Give of your time to help others learn about the outdoors.

A nice good for a young hunter. The smile says it all for the young deer hunter.

Enjoying the outdoors is something that can be easily learned. By catching one fish or a limit; by deer hunting and taking a nice 8-point; by shooting a nice black bear or by decoying a brace of mallards drakes into a small pothole pond.

It also can be learned simply by spending time outdoors, and by studying nature and how our fish and game live, move and react to danger. Much can be learned simply by watching.

We can catch a bunch of salmon or walleyes, but there must be more to our sport than simply satisfying our selfish personal interests. We can take, on occasion, but must learn to give something back as well. Sadly, many never learn this part about giving back.

It’s up to us to make time to teach our childre, minorities and women to hunt.

All of the above joys are fun but nothing compares with mentoring a child or another adult to the pleasures of the outdoor life. Mentoring means giving of our personal pleasures and time to introduce another person to those things we have experienced and have come to love. We can then sit back and watch as a warm glow of satisfaction  crease another person’s face for the first time as they accomplish something very deep and meaningful to them.

My son Guy with a nice lake trout and  my oldest daughter Kim with a big brown.

To me, shooting one more black bear after having taken 28 with bow, muzzleloader, pistol or rifle is meaningless. The same goes for arrowing another small buck or dusting up another limit of our sorrowful population of ringneck pheasants. Do I need another limit of salmon or just one more steelhead in my lifetime? Must I prove myself to anyone at this late stage?

Not hardly. Watching a youngster experience some of these outdoor thrills that has kept me going for more than 60  years is far more meaningful to me. Introducing an adult to the outdoor pleasures that I hold dear also is an incomparable thrill.

Today’s seasoned anglers and hunters are a bit long in the tooth, and that doesn't bode well for the future of either pastime if we don’t get involved. The sad fact is that current sportsman are growing older, and there is too little recruitment of youngsters in the immediate past.

Studies show that children from eight to 10 years of age are most likely to be influenced by a friend, parent or relative to go fishing and/or hunting. This age group is most receptive to learning these sports before they reach high school age.

Mentoring children is not a one-day event. It takes years to do properly.

It takes time and patience to mentor future anglers and hunters. It requires an investment in personal talent and lots of time. It takes love and understanding. It means giving of yourself. It also means realizing that a child’s attention span is far shorter than that of an adult. Patience is a key to the successful mentoring of a child. One of our great=grandsons at the ripe old age of five years says we wants to hunt deer with Kay and I.

Can he sit still and be quiet. He says he can but time will tell. Perhaps he will be so moved the experience that he will replace youthful enthusiasm with learning how to sit still and silent.

Start kids on something easy to catch. Bluegills and sunfish on an inland lake are willing biters. They can start catching fish right away. The same rule applies when introducing youngsters to hunting. Start them on squirrels, and leave the bow or firearm hunting for deer or bear until they have much more field experience.

The key is to provide you-to-them personal instructions in a friendly manner, and begin a child’s exposure on something easily caught. Don’t make the outing too long, but stop for a burger and Coke on the way home, and let the kids keep their fish. Let them show off their catch to the neighbor kids, show them how to clean their catch, and have fresh-caught fish for dinner. Mentoring means  togetherness. The teaching should be fun, not confrontational. Teach them respect for their catch and for others who are participating in catching fish or hunting..

After all these years, I still react well to the hushed whisper of a youngster saying "here comes a nice buck. Isn't he beautiful.? Tell me when to draw and shoot."

Do I have a big grin on my face when I point at the rounded dish-shaped spawning bed of a bull bluegill, and then coax a child into making a short, accurate cast to the proper spot? Of course I do, and it gets bigger as a bluegill tips up, rises like a puppet on a string, and sips a wee rubber spider off the surface.

Tell  the child to expect the sideways pull on the line of a nice bluegill, and teach them to watch for sharp spines when handling live bluegills. Teach them how to keep the rod tip up, and to play the fish gently. Coach them, and praise them, and never raise your voice if something goes wrong. This trip is for them, not you. The longer a child-fish battle lasts, the more the kid will remember their first catch.

You see, what a mentor does is help a youngster develop and retain good memories. Early trips are no time for recriminations if the youngster does something wrong, which they often do. Keep the trip light, keep everything simple, smile a lot and make it a positive experience rather than something they never want to do again.

