“young hunters”

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has unanimously approved a change to the 2023-24 duck season dates, moving back to the traditional opener the weekend before Thanksgiving.

The Boone & Crockett Club’s Generation Next Youth Awards, amid the organization’s 31^st Big Game Awards, included a remarkable 132 great animals entered. Among the black bears, pronghorns, mountain goats and mule deer were eight typical and eight non-typical whitetails taken in nine different states.

The .275 Rigby remains a fantastic choice for the big-game hunter, and has done it all over the course of its 130-year history.

Want to ensure the next generation becomes productive members of society? Consider asking them to join the hunt, and start with waterfowl. Its mix of hard work and fast action is sure to keep ’em coming back—and on the right path.

Save your seat for the NRA show’s annual celebration of hunters and hunting.

Fifty years ago it was tough to find a mule deer in West Texas, but today it seems like they’re everywhere … unless you’re hunting them, of course. Last year, the author scoured the area’s red rock canyons and mesquite-covered ridges to learn what has led to their abundance.

In 1985, we launched a program to facilitate friendly competition among youths 18 and younger that would advance hunting skills including wildlife identification, orienteering and rifle, shotgun and archery marksmanship. Today, thousands of hunter education volunteers and parents still conduct this program at the state and local level to produce safer, more skillful and more ardent American hunters.

In the adventurous world of hunting, there are many great stories and books to make us all gasp, laugh, cry and more. If, as a hunter, you are a reader, odds are your life has been influenced by some of them. If you haven’t yet read enough of them, find them, read them, then pass them on to an aspiring hunter.

Along with the R3 movement (recruit, retain, reactivate), to save hunting’s future we must focus the next generation not only on the fun, physical challenges and nutritious, tasty meals inherent in hunting but also on how it cultivates wisdom and strengthens character.