KAMO – August, 2023 Newsletter – 4 pages
For comments related to this document, contact Mike

President?s Remarks – Hello to all KAMO members and friends,
This is KAMO President Mark Walters with my monthly report. First a bit of a story, as many of you may be aware, I am a self syndicated outdoor adventures writer and on a weekly basis my
column is published in 60 newspapers. About 20 days ago I was driving my truck just south of Lacrosse and pulling my 18.6 War Eagle which is a heavy boat. My pickup kind of lost its transmission and I ended up spending the night in a Walmart parking lot.
KAMO Vice President Mike Brown did me a super huge favor and found a good shop for my truck, which is now junk as a crack was discovered in my frame and Mike lent me his Chevy S10, which I have had this entire time. I am purchasing a 2017 GMC Sierra this week and hopefully that bit of stress is passed.
I feel that Mike has done me a huge favor and to return it, I am going to “allow” Mike to stay the President of The Coulee Chapter, Kamo Vice President, KAMO Secretary and KAMO webmaster for life! Long story short, Mike did me a big favor.
I sat three nights in a tree with Dylan who is a very avid member of The Meadow Valley Chapter and the New Lisbon High School fishing club. Also Chase, who is very active in this organization was on this Learn to Hunt Bear Hunt, which several members of The Meadow
Valley Chapter worked very hard to make happen.
I will leave the positive results of that hunt up to The Meadow
Valley part of this Newsletter.
A friendly reminder and this is important. On Monday, September 11th, there will be a meeting for “The Joe” which will be at Upham Woods Outdoors Learning Center at 7:00 pm. This is very important for chapters that attend The Joe or can support it in some way.
That is about it for today, as usual, thank you for everything that
you do for KAMO!

Mark

Upcoming Youth Seasons – Waterfowl – September 16th – 17th, Gun Deer – October 7th and 8th,
Antlerless / Mac Kenzie – December 8th – 10th.

Planning meeting for the Mac Kenzie hunt (the ?Joe?) is scheduled in Wisconsin Dells on September 11th.
It would be helpful for the Joe Hunt planners to have some estimation from your chapter of how many kids and mentors might be coming to this year?s hunt. Also, background checks required of the mentors take up to two months to process, so if you have someone mentoring that hasn?t had the DNR Authorization for Activity completed, which includes the background check specific to that hunt, let me (Mike) know, and I can electronically forward you the latest revision (2021) of that document.
Joe Hunt planning – 7pm Monday September 11th at Upham Woods Camp. Address is N194 County Road N in Wisconsin Dells.

Donations – When the state or chapter receives a donation, it is important to send the donor a prompt letter of acknowledgement, thanks, and our group?s EIN. There is a template for this or you can contact Mike regarding how this works.

Website – Each chapter should review their webpage. Is everything on there accurate? If not, please correct it or ask me (Mike) to.

Hunter Ed statistics from Summer, 2023 Wisconsin Hunter Education Newsletter – Period from January 1st, 2023 to July 5th, 2023. Number of new instructors – 250. Number of graduates – 7,050. 4,296 of these graduates came out of traditional classes, 912 came out of internet field days (IFD). The online is not taking over as many people have been led to believe – 75 IFD classes vs. 243 traditional for this period.. The demand for the IFD is higher than the number of classes available, so many students end up taking a traditional class anyway or traveling to another county to get in an IFD..

New Program Coordinator Position – Pass It on Outdoor Mentors, the Wisconsin DNR, and the Outdoor Heritage Education Center have formed a partnership and have created a position for a full – time coordinator who will manage the setting up of mentor/ novice hunter and fisher person outings in Wisconsin. The partners hope the coordinator will be able to recruit mentors that come from the ranks of conservation groups, landowners, and other collaborative partners. The coordinator would link the hunting/ fishing mentor/ mentee pairs, find them places to go, whether it be on public or private lands and track their progress. The target group is youth 11 years of age and older with a hunter education certification.
Mike Christenson of Pass It On Outdoor Mentors called recently to convey his enthusiasm over this development. He is excited about what coordinators have already accomplished in other states and thinks Wisconsin is prime territory for the movement. The KAMO group will certainly be asked for ideas and probably for mentor support ideas.

