Please Don’t Rescue “Abandoned” Fawns

Fawn-in-grass

Whether you live in the boonies or the ‘burbs, one thing is certain. Your new neighbors will be arriving soon.  They’ll have four legs, spots, an abundance of cuteness, and a vigilant mother who’s closer than you think.  So please…  don’t “rescue” them.

Every May and June, wildlife agencies and animal rehab centers all over America receive frantic calls from well-intentioned souls asking what they should do next with the whitetail fawn they’ve just rescued.  The answer: As quickly as you can, put it right back where you found it.  Better yet, don’t rescue abandoned fawns in the first place.  With rare exceptions, they’re not abandoned at all.

At birth, whitetail fawns weigh from 5 to 8 pounds. Their mothers immediately lick them clean and consume all traces of the amniotic fluid and afterbirth.  It’s part of the bonding process, and it also reduces the scent trail that would attract insects and predators.  A newborn fawn is almost totally scent-free, and its spots are more than just Disney decoration.  They’re perfect camouflage for a motionless fawn laying hidden in the sun-dappled shadows.

For the first weeks of its life, a fawn is safest if it stays right where it’s put.  Its mother leaves to browse on her own for hours at a time, returning only to nurse.  Although some visits last mere minutes, a doe’s high-protein, high-fat milk allows fawns to gain up to 10 percent of their body weight every day.

Later, they’ll tag along with mom and follow her wherever she goes.  For now, their instinct is to stay hidden and await her return.  Even when danger approaches, their best chance for survival is to stay hidden until it’s past.  The youngest fawns may even allow themselves to be picked up without a struggle.  This doesn’t mean they’re sick or injured, and it definitely doesn’t mean they’re abandoned.

The doe is probably nearby, and its fawn doesn’t need your help.  (Nor does it needs cow’s milk, which is less nutritious, poorly digested, and certain to give it debilitating diarrhea.)  Odds are, your “rescue” be its death sentence.  Most fawns taken to animal rehab centers don’t survive.  To make a deer or any other wild animal a pet is illegal in most states, and it’s a bad idea for lots of other reasons.  The best mother for a baby deer is its own.

As tempting as it might be, just touching that fawn you’ve discovered could increase its risk of being detected by predators that include coyotes, bears, and your neighbor’s dog.  Even your close approach could create a scent trail that leads curious predators to a tasty meal of very tender venison.

(Most experts, however, don’t believe that does will reject their fawns because of human scent; their bond is way too strong.  And the advice to cleanse human scent from a fawn by rubbing it with a towel that’s first been rubbed in grass and leaves?  Probably not all that helpful, considering where else your towel has been—plus the scented detergents and fabric softeners in which you’ve washed it.  A deer’s nose has over 300 million scent receptors.  Bloodhounds have around 220 million, and humans fewer than 5 million.)

When you don’t see the fawn’s mother, that doesn’t mean she’s not there.  You may not see her, but she sees you.  And if you repeatedly observe the fawn in the same general area but haven’t glimpsed its mother for hours or even days, that still doesn’t mean the fawn is abandoned.  Leave it be.

The only possible exceptions?  If you discover a fawn that’s bleeding, has obviously broken limbs, or is crawling with flies or maggots.  Or, if you spot one that refuses to leave the side of a roadkill doe.  Otherwise, leave it where it is.

If you ever encounter a curious fawn that approaches you, the best way to ensure its survival is to help that wild animal stay wild.  If it approaches you without fear or wariness, clap your hands, yell obscenities—or, if you prefer, the word “venison”—at the top of your lungs, and chase it away.  Someday soon that lesson will be a valuable one.

For all the other newborn fawns you encounter, remember the words of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation: “If you care… Leave them there!”

© 2013 Al Cambronne

Photo courtesty Wikimedia Commons

 

Posted in Deer | 4 Comments

A Review of Stephen Bodio’s A Sportsman’s Library

A Sportsman's Library

Today…  A review of Stephen Bodio’s new book A Sportsman’s Library: 100 Essential, Engaging, Offbeat, and Occasionally Odd Fishing and Hunting Books for the Adventurous Reader.

But first, before going any further…  A small disclosure and a serious warning.  I’ve read and enjoyed a couple of Bodio’s other books, and I’ve occasionally visited his blog.  Then a couple months ago I discovered that A Sportsman’s Library and DEERLAND would both be released by Lyons Press on the same day.  So I got in touch, and since then we’ve traded books and traded a few e-mails.  That was fun, and it turned out we enjoyed each others’ books.  This will not, however, influence what I write here.

As Steve writes in the introduction to A Sportsman’s Library, “In 1993, reviewing books for Fly Rod & Reel, I was accused of writing something nice about someone I knew.  I had, and will.  My argument goes like this: First, the world of outdoor writers, even the larger world of letters, is a small one.  Sometimes I think we all know each other. So, I will not give a good review to a bad book by a friend.  I will bend over backwards to be fair to those with whom I have had disagreements. I will not give a bad review to someone I do not like.”  Words to live by.  And write by.  I have, and will.

That’s the small disclosure.  Now here’s the serious warning.  If you hunt or fish, and if you also read, then this could be one of the most expensive books you ever buy.  Although its cover price is only $18.95, the problem is with all those other books you’ll be wanting to buy after you’ve finished this one—the 100 mentioned in the title, but also a couple dozen more “honorable mentions.”  Consider yourself warned.

A Sportsman’s Library: 100 Essential, Engaging, Offbeat, and Occasionally Odd Fishing and Hunting Books for the Adventurous Reader.  Now there’s a subtitle you can sink your teeth into—and one letting us know from the beginning that this will be more than just another “100 best” or “100 most significant” list.  This is going to be a fun list.  Bodio also notes in his introduction that most hatch-matching and how-to books haven’t made the cut.  He does, however, make a few exceptions.

A small number of predictable standards do make the list—Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, and Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, to name just three.  But others are more obscure alternatives.  To supplement The Compleat Angler, for example, there’s the Dame Juliana Berners 1486 classic The Book of St. Albans: A Treatise of Fishing With an Angle.  And then there are dozens of obscure oddities that fulfill the subtitle’s promise of being “engaging, offbeat, and occasionally odd.

Chronologically, Bodio’s picks range from Emperor Frederick II’s 1244 The Art of Falconry to Timothy Murphy’s 2011 Hunter’s Log.  Most are from from the 20th Century, and many are from a time when the idea of a literate—or even literary—book about hunting or fishing was not a surprising notion.  It was a golden era when stories about hunting and fishing—long stories, with few or no photos and many thousands of words—earned writers serious money when they sold them to magazines like Audubon, Sports Illustrated, Atlantic, and The New Yorker.

Alas.  Those days are gone.  But the words remain.  And Bodio’s own words of insightful, erudite, and occasionally curmudgeonly commentary make A Sportsman’s Library a fun read and way more more than just a simple list.  He’s read widely, and he’s written on many of these topics himself.  He’s led quite an interesting life, and he’s someone who really has “been there and done that.”  He was definitely the right person to write this book, his “book of books.”

I suppose if I’d read widely enough to make this sort of list, mine would have been slightly different.  I’d have omitted a few titles and swapped in others.  I suspect that’s true for most readers, and part of the fun was discovering a few books I’d have otherwise never stumbled across.  Bodio did, after all, choose the title A Sportsman’s Library rather than The Sportsman’s Library.

To sum up: A Sportsman’s Library was a delight, and is best described by the words in its own subtitle: “Essential, Engaging, Offbeat, and Occasionally Odd.”  I mean that as the highest compliment.

Although it’s now springtime, another long winter is coming soon.  I’ve already checked, and there won’t be much on TV.  So I suggest you buy a copy of A Sportsman’s Library now.  Read it once for fun.  Then read it again.  This time take notes, make a shopping list, and start planning ahead.

© 2013 Al Cambronne

 

Posted in Books, Hunting | 2 Comments

Overheard at the 2013 Midwest Wolf Stewards Conference

Wolf Steward Beach copyright Al Cambronne

This year’s Midwest Wolf Stewards conference drew over 100 attendees—mostly wolf biologists, wildlife managers, and ecologists, but also a small number of writers, journalists, and curious citizens.  This conference always makes for a fascinating update on the latest science and news related to the Great Lakes population of gray wolves.  Although these wolves don’t get much attention from the national press, they’re three times more numerous than those in the Rocky Mountain states.  My county alone has more wolves than all of Yellowstone.

If you have been following this story, you know the past year or so has seen numerous fast-moving developments.  Midwestern wolves are now delisted, and both MN and WI have held hunting seasons.  This year MI appears poised to follow suit.  You will be shocked to learn that in all three states politicians have become involved.

