Students learn hunting fundamentals

A group of junior high students is learning the finer points of firearms from a teacher with over 30 years of experience. Jim Cuddeback of Washington is leading a class on hunter safety and ethics that began Monday at the Washington Junior High School and will continue every day through Saturday. Cuddeback is in his 33

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year of teaching the hunter safety class.

Cuddeback brought about half a dozen guns to the class that are specially made for educational purposes. The Department of Natural Resources produces the guns, which are bright orange and do not contain a firing pin, but are like real guns in every other respect. Cuddeback reviewed the different types of rifles and shotguns and the various ways of loading them such as bolt action, level action, pump action, semiautomatic action and hinge action.

Cuddeback said he teaches the class because he wants to ensure that people who hunt do so safely. He said hunter safety classes have significantly reduced the number of hunting- and firearm-related accidents. The DNR reports that in 1981, there were 61 firearm-related accidents, 10 of which were fatal. Of those 10, the shooter was 16 or younger in seven of the cases. Eight of the 10 cases were not even related to hunting but occurred when the firearm owner was cleaning the gun.

Iowa law states that everyone born after 1967 must take a hunter safety class in order to obtain a hunting license. Cuddeback told the class that in the late 1960s, between 12 and 20 people were killed in hunting accidents each year. By the late 1990s and through the 2000s that number was zero or one most years, and Cuddeback attributed the decline in deaths to the mandatory safety course.

Six students attended the first day of the hunting class. They will attend four more before Saturday, which is test day. The students will complete a written test and a ?hands on? portion in which they will be tested on handling a gun.

Several students said they started out shooting BB guns before graduating to rifles or shotguns. One student in the class, Shelby Mineart, did not. Mineart, daughter of Henry Mineart and Rebecca Goeke, jumped right into firearms.

?I shot a .22 the week before my 13

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birthday,? she said. ?I had just gotten it from my grandpa. My dad said it would be best to start with a .22 because it doesn?t have much of a kick. I was pretty scared because it was the first time I had ever held a gun. I surprised myself at how accurately I shot it.?

Mineart said that she has not gone hunting and likes to shoot at targets instead.

?My dad wanted me to take this class so I could hunt in case I wanted to,? she said.

Kyle Anderson, son of Shane and Teresa Anderson, said he started shooting a BB gun when he was 8 years old. He started hunting pheasants at age 10. He has learned how to shoot a .22 and a 4-10 shotgun.

?When I go pheasant hunting, we go in a group and we get in a line so we don?t shoot each other,? he said. ?You walk the fields until the pheasants come out. Once they come out, you point your gun up, take the safety off and shoot.?

John Sands has gone on many hunting trips with his father. Sands is the son of Jake and Katie Sands. Most of the time, John sat next to his dad in the blind and learned all he could by watching and listening. Recently, he has begun hunting, too, and he shot his first deer this year.

?It?s really exciting when you see the deer walk up, and your adrenaline is pumping,? he said. ?When you shoot it, you get excited and go crazy.?

Owen Horak, son of Paul and Lynn Horak, got his first BB gun when he was 8 years old. He received a shotgun as a Christmas gift last December.

?The shotgun can be switched into a .22 rifle,? he said, referring to how the gun?s barrel can be removed.

Horak said he hunts on a farm that is a 20-minute drive from his house. He said he shoots his gun once every three weeks. Anderson said he likes to shoot his guns at gun ranges and he also hunts on farms in the county. He said he hunts or goes to the range about once every two months. He said he hadn?t hunted yet this winter but that he went rabbit hunting last winter. Horak and Anderson said they would like to continue hunting for the rest of their lives.

Cuddeback told the students that there are certain kinds of guns that are more dangerous than others, namely pistols. He said pistols are dangerous because they have a short barrel. He said that the way they are carried in their holster with the barrel pointed at the person?s foot means that a slip of the finger when retrieving the gun can result in a serious injury.

The students watched a 10-minute video about shotguns. The video explained why a small gauge number refers to a shotgun with a large barrel. For instance, a 12-gauge shotgun has a larger barrel than a 20-gauge shotgun. The gauge is determined by taking one pound of lead and dividing it into a certain number of equally sized balls until the ball fits into the barrel. If a pound of lead is divided into 12 balls, one of those balls fits into the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun. If a pound of lead is divided into 20 balls, they fit the barrel of a 20-gauge shotgun, and so on.