Bright Idea Outdoors Weblog

Wounded Warrior Blind Project Dedicated

Ducks Unlimited--one of the nation's leading conservation organizations--and the United States Marine Corps recently partnered to help American service people get back in the hunt after being wounded in the service of their country.  The partnership proved a success last weekend with the January 24 dedication of the Ducks Unlimited Wounded Warrior Blind Project at Quantico Marine Base in Quantico, Virginia.

Not only was the project dedicated, but with two of the three blinds complete, some war veterans actually got a chance to do some duck hunting.  David Elwing, Committee Chairman with Ducks Unlimited's Pentagon chapter, had the opportunity to take Marine Chief Warrant Officer Brad Garfield on his first duck hunt.  Elwing sent me these pictures of the construction and dedication of the blinds and of the successful results of CWO-4 Garfield's hunt.

 Construction

 Nearly finished

 Unveiling the permanent Wounded Warrior blind sign (l to r: Marine Lt. General George Flynn, Congressman  Rob Wittman (R-VA), Sgt Keith Buckmon; Dave Elwing, CWO-4 Brad Garfield)

Chief Warrant Officer Garfield with his (and Dave's) limits of ducks and Dave's dog Jade

Dave and CWO-4 Garfield hunted Blind # 1, located on the Potomac River, where Dave broke up ice before the hunt.  The other completed blind is located in the headwaters of Chopawamsic Creek, and the third blind, which is expected to be built this spring, will be near the mouth of Chopawamsic Creek.

Dave says the Wounded Warrior Blind Project came about through the efforts of the DU chapters from Richmond, Possum Point (Stafford/Quantico), the Pentagon and Alexandria.  Some of the $14,000 that DU contributed toward the cost came from an October fundraiser held by the Richmond Chapter.  Other funding came from the Virginia DU Executive Committee.

Most of the material was donated, and Quantico Marine Base provided gravel and heavy equipment used in building handicap van-accessible offloading sites for each blind.  Volunteers from the DU chapters, the community and the Marines provided the labor.

Saturday's hunters were identified by the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Regiment, which is based at Quantico and sought "wounded warrior hunters who could safely enjoy the day," Dave said.

CWO-4 Garfield, a longtime Marine, was seriously wounded in 2005 when he attempted to defuse an improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq.

According to Dave, the blinds will be made available to other disabled hunters through Quantico's Natural Resources & Environmental Affairs Office, which manages all hunting at the military base.

Ducks Unlimited is a volunteer organization that works to restore and protect waterfowl habitat and wetlands.  As of last year, it listed membership roles of nearly 800,000.  For more information on the Wounded Warrior Blind Project or Ducks Unlimited, contact David Elwing at dwelwing@erols.com.

Where to Hold a Regional Bloggers Meeting

Kristine recently sent out a very well-formulated set of guidelines for the proposed OBSRegional Bloggers Meetings and momentum is really building for these gatherings, which are planned to take place later this year.

The guidelines all made sense, and I, as someone who has volunteered to coordinate a meeting for my region, would happily comply with all of them.  The only problem I have is how to fund the shindig for Virginia and the surrounding area.

Well, I said to myself, if you can find enough people who want to come, you'll find a way to pay for it.  It will just work out.  But how to make people want to come?

To do that, you've got to pick a great venue, I continued talking to myself (it's gotten a lot easier to do this in public ever since those hands-free cell phone things came out; people in the grocery store think I'm talking on the phone when I'm really talking to nobody but the voices in my head.)

Anyway, picking a good place to hold it: it's got to be something a little different, something that will appeal to folks who love the outdoors.  Since it's a Virginia meeting, it makes sense to hold it somewhere surrounded by Virginia history.  And since the economy stinks, we should do it somewhere that is relatively inexpensive.

Unlike Rex, I don't have my own plantation, but we do have some plantations here in Virginia, and I can't think of a better one than Virginia icon Robert E. Lee's birthplace at Stratford.  Located on 1900 acres in Virginia's Northern Neck, Stratford offers lodging and facilities for large or small meetings.  The Potomac River property also offers hiking trails, and I heard a rumor that it's crawling with deer.  With the Potomac location, a Stratford bloggers' gathering would also offer attendees the chance to combine the meeting with a fishing trip.

I should also add that the Northern Neck is a beautiful part of the Commonwealth.  I've never spent much time there, but many people who do absolutely fall in love with the area.  Blogger meeting or no blogger meeting, I plan to visit Stratford sometime soon.

OK, so that's my idea for where to have the meeting.  Now comes the question of whether anyone else would want to go.  Kristine is working on a list of OBS members that includes their approximate locations, but other than Kevin, I currently don't know who else is blogging about the outdoors from my part of the country. 

