By James C. Fulmer | Past President NMLRA
“Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”
—Fred Astaire (1899-1987)
My life has always been busy and full. Many writers have asked how you can find enough to write about while you are still working. I never had any trouble; there was always an adventure around every corner every weekend. Now that I am retired there is an adventure every day.
Left to right are Marilyn Jones and Pat Butts, volunteers for the .22 rifle shooting at YHEC.
National Rifle Association’s Youth Hunter Education Challenge is an event I have been invited to for many years by Charlie Fox, the Pennsylvania State YHEC Coordinator, and Steve Petris, who is an event director. Because of having to work I could never make it during the week and the event always runs the last full week in July. This year it ran July 22 to the 27th and was held at Mill Cove Environmental Center near Mansfield, PA.
The NRA YHEC started in 1985 and over the years has had over a million young people participate in this program. The idea of YHEC is to improve young people’s hunting, marksmanship and safety skills by building on what they have learned on local states’ basic hunter education courses. They pick up knowledge they will use for life while hunting in their home states. Rifle, bow and muzzleloader shooting at life-sized targets at ethical hunting yardages included. They will also do wildlife identification, map and compass orienteering.
There are eight special skill areas. They are 3-D archery, .22 Rifle, Muzzleloading, Sporting Clays, Orienteering, Hunter Safety Trail, Test on Hunter Safety, and Wild Life Identification. My friend Steve Petris who is the event director for a special 9th event called Cherokee Run, which is a fun timed event. It has fire starting with flint and steel, a spear throw, bow, .22 rifle, BB guns and all kind of fun things to do—all based on time.
This year’s NRA YHEC at Mill Cove had about 345 participants from 14 different states. When the NRA YHEC National event was first started it was only held at the NRA Whittington Center at Raton, NM. In 1999 the event was moved to the Mill Cove site in Mansfield. The event rotates every other year since then between Raton and Mansfield. Next year the 2019 NRA National YHEC event will be held July 21-26, 2019 again at the NRA Whittington Center in New Mexico. The idea of rotating the events between the two sites is to let participants from different parts of the country have closer access to this national event.
The NRA, which is great at statistics, shows that 1.3 million young people have participated in YHEC since the program started in 1985. Average age is 14.8 years old and 54% are NRA members. The number of states that have YHEC events is 38 with 93% of the participants hunting in their home state. On gender 81.9% are male and 18.0% are female.
Left to right: Steve Petris with Bob Davis Jr.
What I find interesting about the Mansfield Mill Cove Site is the fact the 1993 National Muzzle Loading Eastern Primitive Rendezvous was held there by Paul “Skip” Hamaker, who was the “Booshway” of the event. “Skip” has long since passed into the next life but the site that his Rendezvous staff helped develop is still being used. I was chief range officer at that event in 1993 and I loved seeing all the changes to the site. There is a covered pistol firing line and several pavilions that would be great to be used for any type of event both, modern and primitive.
Pennsylvania set all kinds of records in July and August for rain. Actually this year was the rainiest year I can remember here in PA. The week in July this year during YHEC was one of rainiest for the month. I was going to visit the event the first Monday but Steve called me and said “don’t come up we cancelled I will call you tomorrow before 7AM if it is OK”. I live almost 4 hours away from the site so when he called the next morning at 6:30AM I did remind where I lived he said “we should be good for today.” I arrived at 11 o’clock and stopped to eat before I went back to the site and ran into Marilyn Jones and Pat Butts getting lunch also and they were volunteers for running the .22 rifle events and said the ranges closed for the day because of rain.
We were surprised by the herd of deer on Hunter Safety Trail.
I went back to Mill Cove anyway and ran into Steve, Charlie and Bob Davis, who is the head NRA national manager Outdoor Recreational Programs. It was raining about as heavy as I ever saw it but the big problem is Mill Cove is part of the Tioga Lake flood control dam project. We have been having severe flooding all this year all over the state. Steve had already torn down the Cherokee run with plans of moving it because the water was already up to the range and they knew it was going to get higher. So Steve took me for a tour of the site and all of the different venues. Of course I went back to my old range and also checked out the new ranges. Just when I was leaving Bob got the word they were going to shut down the dam all together. But there was a plan for this, volunteers worked hard and moved everything to higher ground and moved the effected portions of the event to Lambs Creek Sportsman Club so the participants would compete there over the next several days.
My first year at the event and Mother Nature didn’t cooperate! I missed seeing a lot of my friends because they had left for the day. Many of the volunteers of the muzzle loading portion of this event are National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association members. Jerry Middendorf, Curt Voorhees, Steve Petris, Casey Bennett, Mike Congdon, John Olson and many others are some to name a few. Next year I will try and get out to New Mexico and the Whittington Center and experience the whole event.
The NRA YHEC is a great event that teaches our youth the value of hunting. This program helps make educated, safe and ethical hunters who will grow up to be voters. That is why YHEC is important to keep the hunting tradition alive. For more information go to YHEC.NRA.org
