There was a time not so long ago when most wildlife-management students were hunters, and their early involvement with and appreciation for the outdoors drove them to careers working with the natural world. Even the celebrated father of modern wildlife ecology and management, Aldo Leopold, was a devoted hunter who approached conservation from a hunting perspective. He used to say that any experience that reminded us of our “dependency on the soil-plant-animal-man food chain” was a valuable one.

How things have changed! Today, many wildlife-management and natural-resources students—indeed most Americans—have lost all sense of connection to the land. Just 5 percent of the U.S. population hunts, and young wildlife-management professionals have trouble relating to the hunters on whom they heavily rely to control populations of large mammals such as deer and bears.

It’s a development that Leopold—dead almost six decades now—would deplore, and it troubles Gary San Julian, professor of wildlife resources in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. So, working with Duane Diefenbach, adjunct associate professor of wildlife, colleagues in wildlife-management at other educational institutions, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, he decided to do something about it.

In consultation with faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison—coincidentally the institution where Leopold was a professor for many years—San Julian established a program to expose students learning to be wildlife managers to hunting, similar to one offered by the University of Wisconsin for more than a decade. “Awhile back, I realized that few of my students had any direct connection to the land,” he says. “It is not that we are trying to turn them into hunters, but since hunting is the most important wildlife-management tool, they need to have an understanding of its role.”

Last fall, after offering the program in Pennsylvania for two years, San Julian took 18 students from the School of Forest Resources—more than half of them women—to the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation in Dundee, Ill., 30 miles from Chicago. There they, along with 20 wildlife-management students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, experienced four days of intensive training.

At McGraw, which provided generous financial support for the program, students attended sessions on the ethics, morality, role, and responsibility of hunters, along with gun and hunter safety, skeet shooting, and even pheasant hunting. Lessons taught in the course include, “Who Hunts and Why,” “The Biological Basis for Hunting,” “The Role of Hunting in Wildlife Management and Conservation,” “The Ethics and Morality of Hunting,” “The Responsibilities of a Hunter,” “The Role of Hunting in Society,” and “ Reflections on the Hunt.”

“It’s not that all students are anti-hunting—although some of them are,” says San Julian, who incidentally is an avid hunter.

“Most of them just don’t have an appreciation of the role of hunting—they don’t hunt because they never had the opportunity. It’s part of the social fabric of our culture, and in the line of work they will be going into, it’s vital that they realize that. We wanted to establish a program that would help students understand the role hunting plays in wildlife management.”

After earning their huntersafety certificates, when it came time to try their hand at pheasant hunting, not every student participated. “ Nobody was pressured or forced to go hunting, but most of us did,” says Amy Carrozzino of Milroy, Pa., then a senior majoring in wildlife and fi sheries science. The 21-year-old former president of the Penn State Student Chapter of the Wildlife Society didn’t kill a bird, but she enjoyed the experience.

'I grew up in a suburban area and I had no exposure to hunting,” she says. “I was never really against it, but I was uninformed. I realize now that I was at a disadvantage not knowing what hunting was all about. I plan to work in wildlife management, so I think this will help me in my career. The course taught me a lot and it was a great experience.”

Leslie Jones, a recent graduate in environmental resource management, was strongly opposed to hunting before taking the course. The 22-year-old vegetarian from Erie, Pa., witnessed her entire concept of hunters and hunting change through her experience at the McGraw facility.

“ I took the course because I wanted to be more well rounded, because in my field, I will be dealing with hunters. To manage properly, I felt I had to understand them,” she says. “I went from being an anti-hunter to really appreciating hunting—I came to understand that the hunters I have known are the kind we don’t want. I felt that they didn’t adequately value the life of the animals they killed. But I realize now that ethical hunters respect the life they are taking and use the animals, and that hunting is necessary.”

Surprisingly, Jones, who had never held a shotgun before, turned out to be a pretty good shot and may even consider hunting in the future. “I didn’t eat the pheasants, but the other students did, and they said they were delicious,” she says. “I am actually more interested in target shooting than hunting. Since I don’t eat meat, I won’t hunt because I would never waste an animal, but if I ever start eating meat, I may well start hunting. I would definitely be more comfortable eating meat from a wild animal that I shot rather than from a cow.”

Elizabeth Huber, a wildlife and fisheries science major from Pittsburgh, had never held a gun before either, but she enjoyed the training and found it valuable. Her father and grandfather hunted when she was very young. “But I was too little to understand,” she says. “I have friends who are deer hunters, and I could never understand why they hunted. But now I understand the thrill and the satisfaction. I shot two pheasants and skinned, cleaned, and ate pheasant that night. They were delicious.

“ I found the course very helpful,” she adds. “Now I know that a lot of people who hunt have a deep respect for wildlife and fisheries. I had a wonderful time and learned so much about the environment. It was great to be able to go out there and experience it.”

San Julian doesn’t claim to have invented the concept of teaching wildlife-management students to understand and appreciate hunting, but he’d like to play a role in expanding it.

“When we decided to collaborate with the University of Wisconsin at Madison, we had an opportunity to work with the Wildlife Management Institute in Washington, D.C. We also have had generous help from the National Wild Turkey Federation and local gun clubs and shops.”

The Wildlife Management Institute, according to San Julian, provided logistical and organizational support for taking these state programs to a national level at the Max McGraw Institute. The “Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow: Wildlife Student Hunting Awareness Program,” working with wildlife-management agencies and universities, is now focusing on training professors at other institutions to replicate the program regionally. “ I think this is so important,” San Julian says. “We are cementing a foundation for a national program. Our future wildlife-management professionals will need to work with hunters and use hunting to manage wildlife populations. Without this, their education is not complete.”

— Jeff Mulhollem