KAMO Newsletter – January 2020

Hello everyone, This is Mark Walters the President of Kids And Mentors Outdoors with my section of our monthly newsletter. First, please remember March 21st as the date for our annual state members meeting and Board of Directors meeting.  We are still working out the location details but it will be somewhere in Stevens Point.   Please submit your thoughts to me as to who you feel would be a good choice for our annual President?s Award.
I recently attended an event at the Marshfield YMCA with Brad Allen and Dana Anderson of The Yellow River Chapter.  In simple terms this was a monthly meal for parents and kids where we had a simple display and spoke with parents and kids.  This event had been put into the YMCA’s newsletter in advance and it was a big and very positive hit for The Yellow River Chapter.  This type of marketing could be done by every chapter and I am confident that it would work.

I am not going to go too far with this next bit of news but a year ago I was contacted by an old friend of mine who said that he had some friends that would like to start a KAMO Chapter.  I did not hear from him and figured that they had lost their energy but I am happy to say that I was given a call on Friday and they want me to head down to Beaver dam and meet. I will do just that in the next month. Another important piece of information is that next years “Joe” had to be moved to the weekend of December 19th.  This is not good for KAMO as it is so close to Christmas but the facility that we have used for 12 years in a row was rented out to someone else.  Please put this date in your mind.     

Rick Miotke and I are headed up to Chequamegon Bay in the morning for an ice fishing trip, my guess is that we will have a blast. As always, thank you for everything that you do for KAMO!

General – 

As proof that members do read the newsletter, several comments were forwarded about updates to the KAMO Directory. The current mentor mailing list now has several more members listed in it – 60 people total.

News about a Festival that is upcoming and that KAMO people have been invited to for promotional purposes. It sounds like a couple KAMO people are going – Bob and Tom.

Grandpa Ray Fest

Feb 8 th , 2019 Savanna Oaks Community Center 100 Savanna Rd, Fall River, WI 53932

Doors Open at 11 am. Fall River is in Columbia County east of Poynette.

 

11 am meet and greet

11:45 am food and introduction of G.R.O. Vendors/VIPS

12:00 Daniel Storm WI DNR ?Deer Collaring Program Discussion?

1:00 3-person round table discussion how they harvested their deer in 2019

1:45 Jason Wenzel ?Creating Sanctuaries?

2:30 Break/ Social time

2:45 John O?Brion ?Research, what we learned in 2019?

3:30 Big Raffle Drawing

4:00 Closing

 

Webmaster – 

Some updates were run on the site this month.  These updates are performed quarterly at a cost of $80.00/ year. I had asked for a winter picture to be put on, but there may have been complications doing so as I know it has been tried. 

The site gets about 200 visitors per 30 day period this time of year. Most of these visitors are first timers. Remember that brochures can be run off the front page of the website if needed – they are in a bottom corner.

 

KAMO State Convention – Saturday, March 21st –  9:30 – 3:00 

Country Inn and Suites – 301 Division Street North – Stevens Point

Potential agenda items:

How to effectively deal with new chapter/ mentor inquiries

Development of a risk management policy

Overview of liability insurance coverage. What we are and are not covered for.

Website

Baraboo- 

Will report next month.

Coulee – It has been a quiet month at Coulee. Several mentors are snowbirding it. Some KAMO families did attend Kicking Bear?s Kids Ice Fishing Tournament on January 18th. There is some interest by some families in Coulee?s February 8th sledding event. The Kids Ice Fishing Day at the Genoa Fish Hatchery of February 1st was cancelled due to unsafe ice conditions (ground water seeping into pond).

 

Mike

 

Lake Wisconsin

Will report next month

 

Meadow Valley – We had 8 members present at our January meeting.  

Mentoring activities for the month included:

Dan and Harper trapping fisher

Bob and Keenan went deer hunting

We have decided to give 2  $500 scholarships to graduating seniors entering into the fields of conservation/natural resources. /or related sciences.  We will have a committee of 3 review who will review all applications and recommend to the chapter membership who should be awarded these scholarships.  We tabled the scholarship discussion for the January meeting.

We had our annual fisheree at Bigalkes pond this past weekend.  Though the fish did not cooperate, all had a good time. In total, we had 7 kids participate in the event.

Raffle sales are going strong.  Our annual raffle drawing will be at the February meeting.

We will be participating in an outdoor exhibition (Grandpa Rays) in Fall River Wisconsin the week of February 8th.  Tom and Bob will man the KAMO booth.

 

Upcoming events include 

February – Grandpa Ray?s outdoor exhibition

March  – Maple Syrup

April ? Learn to Hunt turkey

 

Submitted by Bob Nicksic

 

Northwoods

Northwoods  meeting January 15th.

 

On another snowy, white knuckle night, eight members showed their mettle and attended the first meeting of the 2020 season.

  Elections were held and to everyone’s surprise, all four previous officers were unanimously re-elected to their respective positions. The current president tried in vain to get impeached, but to no avail.

  Financial report was given and funding options were discussed, with Tom Jonet volunteering to pursue a continuous aluminum recycling endeavor involving the general public, local taverns and township dumps donating their unused metal. Another option we have never pursued, but  are willing to try.

 Our events schedule was set for the year with a free ski hill tubing and lunch event added for February 22nd. Something new for Northwoods this year.

 Jeff Moll (this guy is always thinking) proposed some new marketing ideas which would involve poster prints of our different events, at various retail outlets and the school, to bring more awareness of KAMO, our mission and possible donations all at one”Kiosk”.

 We welcomed one new member and former volunteer Randy Foltz into the fold.

A good guy to have on a more permanent basis.

 Future involvement with the Iron Mountain 4H group, our annual scholarship  and a possible maple syrup event were tabled till the February meeting.

 STILL President..

 

 Mick  Northwoods Chapter

Yellow River

Did not meet this month.