SAFETY FIRST

Kevin Blazek of Greenfield received congratulations from his peers last Thursday night, during a continuing education meeting at Three-Mile Lake near Afton, as he marked a half-century as a hunter safety course instructor.

He said the only thing that would have made the moment better is if the late Keith Bates, who he taught with for many years, could have been there with him. Bates, also a longtime barber in town, died in 2021.

The two began as instructors at the same time in 1976 — Bates said he would become an instructor if Blazek would too, and the rest is history. The role paired well with Blazek’s then-new position as Adair County’s conservation director, but the love for teaching the classes has gone much deeper for Blazek. He also never imagined he would still be doing it 50 years later.

“As I’ve told many parents who weren’t sure if their kids should do it, I tell them that it’s one of those things like driver’s education, electrical safety or fire safety,” Blazek said. “At some point in time, between now and through their adult life, they’re going to encounter a gun. When they do, they need to know what to do so they don’t have a tragic accident.”

When they started, Blazek and Bates taught hunter safety to interested fourth-graders and older students in area schools during the school day.

While live firing was not part of the class at first, it soon was added. Blazek recalls students standing on the gym floor in Fontanelle in front of the stage, shooting at targets on the back wall of the stage. He teamed with the Orient-Macksburg FFA to secure BB guns, and the shooting range was the football field in Orient. Students shot into an embankment and a makeshift backdrop.

Blazek never taught the class in Greenfield schools, where school principal Carl Schwartz was a certified instructor.

When schools began transitioning to an A- and B-day schedule and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources clamped down on certain hourly requirements for the class, those two factors created challenges for teaching it during the school day.

“We ended up just doing an October class every year. By doing October, we were one of the last classes in southwest Iowa before the hunting season started,” Blazek said. “When we first started, you didn’t have to have hunter safety to purchase your first hunting license, and at some point they made it a requirement. At that point, the interest was unbelievable. Us being the last class in southwest Iowa, we became a class of people who procrastinated.”

The increased interest led to many volunteer instructors stepping in to help. A few examples of two-generation instructor duos Blazek has worked with are Keith and Darrell Bates and Chris and Dan Baudler.

“There were three or four years, probably in the early ’90s, that we had more than 100 students in the class,” Blazek said. “If it hadn’t been for all the instructors who helped, we couldn’t have done it. I hate to even start naming them.”

The class is still held each early fall, with both a classroom and shooting-range component. Today, the shooting range used is at Mormon Trail Lake east of Bridgewater.

Blazek’s two main commandments of gun safety are treating every firearm as if it is loaded and keeping the muzzle pointed in a safe direction at all times.

“Teaching is actually pretty fun. As an instructor, you smile inside when a boy or girl is up on the trap range and they shoot and break a clay target for the first time, and you see their reaction,” Blazek said. “The expression on their face makes you feel happy.”

Demand for hunter safety classes has dropped over the years, and Blazek thinks there are two reasons: fewer people interested in hunting and the availability of online options for obtaining credit for the course.

Blazek, now 73, retired after 43 years as conservation director in February 2019. Many of his colleagues became hunter safety instructors because of his own involvement.

Recently, he received a package in the mail he wasn’t expecting. It was a book from someone who had written about Blazek inspiring him to pursue a similar career.

“I knew then that he was in teaching, but it ended up that he taught wildlife and conservation at the University of Nebraska for 25 years, and now he’s the head of their department,” Blazek said. “Volunteer instructors never realize how they might touch lives down the road. That’s another example of why you do this.”