Wallace Man Wins Instructor Award Hunter Education Teacher Keeps Busy With Community Volunteer Projects

Nick Hogamier felt honored to be named Idaho’s Hunter Education Instructor of the Year. The award came with a lifetime hunting and fishing license, and one drawback.

“Now, I’ll feel obligated for another 20 years,” he said before Gov. Dirk Kempthorne handed him a plaque on Monday. “I don’t know if I have it in me.”

If the past is any indication, the 52-year-old Wallace man has an endless supply of volunteer energy in him.

He’s been on the Shoshone County Search and Rescue team for 30 years, and served as a volunteer firefighter for 18 years. He’s chairman of his county’s waterways committee, serves on the East Shoshone Water District Board and is a past Wallace City Council member. He’s active with the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. As a member of the Forest Fire Lookout Association, he helps save historic structures.

“It’s really neat to take something that’s about ready to fall over and fix it up,” he said.

When it comes to building safe sportsmen, he’s usually working from the ground up. Most students are youngsters, who can get an Idaho hunting license after they’re 12 years old, but not until they’ve taken the course offered by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Hogamier has been with the program since its inception in 1979, having been talked into it by conservation officers Dwain Lowry and Doyle Reynolds.

“It’s guys like Nick who make our job so much easier,” Reynolds said Monday.

Hogameier is supervisor of facilities for the Wallace School District. He’s one of 126 hunter education instructors in the Panhandle. He was nominated by program coordinator Pete Gardner for a regional award, then chosen from among seven instructors statewide for the 1999 top honor. Two years ago, Richard Gerhard of Coeur d’Alene won the state award.

Planning, promoting and teaching the classes is a springtime ritual for Hogamier. He’s taught 41 hunter courses, resulting in 1,036 certified students.

That means eight evening sessions in each of three towns: Osburn, Kellogg and Mullan.

There’s also a field day during which students get target practice with .22-caliber rifles. They’re also given wooden “rifles” and are told to handle them with the respect due to real weapons. Hogamier recalled that a couple of students were escorted off the field, and out of the course, when they were caught horsing around.

“They came back the next year and took the course again,” he said.

The vast majority pass the course the first time. “They’re tickled to death to get their certificate. They love you for it,” Hogamier said. “And they’ve earned it.”

Hogamier knows firsthand that the program’s lessons have hit the mark.

“When I joined search and rescue in 1970, you always heard of people getting shot. Accidents do happen, but they’re very rare anymore,” he said.

The hunting safety course gives Hogamier a chance to teach some basic survival techniques. For example, he advises students to stay put if they get “misplaced.” That will conserve energy and increase their chances of being found.

“I tell them, `Should you get lost and I have to come get you - which I’d be glad to do - you’d better be sitting in one place.”’ Hogamier will put his free license to good use. He especially enjoys going out into the woods with his 28-year-old son.

“I hunt and fish but I’m not a fanatic,” he said. “If I don’t get anything, I still have a good time.”