Chapter Reports –
Baraboo – The Baraboo River Chapter of KAMO met on Monday August 14th. We were supposed to have a ?Campfire Meeting? but the rainy weather moved our meeting inside. Our small group had just over 200 hours in the past month working to get Kids Outdoors. Activities included camping, fishing, swimming, and outdoor travel (Canada). We discussed the upcoming annual Learn to Hunt that we call the ?Joe Hunt? at the MacKenzie Center near Poynette that is scheduled for December 2023. We are inviting/encouraging any KAMO Chapter that will send mentors or kids to the Joe Hunt to send a representative to our September meeting. We will have information packets available and will confirm plans and dates. We also discussed having Bingo again and securing outdoor related prizes. Our September meeting will be held at 7pm Monday September 11th at Upham Woods Camp. Address is N194 County Road N in Wisconsin Dells. Thanks

Tradition Forward,

Greg

Coulee – The Boys and Girls Club and the Good Fight Community Center went on the Best Dam Fishing Float with some KAMO mentors on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 8th. All the 14 kids caught something. Some of the nicest smiles ever from these youth as they hauled in their biggest fish of a lifetime.
Two days later, on Thursday, the 10th, a group of 7 kids from Boys and Girls joined two mentors out on the float.
Our chapter sold a boat that a former mentor?s family donated to us and put the funds in our activity account. We have arranged for our first campfire evening at Pettibone Park and a trip out on the fishing float with BBBS – both in September.

Dodge County Conservation – It was a busy month of August for DCC KAMO. Participated in National night out and made a lot of friends and Contacts. Big Brothers and big sisters will be meeting with us soon to see if we can work together in the future. Other contacts were made as well and we will be very busy the next few months setting up meetings and gaining new Partners with our Chapter. We also had another Hunters Safety class and 16 happy Boys and girls (1 adult) Graduated with flying colors. We will be having a booth at an upcoming kids fishing tournament at the Friends of Clasun Park event in Fox Lake on Saturday the 2nd of September. Also we have a boat entered as well. A few of our mentors are doing more one on ones with some of our kids that have been to our events and it’s going great. I can not say this enough but the Group of people that DCC KAMO has on board are the very best and I could not be more proud of what we are doing for our next generation of kids and getting them outdoors. As always, watch our Facebook page and our Chapter page on the website. Thanks Everyone.

Jim Braker Pres.

Meadow Valley – We had 7 members in attendance with 1 visitor. All of our effort the
past few months has been the 2 LTH bear tags. We have been waiting twice a week since the beginning of May. We purchased cell cams for the 2 youth (Chase and Dylan) who are receiving the tags.
Additionally, we purchased 2 person tree stands which both boys helped assemble and erect. We added Mark and Kevin Peterson to the approved mentor listing to be sure we always had a mentor available when the boys wanted to hunt. Bob, Aaron, James, Kevin and Mark are now
approved for the LTH bear program.
Dylan shot a bear last Saturday evening (August 26th). Chase hit a bear that same evening but we were unable to retrieve the animal. It was determined Chases’ shot was not fatal . Dylan’s bear went about 20 yards!! We have until October 4th to assist Chase in getting a bear.
The fishing club under the guidance of Mark Stamper will be meeting the 1st week in September. We will wait to hear from Mark regarding how we can assist the club.
The scholarship committee presented a few changes to the selection criteria in hopes of getting more students involved in the program. We had a discussion regarding the Joe hunt and it was determined Bob and Jim would attend the next Baraboo Chapter meeting.

Northwoods – The group picked up four cases of shotgun shells recently. An October 14th shoot/ pheasant hunt is planned.