So if you do blog out of Virginia or some nearby state, and if you'd be interested in coming to a meeting at Stratford or would like to suggest another place, please let me know. If there are no takers, I'm going to Albert's meeting in Florida. 

Meanwhile, I'll put in my earpiece and keep talking to myself.

Finally Some Snow; OK, Bring on the Spring?

I've been waiting all winter for some snow, and it finally happened yesterday.  The kids get to enjoy it, and I get to make some money.  Getting paid for snow removal is the good part; performing snow removal is a total drag.

I've been at it off-and-on since yesterday morning and have to go back out tonight to salt one more parking lot.  Hopefully, that will be the end of of this particular snow removal operation, and, with that, I've had enough winter.

Meanwhile, my fever has subsided, but I'm still not feeling up to full strength.  I'm counting on that returning by tomorrow and getting back to a normal writing schedule.

Sick

I had planned to write today about the Nations Outdoor Sportsmen's Show that took place over the weekend in Chantilly, Virginia.  The kids and I went on Saturday, and I went back yesterday with a friend and a notebook to look for the "big story" for this week.

Only, right after we left the show I started not feeling right.  By 8 p.m. I was shivering in bed with a fever.

I feel somewhat better today, but I'm just not feeling it when it comes to writing anything of substance.  Hopefully, I'll be back to full strength by tomorrow.

Lessons from the 2008 Deer Season

I've wanted to write a 2008 deer season wrap up but have been reluctant to do so considering that technically deer season lasts until late March in my county.  But I've only been out once since the regular season ended nearly three weeks ago, and I'm being increasingly pulled in other directions.  This is not to say that I've ruled out hunting or shooting an antlerless deer during our long special late season; but at least as far as the blog is concerned, I'm ready to close the book on the 2008 deer hunt:

Here are a few things I'll take with me into the fall of this year:

The special early season is better than the special late season.  Assuming 2009 regulations are the same as last year's, we can begin bow hunting antlerless deer in early September here in Loudoun County, Virginia.  The advantages to this early season over the current late general firearms season include: you don't have to worry about shooting a buck that has dropped its antlers in September; even though you can't shoot a buck, you know you have a whole season in which you can ahead of you; does shot in September count toward Earn a Buck, and does shot in Jan.-March do not; and with leaves on the trees, it's a lot easier to see the deer before they see you than it is now.

I love Rage broadheads.  I switched from Muzzy to three-blade Rage broadheads in November and was immediately impressed with their consistent flight.  You know "true as a field point."  When I finally shot a deer with a Rage-tipped arrow in late December and saw the huge hole that it tore threw both sides of the deer, I was convinced that this will be my broadhead of choice for years to come.  They are expensive but well worth the price.

Deer scents really do work.  Well at least good old Tink's # 69.  I had never had any success with scents until the mid-November 2008 day that I put some out and watched bucks start coming out of the woodwork less than 10 minutes later.

Which leads me to what is probably the most painful lesson I learned during the past season.  The first deer to approach that day I used the Tink's was a beautiful six-point buck.  As it stood broadside to me at about 10 yards I could see that it had a strange-looking shock of long dark hair growing between its antlers.  I considered shooting this buck but decided it was too young and let it go.  Later I told the story to my hunting partner Mike, aka the Captain.

"I'd have shot it," said Mike, who had used a buck tag on a big four-pointer a couple weeks earlier. 

"I should have," I replied.  "That deer probably got hit by a car later that evening.  If not, the guy hunting with a muzzleloader next door will kill it tomorrow."

A few weeks later, I emailed back and forth with a friend, who, like me, hunts small Loudoun County properties.  At that point, the season was drawing to a close and he was 0 for 2008.  He said he'd let several nice bucks walk while waiting for that trophy that never came.

"I guess I've been watching too many hunting shows," he wrote.

The point is, Quality Deer Management is a wonderful goal, but it's pretty hard to practice it effectively when you're hunting on properties of 20 acres or less in size.  In my area, hunters on surrounding properties kill a lot of the deer and far more of them are killed when they're hit by vehicles on the local roads.  The limited number of stand locations on these small properties also makes it hard to hunt that monster buck that fills your dreams.  If he's not coming by the stand you're in, you don't have a lot of choices for other spots to look for him.

So, if I encounter a buck like that six-pointer this year, especially if it's nearly mid-season and I have yet to fill a tag, I'm probably going to put QDM aside and put the deer down.

Finally, I learned a lot about butchering and processing my own deer.  In the past, I had done this on occasion but more often took my deer to a local processor.  This year however, caution about spending money brought on by the weak economy led me to butcher all four of the deer I killed myself.  Every time I do it it gets easier, and I'm delighted to have saved the approximately $350 I would have spent at the processor.

