I was honored to speak at the 2015 IHEA annual conference in Des Moines. My presentation offered five tips to help hunter education instructors more effectively communicate the critical themes and data in the instruction materials. Also, I tried to present my material in such a way that it could be easily communicated by agency administrators to instructors that did not attend my presentation. I’ve been asked to write this series to do just that!
Persuasion is a skill, and the skill can rise to the level of art. Think of a great trial lawyer who can take almost any case and present it more successfully than almost all of his or her peers. Why? Because he or she has greater persuasive skills. It means that the lawyer will have the target audience—a judge, a jury, a legislative committee—believe that what the lawyer presented was important and that, therefore, the audience should accept and act on the lawyer’s arguments.
The same analysis and principles apply to hunter education instructors. The instructor is, or should be, an advocate for specific goals and should consistently attempt to inspire his or her students to act to achieve those goals, such as becoming responsible hunters. The skills that help the hunter education instructor achieve success are identical to those used by the successful lawyer and, for that matter, politicians, successful sales persons and even being a good parent. The skills are transferable across roles.
The phrase ‘improving the persuasive capability of instructors’ means tweaking the instructor’s existing skills and methods derived from practice and experience to achieve the following:
- Best and most effective arguments to explain what is being taught is worth being learned
- To see that the hunting heritage extends beyond the actual physical hunts.
Every instructor I have met wants to find the best ways to instill in students several traits and qualities, including but not limited to:
- Paying attention more consistently in class
- Motivating students to commit to the values and character required of a good hunter
- Inspiring students to defend the hunting heritage by the disciplined use of information, logic and moral authority
- Perhaps most significantly, motivating students to become informed, articulate, passionate and...
unapologetic advocates for maintaining and advancing the hunting heritage
Here are Five Tips that can help instructors achieve these goals.
- Have a Dialogue
- Weave Responsibility (Ethics) into Every Part of the Curriculum
- Find Clarity
- Teach the Student’s Role in the Big Picture
- Inspire and Motivate by Telling Your Stories
Background
Hunters and instructors are confronted with an array of conflicts, dilemmas and challenges so vast that the imagination and coping skills want to just curl up and hibernate. Like that frustrating Whack-A-Mole game at an arcade, no sooner do you knock one problem down and another one or more pops up with seemingly greater vengeance and taunting joy.
Here are a few descriptions of challenges and/or actions instructors have shared with me. I will discuss each of them within this series of articles.
- In an attacking manner a non-hunter challenged a friend who is an experienced instructor: “Imagine how many beautiful animals we would have if you hunters didn’t kill them!”
- An anti-hunter drove her car, honking the horn, onto private property where hunters were legally hunting geese from blinds. With abusive foul language the anti-hunter
- A hunting video showed an archery pronghorn hunter shooting a wounded buck that was smaller than the buck antelope the hunter reasonably expected to shoot. “You must do what is right,” the hunter said.
- Several young hunter education students confided in me they are silent about their hunting classes and hunting experiences because they do not want to be insulted or harassed by their peers.
You’ve all been confronted with any number of the above situations and, no doubt, dozens more. You know important lessons can be learned when you share these anecdotes with your students. The purpose of this series of articles is to present ideas and teaching tools that can most effectively enable students to 1) defend and refute slanderous accusations, 2) motivate them to commit to becoming more responsible hunters and 3) inspire them to become advocates or ambassadors on behalf of the hunting heritage.
As I said at the beginning of my talk in Des Moines,...
I am new to your field. I know I stand on the shoulders of giants. I am not giving you content. Rather, I am sharing techniques I have found to be effective to inspire students to be better hunters and, for that matter, better people. Part 1 of this series will deal with Tip #1.
Tip #1 - Have a Dialogue
“Good company and good conversation are the very sinews of virtue.” Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, 1653
The English word ‘dialogue’ comes from the Greek dia, meaning going through, between, across, and logos, meaning thought, content, the idea. Thus, a dialogue is a process, a discussion, where thoughts and ideas interact among people. A dialogue is a shared journey of questions and answers. A dialogue can accomplish several goals:
- Guide toward education and insight
- Clarify or define a problem or issue
- Establish ways to solve or address an issue or problem
- Determine that one resolution is the better or best resolution under the circumstances and
- Persuade people that the best resolution is in fact the best resolution.
Thus, as a teaching tool, a dialogue can clarify issues and persuade that the issues are important. A dialogue can be formal or informal; from the Joint Chiefs of Staff planning options for dealing with Iran to folks sitting around a campfire opining on the best quarterback in the history of the NFL.
Instructors want to instruct and teach, not serve as moderators for a blizzard of opinions that ultimately lead nowhere. Therefore, I suggest instructors’ dialogues be somewhat formal, with structure and goals, and not be a forum for sharing opinions that yield no conclusions, wisdom or judgments about what is right and wrong or what is best under the circumstances. The dialogue should offer at least the following:
- What the instructor (curriculum) considers important (standards)
- Why the matter is important
- Does the student understand what is important and why?
- If the student disagrees, have the student identify the facts, values and consequences that support the student’s opinion.
