Wisconsin Waterfowl Assn. Newsletter

Thanks for taking a moment to read about all that’s going on in your Association this month. Although we now formulate the hunting season structure much earlier in the year, we’ve recently had a series of important meetings surrounding the “administrative side” of waterfowl hunting: in late July we participated in the “Wisconsin Plan” update meeting with WDNR & many other conservation partners, seeking to update guidance documents for all things waterfowling. Then, last week there were conference calls for the “Sportsmen for Wetlands” coalition, and the Stewardship re-authorization partnership group, and a meeting of conservation leaders with Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke (USFWS), in Sheboygan last Friday.

As we move into August, there’s a great slate of WWA events for you to participate in; you can tell things are ramping up again as we move into the second half of summer!

Perhaps the biggest excitement of the whole month will be Waterfowl Weekend taking place Friday August 10th through Sunday the 12th. This event will see the return of last year’s new Decoy Carving Competition & Exhibition, which started out at UW-Stevens Point, along with the Federal Duck Stamp art competition, and is now joining the return of the Wisconsin State Duck & Goose Calling Championships on the 12th, put on by the hard-working volunteers of our Marshland Chapter, from the Beaver Dam area. We’ll once again return to the “comfortable confines” of the Cabela’s Richfield store for these amazing competitions. Thanks so much, for everyone that helps pull this awesome undertaking together! Please mark your calendars, and make a plan to come out and join us for these

celebrations of our waterfowling traditions.

Now some credit for those brave souls who host WWA events in the heart of vacation season: kudos to our team that transitioned our Ozaukee County sporting clays shoot into a one day event, setting a new single day record for participants, back on the 15th of July! I’d also like to thank everyone who assisted with 8th annual editions of the Abrams Sporting Clays Shoot, presented by NEW Wall Street, and the Fox Valley Scramble, presented by Financial Consulting Services, for two great events, that occurred within 5 days of each other, near the end of the month! Thanks to all of you who joined in the fellowship of WWA supporters coming together for a few hours, to enjoy our great outdoors.

September 1st will be here, along with the start of some early migratory bird hunting seasons, before we know it! Please mark your calendars for Thursday night, August 30th. We’re moving our series-finale “night of winning” concept again, this time to Waverly Beach, on the shores of Lake Winnebago, in Menasha, to celebrate the start of hunting seasons. We’ll keep it “quick & dirty”, you’ll be in and out in less than 2 hours, with some really great stuff being drawn, after the last few tickets are sold, plus a few stand-alone games and raffles, the Redneck waterfowl blind from our Flurry Shoots, another pistol/safe raffle, a Cabela’s roto-molded cooler package, and more! It’s there that we’ll draw the Grand Prize Browning gun vault – the attendance-based prize for our 6 event sporting clays shoot series, that wraps up with the 19th Annual State Shoot, on the 18th. $25 for advance registration. If you’ve attended any of our shoots, and you register in advance, it’s a night of cold beer & appetizers for $20! You won’t want to miss it!

We’ve got lots more in this update, and so I’ll let you move on to the other authors’ submissions. Thanks again for taking a moment, and for choosing to support the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association.

See you on the water,

Don