Some people love wolves, and some people hate them.  Right now lawyers must love them, and I don’t just mean out of professional courtesy.  Lawsuits abound, and it seems likely that more will be filed soon.

Rather than boring pictures of biologists in a conference room, I’ve once again included springtime beach scenes from outside the hotel in Silver City, MI.  And since it would be difficult to summarize last week’s fourteen hours of presentations in a blog post, you’ll have to settle for a few random, out-of-context quotes.  Sorry.  I gotta go write some other stuff in a minute.  But here’s today’s random assortment of wolf science, news, and questions:

  • We have about 5,000 wolves in the region.  Minnesota has a population goal of 1,600, with no maximum goal.
  • Would you like to see a picture of my wolf?
  • We then collected, washed, and sorted scat from the entire study area.  From our analysis, we learned a great deal.
  • For one more example of how an irrational hatred of wolves is reflected in our language, just watch the news tonight.  Count how many times you hear the phrase “lone wolf terrorists.”  (The other day I heard a reporter in Boston use the phrase “lone wolf” at least six times in under a minute.)
  • In WI, 76 depredating wolves were killed in 2012.  Of those, 57 were removed by Wildlife Services.
  • In all three states (MN, WI, and MI), about 50% of all investigations turned out to involve actual wolf depredation.  The other 50% involved either wolf scavenging, or else depredation by coyotes, bears, and dogs.  If it’s chickens or ducks, suspect the neighbor’s dog.
  • By law, MI will now pay for missing livestock, but only if it was taken by wolves (?!?!?).  And if we can’t rule out wolves, it was wolves.  Plus, farmers are now allowed to do their own depredation investigation, e-mail us photos, and receive compensation.
  • Fladry has significant spatial and temporal limitations.
  • It was a bad idea for those wolves to make their den that close to a daycare center.
  • We found the missing basketball at the den site.
  • A first: A frustrated trapper called to tell me the DNR has greatly overestimated wolf numbers.  (In DEERLAND, I open my chapter on deer management with a quote from a veteran deer biologist who tells me most hunters are pretty sure the DNR doesn’t know how to count.  But he’s noticed a pattern: “Mysteriously, after 50 years in the business, I’ve never had anyone accuse us of underestimating deer populations or overestimating wolf populations.”  Apparently, however, that’s no longer true.)
  • The stated goal of WI’s inaugural hunt was to lower the population.  The season opened early enough so the pelts of most animals harvested were in poor condition.
  • In WI, the annual goal for dead bears is 12 times higher than for live wolves.
  • Are wolves resources or relatives?
  • The model worked better when we added a 7.5% correction factor for unobserved mortality.  One possible explanation is cryptic poaching.
  • We found no genetic indicators that correlated with these morphological differences.
  • Are hunters’ ethics different for wolves than for deer?
  • We’ll let wolves tell us what the landscape’s carrying capacity is.
  • These numbers varied over time and space.
  • In the area with more wolves, deer herbivory may have been reduced by population density, but also by behavioral changes that occurred when deer were more vigilant.
  • A resource is at stake. Hunting is at stake. Our humanity is at stake.
  • The judge found that WI has established safe and humane rules for hunting wolves with dogs.

© 2013 Al Cambronne

Wolf Biologists on Beach copyright Al Cambronne

 

Posted in Ecology, Hunting, Wolves | 14 Comments

For Deer in the North, April is the Cruelest Month

A Beach in April, copyright Al Cambronne

Last week I spent two fascinating days at the Midwest Wolf Stewards conference.  I learned a lot, and it would be tough to summarize fourteen hours of presentations in a brief blog post.  Next time, however, I’ll share a few highlights.  But first, a digression about the weather.  Except it’s not really a digression.  As usual, it’s all about the deer.

This year the conference was held at a hotel and conference center in Silver City, Michigan.  This is a very tiny town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  It’s still mostly closed up for the winter.  I arrived late the afternoon before, learned there’d be nothing in town to eat that night but frozen pizzas at the bar, and decided to make a run to the nearest grocery store.  It was 14 miles away.

Silver City is on the south shore of Lake Superior, just at the mouth of the Big Iron River.  The night before the conference I went for a walk and snapped a few pictures.  I decided they’d be more fun than shots of wolf biologists sitting around in a conference room.

