Took my grandson yesterday. Got no problem with most of it. Kept my mouth shut. Dont want my grandson thinking the safety rules can be ignored, BUT a retired biologist brought up bison. Said there were about 60 million and market hunters reduced that to 1500 in just a few years. Repeated the passenger pigeon tale. I was waiting for him to say beaver but he did not. Think I will wait awhile to tell my grandson what the real story is. i wish they would quit preaching that as truth.

Good job on keeping your mouth shut and taking him. How did he do? Yup tell him the truth later on.

Just a suggestion, maybe it would be best to get him a book on bison and let him discover the truth for himself. I think Steve rinella has a good book on Bison and he could have the "meat eater" connection which would draw him in.

He did fine Adam. He has been around firearms (under my supervision) a lot. Has killed two deer. I don't think he is ready to hunt deer alone or shoot a 22 up into a tree squirel hunting, but he is ready to hunt alone (no other kids) with a shotgun.

I've never understood this government mandated safety thing. Safety is best taught at home.

How is Biology partof hunter safety. I never taught Biology in my Hunter Safety classes. It was explicitly The Handling Function and Safety of Firearms.

Randall they were briefly explaining carrying capacity of habitat and sustainable use.

It is best taught at home, but often isn't.

Buffalo hunters were killing buffalo for their hides in large numbers. The gov't was encouraging the indiscriminate killing of buffalo as a method of weakening the plains Indians. The number of buffalo declinded precipitiously. It all fit together very nicely except that it ignored the exculpatory evidence. Now, 140 years later, the myth is still taught far more often than the truth.

we may wish there were more bison someday soon...

That's good to hear. I don't blame you for being skeptical at all.

I am a hunter safety instructor in Maryland and our material stresses that no species has ever been made threatened or extinct by modern sport hunting.

Since hunter education became mandatory, hunting accidents have been greatly reduced. Many parents don’t even know how to handle a firearm safely as personally witnessed in hunter education classes, on the shooting range, while hunting, in gun shops, etc. Some kids that want to learn to hunt have parents that don’t even own a gun let alone have the ability to teach how to use it properly.

A lot of kids today are being raised by their grandparents or great grandparents. A lot of them may have no knowledge of firearms and bring the kids to be taught safety. Danny’s grandson is lucky, a lot of kids don’t have a mentor. I’m all for state hunter safety programs, new shooters & hunters are vital to keep the 2nd going down the road,

I dont have a problem with it. it works. Numbers are proof.

Apparently Michigan has an online course for 29,99

What really reduced buffalo and passenger pigeons. Over hunting wasn’t it? Sometimes killing for the sake of killing.

Well, we know that's a lie :-)

Reminds me of an article an anti wrote in a local newspaper some years ago about a local trout stream that was home to a good concentration of otter. Anglers were complaining that, even though the stream was stocked each year with trout, the population of trout was low. The anglers wondered if the otter were the problem? This anti wrote that otter didn't eat trout, that their preferred fish was carp.

Charles, with 60 million buffalo, how many would need to be killed a year to lower the population? How many teams of hunters would it take to do that? How many could a team of four men say, kill and skin a day?