Now, if I could just figure out what I did spend that money on...

NRA Releases "Campaign Battle Plan"

National Rifle Association members recently received the NRA Political Victory Fund's "Campaign Battle Plan" to protect Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms in 2009 and 2010.  According to NRA-PVF Chairman Chris W. Cox, the next two years will be a critical period, requiring unprecedented vigilance by pro Second Amendment voters and public officials.

"America has elected the most anti-gun presidential candidate in history to the highest office in our land," Cox wrote in a letter to potential supporters.  "On top of that, you and I are facing bigger and more powerful anti-gun majorities in the Congress, controlled by iron-fisted gun-haters like Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers."

Cox urges NRA members to take action now rather than waiting for the president to sign anti-gun legislation into law.

"Because, when it all comes down to it, if we lose even the smallest battle for the Second Amendment, we lose that part of this precious freedom FOREVER."

Cox's letter concludes, as most NRA mailers do, by asking members for money.  The stated fundraising goal of the NRA Political Victory Fund is $3.75 million.  Among the things the organization would use that money for are:

• Recruiting pro-gun candidates to take on "D" and "F" rated candidates in 2010;

• Launching and sustaining pro-gun voter registration drives; and

• Fighting for or against ballot referenda and initiatives that impact our hunting and shooting rights.

These items and seven others are outlined and explained in the NRA-PVF's "Ten Point Plan for Victory."  The plan specifically mentions the need to "Win state elections in Virginia and New Jersey this year."  Both of these states will hold gubernatorial elections in November.

"These are bellwether races that will set the tone for 2010, when another 38 states will elect governors and state legislators across the country," says the plan.

For more information on the National Rifle Association, go to www.nra.org.  More on the potential threats posed by the new administration to Second Amendment rights can be found in Cox's article "Has the Gun Grabber's Time Come?" on page 16 of the February issue of the NRA publication American Hunter.

Today in History...

It's taken me two-and-a-half months to bring myself to write these words: Congratulations and good luck to President Barack H. Obama...

Nation's Outdoor Sportsmen's Show Returns to Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia's only major hunting and fishing expo returns this week to the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, with the Nation's Outdoor Sportsmen's Show opening Friday at 3 p.m.  The show runs until 8 p.m. Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday.

Many of the details of this year's show are still a little fuzzy, with the seminar schedule still up in the air as of Sunday afternoon and little information available on vendors or sponsors.

But don't let this stop you from setting aside some time this weekend to attend the show.  I was there all three days last year as a seminar speaker and had a great time, meeting lots of interesting people and getting a look at some exciting products.  This year, I'll be attending not as a part of the program but as a member of the outdoors media. 

In 2008, the show took place right after Christmas, on the last weekend of Virginia's deer season and conflicted with a Washington Redskins playoff game.  With the holidays and deer season already a few weeks in the past, and the NFL taking the weekend off, I would expect attendance at the Nation's Outdoor Sportsmen's Show to be better than last year.

So make your plans now.  Hope to see you there!

Bright Idea Blog Featured on Moms' Website

Mothers are the busiest people I know.  Working mothers, whether they work outside the home or run a home-based business, are the busiest of the busy.  Somewhere out there, though, is a busy mom who wants to make the time to teach her kids about hunting.

That's why I'm proud to announce that I have been added as the featured hunting "expert" on www.bizymoms.com.  My profile and and three columns I wrote for the site came online this week. They are featured in bizymoms.com's Expert Corner, a collection of material from individuals knowledgeable on dozens of different subjects, anything from  "creative self employment" to real estate to writing children's books to the numerous topics in Sports and Recreation--including the newest one, hunting.  

I'll be writing a new column or article for bizymoms.com every two weeks.  This should be fun and will give me the opportunity to reach some readers outside the normal outdoor blogging circles.  Maybe I'll even get to play a roll in bringing a new hunter to our beloved sport. 

I might have liked to be called something other than an "expert," but who am I to tell a bunch of busy moms how to run their website?

Authors Note: a special thanks goes out to my favorite busy mom, who took the picture on my bizymoms.com profile page.

Run Hard

Early in the morning, before the sun has risen over Camp Cowboy, a rabbit wakes up.  The rabbit knows it must outrun the fastest fox, or it will be eaten.

On the other side of the pond, a fox wakes up.  It knows it must run faster than the slowest rabbit, or it will not eat.

Whether you are a fox or a rabbit, you know what you've go to do.  And when day breaks, you'd best be runnin'!

Author's note: I didn't exactly make that up.  Actually, I took a quote that someone read at a business luncheon I attended today and re-worked it a little.  If I can find out where the original one came from, I'll publish it here with attribution.