As you can see, spring is arriving slowly in this part of the world.  That evening’s sunshine didn’t last; the next day was dark and drizzly.  Two days later, on the way back from the U.P. to NW WI, I drove through rain, sleet, and then a blizzard for the last hour or so.  After I arrived home, we were blessed by another 18” of heavy, wet snow.  That night, with the window open just a crack, we fell asleep to the sounds of white pine branches breaking.  By the interval that passed between the snap and the thump, we were able to tell roughly how high the branch had been.

Parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula received over 20 feet of snow this winter.  It’s not easy being a deer in that neighborhood—or even in my own.  Some deer have already expired and been scavenged by wolves.  Others waded slowly through deep snow and fell prey to wolves whose oversize paws allowed them to float on the surface.  But of all the deer that don’t make it through an entire winter, a disproportionate number of them almost do.  To quote T.S. Eliot slightly out of context: “April is the cruelest month.”

In an unusually hard winter, a large percentage of deer don’t survive.  Of those, most expire in April, right before the spring green-up.  Last year’s fawns are hit hardest.  Surviving does will have lower birth rates; rather than twins and triplets, most will give birth to one fawn or none.  These fawns, in turn, will experience higher rates of neonatal mortality—and may even be more vulnerable next winter.  Let’s hope it’s an easier one.

But the thing is…  Across much of the whitetail deer’s northern range, all these things happen during milder winters, too.  Only the numbers and percentages are different.  Nature is nothing like those Disney movies I loved to watch when I was a little kid.  In particular, it’s nothing like this winter scene from Bambi.  And by the way…  The legs of real deer don’t bend that way.  If deer fall on the ice and all four legs splay out like that—which does sometimes happen—the deer don’t get up.  Ever.

Sorry.  That was a little depressing.  I don’t know what the hell got into me.  Next time I’ll try and do better.  Until then, here’s another sunny springtime photo.

© 2013 Al Cambronne

Spring Breakup, copyright Al Cambronne

 

Posted in Deer, Ecology, Wolves | 2 Comments

No Easy Answers to America’s Suburban Deer Conundrum

rock creek roadway

To quote H.L. Mencken, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”  The dilemma of overabundant deer in America’s cities and suburbs is just one of those complex problems.  And unfortunately, deer birth control turns out to be one of those easy answers that are “clear, simple, and wrong.”

The idea of deer contraception is compelling precisely because it’s so simple.  It has, as Stephen Colbert would say, a certain ring of “truthiness.”  Meanwhile, the reasons it doesn’t work are complicated, scientific, and boring.  For those with short attention spans, the truth takes way too long to explain.  Which reminds me of another quote, attributed in various forms to Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, and the Reverend Charles Spurgeon: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still pulling on its pants.”

But alas.  Contrary to persistent urban legend, there’s no handy oral deer contraceptive we can sprinkle about the woods or pour out onto piles of corn.  Nor is deer relocation a workable idea.  And for a variety of reasons I summarized in this Washington Post piece, currently available deer contraceptives remain problematic.  Deer birth control is great in theory.  In practice, it’s difficult, expensive, and temporary.

When deer are so overpopulated that they’re malnourished and doing serious damage to their habitat, damage that affects every other plant, animal, and bird in the entire ecosystem, then standing back to watch may not be the best solution—or even the most humane solution.  But in all fairness, lethal control measures aren’t permanent, either.  There are no easy answers.

Deer are good are at two things: eating, and making more deer.  So even though lethal measures may temporarily protect the habitat and prevent the remaining deer from slowly starving, the job may need to be done all over again in another year or two.  Rationally, however, this is almost always the solution that’s best for the habitat and best for the deer themselves.  Still, a lot of people with good intentions just don’t want to ever see deer harmed.  Not even one.

Which brings us to the Washington, D.C. deer that once again put this issue in the news.  These deer don’t just live near Washington, they live right in the middle of it—specifically in the 2.742 square mile Rock Creek Park, which roughly bisects Washington, D.C. Subtract the creekbed and the park’s buildings, parking lots, and roadways, and we’re probably down to just over two square miles.  Park officials estimated the deer population at around 200, which works out to…  Way too many deer per square mile.  The understory was severely overbrowsed, browse lines were appearing overhead, and the deer were hungry.

