Hello KAMO Members and Friends,

This is KAMO President Mark Walters with my monthly update. First, last month I may have forgotten to mention that Linda Brodeur has become our 2nd Vice President. I have known Linda all my life and I am very thankful that she has stepped up to the plate. Our present group of officers is awesome and makes my life much easier

As we all know we are looking for both a new Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer. Donna is no longer in KAMO and Tony is swamped. Please discuss this and keep talking about it until we have replaced both of them.

I am asking that anyone that can attend the May meeting of Indianhead Chapter on May 21st please attend. As you all know this chapter has experienced a setback this winter and could really handle a show of support. I am going to do my best to make that meeting.

If you have not looked at the website or our facebook page recently please do so. Mike, Linda, AJ and Dawn have really been getting the job done and really could use your input.

On the weekend of June 8th the Baraboo River Chapter of KAMO will be having a camping weekend on Castle Rock Flowage, possibly with Lake Wisconsin. I am going to try to make this as well and ask that you please do the same if at all possible. These summer camping trips are a huge success and one of the reasons that we started KAMO.

As always, thank you for all that all you do for KAMO!

Mark

KAMO Outdoor Tip of the month:

Hey there! This month I am going to give a brief description on how to start a campfire with what is in your immediate surroundings in a forest. Think small, first gather either “brown” pine needles or dry leaves and place them in a small pile, next gather the smallest, dry “dead” dead branches that you can find. Put the branches on top of the leaves or needles and always remember this, fire burns up. Use a butane lighter or a match and light the needles/leaves. As the fire starts, gather some larger, dry branches and carefully place them on the fire. This always works for me!

Tip from Mark Walters

Another tip on starting fires from Jim Kurz: Cross two small branches on the ground first so that the pine needles and leaves are off the ground a little and air can get underneath.

News from the Baraboo River Chapter:

The Baraboo River chapter had its meeting on April 16 at Rivers Edge Resort. We have gotten the yard signs that were discussed at the state meeting regarding our core building focus. Although the biggest share of signs will go to our chapter, there are some for each chapter, so please let me know a name and address for where you would like them sent. The most recent update regarding the billboard is that although we did get the township approval, we are hitting a snag with the DOT. Our sign guy has been in contact with them, but has not gotten anywhere with the regional person, so he is going higher up the ladder. We are going to continue to believe that this will all work out.
Jon Hillmer and Greg Wagner had a display at a local Earth Day event and Jon did a bird house building project. We will be participating in a DMAP cleanup day June 2 on a property that we use for our annual Joe Hunt. This will help the land owner and the hunters allowed to hunt the property as well. We have our first fishing day with the Lake Wisconsin chapter on June 6 at the fireman’s park in Merrimac, then the weekend of June 8,9 we have our camping trip at Castle Rock County Park in Juneau County. We have 5 sites reserved, all have electric hookups and are plenty big enough for large campers or RV’s. Please let our chapter know if you are planning to camp with us. Lots going on with spring turkey hunts and the soon opening fishing season, so take advantage of this precious time. Tradition Forward

Submitted by RickMiotke

News from the Coulee Chapter:

A newer volunteer took a group to the rock climbing wall at the Wabasha Recreation Center in Winona on Saturday, March 24th. The center is closing down for a major remodel and they offered that last day for free.

On Saturday, April 7th we took the turkey hunting group to the West Salem Rod and Gun Club for safety instruction and shooting prior to the turkey hunt. We did not get out turkey hunting over the youth weekend due to one mentor getting the flu, one child having something else come up, one child spraining an ankle, and the ice/ snow storm. We will try to take them out during the regular season.

We were going to assist the Big Brothers/ Big Sisters in having the CritterMobile display at the Wiscorps building at Myrick Park on Wednesday, April 18th. That got called off due to weather as well. We have our annual kids archery shooting event at La Crosse Archery April 28th.

I sat at a table at the Lunda Center at W.T.C. on two different occasions – one in March and once in April and got some interested families to sign on to our mailing list.

This year three retired mentors are going to offer ?fishing buddy? services to the community. We are going to let KAMO families, big brothers, and even people interested in our group who have never tried it make requests about being taken out fishing either on shore, in a boat, or on the local fishing float. We hope this satisfies our yearning to introduce more people to fishing and to our group at the same time.

Lake Wisconsin chapter
We have our meeting May 1st, 7pm at the Harmony Bar, we will be discussing our fishing line recycling project, summer events and any one on ones from Turkey hunting and fishing, the youth Turkey hunt this year had some nasty weather, bravo to those who got out there anyway! We continue to try recruiting Mentors and Mentees. Looking forward to the warmer weather and the growing season. Several of our chapter members helped make the Maple fest at Mackenzie center a successful day! Tradition Forward

Submitted by Bob and Linda Brodeur

Submitted by Mike Brown

News from our Webmasters:

News from Webmaster

Updating the kamokids.org site has exceeded my expectations in every aspect. Gathering Waters got us off to a great start on the upgrade with bright new pictures under a more current theme/ layout. They were able to do it quickly and at their quoted figure. We will save a lot of money through using QTH.

