[FOM]

We are discussing the requirements for bird boys at an AKC HTs who shoot poppers. The age requirement is clear, but we can not decide whether or not having boy scouts who have earned their firearm safety merit badge is sufficient to meet the rules about "Hunter/Gun Safety course".

Who in the AKC can we contact to get a ruling on this?

What do clubs who use boy scouts do?

 

[Joe Brakke]

All of our BS had hunter safety. You should approach the DOW or whatever they call themselves now a days and see if they accept the FA Merit Badge as an equivelant Hunter Safety Program certificate. If they endorse it then you should be good but having the AKC acknowledge this also would be important. I do know the HSP Cert requires a state certified instructor approved by the DOW.

 

[JustinRobertTaylor]

I saw a test where boy scouts fire the gun but there was an adult in each blind with boys.

 

[badbullgator]

We tried the scouts for a while, but the problem for us was that very, very few of them were 16 or older. We would get a bunch of 12 and 13 year olds. They did not lack in effort, but they were just not enough to get the job done. We now use students from the local high school. It is a rural area and we found the kids loved to hunt and had experience with animals so throwing and killing ducks was not an issue. We pay the school and the students volunteer and get community service hours. They are fantastic. All we did was call the guidance office at the school and ask if they had any kids that would fill this and explained everything they would be doing. I am not sure this would work with a school that is not in a farming community.
Some of the the best BBs I have ever seen were ROTC or other "explorer" groups. THe ROTC kids are great because they come with a lot of discipline and great work ethic.

 

[Lee Nelson]

The HRC club I belonged to used Boy Scouts for bird boys with great results. We didn't need to worry about fire arms at the stations, however. We also had them do concessions for a fundraiser for them. Reliable and enthtusiastic.

 

[Joe Dutro]

Last Fall Ohio Valley started using a 4-H Shooters group. While we did have a problem with age most of the parents came with the kids so we had the parents shoot the poppers and the kids launched the birds and blew the calls. We also had plenty of blind planters and bird runners.

It worked great. The kids worked VERY hard. At the end of the weekend they were asking us when the next event was.

 

[FOM]

We have tried multitude of resources for bird boys. I did have a local ROTC (not JROTC) support our FT, that unfortunately ended up being a PITA as these soon to be commissioned officers were too big for their britches - I don't recall behaving like them when I was a cadet. I have not tried the local JROTC, they may be our next option, but right now we are going to pursue the Boy Scouts. It looks like it will work for both of our organizations and the parents in this particular troop seem very, very active.

We are also members of a local muzzle loading club and one of the members is a certified NRA instructor, Boy Scouts instructor and can give them a Hunter's Safety class, so....we are going that route. So this way we don't have to worry about it, was hoping them having a firearms Safety merit badge would suffice, but since their is a grey area, we will just have them get hunter safety cards.

Now all I need to find is help for our FT...

 

[savage25xtreme]

Lainee,

As you probably already know, SRC uses boy scouts. There is good and bad with every option I think. The dads are very involved with this group so we usually get enough adults to be out there with the kids. DON'T PUT SODA IN THE SCOUTS COOLER!!! They will drink every ounce then pee every 5 minutes for the next 4 hours!

 

[FOM]

Lainee,

As you probably already know, SRC uses boy scouts. There is good and bad with every option I think. The dads are very involved with this group so we usually get enough adults to be out there with the kids. DON'T PUT SODA IN THE SCOUTS COOLER!!! They will drink every ounce then pee every 5 minutes for the next 4 hours!

You give your Bird Boys drinks? Next you'll tell me that we have to feed them lunch, too! Oh I know, judged this last Fall and the poor kid waited until a dog was running to the mark to decide to get up and pee - this was for a Derby! Can you guess what the dog did? And yes we gave the dog a re-run.

 

[Rick_C]

The best group of kids our club has used were FFA members. There were at least as many parents as kids and they all were very enthusiastic, polite and hard working. Not a single complaint from any of them. The club donated to the FFA club and they also did a lunch spread for the competitors to help raise funds.

We had JROTC kids at another test. I expected them to be great, hard working, diciplined kids. Yeah, not so much. They showed up late, walked at a snails pace everywhere they went and we had to constantly be on them to get them to work. Clearly they didn't want to be there.

.

 

[savage25xtreme]

The other thing they love to do is chat on the radios to their buddy out at the big memory bird station haha. Patience are required to judge!

 

[clipper]

The best group of kids our club has used were FFA members. There were at least as many parents as kids and they all were very enthusiastic, polite and hard working. Not a single complaint from any of them. The club donated to the FFA club and they also did a lunch spread for the competitors to help raise funds.

We had JROTC kids at another test. I expected them to be great, hard working, diciplined kids. Yeah, not so much. They showed up late, walked at a snails pace everywhere they went and we had to constantly be on them to get them to work. Clearly they didn't want to be there.

.

X2 on the FFA kids

 

[Rick_C]

The other thing they love to do is chat on the radios to their buddy out at the big memory bird station haha. Patience are required to judge!

Isn't that the truth. Had to confiscate cell phones from one group of kids because they were always testing or talking when the judges called for birds too...:-x

 

[Tim West]

Lainee, if you can find a local home school football or baseball team that is a good start. They don't have to worry about getting out of school on Fridays and most of them have a good work ethic.

We presently have a high baseball team work our Cimarron RC trial and they are great. Lots of kids and two adults are out there at all times. We pay them well but we have 8 to 10 kids out there every day, and all of them can throw a bird. This is a team from a larger school, so even if they have a game in the spring they will have enough Jr. Varsity kids to help out.

Problem we had with scouts were some of them were so little all they could do was shoot or take birds at the line.