November, 2019 Newsletter
KAMO – November, 2019 Newsletter
President?s Message
Hello KAMO members and friends! This is KAMO President Mark Walters with my monthly report for The Newsletter. I am home for about 24-hours from deer camp. The wolves ate most of the deer where we hunt and we have been trying very hard to find places to hunt where the wolves did not beat us to the last few whitetail deer in the area.
Back to KAMO news! The Joe is the second weekend in December. I just spoke with Rick Miotke and we have 17 hunters signed up. As I have said for years, without Bob Brodeur and Rick Miotke managing this hunt, it would not happen. I also just spoke with Mike Brown and he will be doing some very important research on our insurance and since there will be at least seven members of the Board of Directors at The Joe and we will be getting an update on this important subject. With that said, I am going to return to my Thanksgiving festivities and as usual thank all of you for all of your efforts to help kids get into the great outdoors.
Mark Walters
Upcoming Winter Events from other groups:
Kicking Bear
Kids Ice Fishing Tournament
Saturday, January 18th, 2020
Mosey Landing, Lake Onalaska – Registration starts at 7. Weigh in from 12-3. Prizes for biggest fish in several categories.
Wisconsin R3 Angler Education
La Crosse area – Classes evenings of February 19,20. Outings on Saturday, February 22nd and 29th. Cook the Catch gathering on Sunday, February 23rd. Location TBD. Class size up to 20. Register on GoWild site.
Wisconsin Women Fish
Learn To Ice Fish
- Friday, January 17th, 2020 – Sunday, January 19th, 2020, Central Wisconsin TBD.Open to public
Ice Fish the Mississippi River. Location TBD
- Saturday, January 25th, 2020 – Sunday, January 26th, 2020. Members only.
General Info
There is a new mentor enrollment form – this is the document that the tentative enrollee fills out to agree to have a background check done on him/ her. The newer version contains a statement regarding the fact that a third party will receive and review the tentative members private information . The background check company is currently Intellicorp. This form appears on the kamokids.org website under the ?Additional Information? tab as ?enrollment forms? When the form appears, it can be typed into directly before printing or printed as a blank form and have the requested information handwritten on it.
Mike is searching for another liability insurer for the KAMO group. Our current insurer is becoming unreasonably expensive and is covering fewer incidents. We are in a commercial – specialty market category meaning the number of carriers willing to insure a group like ours is going to be small. If you have any leads about a potential insurer, please forward this information to Mike. A quote request was sent out to Philadelphia Insurance – they are the insurer for a regional handicapped archer organization Mark knew of.
At a recent Coulee meeting, the importance of reaching out to other youth outdoor groups was emphasized, especially in the winter when several mentors are snowbirding. For that reason, there are some non KAMO activities mentioned in this month?s newsletter.
There is still an ongoing search for a person with a medical background to be in attendance at the Mac Kenzie Center during the Joe Hunt. What will happen if we show up at the Mac Kenzie Center without the medical person they asked us to bring? We hope to avoid finding out that answer. Do you know of anyone?
Webmaster
The site has been visited158 times in the past 30 days. Average time on site is about 3 minutes which is up about a minute from the usual. The top hits have been ?enrollment forms?, ?Baraboo River Chapter?, ?October, 2019 Newsletter?. This is the first time a monthly newsletter has appeared as a frequent hit.
Most of the KAMO site users are first timers (80%), yet they know our kamokids.org address – they come in directly using the address. This points to the effectiveness of the auto magnetics, billboards, other references to our website address to people who have not heard of the group.
The site is visited with even distribution throughout the week. Sundays and Mondays people visit more often in the late afternoon and evening. The other days are mostly from 7 am – 5 pm. 58% are desktop, 25% laptop, 17% tablet. This indicates that most people log in from a home or office unit after learning of our web address.
Big Brother is recording all this information and is willing to share some of it. Somewhere in all that data there are conclusions to be drawn.
Chapter Contributions
Baraboo
The Baraboo River chapter had its meeting on November 11. Although most of the meeting was geared toward the Joe, there was great stories about all the time spent by our mentors with kids doing all kinds of different activities. We had Bob Brodeur from the Lake Wisconsin chapter attend to help finalize some of the details involved. We will have 17 pairs for this years hunt, which is down a little from recent years, but it will still be a great event.
For those mentoring, make sure your kids have their Joe Hunt student form, KAMO waiver, and MacKenzie Center waiver when they come to the hunt if they have not been turned in already. We will be doing a few things differently at this years hunt to make it a more enjoyable for both the kids and mentors. Enjoy the great outdoors. Tradition Forward
Rick Miotke
Coulee
Coulee had an outing at a Desoto area horse ranch at the request of the owner. This was our second time there this year and the turn-out was disappointing both times. The weather was not very good either time though either.
Coulee had a small group meeting this month during which we made it a point to think out of the box in terms of getting new mentors in our group. Several of our mentors are snowbirds, thus we decided we need to piggyback on the outings of other groups during the winter. For example,Kicking Bear has a kids ice fishing tournament on Lake Onalaska and they asked us for help anyway, so that?s a natural (See other groups events above).
Some of our mentors trained for R3 Angler Education with an emphasis on working with adults. Our hope is that some of these adults may want to work with our group. The American Legion in the area is interested in doing more kid oriented activity. They are interested in hosting a hunter?s education course at their Onalaska facility and I am supposed to meet with the director soon about doing those things.
Mike Brown
Lake Wisconsin
Preparing for the Joe Hunt. Bob attended Baraboo?s last meeting.
Meadow Valley
We had 10 members present at the November meeting.
Mentoring activities this month included our 1st youth pheasant hunt at Woods N Meadows. Brian Gruber took his dog along with 2 Kamo kids and 2 mentors for a half day of pheasant hunting. They had several flushes with not many birds harvested. We are discussing plans for next years hunt.
Discussion continued on the possibility of developing a Meadow Valley Kamo Scholarship. A committee of 3 members will develop a draft and present at the December meeting.
We discussed the Joe hunt and continue to look for new kids to take. The New Lisbon Schools have been contacted but so far no kids interested.
Our activities calendar going forward include:
Joe Hunt ? December
Ice Fishing – Jan/Feb
Maple Syrup ? March
Submitted by Bob Nicksic
Northwoods
Nothing for now from northwoods except a recommendation for those who like to read in their deer blind, put a bookmark on the next page as a reminder to look out of the blind periodically. Another suggestion was to read short stories.
Yellow River
We are very excited about the possibility of teaming up with YouthNet, a youth organization here in town. They are excited to learn more about who we are and what we do. There will be a dinner night for the YouthNet parents that Brad and Keith will be speaking at on 1/16. Doesn’t sounds like any of our kids are going to the Joe hunt this year, Brad and Dana are both helping in the kitchen and with other tasks needed. We are hoping to go back out to Mike N’s land for a winter outing on 1/19 from 12-3pm, we will cook food outside, walk around the woods and have planned activities. This was a lot of fun last year. We will be planning our 2nd annual fisheree in Feb and then want to make a trip to the Eau Claire Dells as well. Next meeting will be 12/9 at 7pm at Nutz Deep II.