Wyoming is officially dialing back its long-standing in-person hunter safety requirement – at least for adults – and not everyone is thrilled about it, Oil City News reports.
In a split vote earlier this month, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission decided to let hunters 18 and older earn their hunter safety certificates entirely online, ditching the hands-on classroom requirement that’s been standard for decades. The move aligns Wyoming with most of the country, but veteran instructors warn it could come at a cost: safety.
Fremont County hunter safety instructor Joanne Eisemann didn’t mince words when she addressed commissioners at their Jan. 13 meeting. Many of her adult students, she said, are brand-new to firearms.
Some have never even held a gun.
“I cannot stress enough the safety factor,” Eisemann told the commission. “Safety first.”
She and several other instructors and hunting advocates urged commissioners to keep in-person instruction on the books. They pointed to lessons that just don’t translate well to a screen – physically handling firearms, practicing how to cross fences safely, and having real-time conversations with game wardens about Wyoming’s specific hunting laws.
Despite those concerns, commissioners voted 4–2 to approve the online-only option, arguing that Wyoming was already behind the curve.
“We accept hunter safety certifications from other states, and now 33 states have an online-only version,” Commissioner Rusty Bell said.
That reality has created a loophole for years. Even when Wyoming required in-person classes, adult hunters could simply take an online course through another state and have it recognized here. About 100 Wyoming residents did exactly that in 2025, enrolling in hunter education programs offered by states like Idaho and Nebraska.
“That’s the hard part,” said Game and Fish Communications Chief Roy Weber. “So we may as well offer a course that we feel is beneficial and covers the stuff we want to cover here in the state of Wyoming.”
Details are still being worked out, but the new Wyoming course likely won’t include live instructors. Instead, it’s expected to rely on self-paced online modules and quizzes, Weber said.
The adult-only online option isn’t expected to roll out until early 2027, and it won’t affect younger hunters. Anyone under 18 will still be required to attend in-person classes, which means roughly two-thirds of hunter safety students will continue learning the old-fashioned way.
Game and Fish Director Angi Bruce backed the change, telling commissioners that research shows no meaningful difference in test scores between online and in-person instruction.
Not all instructors are convinced. Alan Brumsted, a longtime hunter safety instructor from Lander, said his years in education have made him skeptical of shortcuts.
“If there’s a workaround, people will take it,” he said.
His worry is that students will scroll through lessons, answer common-sense questions, pass the test – and never truly absorb critical safety lessons.
“I worry about the integrity of the test,” Brumsted said. “And I worry about the fact that there’s just no accountability. There’s no in-person time for somebody to ask a question.”
Commissioners Ken Roberts and John Masterson voted against the change, saying instructors’ voices should carry more weight.
“I listen to the people who teach hunter education,” Masterson said, “and I cannot help but give them a great deal of deference.”
Roberts echoed that sentiment, saying that if educators believe in-person instruction makes the program stronger, it’s worth keeping.
Hunter safety certificates have been required nationwide since the 1950s, when states began responding to hunting-related injuries and deaths. Wyoming’s decision marks a notable shift – not an outright rejection of hands-on learning, but a recognition that adult hunters already had ways around it.
For now, the debate highlights a familiar tension: modern convenience versus traditional safety practices. Whether online-only instruction proves just as effective in the field is something Wyoming hunters – and instructors – will be watching closely.
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