A Donation to Education

The Sportsman's Warehouse has donated $8000 to Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) for hunter education awards. "They are very supportive of hunter education. They even provide classroom facilities in their stores and equipment for the classes," said Ron Fritz, Hunter Education Coordinator for IDFG. "The corporation as a whole voted to donate the $8000 to the hunter education incentive program." Idaho has 1,100 certified volunteer hunter education instructors who teach over 400 hunter education classes annually statewide. Hunter education classes consist of approximately 15 hours of classroom instruction and four hours of field experience. These classes teach safe handling of firearms and bow hunting equipment, but also reach beyond by teaching the young hunters about wildlife, game management, laws, ethics and hunters' responsibilities. Each instructor is a volunteer donating countless hours of time to these young people. "Well, the way we look at it, we try to support the instructors teaching classes to kids. They are not making money doing this. They do it because they care about the future of all hunters. Sportsman's Warehouse feels we would like to help support the instructors with a small incentive," said Don Thomas of Sportsman's Warehouse. The incentives will be part of a program that rewards instructors based on the number of classes taught, students graduated, class hours and other factors. Hunter education began with increased safety as its first basic goal and has been credited with the dramatic decrease of fatalities since its development. Since the 1970s, the fatality rate has fallen from 11-12 per year to one to two in the past five years.