I did my course with John and Andy at the Stalking School. During the study stage i worried i would fail it. I did the course with a friend and we would happily have cancelled many times. However when we called up to discuss our concerns our minds were put at rest, we realised everyone feels like this. Some have stalked forever and dont want to be shown up as inexperienced after 50 years and others are new and are worried by the boys with 50 years experience. We were kind of in between. We did a few evening sessions studying, and then spent a couple of evenings on the range practising. We decided to treat it as a learning experience, and did not study to pass the assessment. We found anything to do with reds and roe really interesting, Sika and Fallow kind of interesting and Chinese water deer and muntjak just a chore. The diseases were interesting, and we actually found a deer with pleurisy symptoms some months after the assessment, so for this alone it was worth it!
Our man worry was seasons and identification of species we had never seen, that live in a country we had not stalked in. To make matters worse iain is very colour blind and species identification was going to be an issue. We only stalk roe and reds, and getting them confused is not an issue!
Well we actually enjoyed the course a lot once we got started. Our studying had us in a reasonable place, but Johns easy training style made remembering the details easy, i still remember them now! It had the feel of a few friends chatting about a series of subjects rather than a stalking course and so worked for us.
For us the three main worries were the species identification, the safety test and the shooting test. Not because we felt we did not know them, but more because we would be embarrassed by failure. The identification test always had a point that defined the species in it, it was never a patch of brown in a forest! i would not say it was easy, but it was not difficult. If we had actually seen all the species i am sure it would have been easy.
The shooting test was easy. We had practised all the styles, and had practised them at longer ranges than the assessment, so we knew that as long as nerves did not get to us we would be fine.We used our own familiar equipment. Knowing that we had done and passed the test ourselves at way more then the test requirements gave us a lot of confidence.
The safety assessment was new to us, and we did not really know what to expect. We had read the detail of it, and spoken to friends, but we were still concerned. It was done like a real stalk, but with each of the stages you knew that you had to make a decision about the shot, and they were set up so it was clear what the hazard could be. The questions during the walk were easy enough, and we only had one problem. iain did not see a red piece of kit on the green grass, it was invisible to him. It was part of the assessment, and once it was pointed out to him he made the correct decision / answer.
Overall on the way home we agreed that it had been a really enjoyable learning experience, and not what we had expected, we had expected a far more stressful experience and it simply was not like that. We will do our DSC2 in time, probably starting this season.
Dave