Here are two dialogue models or formats that can help guide the instructor to explain the value of the materials,...
the lessons to be learned by any of the instructor’s experiences shared with the class and to assess whether the students are learning the lessons they are supposed to learn.
Technique 1: A. What is your opinion? B. What facts support your opinion?
Everyone has an opinion. I have heard cruder ways of phrasing this reality. The instructor’s challenge is to decipher the why of the opinion, whether it’s the opinion of the instructor or of the student, and determine whether the opinion is supported by facts and data. Simply put, is the opinion reasonable and logical?
Example: Is it ethical to take long distance shots at an animal? Much has been written on this topic. I have seen many YouTube videos of hunters shooting game at distances well beyond one thousand yards. I have heard anecdotally that my home state, Colorado, has become a destination for hunters wanting to take such long distance shots. More than one hunter has told me, with a hint of braggadocio in his voice, he has taken game with 700-800 yard shots.
Ethical or unethical? The answer matters because instructors want to discourage irresponsible hunting. Irresponsible hunting shows a lack of respect for the animal, demonstrates, in my opinion, that the hunter does not respect himself. Irresponsible hunting turns public opinion against hunters. Enough said.
Let’s apply the technique:
What’s your opinion?
Opinion 1: My opinion is that any shot within the skill range of the hunter is ethical.
What are the facts? Assume a thousand yard shot. The hunter is experienced; the hunter knows his or her rifle and ammunition, the hunter has demonstrated minute-of-accuracy, more or less, at the target range, the animal is unaware of the hunter and is not moving.
Based on those facts, perhaps a persuasive argument can be made that such a shot is responsible.
But those are not the only facts to consider! And here is the key point: the honor, the integrity, the moral authority of an argument is based not only on the facts that are used but also on the decision to reject or ignore certain facts. Choosing or rejecting facts and overvaluing or undervaluing facts has moral significance. The decision can be moral or not moral, but that conclusion can only be determined by applying logic and ethical...
values to the decision.
Here are some facts not mentioned in Opinion #1: The animal might move during the flight of the bullet; the wind could shift; a twig not seen through the scope might deflect the bullet; approximate minute-of-accuracy means that the bullet could hit half a foot or more from the aim point by a bullet that has lost much if not most of its energy; wounding an animal is different from hitting the edge of or missing a steel plate; if the animal is wounded, does the hunter have the time, the skill, the physical endurance to travel that distance and ethically dispatch the animal, if the animal can even be found?
And these facts do not even consider the fair chase argument brilliantly discussed on websites such as Boone & Crockett (www.boone-crockett.org). And finally, the hunter should ponder whether the shot is worth these risks? And, what’s the point? What is achieved? These are facts that, when assessed in the mix, will determine whether or not such long distance shooting is responsible and prudent. Thus,
Opinion #2: Long range shooting is not ethical except in the most extraordinary circumstances, which I, for one, do not expect to exist
Technique 2: A. What do you know? B. What facts do you need to know?
At a breakfast meeting at the Conference, Kalkomey’s (title sponsor) Mitch Strobl made an important presentation featuring one of their on-line education products titled Shoot or Don’t Shoot? The video began with a magnificent elk outlined against the sky standing on a ridge. Shoot or don’t shoot? Let’s apply this dialogue technique to answer the question.
- AWhat do we know? We know a bull elk is standing unobstructed on a ridge, presenting a clear line of sight and bullet path.
- What do we need to know? We need to know a lot of information before a responsible determination can be made to shoot the elk. Facts we need to know include the skill of the hunter, the animal’s distance, the caliber of firearm used, whether the animal can be reached from the shooter’s location. But more important, as Kalkomey’s video beautifully illustrated, we need to know what is behind the ridge! The video’s next sequence showed one or more homes beyond the ridge. Horrific consequences could occur if the bullet missed or passed through the elk and hit a...
person.
A dialogue of focused questions and answers will lead to the conclusion that the best answer to the question is ‘don’t shoot.’
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, a disciplined structured dialogue that uses the two techniques mentioned above can lead to vibrant discussions with students that will reinforce disciplined thinking and increase the probability that students will act responsibly should they be confronted with or tempted by challenges that often arise in hunting environments. The dialogue process can also etch in the students’ mind the importance of thinking in terms of responsibility (ethics), personal choices and consequences.
Part 2 will cover Tip #2: Weave Responsibility (Ethics) into Every Part of the Curriculum
Michael Sabbeth is a lawyer in Denver. He lectures to bar associations on and writes about ethics, rhetoric and advanced advocacy skills. He has written the book, The Good, The Bad and The Difference: How to Talk with Children About Values, a guide on how to talk with children about moral decision-making and reasoning. He writes for many prominent hunting and shooting magazines. He lectures regionally at Master Hunter Education workshops and nationally (e.g. Dallas Safari Club, Safari Club International, IHEA-USA) He is now writing a book titled The Honorable Hunter: Defending and Advancing Our Hunting Heritage on how to make the best arguments to preserve and advance hunting and the shooting sports. He may be contacted at: author@makeyourcasehuntshoot.com and michael@thehonorablehunter.com