Effective August 1, 2009, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources changed their guidelines for distance learning. Students are now required to spend a minimum amount of time on each course page before proceeding to the certification exam.

Click here to go to the latest version of the Today's Hunter in Indiana online course—the official hunter education course of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

Lessons in Wildlife Management

Initially, wildlife management in the United States was skewed toward protection. In the early 1900s, for example, wildlife managers attempted to preserve a mule deer herd in the remote Kaibab Plateau of Arizona. Hunting was banned, and predators were destroyed. The result was severe overpopulation, habitat destruction, and mass starvation. From these hard lessons wildlife managers learned that there is more to conservation then just protecting wildlife. They discovered that nature overproduces its game resources and that good wildlife management yields a surplus that can be harvested by hunters.