KAMO December Newsletter

Hello everyone,

 This is KAMO President Mark Walters with my section of the monthly Newsletter.   It is Christmas morning, later today Selina and I are heading down to the state of Mississippi for a hog and deer hunt and a family get together, I am very excited.

  Back to KAMO news! The Joe went off without a problem by the combined efforts of dozens of good people. eff and Pattie Rouse, Aj, Madison and Megane Jones were incredible at cooking for The Joe. Rick Miotke was our leader and did most of the ugly work and Bob Brodeur found us land, found us a rifle for the bingo game, put up the deer pole and did about 50 other things.  There are other people to mention but the list is too long.

Eleven deer were harvested by 16 young hunters and I was really impressed at how well behaved this group of young hunters acted for all three days. This year we laid out the rules in a very clear way on day one and I really believe that made life a lot better for everyone.

  In case you were not aware of this, we had a serious problem and that is that our insurance was going up 500-percent.  Thanks to an act of God and Mike Brown?s work with the agent, that catastrophe has been averted.

  We also had two serious inquiries in the last week about “potential” new chapters.   I can honestly say that I have a gut feeling that KAMO is on the verge of a very positive horizon!

 This is all happening because of the combined efforts of one and all!

Thank you for everything that you do for Kids And Mentors Outdoors,

 

Mark Walters

 

Webmaster  – I would appreciate it if someone would cruise through the website once in a while and see if everything is up to date on their chapter page and other pages generally. The site has been visited about 270 times this month by primarily first time viewers. If you do the math on our analytics, about 2,000 – 2,200 new viewers/ year log into our site.

 

Mike

 

General

Importance of keeping someone informed of changes within your chapter?s membership – new member, member leaving, changes in contact info.

When a chapter does not inform the person maintaining the directory of changes (currently Mike from Coulee), the following things occur: The newer person does not get the monthly newsletter or other information. Our insurance company is provided inaccurate information about our group?s size or who in our group should be covered.. Someone working on a task in which contacting members is necessary is unable to get a hold of people. For these reasons, please discuss this need at your next meeting and report changes to Mike.

We got good news from our insurance agency regarding our future premium rates.  Since we weren?t sure whether we were staying with our carrier. we looked around and got a better picture about which companies that would potentially insure a group like ours. There are three potential carriers including the existing one. As it turned out,we are sticking with our current policy.

If you have any ideas about content for the state agenda this spring, please share them. Remember that we are in the market for another meeting place.

 

Mike

 

Message from Aaron Bigalke

 

Every year I attend the Grandpa Ray Fest at the Savanna Oaks Community Center in Fall River, WI.  This event is put on by Grandpa Ray Outdoors and features seminars and booth and raises money for the Outdoor Heritage Education Center.  For those not familiar with the OHEC they have a very similar mission as ours. More info can be found here https://outdoorheritageeducationcenter.com/

 

Talking with the owner of Grandpa Rays he is very interested in having KAMO be a part of the fest this year.  I will be having a booth for my products but wanted to reach out to see if KAMO could provide a couple people to operate a booth and get the word out on all of the great things that we are doing.  This would likely lead to future donations to the organization as they currently do with the OHEC. The booth would be free of charge, just need some people to volunteer to man the booth and come up with some things to have there to spread the word about our mission at KAMO.

 

Let me know if anyone has the time and interest in helping to make this happen and I will get the details out to everyone.

 

This event is typically in February

 

Baraboo

The Baraboo chapter did not have a December meeting as the Joe Hunt was the top priority for our group. This years event was slightly smaller with 15 Learn To Hunt participants, but we found it to be our most successful hunt to date with 11 deer harvested. The weather conditions were ideal and we found the deer to be in a second rut phase which really helped. There were many great stories of kids seeing their first deer while hunting and many actually getting the opportunity to harvest an animal.  We had wonderful meals as usual with the combined efforts of Jeff and Patti Rouse and Chef AJ. Thanks to all those that helped make this a wonderful weekend. With these warmer than usual conditions it may delay some of the normal winter activities, but it is still a great chance to be outdoors. 

