There were 35 in last night's class, about par. Sixteen females, the rest males. Probably more than half were 12-14 years old. They were seated at six tables, and a spare card table. A couple tables taken up by families, and the rest tended to split with females on the right, males on the left. More than a couple of the women looked like they would have a hard time changing a tire, much less packing a firearm and gutting a deer.

And yet, here they were.

This classroom actually worked better than the remodeled Depot room Ron used to use for his Hunter Safety classes. The depot has lousy acoustics, no good place to project slides or films, and requires all conversation to stop for a minute or two at least twice every hour when a train goes by.

Three meters away. Literally.

But the Depot was unavailable, so we're in the Aerobics Room of the Rec Center. Two walls of solid mirrors, with weights and steps stacked in the back. A full size punching bag hanging up front by the speakers' table.

Boys had great fun with that during the breaks.

One of the wardens went first, covering proper care of game meat. The basics: keep it cool, keep it clean, keep it dry.

Then it was time for me and my decade+ old slide show on Wildlife Management. You'd think I would know this by now, but I spent two hours in the afternoon going through it again. And again.

Room works well for slides, them projected up behind me, me facing the audience. Pacing back and forth as I do. The mirrors on the rear wall were wonderful for letting me see which slide was up without having to turn and look.

And I remembered the laser, for once. Handy for pointing out everything from the deer turds (really) to the browse lines to the bone marrow to the annual growth of willow, to the absorbed antelope fetuses and everything else in between.

'Course, that required me to turn towards the screen, a faux pas for public speaking. Until I realized I could zap the image in the rear wall mirror and hit the screen beside me. Worked fine, although it threw a few folks off a little bit until they realized what I was doing.

Took a short break when I was through. A hunter here with his son came up to tell me "You're getting too good at this."

Not sure what he meant by that, but I'll take it anyway.

Warden and I visited with one of our regular hunters, finding out he had lucked out and drawn an antelope license. "not sure of I'll go out tomorrow morning or not," he said. Warden's eyes grew wide as he realized.

Our antelope archery seasons open the 15th. Tomorrow (or today, now).

Summer is over. Fall is here.

Then the other warden's turn. Basic laws & regulations. How and when you can and cannot shoot from a vehicle, shooting from roads, spotlighting, that sort of stuff. The family in back exchanged numerous surprised and disbelieving looks when he explained that jackrabbits are "predatory" animals. He led them all on for a while before explaining that "predatory" is a legal status, not a biological function. Always fun.

The first warden and I sat in back, commenting about his new moustache. Suspect it is to make him look older. (It started growing after we noticed another warden newly clean shaven at a meeting last spring. He admitted he took his moustache off to look younger. And had grown it to look older in the first place. Worked.)

He used photocopies provided by the first warden to show what a virgin license looks like, and how it looks when properly completed after making a kill. But first he pointed out to everyone that it was a photocopy of her license. "You know what this means? It means she ate her deer license last year." 'Course the licenses are different this year, the first real change in 18-20 years, so it wasn't the best visual aid.

Then the first warden back up for her segment on wildlife identification. With me sitting in back tallying up the other warden's antelope classifications so far (fawn crop better than hoped) and him off to tend his new, ex-feral horse.

She jabbed one of the deputies in the crowd, asking him if he had graduated high school. Because she didn't want to call on him if he couldn't read.

Really!

Bet she doesn't dare speed in town for a while.

She used some red feathers and amputated talons to ID and discuss raptors. Seems a 10-year old boy found the sick or weakened redtail hawk in their parking lot, so beat it to death and took the feathers and feet. And took them to school to sell. $25 per foot, $1 per tail feather.

Got caught, of course. Most folks take their wildlife personally here.

Not his Mom, though. She thought he was being resourceful.

When pointing out the feathered, and thereby silent, feet of a great horned owl, she asked me if our owls were still in town.

So I got to tell everyone about the wings that flew over me 20 hours earlier.