n

The post Why Minimum Hunting-Age Limits Need to Go<\/a> appeared first on Field & Stream<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The author poses with his son, Anse, who took this dandy whitetail buck last fall. Will Brantley You could call me the archetypal proud dad. When I share a picture on social media, it\u2019s often of my 9-year-old son, Anse, with some critter that he\u2019s shot or fish that he\u2019s caught. Last month, the kid…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancesalescoach.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}