Yesterday my wife and I took our granddaughter to the Youth Hunter Education Challenge at one of our F&G Dept. conservation camp sites.
There were two firearm events, one a fairly casual clay target shotgun session, the other 22 rimfire bullseye shooting.
I'm 99% sure the "instructors" (using that term loosely) were NRA qualified hunter safety or firearms instructors. That being the case I was suitably unimpressed by their abilities.
They had several 20 ga. shotguns, two autos, at least one, maybe two pumps, all youth models, and one adult Ruger Red Label. They demonstrated proper handling and stressed muzzle control but advocated carrying the guns muzzle up. To me that is a very uncomfortable manner to carry a firearm and I noticed some of the kids struggled with it. OK, so it works, after a fashion.
Where it got sketchy, as far as the instructors having a clue was when one of them was trying to show/help one of the kids load one of the autos (Rem 1100 or whatever the current model like that is) with the muzzle up when he was at the shooting position. The guy tried repeatedly to put the round in the ejection port and push it into the chamber with his finger. As soon as he removed his finger the shell would fall out on the ground. After several tries one of the other instructors had to show the first one how to drop it in the port and hit the action release. The next kid in turn came up with the same gun and asked the instructor what type of action it was and the guy told him it was a pump. RIGHT!!!
Later I observed one relay at the 22 range. Nice range covered firing points and gallery, no blue sky anywhere, even a covered berm to keep the rain from washing any of the demon lead down to the nearby lake. Neither of the instructors I talked with had any idea what distance they were shooting. It looked like 50 ft to me. I got answers of 20 yds and 17 yds so they were close but apparently never got curious enough to even pace it off when they went downrange.
There are decent benches with proper cutouts for both left and right hand shooters. One of the kids was a lefty, they gave him a left hand rifle but sat him down at a right hand bench position, the poor boy looked terribly uncomfortable trying to shoot that way.
My granddaughter (Elisha) was in the relay I was watching and I know she's pretty good with a rifle. These were mostly, if not all, Savage bolt action single shots, most of them youth models, at least two adult sized. They started out by shooting "sighters" on 8" Shoot-n-See targets. Low quality iron sights, black front bead against a big black target, I guess nobody ever heard of aim small, miss small.
The rifle Elisha drew was shooting high and right, several of the others were similarly off in one direction or another. I asked if they had made any attempt to zero the rifles and got some muttered statement that they "weren't allowed to do that". Not allowed to adjust the freakin sights before they put the gun on the rack? Maybe there is something in the policies about not making "modifications" to the guns, but to adjust the sights?
I have taught Elisha to shoot for group, then we can adjust the sights to put the group where you want it. Some of the kids knew to do that, some tried to hold off and shoot for center. It's hard for 10-12 yr olds to do that and it showed.
After the sighters were fired on they shot a second target. After they took the targets down Elisha brought hers over to show me. Not bad but she had shot better two days before when we went out on the 25 yd range with the family 22 single. But, she was shooting with her elbow on the bench, everybody else was trying to shoot off those three lobed, multiple stepped MTM plastic rests. Anyhow, she did pretty darn good for an unfamiliar gun.
They put up new targets and while they were downrange one of the instructors came over to me and asked if that was my granddaughter and commented that she had held a pretty good pattern. At which point I agreed with him that it was but shotguns shoot patterns, rifles shoot GROUPS. I got a deer in the headlights look for that.
While the kids were shooting their third string the same instructor asked me and another observer if we would mind filling some loading blocks they were using on the benches. We went over and he warned us to wash our hands after we finished because "You'll have lead all over your fingers". Gotta keep that lead scare going even of you don't have a clue.
I got another of those looks when I asked where, from a copper plated bullet and a brass case, I was going to get lead "all over" anything.
When the kids finished they were instructed to go to the main building and wash their hands really good because there was dangerous lead on them after shooting. They fired 30 rds each, in an open sided building with a 10-15 mph wind blowing from behind them but I'm sure this comes straight out of a book written by a safety committee in the Land of La-La.
I've seen some good instructors but I saw nothing but mediocrity in the group that was involved in these two events. This event was being promoted as sort of an example of a great program and overall it was as the kids all seemed to have a great time. But when you advocate firearms safety and the enjoyment of the shooting sports it seems like if you're teaching something you could at least have truly qualified instructors, not just ones who took a class one time.