Chuck H. You brought up an interesting post about Hunter Safety Coarses. You are right in most states I know you have to go to classes in order to get your license. Growing up in New Jersey, buy the age of 14 you were allowed to hunt if you passed the coarse, whether it be for shotgun or bowhunting or both. You had to produce the Hunter Safety Coarse card to the issuing license dealer in order to receive a license. In renewing your license you had to show a previous license and they wrote the number on the new license. If you didn't show an old license you didn't get a new one.
In the service in Germany, 1966-1967, I was very fortunate to hunt with a German fellow who worked on post as a fireman. His family owned quite a bit of land not to far from where I was stationed, next town. It all started with my purchase of a Remington 11-48, in a .410 from the Rod & Gun Club. He said I wouldn't be able to kill anything with it. To make a long story shorter, he invited me to hunt on his families property, with his dad (During WW11 was in the SS), son and myself in the morning for ducks, hares, afternoon hunt with a group of people, hunting hungarian partridge, pheasants. Told me that if anyone asked about my license, that I had one. I found out later that it takes up to 6 months to get a license, and you need to have at least 400 acres to hunt. You have to have a dog, and it must retrieve everyting. If there is water on the property, it must retrieve from in the water. Government officials test the dogs. All the game shot goes to the landowner and if you want some, you have to buy it from them.
Hunted more than once and did kill everything from hares, up to 10 lbs, hungarian partridge and pheasants. Wouldn't let me shoot any Roe Buck with the .410, too small. The father shot a drilling and my friend shot a Franchi auto 20. I first had problems with the Belgian made paper shells cycling in the .410, finally had to scape the wax from them to cycle.
