Sportsman a class act for 50 years

Howard Gardner was president of the Richland Rod & Gun Club in 1957, when a new Washington law required young hunters to complete a hunter education course.

“We jumped right in,” he said last week.

And he never found an excuse to jump back out.

Gardner, 78, has volunteered as a hunter education instructor for 50 consecutive years, a milestone that ranks him with an elite few of the state’s hunting heroes. The Washington Hunter Education Instructors Association recently presented Gardner with a new Browning BPS 20-gauge shotgun inscribed with a tribute to his half-century of service.

“In early years, students needed only four hours of instruction and it was all firearms safety,” the retired Hanford engineer said. “Now our course is a minimum of 10 hours and we also cover things like conservation, sportsmanship, survival and first aid. We also have a popular field day for shooting and simulated hunting situations.”

Phil’s Sporting Goods in Pasco has arranged a special room for the 10 hunter ed classes the club teaches each year. “We used to arrange for school classrooms to have the classes,” he said. “Boy, things have changed. You sure can’t do that anymore, not around here anyway.”

Although he’s volunteered his time all these years, the payoff has been huge, Gardner said.

“In the ‘50s, Washington averaged about 40 hunting accidents a year and four to five deaths,” he said. “In the past 10 or 15 years, those numbers have dropped to eight or nine accidents a year and a death every other year or so.

“That’s progress.”

Gardner is considered the consummate sportsman by many of his peers in the Richland club. With the advent of spring-like weather, he’s already been out on his bicycle logging 35-mile rides. “It’s part of my conditioning program for the fall hunts,” he said matter-of-factly, as though everyone plans ahead that way.

Gardner still hunts and fishes regularly, and he has some elegant big-game trophies as mementos to his years in the field — but not as many as he had a few years ago.

“I discovered e-Bay,” he said. “Little by little, I’m doing my kids a favor and getting rid of some of this stuff.”

Deer and elk antlers, plus old hunting collectables are among the 1,000 items he’s sold for $13,000 recently. Some of the old Field & Stream pins awarded to hunters bagging trophy big game years ago are worth a surprising amount of money he said.

“I got $25 for my goat pin,” he said.