As much as I like fishing, it’s enjoyable to watch someone who has never done it before, respond to clear and simple instructions, make a perfect cast and hook the fish. My pleasure comes from sharing their excitement.
It helps me remember those early days when my mentor – Max Donovan of Clio – taught me the ropes.

After many years, squirrel hunting is not at the top of my hunting priorities. But, if a youngster wants to go, I'm up to the challenge. A few hotspots exist in my area, and walking a youngster into the woods and sitting down to wait for bushytails to start moving is a grand adventure for someone who has never done it before.

“The key here is that the mentor must leave his fishing rod, shotgun or rifle home,” said Kevin Davis, a retired Department of Natural Resources conservation officer. “A mentor who carries a bow, firearm or rod appears to be competing with the youngster, and that is the worst way to handle a beginning angler or hunter.

“Such outings succeed best if the mentor does what he or she is supposed to do, and that is to educate youngsters how to catch fish, hunt deer, shoot squirrels or whatever their current passion may be. Mentoring trips are for the kids, not for a selfish adult. All an adult needs to bring is plenty of  enthusiasm, sound knowledge, a contagious sense of safety and an out-going willingness to share it with a child.”

It's fun teaching kids the little tricks that most longtime hunters learned many years ago: like clicking a quarter against the breech of a shotgun to produce a clicking noise like a chattering squirrel; tossing a rock on the far side of a tree to get the squirrel to circle around to your side; these and many other tricks work well but a first-time hunter will get all excited when they watch it produce the first time.

And they will thrill, years from now, when they repay their debt to me or another mentor by teaching someone else how to fish or hunt. These fishing and hunting pastimes emphasize one basic tenet: what goes around, comes around. You give and you take from each experience.

My late friend Max Donovan of Clio, Mich. had a big hand in mentoring me.

Waterfowling is fun when shared with a novice hunter. Think of the lessons to be learned: why ducks land into the wind; why puddle ducks often circle two or three times before pitching in to a spread of decoys; why there are times to call and times to remain silent: when to move and when not to; how a marsh has a distinctive odor on a cold October morning; why the head-shaking battle of a fly-caught steelhead is such a thrill. The list of neat experiences to be  shared could fill this and dozens of other pages.

We know these things, and only those sportsmen who deeply care can help children or other adults learn why what we do is so important now and why it will become more important in the future. They need to learn that anglers and hunters, who pay taxes on their equipment purchases, can see it returned to the state to help finance other types of habitat work, fund other studies or to purchase more public land for hunting.

These and thousands of other outdoor lessons that adults take for granted are the stuff of dreams to children, minorities or women. These tidbits of lore are why having someone follow us into the future, and then teach youngsters to carry a bright flaming torch that will lead to the birth of a new sportsman, regardless of their age.

Fishermen and hunters have only a few things to pass on to younger sportsmen: their knowledge, wisdom and a willingness to share it. This is not the time nor place for adults to be ignorant or selfish: it's a time when we must give of ourselves so others can continue the angling and hunting heritage now and far into the future.

My wife and I share many days afield with youngsters. We take a fierce delight in watching a smile light up the day and a gleam form in an eye as all  puzzle pieces fall into place. It's the day when understanding and wisdom team up with enthusiasm and opportunity to make someone a success on the water or in the fields and woods.

The future of these pastimes, and of our youth, is in our hands now. We can pass along the tradition by mentoring people or we can drop the ball by being selfish and self-centered. The choice is ours to make, and we need to choose our actions wisely.

The future of fishing and hunting is in your hands. Dont drop the ball now.

We can think only of ourselves or we can put forth a real effort to encourage others to enter these outdoor pastimes. In my mind, the choice is an easy one. We help train new sportsmen or we can watch what is so precious and real to us begin to wither and die because of sportsman apathy and a silly lack of compassion for others.

I've helped youngsters, minorities and women learn about these pastimes and will continue to do so. I'll freely give of my time, and once my race has been run, I'll be on my way to a new adventure knowing that I did my part during my lifetime.

Will you be able to say the same?

Title: Give of your time to help others learn about the outdoors.

Tags: ((Dave, Richey, Michigan, outdoors, fishing, hunting, introducing, women, children, minorities, to, these, pastimes, pleasures))

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