It’s a familiar and recurring story from suburbs and cities all over America.  This time, rock creek bridgehowever, it was happening right in our nation’s capitol.
Predictably, when the National Park Service (NPS) decided to send sharpshooters out to remove some of those deer, not everyone was happy.  Animal rights organizations filed lawsuits, concerned citizens wrote angry letters to the editor, and protestors marched nightly at the edge of the park.  A couple weeks ago sharpshooters removed 20 deer, about 10% of the park’s population.

Just before that happened, D.C. council member and former mayor Marion Barry weighed in with a tweet nominating the NPS for “MOFOs of the month.”  In later tweets, he wrote “NPS will be sharpshooting deer in Rock Creek Park. So wrong. #dontkillbambi  Can they be relocated? I mean the NPS. The deer can stay.”  (Later Barry apologized, especially for the abbreviation that stands for about what you think it does.  He stated that although the tweets were from his account, they’d been sent by a staff member.)

So I decided I should weigh in, too.  You can read the piece here; it includes links to the peer-reviewed papers I cited.  (Some of which are papers you’ll also find mentioned in DEERLAND’s footnotes.)  For now, here are the last two paragraphs:

The consensus among wildlife biologists is clear: Deer contraception is only a viable option for small, isolated populations such as on an island or in a fenced enclosure. As much as we might wish otherwise, it does not provide an easy answer to the problem of overabundant deer in our nation’s cities and suburbs.

If we feel uneasy about lethal control measures, we should feel even more uneasy about the only real alternative: collisions with motor vehicles, disease, and starvation. As one ecologist told me, “Just because we’re not shooting them doesn’t mean we’re not killing them. And just because we’re not shooting them doesn’t mean they’re not suffering.”

© 2013 Al Cambronne

Photos of Rock Creek Park courtesy NPS.

rock creek waterfall

 

 

 

Posted in Deer, Ecology, Forests | 4 Comments

The Flushing Bar Project

flushing bar

Today’s post has nothing today with tavern toilets, and it has nothing to do with drinking establishments located in a certain neighborhood of Queens, NY.  It’s actually about a very sobering, serious subject.

I first learned about it in a recent issue of the Whitetails Unlimited magazine.  (In my last post, I described the scene at my local WTU banquet.  A fun evening, and lots of raffles and prizes.  That’s where the money comes from.  Here’s a great example of where it goes.)

In this context, “flush” means to scare an animal or bird up out of the cover where it’s hiding.  As an example, grouse and pheasant hunters often speak of them or their dogs “flushing” a bird from cover.  Many prey species, especially juveniles, have a strong instinct to not flush.  Normally, their best chance for survival is to stay hidden until the danger is past.  If you’ve ever been out in the woods and found yourself being startled by a grouse, rabbit, or deer that waited to flush until you’d almost stepped on it, that’s the explanation.

It’s a great survival strategy—or at least it is until wildlife encounters modern farm machinery.  That’s especially true for hay mowers.  When birds or animals frightened by the sound of an approaching mower decide to hold still, hunker down, and wait until the danger is past, it’s often the last bad decision they’ll ever make.  Every year, this happens to untold millions of grassland birds—and also to various other creatures, both avian and mammalian (including, of course, deer).  And also, for that matter, the odd reptile or amphibian.

Enter the Flushing Bar Project.  These devices, like the one shown above, are intended to flushing bar postermakde wildlife flush safely ahead of mowers and other equipment.  Most variations use a similar design, with a horizontal boom that has several chains hanging from it.  There’s usually some sort of counterweighted pivot system that allows the boom to be raised when driving through a gate or on public roads.  The example in the photo is the only known commercial flushing bar; it was made by Ferguson back in the 50s.

Why none since then?  Good question.

Now, with a little help from WTU and other organizations, a new generation of inventors and tinkerers is welding together new prototypes.  All of the manufacturers selling hay mowing equipment have also been invited to join the project.  But today tractors are larger, some equipment fits on the front of them, and many farmers are using machines that come in standalone, self-propelled configurations.  The Flushing Bar Project is designed to bring innovators together, share information, and find solutions.

Mark Ludwig of the Alleghan, MI conservation district is one of the people behind the project.  He was quoted in the WTU magazine as saying the bars deployed in 2012 were very effective in flushing deer.  “In fact, fawns were jumping well ahead of the chains, which is not quite what we expected.  Other game animals were also flushing well, including turkeys, pheasants, and ducks.”

