by Karen Mehall Phillips, NRA Hunters’ Leadership Forum and American Hunter - Tuesday, October 28, 2025
The National Rifle Association announced its award-winning free online NRA Hunter Education course is now available in Georgia as the NRA works to make the course available to hunters in all 50 states. Since making its $3 million investment in the state-of-the-art course and launching it in 2017 in conjunction with the state of Florida, the NRA has provided nearly 289,000 students with free online hunter education, supporting and fostering new hunters nationwide.
“The NRA developed this free online course with one goal in mind: to make it easier for new hunters to get into the field,” said Josh Savani, Executive Director of NRA General Operations. “We are pleased to partner with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to bring this no-cost program to the residents of the Peach State. The NRA has been and will continue to be the leader in providing the very best hunter education and training in the country.”
The free NRA course and its expansion into Georgia tracks with the NRA’s leadership role in the hunter safety and education arena, considering it was the NRA that developed America’s first-ever hunter education course in 1949 with the state of New York. As the 15th state to adopt the program, Georgia joins Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia as states that accept NRA Hunter Education as a prerequisite for getting a hunting license.
Speaking as a lifelong hunter and someone whose initiative helped lead the way for the NRA in developing its free online hunter education course eight years ago, Matt Fleming, Director of the NRA Hunting, Conservation and Ranges Division, explained, “Hunter safety and education is the foundation of our cherished hunting traditions and is how we make sure every hunter goes afield with the necessary knowledge, responsibility, ethics and respect—both for wildlife and for fellow hunters, landowners and the general public—that will keep hunting safe and enjoyable for future generations. We are proud of the nearly 300,000 new hunters who have now benefited from the NRA’s no-cost comprehensive training.”
The free NRA Hunter Education course offers a comprehensive approach to instruction as the 15-chapter, online sequence features attention-grabbing videos, graphics and diagrams, interactive modules, audio recordings and numerous action photos presented in easy-to-access components. It provides an ideal method for teaching those interested in hunting the critical lessons that will stay with them over a lifetime of hunting enjoyment.
In today’s busy world, part of the reason the NRA course draws increasing support is because it offers flexibility and convenience, allowing new hunters to study when it fits their schedule at their own pace and on their own time. In addition, it sidesteps what can be a prohibitive cost barrier as seen in other online courses. The fact the NRA online course is free of charge encourages new hunters to take the first step while also making it easier for experienced hunters to revisit the material.
For more good news, in 2019 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced state wildlife agencies could now claim a dollar value of the NRA’s free online Hunter Education Course as in-kind match dollars to access federal Pittman-Robertson (P-R) grant funds. The move marked a major win for the NRA and state wildlife agencies, which rely on the P-R dollars administered by the USFWS’ Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration (WSFR) Division for their fish and wildlife conservation programs, and is a giant step forward in bolstering states’ hunter recruitment efforts and the national NRA-backed R3 movement (recruitment, retention and reactivation).
For more information on the NRA’s free online Hunter Education course, visit NRAHE.org. For information on getting the NRA course approved for use in your state, email [email protected] or call 800-492-4868.