Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemdji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org [Music] Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/ Director Scott Knudson.

In this episode we examine a small vignette of youth shooting culture in northern Minnesota.

I told you you can cheat you can get away with it some things that are going to hurt you later, but now it's when that stuff's going to come back to get you and haunt you.

My name is Neal Tacheny, I'm the summer camp director at Deep Portage Learning Center, which is in Hackensack, Minnesota.

One of our key summer camps at Deep Portage is our Forkhorn 1 camps.

Forkhorn camps were started by the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association about 35 years ago as a way to get more kids involved into deer hunting, and ultimately they really turned into a firearm safety camp.

So this camp, they come Sunday through Fridays, and they're here to get their firearm safety and they have to earn everything.

So they have to take a written test, they have to do their field day requirements from the DNR, they have to shoot up at our shooting range, but most importantly they have to behave every second they are at camp.

We always say no matter how good you do on your test or field day portions, if you choose to make a bad decision behavior, that's going to get you sent home or not getting your firearm safety.

And you would be positioned with the firearm with your elbows out like that.

At camp our philosophy, kind of, that we teach kids is that this is a tool.

A firearm is a tool and when we use it dangerously that it is used as a weapon, so we want to make sure kids know right away this is not something that is used as a weapon, this is a tool.

And we want to make sure that they know every action they take they have to check themselves.

Am I being safe?

Am I being responsible?

Am I being respectful?

They have to make sure that they're following those three core things at all times because we don't want kids at our camp we don't want them being scared of firearms, we want them to have a firm appreciation and respect that if this is used incorrectly things could go bad and that's when we have bad situations.

But if we follow the four rules of firearm safety, if we really take care and be safe around ourselves and others, then we can have a good respect and enjoy the hunting and shooting traditions the state has to offer.

Deep Portage Learning Center is in its 50th year of programming.

So we are an Outdoor Learning Center.

We have actually been around since 1972 but this is our 50th year of programming, so we're here educating the public of all ages kind of the importance of incorporating outdoor conservation, outdoor recreation, into everybody's everyday lives.

So during the school year, September through May, we have 5 to 6,000 students that come here on school trips from all over the state of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, northern Minnesota, western Minnesota.

Then during the summer we have summer camps that also draws different types from all over the state.

So the number of camps we have at Deep Portage.

We have Fishing Camp, which is a pretty traditional fishing camp.

We have an Izaak Walton League Camp, which is kind of camp in a nutshell.

If you think of camp that's what that is.

It's a conservation minded camp so we do a lot of fishing, a lot of ecosystem biology.

But then we have the Forkhorn series camps.

Forkhorn 1 is firearm safety, Forkhorn 2 is bow hunter safety, and then when you come back for Forkhorn 3, the last of the series, we go over a lot of in-depth coverage on a lot of the hunting practices.

So then we turn kind of into maybe duck calling or turkey calling and giving you more hobbies and passions beyond just the hunt.

The four firearm safety rules, can anyone give me one rule?

Introduction to safety is generally our classroom portion and that's when they're going to learn the first four important rules of firearm safety.

We repeat them as a class just so they know this has to be engraved in your memory.

This isn't something we are tricking you on, this is for everyone to be safe with.

If you're going to be using a firearm, if you're out in the woods, these are things you need to know.

It's a kind of an introduction to those simple basic rules.

Hey what does a firearm look like, how do they work, what are the parts to them, so you can operate them safely.

And then we jump into the classes where they have to go over fences with them, have to pass them to one another.

We go up to the shooting range and in all this time, of course, we're still teaching them and make sure they're learning that.

This isn't just for a test, this is for life skills.

We want to make sure they're memorizing and learning the material and not just kind of using it, throwing it away later.

All right.

The last one.

Be sure of your target and beyond.

Be sure of your target and beyond.

Deep Portage offers an all girls Forkhorn Camp, pretty unique.

So we'll have anywhere from 50 to 60 girls that'll attend that camp just by themselves and it gives the girls here at camp an opportunity to have zero pressures from anything from the outside.

So we make sure to have female instructors in the classroom, kind of at the classroom lecture portion.

So we want to make sure that they have an environment that they can learn together and, you know, there are many more male hunters and farm users than females, so we want to make sure they get an equal shot as well to be here and making sure we're being inclusive to them as well.

After they complete Forkhorn 1 and their firearm safety they have a chance to finally go hunting.

So in Minnesota you need, at a certain age you do need, a firearm safety certificate to go hunting.

