The Crookston Gun Club will host a fall session of the DNR hunter safety training class from August 11-22.
Class sessions will be held on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. beginning on August 11. A field day and final test will take place on Saturday, August 22, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. All class sessions will be held at the Crookston Gun Club, 26251 240th Street SW.
Steve Videen runs the annual safety courses at the gun club, and spots are still available for the August classes. The course is open to anyone who wants to hunt in and around Minnesota, especially youth hunters. “If they’re going to shoot trap with the high school league, they have to have this,” says Videen. “If they’re going to go hunting in Minnesota, other than the youth license, they have to have this in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, all 50 states actually, and this certification is good in Mexico and Canada as well.”
The club usually holds classes in the spring and fall, and a field day for online participants in the fall. Videen mentioned that, compared to previous years, classes were harder to fill this year, particularly because the August class partially overlaps with Ox Cart Days. “This year has been particularly slow,” Videen says. “Normally, we post the classes in January, and they’re full by February, and the online class in September is full. I had one back out, so I was able to get a hold of another student to get them in, and the one in August is about two-thirds full.”
In addition to hunting and gun safety, instructors are brought in to teach related topics like situational awareness, wildlife identification, and survival skills. “The class sounds like it’s just for hunting and shooting, but there’s more to it than that,” explains Videen. “And there are a lot of things that even some of the students bring up where we can answer their questions. We also have the local conservation officer in for one night, and he goes over the yes you can, no you can’t, the legalities of a lot of that stuff, and there’s more information given out than you can imagine, so we try to cover it all.”
To register, contact Steve Videen at 218-289-2115 or stevevideen@yahoo.com.
