The young girl came walking between us, her white-tipped cane gently caressing the floor as she went. Her personal teaching aide following a few steps behind.

My friend and I were visiting in the middle of the junction of two school hallways, with her keeping an eye on her brood of the moment. I was at the Middle School again, giving my slide presentation on wildlife management to her hunter safety class. They had actually combined two periods for my presentation, allowing me to speak only once, instead of twice, and leaving more time for explanations and questions.

We were giving the kids a break, between the principles of habitat and the principles of wildlife population management, when the blind student passed by on her way to her next class. My friend teased her, asking her if she knew who she was passing.

She did. No surprise to either of us.

Later, as we waited for the kids to finish their bathroom and water breaks, and burn off some of the lunch calories, my friend proudly mentioned that the blind gal had passed her hunter safety class.

But I already knew that. From the girl's mother, who had spent considerable time visiting with me on the legalities and hassles of allowing a blind person to hunt.

Which she had done, after she passed the course. Just needed a special scope to allow someone else to sight the rifle in on the target, peering in over her shoulder.

As long as she pulled the trigger, she was the hunter.

But I hadn't known the special problem the girl had had passing the safety course.

Among the many requirements on firearms safety, wanna-be hunters also have to be able to identify most common wildlife species in our state, and know their legal classification.

Legal classifications are usually obvious, like elk and deer are big game, rabbits are small game, beaver are furbearers, etcetera. But there are some oddities, like jackrabbits being predacious animals.

No, that doesn't mean our legislators are stupid and think jackrabbits go around killing things. In legal terms, predacious does not mean predatory. It means undesirable and totally unprotected, a reflection of our agricultural heritage.

But this was not the blind girl's problem.

She couldn't distinguish between big game and small game.

And my friend, her teacher, finally figured out why.

This girl had already gone hunting, with her family. In fact, I suspect she was in their truck every time they came through my check stations ever since she was born. And they didn't shelter her. She knew the feel and smell of elk, antelope, deer and rabbits.

Or rather, the feel of dead elk, deer and antelope. And by that point, they were all knee-high to her. None of them met her concept of big.

So my friend, her teacher, took her into the school's taxidermy display (all items donated by our outfit). And to the local tazidermist's shop. And let her feel lifesize replicas of elk, and deer, and antelope and moose. Standing as they would alive.

And she learned about big.