So hopefully this camper, when they go home or they go back to their hunting camp, they bring these safety protocols back to their families and their friends and we've had many testimonials from many, many hunters, especially senior citizen hunters that say: Hey this youth went through your camp and they taught us how to use a safety harness, they taught us how to do deer drives better.

That's ultimately our goal is if we can educate the youth, people tend to listen to their kids, to their grandkids, and that's our goal.

Deep Portage offers the three Forkhorn series as kind of a buildup for our campers.

So we may cover a lot of the same materials in Forkhorn 2 and Forkhorn 3, but by getting those kids back three separate summers in a row we have a core group of students that is continuously getting that firearm safety, that hunter respect, all that stuff we want to relay a positive image to the hunting and firearms community.

They get to see it three summers in a row, so we think that's really important, that if a student's going to learn something they repeat it multiple times and that's kind of the beauty of our Forkhorn series is they get to come back so many times and relive and relearn all this stuff to bring it back to their hunting camps or their shooting ranges and they can be that much more safe than if someone just attends one time or twice.

The second one will be a big one.

Okay, okay.

Are you ready?

Pull.

Deep Portage on site has a 10 station sporting clays range.

So it's kind of like golf but shooting clay pigeons.

And so we have a camp called Upland Bird Camp where we take the kids out on the course and they get to have 10 stations where as they're walking and their sporting clay targets, the orange discs, that get thrown over them, that get thrown at them, left to right, right to left, different speeds and angles.

And as a shotgun instructor we help them through making sure their form is right, their mechanics are right, so that way they can target sporting clays more efficiently here at camp and bring it back into their sporting clays teams or out when they're hunting a field.

Oh get away!

Did you try a mini just by itself?

I want to try another try.

Another one yeah.

The stations are kind of mimicking real hunting situations.

So what we have done with the course is we have one station in particular that goes kind of from right out in front of you and goes straight out.

We have another one that kind of simulates the bird crossing right to left really quick.

And then we have a really fun unique station where they come from over the top and then they work downward.

Pull.

Nice.

So we're trying to work all of the different areas a person might encounter out in the field.

And these sporting clay stations, this is an actual High School League now.

So trap shooting became popular 10-15 years ago and now the sporting clays course is also a high school option, so it helps them practice for when they're going to go back to school.

Awesome.

Some of the challenges and things campers have to do in our course is one they have to be safe the entire time.

Safety, safety, safety.

Safety is our number one thing we always preach.

So it's kind of them getting used to how do I walk with the firearm on a course up and down hills, how do I approach the bench, how do I get set.

And we really work on their mechanics and shooting a moving target is really tough.

We're going to get some kids that come here and really get it, we're going to get some kids that don't, so we make sure their form is set.

That's number one is making sure form is where it needs to be.

The second is hand eye coordination can be really tricky depending on the age.

Some kids come ready to go and again some just need a little more practice on learning how to lead their targets.

And then third, and most importantly, it's just dexterity.

So we're making sure they can hold the gun properly and sometimes, you know, they might be on the weaker side so that's a challenge they can face is being able to hold a you know a six, seven pound tool, to be using it in the field.

They do get four opportunities, four range days, during Upland Camp to come and practice.

Mental stamina is huge.

They got to know that hey, if I'm missing a bunch, but if I keep practicing eventually I start hitting them.

So it could be kind of hard at first for a kid to understand that.

Pull.

You got it, you did it, nice job.

Next shooter come on up.

Everything we do at camp relates back to kind of being safe with firearms.

That is the whole goal is to make sure our campers come away with being safe at all times and that just doesn't mean when we have firearms in our hands.

We think here at camp everything you do in life relates back to that personal responsibility of is your room clean in the morning, are you taking care of your dining hall tables here at lunch, are you being respectful to your peers and your other campers at camp.

If you can't be we're not going to sign your papers.

We're not going to trust you with having a firearm or being a safe hunter in the field.

So all those things kind of blend together to make you a safe and respectful person here at camp.

Hopefully that translates into the fall hunting season or when you go out shooting with your friends and family.

I'm Blair Nelson.

I've been living in Bemidji for the better part of the last 25 years, and we invented the Peep Shoot sort of as a happenstance after an Easter that was held at our parents cabin in an early spring.

And so we had all these marshmallow peeps laying around in the middle of the summer when we came back and were bored and decided, you know, they're kind of crispy, they'd make great reactive targets for a 22.

