Got my card

I spent Saturday and Sunday in the California Dept. of Fish and Game's hunter education course. The teacher was great. She's a volunteer but charges $10 per student so she can buy guns for kids. The gun was the cutest little .22 single shot you ever saw. Our class only had one child in it, a 10 year old boy. 80% on the test was passing. He had to get a 95% to win the gun. He got 95%. We all shouted and congratulted him. He was such a neat kid.

Another of my classmates was from Bosnia. He had some interesting observations about hunting in Europe and hunting in America as revealing the cultures of each people. It seems that in Bosnia, to hunt one must join a hunt club which costs the equivalent of about $1,000. Then there is the buying of the gun, which has a 500% tax. But the kicker is that there is not a way for a person to legally go hunting except in a group of 20 or more. My Bosnian friend, a Roman Catholic, says this requirement for being in a group, forcing 20 people to chase one animal, shows that Europeans are "unfair to animals and haters of individual personal liberty." Interestingly, he also said that America is not a good aswe used to be. "America is only 20 years behind Europe. We are going to wind up like them." I thought it was neat that this guy who has only been here 3 years already says "we" when talking about America! I asked him why he came to here. He said, "Pretty soon there won't be any freedom anywhere in the world but, at least today, even a poor man can hunt bears and pigs in America."

So, I passed the test with a 96%. Only one point better than a 10 year old boy but the highest score in the class of 23. I couldn't remember the effective range of several cartridges at 12,000 feet elevation but other than those, I knew my stuff. Hopefully, I'll be able to find some time this month to get some spring turkeys.