KAMO August, 2019 Newsletter

   Hello everyone, this is KAMO President Mark Walters with my part 

of the monthly Newsletter.

I attended the August meeting for the Yellow River Chapter of 

KAMO which held there first meeting one year ago and really did not get 

there feet wet until January.  At this meeting I listened to a few 

members speak about having a feeling that they had not done enough as a 

chapter.   Over the next hour I came up with a total of ten events that 

they have held or taken kids to since January 1st.

After a while I said to my good friends at this meeting that they 

should be proud of themselves, that we are all volunteers, we come in at 

our own level and that the unique ideas and activities that they have 

completed is incredible for a group of people that did not know each 

other 13-months ago.

 There is not a one of us that can do it all, there is not a 

chapter that can do it all, KAMO can not do it all, but we are all doing 

our best to help introduce kids to the outdoors and everyone of you 

should be very proud of that fact!

We have our annual September Board of Directors meeting on 

September 24th at 7:00 p.m please send your thoughts to Mike Brown. If 

you are on the BOD please take part in this meeting which as far as I 

can see should be short and stress free.

  The Joe is coming up, please help Rick Miotke and Bob Brodeur in 

any way that you can, even an email to them asking what you could do to 

help would be a bonus.  Think about it this way, what would happen to 

The Joe if we lost Bob or Rick?

  As always, I want to thank you for everything that you do for Kids 

And Mentors Outdoors!

 

  Mark

General

Great job on returning the insurance questions. A task I thought might stretch on for months took less than one. I asked an insurance agent in Onalaska (Travis Weiss – The Insurance Center) if he would do a search for insurance companies who would insure a group like ours, just to compare coverages and prices. Also, our current agent who lives/ works in an Eau Claire office is inaccessible to us for a face to face chat.

After searching through the regular companies the Insurance Center uses and two brokers, only our current insurer and one other carrier would consider covering a group such as ours. We have never made a claim or done anything to distinguish ourselves as a high risk group, but the insurance industry is adjusting to an increased volume in claims due to flooding, storms, wind, etc. and the subsequent billions in claims. Thus, they are not taking on much risk.

Our premium comes due in March. The opinion of the insurance agent is to stick with our current insurer.There are two decision we?ll have to make during our upcoming B.O.D. meeting: one regarding auto insurance through SECURA. And the other is to decide about switching to an agent that lives in the geographical area of a mentor.

 

Webmaster

The site has been visited 166 times this past month. 86% new people. Looking at averages, we get visited about 3400 times a year. The majority of those visitors are on for the first time. We could use a good fall picture for the website – good tree color, kids, no dead animals.

 

Baraboo

   Baraboo chapter had its meeting on August 12 at Kevin Seymour’s house. Our members did a lot of camping and canoeing, and Jon Hillmer had kids coming to his shop and doing different projects. Gander Outdoors has offered our group an opportunity to bring a group of kids into their store and do an archery shoot with any of the equipment they have. We are looking at doing this on January 11, but we still need to confirm that with the manager. If there are some other area chapters that would like to join in, let us know. Much of our meeting was discussing the prep for this years Joe Hunt. We will have Jeff and Patti handling the Friday meals and chef AJ doing the rest, with a few changes to this years menu that will utilize the kitchen improvements at the MacKenzie Center. Start making your contacts for this years hunt.and remember no kids under 10 and only kids that will be 1st or 2nd time participant s. 

 

Coulee

A mentor took 2 kids out on the Best Dam Fishing Float.  Tim Collins took a group out for a pontoon ride on the Black River.

The group is preparing for a September 8th rod and gun club outing and a September 21st visit to Woods and Meadows north of Warrens.

Arrangements are also beginning for the youth deer gun hunt.

Twomentors attended a recent R3 Instructor Certification. This includes both a youth and adult component. The DNR emphasizes teaching young adults as a primary focus group.

Meadow Valley

The Meadow Valley Chapter had 7 members present at our last meeting.  We are preparing for our youth hunt out at the Bigalke Properties this year in October.  We will be hunting and possibly processing the deer that are harvested together as a group to give the youth the full experience of the hunt.  Aaron is working with the DNR to get additional doe tags that can be used by the youth during the hunt. We will also be starting to plan our raffle that we hold during the fall every year, this is our main fund raiser each year and has always been successful.  Our chapter has also began discussions on having a scholarship for local youth that have grown up with the KAMO organization and have decided to pursue a career in the conservation fields. We feel this is a great way to keep our KAMO kids active and involved in KAMO.  We are considering different measures to qualify including having the person seeking the scholarship come back and present, or lead, a discussion on their field of study to our current KAMO kids

Northwoods

Due to scheduling issues, our August senior outing and monthly meeting were pushed off into September.

 

Mick

Yellow River

 

We have had a lot of exciting things going on in the Yellow River chapter. We had a FUN day at Randy’s property, there was fishing, kayaking, and fun in the water, 14 attended. We had a table set up at the Whitetails banquet for community exposure. Had a work day on the Little Plover River, 9 attended. There will be an upcoming event rock climbing at Christie Mountain waiting for a date. Youth deer hunt will be October 5th and we have 2 mentors planning on taking kids out so far. Working on getting our name out in the community and to work with the DNR in the near future