Highlands Today
Lessons Learned The Fun Way
Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today
Kristel Stiegler-Darrah, 15, shoots during her three position air rifle advanced class at Cloverleaft 4-H Center's shooting sports camp in Lake Placid.
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Published: July 25, 2008
LAKE PLACID - Cruising in on the driveway into Camp Cloverleaf Thursday morning, long before you could see the children learning to shoot clay pigeons whizzing by at 55 mph, you heard the pop-pop-pop of their shotguns.
But there's a lot more going on at the 4-H Shooting Sports Camp this week than teaching children, ages 10 to 18, how to safely use and enjoy firearms.
"That's because the purpose of this program is to teach life skills," said Bill Hill, the Polk County 4-H agent who runs this weeklong camp at Camp Cloverleaf and teaches shooting sports to children and adults year round.
Life skills from knowing how to shoot safely and accurately?
"Yes," Hill answers. "If you can learn to stay focused, and you really have to focus to shoot in competition, how important is that? Will the ability to stay focused help you in school? On a job?
"And then there's problem solving," he added.
After the students have learned the fundamentals of shooting, Hill said, his 13 volunteer instructors, all certified to teach shooting sports, often don't intervene when they see a student who has become a good marksman start missing his or her shots.
"A lot of times," Hill said, "we'll step back and let the child figure out why he or she is missing all of a sudden. You can see them thinking out loud, and you'll see them figure out what they're doing wrong and what they need to correct.
"And," he added, a smile growing quickly on his face, "problem solving is a great life skill to have, isn't it?"
Like about 60 percent of the children attending the 4-H Shooting Sports Camp at Camp Cloverleaf, 12-year-old Chelsey Turner of Lake Placid had learned to shoot a gun before.
"I learned from my dad," she said late Thursday morning, while enjoying her second most favorite camp lesson, how to cook a chocolate eclair over glowing charcoals.
Chelsey, though, said she learned a lot more about shooting at the camp, especially as she shot at moving targets for the first time.
"I like the shotgun (shooting) the most, because I'm good at it," she said about shooting clay pigeons. "Or," she added, "I should say I'm working on it and getting better, and that's the fun."
Eighty-five children from across Florida, ages 10 to 18, at this camp learned not only how to use firearms but also how to stay safe and enjoy the outdoors, both in the woods and on the water.
About two out of five of the children never had handled a gun before coming to this camp. For all of the children, this camp started Monday with the tone being set by Hill, who created this course in shooting 17 years ago.
"One of the first things I do (with all of the students in front of him) is hold up a pencil in one hand and a shotgun in the other hand," Hill said. "I ask them, what three things do the pencil and the shotgun have in common?"
After some discussion, Hill stresses the answer: Both are tools; both can cause bodily harm; and both can be great sources of recreation.
Along with teaching students how to use and be safe with guns, Hill impresses on them that no one at the camp can use the word "weapon." He refers to it as the forbidden "W-Word," and the 13 volunteer, certified firearms instructors are fined $1 if they use that "w-word."
"Only two groups, the military and law enforcement, should have a weapon," Hill said. Everybody else, he said, can have firearms, which, used correctly, can be the source of great recreation and, for those so inclined, "harvesting" food from nature.
Hunting skills - such as finding and tracking game, animal identification and making only an ethical shot - are taught.
"But we don't push hunting per se," Hill said. "We're teaching children about outdoors activities and natural resources, and that we're responsible for our natural resources.
"In fishing, for example, we talk about catch-and-release, to help make sure the fish are there in the future. And in hunting, we talk about being prepared to properly harvest.
"We're teaching kids that you can also hunt with a camera ... and we're teaching the children what they can do to preserve our natural resources so that they can enjoy them, and so that our resources will be there for their children and their grandchildren."
Most of the 13 volunteer instructors have been working with Hill on shooting sportscamps, for adults and children, since the early 1990s.
Caroline Shelton, who volunteers with husband Jerry, comes right to the point about why she and her husband volunteer.
"I had a niece (7 years old) accidentally killed by my nephew (13 years old, the girl's brother)." One factor in the tragedy, she said, was that "they knew nothing about firearms
The tragedy occurred when the brother and sister (walked into a barn and spotted a gun, which the brother picked up. He had never seen a firearm and when he picked it up, Shelton said, "it discharged, and it was aimed the wrong way."
"We don't want to see any child, or anyone else, killed or hurt by a firearm," she said.
"We want to teach safety and respect for firearms," she said. Their students, she said,
learn the single most important lesson about firearms first - "every firearm you ever see is always loaded, so treat it like it is."
The 4-H Shooting Sports Camp includes swimming and canoeing lessons, as well as instruction in outdoors skills ranging from campfire cooking to starting a fire without a match or lighter, from using a compass and GPS to navigate to finding safety if you're lost in the woods.
"We don't have the time in one week to teach a full swimming course," Hill said. "My feeling is that if you live in the state of Florida you should know how to swim. At the end of this week, I want them at least to know enough to save themselves (in water)."
One thing has been constant at this specialty camp. The 4-H organizations don't work hard to fill it up.
Early in every new year, Hill sends out registration information to the 4-H clubs in all of the state's counties. Not surprisingly, he said, "we had 60 of the 85 spots filled up before we even sent the information out for this year's camp."
Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or by e-mail at jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com
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