The State Conservation Department is training some young hunters through its Hunting Skills University program. The course is open to those who have completed a basic safety course and includes three days of classroom instruction and a series of hunts led by conservation agents and guides. Jeff Cockerham, an outreach and educational supervisor for the Conservation Department says they’ve invited and recruited some youths to take part. Cockerham hopes this course, designed to go beyond basic safety measures that everyone born after January, 1967, must take just to get a license, will build a lifelong love for hunting among those who take part. This weekend, the group will be headed out to the marshes to try their hand at waterfowl hunting just one of five different hunts the youths get to take part in during the course.