If you farm, none of this will be surprising.  If you don’t, and if you have an overactive imagination like mine, this quote conjures up rather gruesome sights and sounds.  Because apparently without the flushing bar, a lot of fawns are not jumping well ahead of the mower.  Neither are a lot of recently hatched turkeys, pheasants, and ducks—not to mention all the “non-game” species of birds and small mammals.  Of special concern, it seems, are grassland birds like eastern meadowlarks, horned larks, and bobolinks.

The Flushing Bar Project.  An idea whose time has come.  Again.  To learn more, see photos and videos, and get involved, click here.

© 2013 Al Cambronne

Photos courtesy Mark Ludwig of the Flushing Bar Project

Update: I was just in touch with Laura Erickson, who hosts the radio show For the Birds.  She reminded me that although flushing bars would flush adult birds, the nest, nestlings, and eggs would still be destroyed.  Mowing that first crop of hay a little later can help.  But, as she says, “It’s a tricky issue.”  There are no easy answers.  Still, if farmers were to use a flushing bar and mow a bit later….

flushing bar welding

 

 

 

Posted in Agriculture, Birds, Deer | Leave a comment

My First Whitetails Unlimited Banquet

WTU Banquet 1 Copyright Al Cambronne

Although America has many hunting and shooting organizations, I know of only two national organizations that focus specifically on deer: the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA), and Whitetails Unlimited (WTU).

I write about both in DEERLAND, but probably spend more words on the QDMA.  It has a more focused mission, and in the last decade it’s become very influential in shaping the way American hunters think about deer management.  Even if QDM adherents hope to shoot more deer with larger antlers, there’s more to the QDM philosophy than just letting small bucks walk in the hopes of shooting them a year or two later.  Instead, QDM also involves shooting more does so that populations are in balance with their habitat.  There may be fewer deer on the landscape, but each one will be healthier—and also much likelier, if male, to grow large antlers.

There’s a lot more to the QDM philosophy than this.  But if you’re a non-hunter, you’ll be happy to know that its adherents, even if they’re motivated by antlers, are doing a lot to maintain ecological balance in ways that also benefit other wildlife—including songbirds.  That’s not true of all trophy hunters.  More on that another time.  Today, the story of my first WTU banquet.

Whitetails Unlimited may have a less focused mission, but it raises a lot of funds for worthy conservation initiatives.  Most of those dollars go to good causes right in the local area.  In DEERLAND, for example, I cite the example of donations that helped purchase night-vision equipment for the local game warden.  He’s now better able to catch poachers after dark.

Other chapters have helped purchase radio-controlled “robo-deer” that wardens use to lure poachers and road hunters.  (Don’t worry; so far these mechanized marvels of taxidermy can’t run, or even walk.  They only move their head, tail, and ears.  Eventually, after wardens have patched enough bullet holes in these realistic-looking decoys, they’ll need to replace them.)

That’s all nice enough, but I also enjoy meeting new people and exploring new cultures and subcultures.  So one evening a couple years ago I drove over to our local community center for my first WTU banquet.  I’d already joined WTU, and I was already reading the magazine.  It seemed like a very wholesome, family-oriented organization.  (And it is.)  I figured this would be like one of those church suppers that serve only coffee and lemonade.  Oh, well.  I figured I could always pour myself a glass when I got home.  But in the end, I needn’t have worried.

While there were indeed many families at the banquet, there were also many tasty WTU Banquet 2 Copyright Al Cambronnebeverages for grownups.  There was plenty of beer, but no boring speeches.  I figured there might be a quick raffle after dinner, but it turned out the raffles were non-stop—as were games of chance, wheels of cash, silent auctions (which weren’t always so silent), and then more raffles for dessert.

People were buying raffle tickets in batches six or eight feet long, and it seemed like everyone was winning something.  Wildlife art, dinners out at local restaurants, and best of all…  Guns.  And even if some winners spent more on raffle tickets than what the gun would have cost at our local hardware store, no one was complaining.  After all, they knew it was for a good cause.

And besides, everyone had a good time.  It was a fun evening.  The dinner wasn’t bad, and neither was the beer.  For those who wanted it, there was even coffee and lemonade.

Next time:  Another example of an important conservation initiative supported by WTU.  Stay tuned…

© 2013 Al Cambronne

WTU Banquet 3 Copyright Al Cambronne

 

 

Posted in Deer, Hunting | Leave a comment