Hunting will soon have its very own course in NWT schools.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) has been working in collaboration with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to bin a new Hunter Education Course into NWT schools. This program will provide high school students with basic hunting knowledge, as well as fundamental skills, to help them become responsible and respectful hunters in the future.
Jessica Brace, the Director of Curriculum Development and Student Assessment, helped to explain how the course will work.
“There will be seven different modules that the students will go through. They start with learning to be a responsible hunter, they do learning specific around ecology and wildlife management. There’s some learning about hunting laws, the acts, the regulations, and then they get into more specific, on the land skills.”
Brace added that those “on the land” skills include how to prepare for a hunt, how to stay safe during the hunt, as well as general survival skills.
This course will be available for 10th Grade students, and will be worth 3 credits. Students will have the opportunity to be instructed by local Elders, ENR officers, and experienced hunters.
Director Brace also shared the reason for this course’s creation. She explained that in 2020, there was a requirement introduced for new hunters to take an education course before they could receive their license.
“When we heard that that was happening, we connected with the Department of ENR to say that maybe this is an opportunity to bring it into the schools, and have the students learn about responsible and respectful hunting.”
All schools across the NWT will have the opportunity to take part in a basic version of the course this coming January. The course will be made fully available in the 2022-2023 school year.
