I asked the conservation warden who spoke to our hunting class what he thought the percentage was of hunters who violate the law. He replied it was pretty low, about 2%. Then he added that he thought it was because hunters invest so much money in their sport (you know, guns, ammo, camo, blaze orange, processing fees … beer) they don’t want to risk losing their ability to hunt, whereas “with fishing, anyone can go to Wal-Mart and get their Barbie fishing pole, so you see a lot more violations there.”
OK.
Then today in the Journal Sentinel, there was a story on teenage boys blowing away animals en masse, at night, with clubs, whatever, as long as it’s illegal.
And I think about the 10- to 12-year olds in my class waving the guns around heedlessly, asking so many questions about what is legal to do with an injured deer, and I cringe. The class was pretty much a joke, the teacher often describing his own behaviors that conflict directly with what he was trying to teach us, and focusing on weird minutiae like the allowable barrel length for shooting deer with a pistol (5 1/2 inches) instead of basic practicalities like estimating distance to a target. And now those kids can get a provisional license to go out in the woods with weapons.
5% of Wisconsinites hunt. That’s about 278,000 people (not counting the FIBs). If the warden is accurate in his 2% estimate, that’s 5550 hunters violating laws.
Also, the hunter safety class is only required for underage hunters. The rest of us can just go to a DNR service center, plunk down our $24 for a gun deer season license, and off we go.
I’m amazed that there are only 5550 lawbreakers.
