Don't make hunter's-ed optional

Inter Lake editorial

A bill to establish a hunter "mentor" program in Montana is just a plain bad idea.

House Bill 382 would allow people of any age to hunt for five years before being required to take a state-sanctioned hunter education and safety course, as long as they were accompanied by a mentor at least 21 who has completed the course.

The unabashed motivation behind the bill is to recruit hunters - never mind their age - for the purpose of curbing a national trend of declining hunter numbers.

Well, Montana still has a pretty robust hunting population and its hunter education program, driven by hundreds of volunteers, has played a big part in promoting responsibility in the field.

Sure, there may be some libertarian appeal to letting parents decide when their kids can hunt with high-powered rifles. Maybe that would work out if it didn't affect anybody else. But the reality is that immature, untrained or careless hunters are a risk to other hunters in their vicinity.

And that doesn't strictly apply to kids. Current law requires anyone born after 1985 to complete hunter education before they can obtain a hunting license, largely because adults with no safety education can also be a risk to others.

As Kalispell Sen. Greg Barkus put it, "I would rather hunt with a 12-year-old fresh out of hunter's education than with a 30-year-old who has never had it."

The bill has also correctly been termed the "daddy tag" bill, because it would open the door for unscrupulous people to use children of any age to purchase hunting licenses for their own purposes. A dad with four young kids could conceivably finish a hunting season with five bucks in the bag, even if the kids never fired a shot.

Barkus adamantly opposes the bill, and we hope most other lawmakers join him.

A measure of the respect people felt for Oshanee Kenmille is reflected in the four days of observances planned for the revered Salish elder, who died Wednesday.

Kenmille was a master artisan in beadworking and leather tanning and was fluent in the Salish and Kootenai languages - and she shared those skills with many others.

A small woman, she had an outsized role as a force in the cultural foundations of the tribes.

The tribes and others in Western Montana will miss her knowledge, her hard work and her sense of humor.