Safety first: educating generations of hunters

Muzzles up.

How many times has Dave Owsley uttered that foundational command of firearm safety over the past four and a half decades?

Too many to know. But the 79-year-old hunter education instructor has taught multiple generations of Orofino youth how to safely conduct themselves while handling guns and pursuing game. As the saying goes, he’d be a wealthy man if he had a dollar for each time those two words have crossed his lips. But Owsley isn’t in it to get rich.

“You know, when I go to Lumberjack Days, or I’m in town in the grocery store or something, I’ll have one of these little kids come up and say, ‘Mr. Owsley, I shot my turkey,’ or ‘I got my deer this year.’ So there’s my reward,” he said. “I love the kids.”

Earlier this month, Owsley and another volunteer instructor ushered a small group of mostly 10-year-olds through a weeklong hunter education course. In this part of Idaho and across the rural West, successfully completing the program that involves classroom sessions, tests and a field day is a rite of passage. It’s where kids and sometimes young adults learn the serious business of gun safety, hunting ethics, conservation and some basic outdoor skills. For many of them, it unlocks a lifetime of adventures with family and friends.

But like so many things, it’s a tradition that is evolving. In-person classes are no longer a must. For years, students have been able to take the class online. Gone too is the requirement that students fire live rounds at a gun range.

Owsley has stuck with the traditional format — classroom instruction followed by written tests and a field day with live, supervised shooting. But he has added a twist — his signature trail walk.

On a piece of private ground above Orofino, Owsley carved a trail that snakes through timber and presents students with several shoot/don’t-shoot scenarios and gun handling challenges. On the trail they see deer scrapes and rubs, shed antlers, game like deer and nongame species like owls, turkey feathers and even some examples of poor behavior such as road signs that have been used for target practice and empty shotgun shells that hunters failed to pick up.

In groups of four, the students in his recent class moved from station to station — .22 rifles in hand.

“Muzzles up,” Owsley reminds them as they embark on the path. Nursing an Achilles injury, Owsley hangs back while the kids are chaperoned by other adults.

The walk starts with a stream crossing so small they could easily step or hop across. But the students use the lessons they’ve learned.

“Unload, unload, unload,” they say repeating another Owsley mantra and then pantomime doing just that. (The guns are already unloaded.) One student hands her rifle to another, crosses the stream and then reaches back across to take her rifle and his so he can cross safely.

They practice the same routine of teamwork at a fence crossing. At a solo fence crossing where they can’t hand off their rifles, they again unload, slide their firearms under the fence with muzzles carefully pointed away and out of the dirt, slip under or step over the barbed wire and pick up their guns while minding the muzzles.

On the trail, the young students are presented with the other safety, legal and ethical situations they are likely to encounter when they hunt for real. A turkey in a clearing with a vertical bank for a backdrop — shoot. A quail in a bush where the backdrop is unclear — don’t shoot. A deer at a salt lick — don’t shoot. Ducks sitting on a pond — here the answer is tricky. It’s not illegal to shoot sitting ducks and the background is clear. But most hunters prefer a more sporting and fair chase challenge, so they flush the birds and shoot them in the air.

The students get to discuss each scenario and determine how they would respond. Owsley designed it so there is not always a right or wrong answer.

“The trail walk is my thing, because I don’t think anybody else in Idaho is doing this,” he said. “I want to make this special for the kids.”

In 1996, Owsley was named the Clearwater Region’s instructor of the year and later earned the same honor for the entire state. That comes with a lifetime hunting license.

This fall, Owsley, with a donation from North Idaho Whitetails Forever, was able to replace the old rifles he has used in the class for decades with new, single-shot .22 Savage Rifles.

“As far as I know, I’m the only person in Idaho who still requires the kids to shoot because it’s not a requirement anymore for hunter ed.”

Owsley doesn’t hunt much these days but he still relishes the fall with its cool, crisp mornings and the changing colors. While finishing the class, he was also readying to head to elk camp in the Sawtooth Zone with his three boys where he will spend a few weeks.

“I’ll be camp cook and camp host,” he said. “I love it.”

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273.