The ny nwco test today was expecting a full 40 seats and 26 applicants were missing!

I am a co-instructor for firearms and hunter safety classes in my area and we have had a problem with Anti-firearm and Anti-hunters filling our free classes to max capacity and then all being no-shows. All this to block actual interested people from getting firearm experience or their hunting licenses. It has been getting so bad that we have been taking name/address/phone number/email address at minimum and calling to speak to each person to confirm they are attending our classes. Usually antis don't answer the phone and/or give bogus info. We open up those bogus applicant seats accordingly. No need to block people who need or want proper education.

I am sorry if this is old news for some of you but I know this is a safe place to vent on this "sensitive" subject. The antis need to get a life or at least get another hobby....please leave us alone.

When my VFW has a Function/Dinner etc, we ask for a $10 up front payment to cover food cost's, that's returned at the door to discourage "No Show's".

Maybe that's only in Downstate? I've never heard of it up here. They are different worlds though.

Up there you are allowed the finer things in life like rifle hunting, river fishing, etc. and I guess less antis.

Thanks for posting, Danny M. You probably had more no-shows than we have NWCOs in Wisconsin. And we don't need anything other than a

trapping license. Why would people be upset with NWCOs? Even the anti-hunting and trapping people love us here. They think we're the

humane society for wild animals.

You say that but some of the summer tourists that come to the East End of Long Island are bunny huggers.

I can't even post some of the experiences I have had with some of these people on both a personal and professional level. I'll save them for the day we all meet up or talk offline.

We are starting to get the city folk up here, but when their French poodle gets sprayed by a skunk, they see a brown jelly donut munching away at their garden, or mice take up residence in their character filled 150 year old farmhouse they get reformed.

Danny M, I may need to take a trip to the Hamptons. I can talk bunny-hugger language with the best of them. I have a knack for

convincing them to my way of thinking just like a smooth politician. They don't even know it's happening. Kind of like Eaten

described in his post.

Do you let them hold your mouse whompin hammer?

I had a call for a vole retreat today. I look at the damage and it's too high off the ground to be vole and there is no other sign of voles. I ask him if he has rabbits.

"Never seen one on the property. But we do have a woodchuck."

Oh?

"Yeah, but he's trained to stay away from the garden."

How do you do that?

"I clap every time he gets near it. He knows he can eat grass in the yard but can't go in the garden."

I then took him to the garden and pointed out how the damage is not vole damage. He asks how to get rid of the woodchuck. I asked him where it lives he points at the woods. Between not knowing where it lives and a lush garden I know this isn't going to be easy to trap. I told him since he lives out in the middle of the woods I'd just shoot it.

"I'd shoot a person but I won't shoot an animal."

Ok, I guess you have to draw the line somewhere.

"I have a tactical shotgun."

Ok. I decide to refer this to one of the sales guys... By this time I just want to leave. I did end up setting for voles, but only after watching the guy push his finger into the soil and tell me it's a vole hole.

"I'd shoot a person, but I won't shoot an animal." Sounds to me like Danny M is sending people up to you from the Hamptons.

Hahaha...I guess one of them headed up north.

That is an amazing character trait you have there Sir...smooth operator haha.

I have been told I have a gift as well. I was a government Purchasing Agent for 10 years so I was basically paid to talk smooth to vendors to get what I needed from them...the absolute best deal on my terms.

I have never been a salesman though. I am starting to see things are different from that side of the table. It's a weird feeling "selling yourself", but it seems to be natural because I have set up many of jobs within minutes of talking to clients.