All -
Thought I would share my experiences with getting my hunting license in Mass. I have never hunted before and was interested in getting the training and licensing required to give it a try. Like many others, I was frustrated with the inadequate number of courses that are offered in Massachusetts and the lame way in which they are publicized, reserved, waitlisted, etc.
I started looking around at online hunter education options and found that most states require you to show up in person for a field day after completing the online course, and those field days are similarly infrequent in their scheduling. Well, one state around us does not require a field day at the end - just a written test - and that's Rhode Island. Here are the steps I went through to get licensed in Rhode Island, with a total elapsed time from start to finish of 2.5 weeks. I could have done it much faster if I hadn't been traveling during one of the intervening weeks:
No fuss, no muss, no waiting for booked up courses or frantically trying to register when new notification emails come out for a new course. I can't heap enough praise on the RI Department of Environmental Management for making hunting more accessible.
Hope you find this helpful.
Thought I would share my experiences with getting my hunting license in Mass. I have never hunted before and was interested in getting the training and licensing required to give it a try. Like many others, I was frustrated with the inadequate number of courses that are offered in Massachusetts and the lame way in which they are publicized, reserved, waitlisted, etc.
I started looking around at online hunter education options and found that most states require you to show up in person for a field day after completing the online course, and those field days are similarly infrequent in their scheduling. Well, one state around us does not require a field day at the end - just a written test - and that's Rhode Island. Here are the steps I went through to get licensed in Rhode Island, with a total elapsed time from start to finish of 2.5 weeks. I could have done it much faster if I hadn't been traveling during one of the intervening weeks:
- Register at hunter-ed.com for the Rhode Island online course. It's free and easy to register.
- Go through the course material. If you're a decent book learner it will probably take between 4 and 6 hours all in to complete the material with comprehension. If you don't do well on a section you can repeat it. At any rate, far less time invested than an instructor-led class.
- Take the test at the end - multiple choice for about 100 questions.
- Pay a $20 as a fee for printing out your course completion certificate
- Call or email the Rhode Island DEM to schedule your in-person exam. The contact information is available on this page, but at the time of my post, the email is [email protected]. Note that I expected to wait a long time for an available date, but they are literally doing these all the time. I waited a week for a session I could make, and they showed great flexibility in doing appointments at other times if needed.
- Show up at the headquarters and take the 100 question test. It's a mix of multiple choice and true/false. Address is 277 Great Neck Road, West Kingston, RI 0289
- They tell you on the spot whether you passed or failed, and mail you the RI hunter safety certification card within a week. they also hand you a printed book/manual so you have a reference to refer to in the future if you get rusty on any of the material. you could also log back into the online course to review that material at any time.
- Once you've got that certificate, you're good to go on getting a Mass hunting license.
No fuss, no muss, no waiting for booked up courses or frantically trying to register when new notification emails come out for a new course. I can't heap enough praise on the RI Department of Environmental Management for making hunting more accessible.
Hope you find this helpful.