RGS fundraises for habitat improvement
“You know if you’re a traveling wingshooter you can literally set dogs down on wild birds in 23 days,” said Brian. “Sharptail season opens in Montana on September first.” Brian ran the registration table at an RGS event raising money for habitat work last Saturday by Dunbar, Wis. The day before Brian had the unfortunate luck of having to be the hospitality rep for the company he worked for on a Lake Michigan fishing charter outing. After the fishing he was forced to take the clients out for dinner. Every now and then one must take those rough duty assignments.
He debated driving home from Sturgeon Bay Friday night but as midnight approached, he decided a few hours of sleep before the drive would be a good. Brian’s work portion of the event had concluded and he was enjoying his first beverage to rehydrate when we had a chance to talk. Topics like how my knee was doing, when he’s picking up his new pup, how his oldest is starting to help with training dogs, and how some maple trees have started to turn, which led to the 23 days. “Well actually if you’re really a traveling wingshooter ruffed grouse and ptarmigan opened in Alaska a week ago,” I countered. “That’s true. I forgot about that,” said Brian. “And a little known fact about that bottle of Ol’ Ruff Rye on the silent auction table has a tie to Alaska,” I told him and someone listening in asked, “How?”’ “Well the artwork on the label of the grouse was a photo shot by Jim McCann in Alaska and the image on the label is that photo,” I explained. There was a bit of back and forth and I confirmed that McCann is the famous wildlife photographer who lives in Alaska and worked with the Chippewa Valley Chapter of the RGS on their Ol’ Ruff Rye project to raise bucks for habitat. After which that gent walked over and upped the bid on the Ol’ Ruff and two other items enough to pay for a bag of clover to seed trails and two tracks on public land.
This event had 111 shooters shoot in three categories of a hundred rounds of clays - trap, sporting clays, or a combination of 50 of each. The winning score in the trap only class was 100. I shot in the sporting clays class and no, I didn’t shoot a perfect score nor was I even close to winning. We were there to have fun.
The Marinette County Chapter of RGS holds this event each year at the Dunbar Sportsman’s Club. They have a nice little club about the same size as our area’s local club with less woodland and a little more open spaces. They have three trap fields for their adult and youth trap leagues, a sporting clays course that they hold four shoots at a season, and a 5-Stand range that they shoot open and league on every Sunday. Not bad for a little unincorporated town in northeast Wisconsin.
About 15 volunteers from the club, half of which are also RGS members work the event, set up, and tear down. It takes the event Chairman Mark Grandaw a couple days to get the sporting clays course set up and he always sets a great course. Grandaw and the rest of his crew looked tired from the 90 plus degree day. They ran an exceptional event that raised a ton of money for local habitat improvements.
After our shooting ,the talk around our table turned to the fact that it’s less than 40 days to the grouse and the archery deer opener. Someone pointed out that wingshooters, whether they travel or not, shoot doves so we are only 23 days away. And of course, we talked habitat work. Our buddy that lives in the area pointed out wherever they do habitat work for grouse, his deer hunting gets much better there. If an animal lives in the woods in northern Wisconsin, some or most of its habitat needs overlap with grouse management, especially nongame species.
It’s using grouse as a bell weather species since it’s habitat requirements are so beneficial and needed for so many other species, both game and nongame. We got together to catch up with old friends and we made some more. Seems we make new friends up there every year. We raised some money for habitat improvements and had a lot of fun doing it.
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CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN
