WHY TO TEACH YOUR KIDS TO HUNT AND FIVE TIPS FOR TAKING CHILDREN HUNTING

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Mrs. Brenda Valentine of Buchanan, Tennessee, conducts hunting and bowhunting seminars across the country.

The simple answer is that teaching children to hunt is just the right thing to do. Hunting is a basic human instinct. Hunting also teaches children to become very self-reliant. Once they learn to find, take, clean and cook wild game they'll experience a very self-satisfying feeling. They learn that if they're ever called upon to go into the woods and take food for themselves and their families, they can.

You also need to teach your children that hunting is a necessary tool of wildlife management. Civilization has removed most of the natural predators like wolves, panthers and other prey species. Today, mankind has to keep animal populations under control, or else the animals will starve from over-browsing or become so overpopulated that they create wrecks and destroy crops.

Here's five tips for taking your children hunting.

1) Children need things watered down and softened up. They don't need to hunt for a long time or sit still for very long. You need to make the hunting experience fun for them.

2) Children have short attention spans. They're going to fidget and squirm. Then 30 minutes after they've been in the woods, they'll forget why they've come in the first place. So make up games, pick up sticks, discuss the shapes of clouds and let the children use their imaginations to decide what the shapes of the clouds are. Look at bugs. Find animal tracks. Make a trip into the woods a fun experience. Let the children pick up hickory nuts or collect a pocketful of acorns.

3) Take plenty of food, preferably soft, non-crunchy food. Take their favorite treats. I take M&M's for my 4-year-old grandson. I let him climb the tree with me and pull up my bow. Then on the way home, we'll get a pocketful of nuts and a few corn cobs, and I'll find him a stick that can be a gun. When he's an old man, he won't remember hunting, but he will remember going into the woods with his grandmother and what a good time we had.

4) Let the youngster be a part of the hunt. Take some rattling antlers for him or to use for rattling. Buy him his own grunt call, and let him wear it around his neck.

5) Remember that hunting is only a term that we use when we take our children out into the woods for the first few times to let them enjoy being in the out of doors and discovering how much fun the woods can be. As they get older, you can teach them more. But always remember, if hunting isn't one of the most fun things a child does, he or she won't want to go the next time.

You can write Brenda Valentine at P.O. Box 31, Buchanan, TN 38222 or email her at breval@wk.net

Check back each day this week for more from Brenda Valentine.

Why Women Don't Hunt With Men
Why to Teach Your Kids to Hunt
Equipping the Woman Hunter
Christmas Gifts for the Hunting Woman
Which Places Welcome Women Hunters

John's Journal