So we set a whole bunch of peeps up on sticks on the hill, shot them, and they blew up and everyone had giggles, and we thought, you know, that might be a fun thing to start doing on Easter.

Shooter can begin.

It was 2011 when we first had our organized Peep Shoot, Peep Shoot I.

And we had friends and family come over on Easter Sunday and shoot them with 22's in our backyard.

The Peep Shoot is held out at the Northland Regional Sports Park.

It's sponsored by the Bemidji Area Shooters Association.

It's a fundraising event.

It's welcome to the public and we love having new people out there to come and blow up marshmallows with us.

The rules are very simple.

It starts with just being safe.

You should take 10 targets, one at a time in order.

The range master will call out the number of the peep and its color so that they can keep them in order and they're alternating colors.

So the range master would say shooter ready pink one, bang, yellow two, bang, pink three, bang, and so on until the final target number 10 is a green and it is called out as money bunny.

Maybe the ear of the money bunny.

We will check.

Three days ago you're on the verge of a stormtrooper award.

Well like any other sporting event it gets its own rules and regulation as time goes on.

We decided in the first year that it would be one point per bunny for a maximum of 10.

Then in the year after we discovered rimfire tannerite.

Then we took a small plastic bag bought from a local pipe and tobacco shop and filled it with rimfire tannerite and figured that we would incorporate that into the competition with the last bunny being worth one point but a bonus of five if you detonated the bag full of rimfire tannerite for a possible score of a 15.

Everyone locally knows Ann Marie, right.

She's been a fixture among 4-H County Extension and public television for decades.

And Ann Marie hit the money bunny but did not detonate it and so we went, looked at the target, and saw there was a hole in the bag.

So that is a free do-over because Ann Marie raised a snit that she needed another chance.

Caleb Bessler is a warrior.

Caleb Bessler has been going eye to eye with peeps for several years and giving his complete heart and concentration to developing himself as, dare I say, an assassin of marshmallows.

My name is Caleb Bessler and I was a participant and a father of a participant at the Peep Shoot.

At the Peep Shoot, it's a small competition.

It's mostly just to have fun, especially fun for the kids.

So we have a small time to sight in rifles if need be, just check our scopes, make sure everything's right in the beginning, and then we compete against each other to see who can be the most accurate, shoot the most peeps.

My son loves to compete, so that's one thing.

It's an outlet for him to compete.

He gets very passionate about whatever he competes in and so for him he actually loves to, he loves that aspect of it.

He actually made a friend there that we've shot with since that time.

That's probably what he gets out of it, he learns how to compete with a good attitude.

And winning and losing.

I mean, the first year he competed he won the tournament on his age group.

This past year he did not, a good lesson that I'm glad he's learning through, that is to be a good sport about it either way.

So it's kind of both.

It's helpful for me to give him guidance and then also for him to to learn good character.

The biggest thing I think I've tried to teach Kaden in regards to shooting is just that shooting is fun, but it needs to be done in a way that is safe because the reality is with shooting there's no second chances.

If something goes wrong there's not a second chance, you can't take that back.

So that's what we've taught him from a young age is that yes, this is a lot of fun, but in that you need to be very careful because it's only fun if everybody walks home at the end of the day.

Well, Scott, you've been around for enough of them that you understand the complete vibe that one it is taken seriously but it's not serious.

It is a fun event event where people are getting together on an annual basis, coming up from all over the state of Minnesota, sometimes even foreign countries, and it's fun but it's also a unique thing to participate in.

First off it was just a lot of fun that we could have all together, and I think that's the important part for me is that it's something that my son and I can do together and with a bunch of friends as well from the club, the shooting club.

Caleb Bessler, Caleb Bessler to the line.

The fact that his grandfather was there as well is just icing on the cake.

The Peep Shoot is a family thing, so it's not just youth, it's not just adults, it's a chance for parents, kids, extended families to get together and to have grown-ups teach kids how to shoot and how to do it safely in a fun environment.

I mean who doesn't like winning chocolate bunnies and jelly beans?

So for the competition there are different categories.

We have a youth category, an adult category.

You can shoot offhand, you can shoot laying down, or you can shoot in a sitting position.

Everyone waits their turn and when it's your turn you step up to the line, take your best aim and you're hopefully shooting better than the guy before you.

When we're shooting, if somebody hits a peep, everyone applauds and everyone is excited to to see that happen, but the biggest excitement comes from the money bunny, which is the last bunny.

