KAMO February, 2020 Newsletter

This is KAMO President Mark Walters with my section of the monthly Newsletter. There is a ton going on in KAMO these days and I am happy to say that a couple of weeks ago I drove down to The Beaver Dam Conservation Club and had an excellent meet and greet with a group of 27 potential new KAMO members. 

Fifteen of them will be receiving this months Newsletter and was I ever impressed. Folks from all over Dodge County showed up and the club itself is situated on a large tract of land on Beaver Dam Lake.

There were a lot of people shooting trap that night as well and the atmosphere was excellent. I will be returning for another meeting on Wednesday, March 18th and three days later it looks like at least one of these folks will be at the state meeting in Stevens Point.

On Thursday, March 19th the Yellow River Chapter of KAMO will be attending the YouthNet Night at the Marshfield YMCA. I went to this in January and will try to make the 19th as well as in reality if this was done often enough I really believe it would help a chapter find both new mentors and kids.

We are running out of time for The President’s Award for KAMO.  I can name everyone that has won it and sure seemed like it put a smile on their faces when they did. Please send me your thoughts and votes as the decision will be made soon as I have to have time to get the plaque made by the 21st.

Our state meeting is Saturday, March 21st. Please attend this event, everyone that has in the past is well aware that on this day each year we pick our course for the next year and in part, because of that KAMO is doing very well these days.

As always, thank you for all that you do for Kids And Mentors Outdoors!

Mark

State Convention

Saturday, March 21st –  9:30 – 3:00 

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

Convention General agenda – President?s greeting, website/ insurance, officer elections, Youth deer gun hunts vs. CWD, advertising letters for sponsorship and new chapters, President’s Award.

Convention B.O.D. agenda – Review minor policies changes, addition to risk management policy,

Free vs. paid advertising (Paid advertising might pay in metro areas)

If you wish to have agenda items added, please email Mike at brownmtjc@gmail.com to have them added..

Webmaster

190 visitors to the website in the past month. 77% first timers. Please check your chapter?s page for accuracy periodically.

 

General

We added ?hired and non-owned auto coverage to our liability  policy. This protects the assets of the entire state organization in the event of an auto accident related lawsuit. For example, if an insurance company decided to sue the KAMO organization for their combined financial and equipment assets from damages related to an auto related accident, SECURA would provide protection. This costs about $10/mth.

We could also consider adding ?directors and officers? which protects officers/ BOD members in the group from exposure to liability from some oversight, perceived negligence,etc.This would cost an additional $550/month bringing out annual premium up to about $2140.

If your chapter hasn?t paid its annual dues for 2020, please submit them to Tom St. Clair. They are the same as before. For those newer to the group, these funds are used to pay our overall liability insurance, website upkeep, costs of state meetings, The annual deer hunt in Poynette, and to help newer chapters with initial activity and start up costs. The dues don?t cover all our expenses, but we?ve been fortunate to have enough donations so that we have not had to run a major state fundraiser such as a banquet.

 

Baraboo Chapter

The Baraboo chapter had its latest meeting on Feb. 10 at Rivers Edge Resort. Greg Wagner has been spending time skiing with kids and Jon Hillmer has been doing a lot of activities with kids as well. We were contacted by a lady who is the activities coordinator for the Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center, to see if they could possibly team up with KAMO for some future events. Looking forward to the opportunities this may present for our group. Looking forward to the upcoming state meeting when we as an organization can share the good things that are going on within each chapter, but also to collectively discuss how KAMO continues to move forward.

Tradition Forward.

Rick

Coulee Chapter (La Crosse)

We had a lightly attended sledding event in a public setting this year. The private location we have used was iced up and thought to be dangerous.

The state R3 Angler person (Theresa Stabo), a few university students, and I held an Angler Education class for ice fishing in the area. We had a dozen students who were primarily middle aged and up. An excellent group of people. There were two classroom sessions, an outing by Stoddard, and a cooking class/ potluck at a local church.

Due to the enthusiasm of the participants, some of them want to connect in the future.I have a good feeling about the potential for some of these folks to teach a kid how to fish and possibly to help the KAMO group as volunteers on future outings.

Mike

Lake Wisconsin Chapter (Poynette)

This chapter did not meet in February or have activity to report.

Meadow Valley Chapter (New Lisbon)

We had 11 members present at our February meeting.  

Mentoring activities for the month included Bob and Keenan shed hunting and tapping maple trees.

Aaron, Janine, Bob and Tom participated at the Grampa Rays exhibition in Fall River.   The event had over 100 people all of whom are avid hunters learning about deer management and how to improve habitat.  Tom spoke to the group about KAMO. As a result, we had at least 2 people who said they were interested in joining KAMO.

We sold all 600-raffle tickets for our annual raffle.  The winners were:

Dana Anderson

Craig Griffith

Charlie Shasma

Allison Molsby

Jon Hilmer

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all who supported the raffle.

Elections were held with Jim Rydmark remaining as our President and Janine Bigalke as our Secretary.  Both do an excellent job.

We discussed creating a Learn to Hunt for Pheasants next fall.  Bob is going to contact the New Lisbon Sports Club to see if they will work jointly with us to make this event happen.  

The organizer of Husterfest contacted Bob to see if our KAMO chapter was interested in staffing the Outdoor Heritage Educational trailer during the fest.    Hustler is a very small community, which has an annual 3-day event. Our chapter has agreed to staff the trailer for 1 day with the intention of promoting KAMO.  

Upcoming events include:

March 7 – Maple Syrup

March 28th ? Learn to Hunt turkey hunter Safety

April 4-5 ? LTH turkey

May ? Workday at the Madsen Property

June ? Shooting night at NLSC

August  – Conservation trailer at Hustler Fest

Submitted by Bob Nicksic

Northwoods Chapter (Florence)

Northwoods February 12th meeting

 Good attendance for our February snowy night meeting…Brad and Tash brought their new baby girl along. She is beautiful and behaves better than some of our attendees.

 Discussion on our aluminum can collection project took center agenda, with more great ideas and commitments from local businesses. Tom Jonet has taken ownership of this endeavor and it is moving forward nicely. Other items on the agenda were our annual scholarship, a possible maple syrup outing in April and volunteering for a local event in March.

 Saturday, February 22nd, we sponsored a first time tubing outing at the local ski hill. We had a lot of kids show up, barbecued over a hundred dogs, had perfect weather and a lot of positive feedback. The donation bucket was generously filled to the point where our cost was under two hundred bucks.

 Hope to see some of you at the State meeting in March…weather permitting.

Till April,

 Mick and all my Northwoods buddies.

Yellow River Chapter (Marshfield)

We had a nice turn out and fun afternoon of snow shoeing, education and snowman building at Randy Dragt’s property on Jan.25th, a few kids from our initial contact at YouthNet joined in as well and the weather cooperated!

We have been invited back to the YouthNet Family Dinner Night on March 19th, which yielded 9 applications our first time there, so we are looking forward to another opportunity to meet with them again and hope that the word got around how awesome we are so we can get another handful of kids involved. That said, our need for new mentors for our area has increased and I challenge all in our group to double down on our previous efforts and get some more adults involved.

Brad