NWTF and Indiana DNR Partner to Host Collegiate Squirrel Hunt

Looking for opportunities to engage in hunting, TWS students asked the INDNR’s R3 team to plan an educational session on how to hunt squirrels. INDNR invited NWTF volunteers to help host the mentored hunt event, including Pat Navarre, Indiana NWTF state education and outreach coordinator.

“The Wildlife Society’s mission parallels the mission of the NWTF in many ways, and it was important to offer the students this experience,” Navarre said. “We think it is our mission to host outreach events like this.”

On the day of the event, eight students and six mentors gathered at Purdue’s Martell Forest in West Lafayette despite the cold and snowy conditions. NWTF volunteers and an INDNR conservation officer started off the day by teaching participants about squirrel biology in a classroom. The introduction course was followed by target shooting, handling firearms and understanding hunter safety. In the afternoon, the students went out on the squirrel hunt.

For Julia Buchanan-Schwanke, a master’s student at Purdue University, this was her first hunting experience and having a hands-on workshop with the equipment provided made it very approachable.

“It’s a huge barrier for people that want to get into hunting but don't want to spend the money before learning more about it and trying it firsthand,” she said. “Another barrier was finding mentors who could show me the ropes of hunting and processing.”

Buchanan-Schwanke started as an undergraduate at Purdue in 2014 and recently returned to complete a master’s project researching aging in whitetail deer and coyotes.

“As I got more exposed to my field of study, I saw that hunting was a part of that, and I liked the idea of being able to harvest food from the land, so I wanted to get into it.”

After Buchanan-Schwanke finished her undergraduate program at Purdue in 2018, the wildlife program began requiring students to take a hunting history course that emphasizes its importance in wildlife management and conservation. At the end of the semester, enrolled students attend a mentored dove hunt, which allows them, as young emerging professionals, to see that importance firsthand.

Beca Appelmann, a current senior in Purdue’s wildlife program and president of the campus TWS chapter, was enrolled in the course and agrees that it helped change her perspectives on hunting.

“That class opened my eyes,” Appelmann said. “That’s one of the cool aspects of Purdue; we're seeing that [wildlife management] isn’t just going out and petting wild animals, it's really thinking of the bigger picture, and that includes hunting.”

When she was growing up, Appelmann loved the outdoors and knew she wanted to work with wildlife in some capacity, but she was never interested in hunting. Now, through her time at Purdue, she has experience being the Hunting Workshop Group Leader for TWS where she organized outdoor-related activities, such as an edible plant hike, introduction to archery, a trip to a shooting range, wood duck box building and a pheasant hunt. Participating in the squirrel hunt was one of the first mentored hunts she’s been a part of.

“This event was beneficial for me because I had the opportunity to try it and bring some friends along as well,” Appelmann said. “I feel like I want to keep trying it [hunting] out and potentially get an animal on the next one.”

The students saw a few squirrels, but due to the weather, there were no successful harvests. Appelmann’s group saw one squirrel, and a different group saw a few squirrels, but missed their shots.

“I was with a group where we had a few shots,” said Kylee Thorson, a sophomore at Purdue University studying wildlife and the current TWS Hunting Workshop Group Leader. “It was difficult because the squirrels were high up in the tree, and they were new hunters. But I think they still enjoyed it. One guy got his first hunter-adrenaline-shock when he shot, so that was fun to experience with him.”

When Thorson was young, she had mentors at the INDNR, including a conservation officer who introduced her to conservation and hunting. She has been able to go on several mentored deer and turkey hunts, which is what inspired her to create a mentored squirrel hunt in collaboration with the INDNR and the NWTF.

“These kinds of mentored hunts are important because we see in classes a lot of the research that goes into making the regulations for hunting, but I think coupling your conservation knowledge with hunting is very important,” Thorson said. “Getting a good blend of research and hunting and conservation is a very important thing for us to learn for the future.”