Trust me, I’m a graduate of hunter safety course

Other than mowing the yard once a week, I’m not much of an outdoorsman.

It’s been a long time, in fact, since I stood in the aisle at the local Coast-to-Coast looking longingly at a bottle of Doe-in-Rut buck lure and thinking, “I need that.”

For what, I have no idea.

I didn’t actually know anyone who hunted deer.

But the idea of sitting in a tree all in camo appealed to my seventh-grade self.

I was going to be a hunter.

Whether I sprayed the doe urine on myself or around the base of a tree, I never did find out.

Instead, I used my allowance money that day at Coast-to-Coast to buy a squirrel call.

I never did get the hang of it.

In my hands, the call made a noise that sounded more like a flatulent goose than any squirrel I’d ever heard.

I still don’t know why I thought squirrel hunting might become my next hobby. I’d no more eat a squirrel than I would a rat — and squirrels are basically just rats with more stylish tails.

I’m also afraid of squirrels, to be brutally honest.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve feared a squirrel attack. It’s just one of those things.

I always envisioned it’d go down like this — I’m riding my bike under a tree when one jumps me.

I squeal in terror as the thing grabs hold of my head like a big acorn.

As I pedal faster and scream louder, it looks as if I’m being attacked by a coonskin cap. But I can’t shake it.

So, no, I never did actually go on a squirrel hunt.

The squirrel call was promptly set aside with various other gear that I planned to put to use once my friends and I got our hunting licenses.

I needed to be ready, I thought, to kill all manner of game.

No, up to that point, I didn’t have a hunting license. Or even a weapon.

That came on Christmas Day, when my parents bestowed upon me a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun.

God have mercy on the animal kingdom.

Of course, though, I wasn’t just allowed to grab my animal calls and bottles of deer whiz and run wild.

I first had to attend the hunter safety course.

My friends and I all enrolled together to study under the tutelage of county conservation director Dan Towers, who still leads the course to this day.

In fact, Towers will again be offering the free, three-day course beginning Tuesday for aspiring hunters age 12 and older.

Seeing that reminded me of my brief tenure as an outdoorsman.

On one hand, it’s good to see that today’s generation is still interested in hunting, although I envision today’s kids walking around the woods with AR-15s.

But, on the other, I think it’s time I publicly offer to give back my certificate of completion.

Or re-enroll, at the very least.

I haven’t hunted in years, but it feels wrong that I may one day tell my son that I successfully completed the state of Iowa’s hunter safety course.

Along those lines, I feel I should also retake the moped safety class my friends and I completed one evening at City Hall.

We got our moped licenses, then promptly drove around trying to kick each other off them.

In the case of the hunter safety course, we all got our licenses within 24 hours of graduating.

A group of four or five of us soon made off for the woods, carrying various gauges and calibers of weaponry.

In retrospect, I can’t believe my parents allowed me to take part.

Would you allow your seventh-grader to go off with a hunting party of other seventh graders?

“Oh,” they must have thought, “they’re all graduates of the hunter safety course!”

I still don’t know what we were hunting, or what was even in season.

I don’t think it mattered, because when we came to a hillside and saw what appeared to be a colony of rabbits, all hell broke loose.

Everybody just started shooting.

Indiscriminately.

Frankly, I’ve still never seen so many rabbits gathered in one place.

Some guys were kneeling and shooting. Some were shooting over their heads.

It was like the Civil War had been unleashed on an Ewok village.

If we’d had bayonets, we might very well have made a charge.

When the shooting finally stopped, one thing became clear — we were pretty lousy shots.

Just three rabbits lay motionless before us.

I laid claim to one of them, and took it home.

But, no longer in the presence of my buddies, I began to crack. When my dad told me I’d have to clean it — in preparation, you know, to eat it — I suddenly reverted from Rambo back into a seventh-grade boy.

I couldn’t do it. And I haven’t been hunting since.

Looking back, I’m just glad I at least had the smarts not to spray myself at any point with deer urine.

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