July 05, 2008 by Gildas Paradis

We have a full roster of youth hunters again, actually it was full last year, with so many kids wanting to participate. We can only handle 6-8 kids with 3-4 mentors, mostly because of the full service hunt package they get when here for the weekend. It takes a fulltime cook to keep the meals prepared for these young hunters. The kids get a full weekend of hunting much like they would if they booked a hunt with us. The only difference is there is a day of "school" where we educate them about waterfowl hunting incl: calling, decoys, equipment, ethics, species id, shot gun patterning and more. There is a big emphasis put on Safety and proper gun handling, even though all the kids need to be graduates of hunter saftey course, we give them a little reminder course.

The kids have a ball and even find cleaning the ducks a blast. It is all part of hunting and they soak it up. Manitoba Conservation has openned a week on Sept 1st where youth hunters can hunt without a licnese (with a mentor) to help introduce youth into hunting. We take full advantge or that to add a real positive experience that they will remember forever and tell all their freinds what a blast duck hunting is!

It is all about getting kids into hunting and learning that it isn't complicated, rather quite easy and it is a natural part of our heritage and what we as humans are designed to do.

It is too bad more people don't step up and mentor a kid for a day even, it would do wonders for hunter recruitment, and the future of hunting.

Above are some photos of last years group, they were a great bunch, and GOOD SHOTS!