A busy and exiting week passed.

© By Othmar Vohringer

I am sure some of my regular readers were wondering why I haven’t written anything on this blog for almost over a week.

The reason for my absence from this blog was that I have had a very busy week. As some of you may recall, I wrote a post almost a year ago that I want to become a hunter education instructor. I had all the paperwork and study material I needed but stuff happened and I just never seemed to find the time to sit down and study. Finally two weeks ago I said to myself, “If you don’t do it now you probably never will, so you would better get your act together.”

Just to make sure that I do take the time and study I applied for the hunter education instructor exams held on Sunday August 10. That gave me precisely one week to work through the study material. Somewhat nervous and with a pounding headache from studying all night we drove to Kelowna where the exams were held. Five ours later I left the building having passed the exams with flying colors. I am now officially a Hunter Education Instructor appointed by the Government of the province of British Columbia.

As a hunting instructor I can organize and hold my own hunter classes. We have a lot of freedom in how we create these classes for as long as we stay within the main goal of the hunter education curriculum. This appeals very much to me because I never would make a good teacher if I just had to pass on dry theory. This freedom was one of the reason why I wanted to become a instructor in the first place.

I am still working on an education course plan. What I would like to do is to make the course as interactive and reality related as possible. I even been thinking about holding one part, the game and bird identification, of the course outside in nature where the students can see the real animals instead of looking at pictures and drawings.

It is my firm believe that if we want to get young people into our ranks and force them by law to take a hunter education course then we have to make it fun for them. Otherwise the kids will stay home and play video games. Children sit all day in the school and listen to boring theory, they are not likely to sit another two hours after school for three days in another boring classroom to be lectured by a hunting education instructor unless it’s fun and interactive.

I welcome any suggestions from you on how to create a fun education program in the comment section or if you rather want to stay anonym you can send me an email. Firearms, bows and videos are suplied by the BC government and so are antlers, horns, bones, fur and feathers of different animals.

Of course not everything was hard work, I had some fun and excitement too. One of the highlights of last week was good news for my wife. Artemis, as my wife is known in the blogger and art world, has been contacted by one of Canada’s largest newspaper with an offer to be their permanent assignment photographer for the Okanagan area. It is interesting to note that my wife never sent the newspaper editor any query letters or a portfolio of her outstanding photography work. The newspaper found my wife through her blog. The editor was, in his words, very impressed with the picture quality and the writing skill. From the blog he took time and visited my wife’s website too and ended up been even more impressed with the large volume of photography and artwork my wife creates. To cut a long story short, my wife got her first assignment, of many to come, this coming Wendesday.

When I heard the news I was near tears of joy. My wife worked very hard for many years. She never was happy with what she did and keept pushing herself to get better and better. But more than that, photography and art has always been a source of great joy for her. Even a way to express her emotions and feelings. I always hoped deep in my heart that one day she can make a living from what she loves to do and now it happened.

I also learned one or two important lessons. First, editors do search the Internet to look for what they need. Second, adding relevant keywords to your blog posts is very important because that is how people, in this case the editor of one of Canada’s largest newspapers, find you and what they are looking for. As I write this my wife is on location taken a few pictures in advance of the assignment, smart move, this gives me time to tell you what else happened last week.

On Friday my wife’s cousins husband and my hunting partner came for a visit over the weekend. The first evening we went out fishing with the new boat. Between us we caught ten lake trout (no pictures because I forgot to take the camera with me). Then on Saturday morning long before sunrise we headed to our hunting grounds to do some maintenance work on the cabin and fine tune our previous scouting. On the way in we saw well over twenty deer, including some very nice bucks, and grouse where everywhere. We also saw a lot of bear and moose sign. It promises to be a good hunting season. After many hard winters under which the wildlife suffered the populations seem finally to pick up again. I am pumped for the September 1st bowhunting season opener.

Talking about bowhunting, I have posted a few articles on Whitetail Deer Passion with tips about scouting tactics that will improve your early season bowhunting success.

Tags: Hunting Education instructor, British Columbia, Photography Assignment, Freelance Photographer, Okanagen, Boat, Fishing, Trout, Hunting Cabin, Bowhunting, Whitetail Deer