American Hunter, The: Hunting for Higher Education

Waking at dawn to attend class was made bearable by the drive west over the Appalachians to Morgantown, W.Va. If you've ever seen those mountains in the fall you might understand why 20 percent of West Virginians are hunters, compared to 8-10 percent of the rest of the country. Still, the numbers are awfully low and getting lower-the number of hunters decreased by 7 percent from 1996-2000 according to a National Shooting Sports Foundation survey-and no simple answers are readily available. But on the belief that young Americans are rational people who will form logical opinions if given both sides to a story, assistant professors John Edwards and James Anderson invited NRA representatives to speak to their new class, "The Tradition of Hunting."

Whether it's true, America's colleges are perceived as fostering more hippies than hunters. Some experts think college administrators and professors are responsible for cultivating biases in students.

In his booklet, You Can't Gef a Good Education if They're Only Telling You Half The Story, political author and columnist David Horowitz warns that radicals are "capturing and using the institutions [universities] that produce society's governing ideas" as a means of imposing their political agenda on American society.

Other insiders, however, such as University of Georgia forest resources professor Karl V. Miller, do not believe a bias against hunting exists in America's higher-education institutions. Instead, they attribute the lack of hunting knowledge to current societal norms. Miller is adamant that his classes learn the scientific advantages of hunting when used as the remarkable wildlife management tool it is.

Shannon Taylor, a business professor at Montana State University, teaches that hunting is a $ 1 billion economic boon to Montana's economy, but he says that some colleges are lagging behind. "Hunting is finally being more critically analyzed for educational uses by institutions and governments as a wildlife management tool and positive economic stimulus," said Taylor.

Certainly most schools that harbor true wildlife management programs offer students factual information on hunting as a wildlife management tool, but for most non-wildlife major students, higher-education lectures that show both sides of the gun/hunting debate are absent.

West Virginia's new class, classified as a university-wide "special topics course," is unusual enough to garner the attention of the national news media. In an interview with The Washington Times, Edwards made a statement that both Miller and Taylor agree with: "I noticed a trend among undergraduates enrolled in wildlifemanagement courses in which an increasing number of them have never hunted. I don't think every wildlife professional needs to hunt," continued Edwards, "but they need to understand hunting."

By exposing the facts on hunting to students and letting them form their own opinions, "The Tradition of Hunting" represents a significant turn in the influential medium of college curriculum, enough to interest 92 students in the course's maiden semester.

"Whether or not a person chooses to hunt," said Allison Mastrogiuseppe, a junior in Forensic Investigative Science, "hunting is a good thing." Mastrogiuseppe had never before hunted but plans to in the future.

Like the students Edwards and Anderson hoped to attract (20 percent of the class were women), the syllabus was diverse. Beginning with the evolution of hunting from a utilitarian activity of meat eating humans to modem trophy-management techniques, the professors mapped a trail through the entire hunting issue, with emphasis on conservation, animal-rights activism, politics and social impacts, pro-and anti-gun organizations, hunting economics, the history of hunting tools, the nutritional value of wild game and the future of hunting.

Midway through the semester the students took a field trip to a local gun range where they were shown how firearms and bows are used to effectively kill game-a controversial activity at most state institutions.

While the "Tradition of Hunting" class would undoubtedly have created more of a stink had it been implemented at an Ivy League school, any "controversial" class-even in West Virginia-can be a tough sell to institution administrators.

"Administrators and professors must follow grant money" said Oklahoma State University forestry division professor Craig McKinley, whose division recently lost funding for its wildlife management program.The sell becomes a little easier, however, when it's paid for by the R.K. Mellon Family Foundation's $34,000 grant that Edwards was instrumental in proposing and receiving. Unfortunately, many foundations have anti-gun/hunting agendas and are not likely to sponsor a class with a positive take on hunting. But organizations with anti-hunting agendas were invited to "The Tradition of Hunting" class.

Mike Beard of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence delivered his argument for gun control to the class on October 27,2004, several days after NRA Grassroots Coordinator Suzanna Roulette presented the case for guns and hunting. Although the class leaned NRA, Mastrogiuseppe feels the students agreed with some points of both speakers. But she said most students strongly disagreed with the anti-hunting speaker from Fund for Animals."! respected her opinion," she said, "but I didn't get her point; there is little scientific data to back it up."

Edwards and Anderson are showing that if educators can expose the truth to students, the future of hunting can only look brighter. Today's young men and women are a sharp, if not slightly skeptical bunch who are rational in their decision making-if exposed to both sides of a story.

By Jeff H. Johnston, Associate Editor