 

Tradition Forward 

 

Rick

Coulee

Coulee has recently submitted a grant in hopes of raising funds for upcoming activities. Randy helped a parent (his brother, Jeff) with his two boys and Mike mentored a youth from Winnecone. La Crosse resident, Andreux Comstock, went on the Mac Kenzie hunt as the resident medical person. All three kids shot a deer and the older nephew won the .270 rifle during the Bingo game.

A couple mentors are working with an Angler R3 plan to take adults ice fishing. The hope is that some of these adults may be willing to help our KAMO group.

Our sledding event will be on Saturday, February 8th and our hunters education Internet Field Day will be on Saturday, April 4th at the American Legion Onalaska post.

 

Mike

 

L ake Wisconsin

Hello Folks

The Lake Wisconsin chapter had a busy month getting prepared for the Deer hunting season and our Learn to Hunt we do with the Baraboo chapter. We had a successful Le

            It?s been a very mild winter so far but have been able to find some ice for ice fishing, have had some luck on smaller back waters where the ice was safe with some arn to Hunt with 17 Kids and Mentors getting 11 Deer total. All the kids had the opportunity at seeing and getting shots at Deer, with some having better luck than others. I would like to thank all the land owners who opened up their land and stands for us to use and always willing to help in any way they can. I would also like to thank all that make the learn to Hunt the success it is every year from the Kitchen staff and Mentors who come early to help get set up and of course the great group of kids we have every year.nice Blue gills, Crappies and Walleye being caught. We are always on the lookout for Mentors and Kids whether you are interested in all activities or just a certain few we could use your help, expertise and time. If interested please contact Bob Brodeur at 608-212-5840 or email me at bob@brodeurmaintenance.com . Wishing everyone a safe and happy 2020!

Tradition Forward

 

Submitted by

Bob Brodeur

Meadow Valley

We had 6 members present at our December meeting.  

Mentoring activities for the month included:

Jeff and Tobias deer hunting.  Tobias was able to harvest a really nice 7 pt buck with a 20 ½? spread!  The club approved the funding to pay for a European mount for Tobias.

Janine took Allison deer hunting as well but no deer were harvested.

Bob, Tom, Jim and Mark were mentors at the Joe hunt.  

We tabled the scholarship discussion for the January meeting.

Upcoming events include 

January ice fishing

March Maple Syrup

 

Submitted by Bob Nicksic

 

Northwoods

Northwoods December meeting held Wednesday the 11th.

 A year end wrap-up and holiday social were held in tandem on another very cold evening, all but one member, attending.

 Jeff Moll discussed the finer points of the last BOD meeting with the new insurance questions that have resurfaced, gave an overview of the McKenzie hunt and led a lengthy dialogue on a new program in state schools regarding team ice fishing competition. 

 Our treasurer gave her reports for the year and it appears we have spent the most monies on outings in 2019 than in our previous pasts. Discussions followed as to how we can increase revenues. One major thought was teaming up with a 4H group in Michigan, both to increase youth participation and leverage costs between the two organizations.

 Due to the unusual amount of early snow this year, our thoughts of ice fishing were tabled till the January meeting to better understand what conditions lie ahead.

 And on a happy note, Tash and Brad Shucha (by the time you read this) will be the proud parents of a new family member.

 With that, we wish you all a Merry Christmas from the land of Big Snow.

Mick

 

Yellow River

This month?s meeting was a smaller one with the cold and snowy weather but we got a lot accomplished. The YouthNet meeting is scheduled for January 16th at the parents supper and we will have a KAMO table with hats and shirts set up along with people to talk to parents and answer questions about us. We are excited to get kids outside that maybe don’t get that opportunity now. There is no one going to the Joe this year, we are wondering if we could start something up here for our small group, more will be discussed later. Our next Outdoor Fun Day is January 25th from noon-3pm at 11933 Patton Road in Lindsey, WI. There will be air rifles, snacks and more fun outdoor activities. We are still working on a date for our ice fishing day in February. We are looking at a Sunday afternoon for the Dells of Eau Claire trip. We have a great person from the community that is going to open up his land for us to go summer fishing and have more fun on the water, again this year. Working on making business cards to continue to spread our name in the community. Next meeting will be January 13th at 7pm at Nutz Deep II.

 

April