Hunting For Youth

[Paul Wood]

The Notre Dame Rod and Gun Club has been trying to get the province to lower the legal hunting age in NL to try and encourage more youth involvement. The aim is to reduce the age to 12 yrs as in other jurisdictions in Canada so you can take your children/grandchildren hunting and get them interested while young. The Canadian Wildlife Service did put a Waterfowl Heritage Day in place in NL in 2008 (at our club's request) allowing a special day prior to the regular season to allow young hunters the chance to try waterfowling before regular hunters. They must be accompanied by a licensed adult hunter (who cannot shoot). The problem is that the province has not lowered the hunting age so it only applies to 16 - 18 yr olds which is not the real intention of the day. We have written Minister Charlene Johnson (Environment and Conservation) several times and know that the Wildlife Division people are supporting this change....but we need more support. Our club instituted a Young Hunter Heritage Day at our club last spring which was really successful. We had 27 young kids shooting trap, 22 rifle, duck calling as well as learning about safety and conservation. We are having another on May 29, 2010 in cooperation with the Wildlife Division and Ducks Unlimited and intend to make it an annual event. We are showing the Minister that there is interest from young people and we need to promote our hunting culture with our youth. We need everyone involved in hunting to write the Minister - send an e mail etc about this issue. Hunter numbers are decreasing dramatically - youth are pursuing other activities as they can't participate properly. Minister Charlene Johnson, Dept. of Environment and Conservation, P.O. Box 8700, St. John's NL A1B 4J6 All the best, Paul Wood, President, Note: we are based in Lewisporte on the south side access road; and have a clubhouse, rifle range, trap facility, and archery range. We have over 100 members from all over central newfoundland and other parts of newfoundland including St. John's. Any one interested in joining? e mail [e-mail] Notre Dame Rod and Gun Club, P.O. Box 1239, Lewisporte, NL A0G3A0

[Edward Smith]

I wish that we could start that here as well. Paul was it hard to plan for?

[Kelly Sandoval]

Hi Paul, looking forward to the next Young Hunter Heritage day. This year will be even better now that we have a year under our belt.

[Edward Smith]

Maybe we as a group should do something as well! Thanks for letting us know Paul! Ed

[Rich Reeves]

Hi Paul,

Did you consider starting up an online petition? Check out the link below for the NL crossbow petition.

http://www.petitiononline.com/hunting1/petition.html
http://www.petitiononline.com/petition.html

This guy (gal) started a NL crossbow group on Facebook and passed on the information via that group.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57237227844

The letter is attached to the petition. I hope this helps.

Rich