Colin and I have been upgrading the site on our own the past few weeks. He is currently upgrading Coulee?s brochure with new pictures and a few wording changes. We will remove the La Crosse area info and put the completed brochure on the homepage and move the current brochure to the ?New Chapter Application? section of the site. We will move the mentoring tip of the month somewhere else.

We put in some new links, but need your suggestions for more. Please visit the site and see what you think – if there are any changes or upgrades needed, please make comments, especially concerning your chapter?s page. Four chapters have been issued their account log – in information. Log in, edit, push the update button, log out. Your information will show up instantly on your chapter?s homepage.

Note that there is not a calendar on the site any longer. This is at the recommendation of of the web place – calendars are problematic as far as .keeping them current. Note that on the homepage the viewer is directed to the chapter page in their area to get those activity details. In Coulee?s case, a viewer to our page is directed to email me to get those details forwarded to their email. This also saves me the trouble of going in there and changing that on the chapter page every time there is an activity addition/ adjustment, which is often. Not knowing who is viewing an online calendar and potentially coming to an event that has been cancelled or modified in some way makes it impossible to let them know of those changes.

The site features an analytic section that tells the frequency of visits, the number of pages on average a visitor views (3), the average time spent on the site (2.5 minutes), percent of viewers on for the first time (70%), the bounce rate – the percentage of visitors that view the homepage only and exit (45%). That bounce rate is excellent – it indicates that most people are captivated enough to remain on the site.. We are told where the visitors are referred from, the number and location of visitors turned away by the firewall protection, and more. At the present time, our site is visited lightly, but now that it is more user friendly for us to update, has more curb appeal, and more people are being encouraged to view our site, visits are likely to increase.

The future quality of the site is what we collectively make it.

Submitted by Mike Brown

FaceBook News:

Boosting pages on your Facebook page costs under $20.00 per time and if you keep doing it, gets results. Our first boost reached 384 people. Our fifth boost reached just under 2,000 and was shared 6 times.

The Lake-link blog has been viewed an average of 12,500 times/ month since the Joe hunt. It?s free to use and I believe has potential to get us some volunteers if we use it enough.

Submitted by Mike Brown

News from the Indianhead Chapter:

Our President, Ray Jay died after losing the cancer fight. We also lost some of our KAMO family last month. We will meet the third Monday (7 p.m. at the Pioneer Bank) of May (May 21) to plan for pontoon boat fishing and our usual work day at the Mardi Gras in July with a downsized Chapter.

We mentored two young turkey hunters during the Youth Turkey Hunt, just Saturday, no luck, but nobody froze to death either. Count your blessings.

Submitted by Jim Kurz

No News from the MarshPoint Chapter this month.

News from the Meadow Valley Chapter:

We had 7 members present at our April meeting. Mentoring for the month included:

3 kids participating in the turkey learn to hunt season with one turkey harvested.
Aaron and Janine took their Kamo Kids shed hunting and shooting.

A review of the state meeting was done for the group. All were pleased the website was being upgraded. To assist in this effort, Aaron has created a chapter Facebook page for a central place to upload pictures .

Upcoming activities include:

DMAP days at the Madsen property
Tree planting
air rifle / trap shoot evening
camping/bow fish

We discussed. ways to recruit more mentors to the organization. We have decided to change our meeting night from the 2nd Wednesday of the month to the 1st Wednesday to see if we can recruit more members.

Elections for Vice President and Secretary were conducted. Aaron will remain VP and Janine will remain secretary. Congrats to both and thank you for your past and future efforts.

Submitted by Bob Nicksic

News from the Northwoods Chapter:

Meeting held April 18th, eight members in attendance.

Most of the meeting involved discussion of the State Board gathering and new policy procedures, website changes, Facebook page, background check renewals for the chapter and the KAMO Chapter Manual.

We had a review of our ice outing held in February, put together the final thoughts on the fish line disposal units to be built and placed in May/June, help with an upcoming girl-scout fishing event, scholarship fund and made a donation to the Oconto River Kids, an organization that helps terminally ill youth with outdoor activities.

Last, we presented Tom McClain with a mounted print of himself and Marlin, his beloved, championship bird dog, who was at all of our past pheasant outings, and has since moved on to a new hunting ground. A very touching presentation thanks to Jeff Moll.

For all those who are inclined, enjoy the ice fishing opener on May 5th.

Oldest President Mick Mlinar Northwoods Chapter

Newsletter collected and edited by KAMO State Secretary Jim Kurz