What would you recommend that I use...

if I wanted to take down a moose?

That is what I asked my class today as we were wrapping up our day.

Now that I have all of my students back (my numbers are back up in the teens) from hunting, I wanted to see them engage in a real conversation with the topic being something they love to do.

Within 30 seconds all of my boys ran to the back where I was standing, all of them grinning ear to ear.

I first heard, "I use a 223 Remington."

And then there was an onslaught of numbers.
22 mag and 243, 308, and 22 chipmunk, 22 long rifle.... I don't even know if I got these right, but they definitely have an arrangement of guns to choose from.

It was at this time that head knowledge became heart knowledge, my students are becoming young men and women.

But what got my attention wasn't the fact that they can take down an animal with a large gun...even at 90 lbs., but the tips that were shared at the tail end.

"Make sure you here or here," one said as he was pointing to his neck and then his rib cage. And with that one comment came another lengthy discussion on why it's important to take down an animal quickly, and it wasn't b/c it takes more work to make the kills, but b/c as one kid put it,

"It hurts the animal."

A little more insight into a world that still takes me by surprise.