It's the green bunny, and if you shoot the money bunny in the correct position, in the right spot, there is a small bag of tannerite that will explode the bunny and of course everyone goes wild at that point.

Well it helps teach tradition, respect, and you have built-in ownership as a memory for people growing up.

I expect when my kids get older they are going to remember a few things about the Peep Shoot, among that they're going to remember that it's been a hard competition with lots of family smack talk.

They are going to remember that their grandpa was here shooting through a special stand of an old car door because he was an old North Dakota hunter and that's how he shot.

They'll remember that it's held on Kentucky Derby Day every year and their Grandma, who just turned 80 this year, shows up in a derby hat every year.

These sort of memories you just, they're never going to forget.

So we've been back to the peep shoot again and invited a few friends this next year where we have a goal of inviting five friends to the Peep Shoot.

So hopefully we're planning on going back next year and having some friends to shoot with us.

My name is Jeff Krona.

I coach for the Bemidji Trap Team, The Lumberjacks.

We're at the Bemidji Shooting Park in Bemidji, Minnesota, just north on Highway 89 at mile marker 3.

At this facility is where our home is.

This is where we compete on a weekly level.

The kids have six houses that they can shoot at.

The clubhouse is an amazing place to have this.

The Bemidji Shooting Park has trap shooting, it has skeet shooting and it has 5-Stand, one of the best 5-Stand stations in the state of Minnesota.

This is one of the nicest trap ranges I've ever been to.

I've been to multiple states and many of them here in the state of Minnesota and this is one of the nicest that you'll ever see.

The Bemidji high school trap team started 10 years ago, this was our 10th season.

So we're going into our 11th season.

We shoot spring, summer, and fall.

So roughly we're shooting nine months out of the year.

We have 65 students at this point.

Trap shooting is a sport where you learn responsibility, you're handling a firearm.

And if you'll look at, come out and watch one of our practices, one of our tournaments, you will see how responsible these kids are you.

Come out and watch us and then you go to watch adults shoot and our kids are much more responsible handling firearms.

Trap kids in general are just amazing kids and we don't have any problems with anybody shooting with anybody.

I make sure that I go out of my way to make sure people shoot with other people throughout the year, that way when they get down to a tournament and they're shooting with other people the rhythm can be quickly learned.

There's a lot of rhythm in trap shooting.

Some of the challenges of trap shooting is once you learn the basics, it's all in your head and you get to learn something and then what you know is not working one day and is it your aiming point, is it how the gun sits on your shoulder, is your cheek not on there correctly, all of that take into account.

One day you can't break a bird and the next day you'll rip off 100 straight.

So one of the benefits of Bemidji Trap and Skeet Club is we have one of the greatest backgrounds in the state of Minnesota.

You go down and compete at where we every high school goes down and competes, you're looking at semi- trucks going by in the background the entire time you're shooting and you can lose your soft focus.

In trap shooting the boys and girls do shoot together.

They intermix on each team.

The girls sometimes like to shoot with each other and sometimes the girls want to shoot with the boys.

I don't see any advantages of being a male over a female in this sport.

One thing I really appreciate about the Bemidji Area Shooters Association is everyone is very encouraging when you're there.

If you are uncomfortable with something, they're very willing to help.

They're also very giving, like in fact that day, when I was at the Peep Shoot, I think I shot three other guns that were not my guns and they just said here's some ammo shoot this gun, have some fun, so that's one thing I just I couldn't say enough about the people that were there.

Familiarity with firearms is a great thing.

It removes the mystery, it removes the allure of danger.

Your experiences with firearms aren't war movies you've seen, it's not the tragedies on the evening news.

Your experiences with firearms are safe, they're wholesome and they, you know, create a lifelong experience that the next time a kid who's been to the Peep Shoot finds a firearm, they're going to respect it, not horse play with it, and have the, I guess, responsibility baked into them from just having experience with gun culture.

I would like the Trap Team to continue to grow and I want them to continue to succeed and the coaches that we have right now, the board that we have right now, I feel are doing a good job of helping us grow.

Campers can find out all about our camps online.

So we have online registration and all of our stuff on the Deep Portage website under summer camps and the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association is the main sponsor for camp and they are terrific at giving out scholarships for students, so if you are interested and someone who needs a scholarship, please contact the Deer Hunters Association.

There's many chapters statewide and at the state office in Grand Rapids.

Always get in contact with them in case they have scholarships left over so that way they can help you out and get to camp.

Safety, safety.

Practice those.

Join us again on Common Ground.

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Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people, November 4th, 2008.

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