Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

I've owned my oldest accutrigger for about 10 years now I think, and it was a used rifle when I got it.

I posted this on the main Campfire forum. Not 1 response so far. Kinda ironic that every kind of degenerate topic can get tons of responses, but ask a question about a very worthwhile cause and all you hear is crickets. Anybody here have any ideas?

I am the president of our local PF chapter and we are going to hold a Youth Outdoor Activity Day late this summer. This will be a free thing for kids to come out and experience a lot of different outdoor hobbies like: trap shooting, BB/Pellet gun, archery, orienteering/geocaching, shoot/don't shoot course, mock blood trail, trapping demos, slingshots, casting clinic, etc. We are going to ask conservation orgs to come out and host a youth activity of their choosing. We cannot shoot rifles of any kind at this facility, but we have plenty of room.

My question to the 'fire is can you think of an outdoor activity that we could put on for kids to do? All ages of kids will be participating and we need things for young kids as well as old kids. Prolly looking at 200 kids is my guess. If you have any ideas of things we could do, I would really appreciate hearing them. After all....it's for the kids!

How about a Pocket Gopher trapping clinic? Teach them something that they could go out and make a few bucks doing and help out the farmers at the same time. That could build relationships for future hunting access on private lands as well.

I added it to my list Roody7! anybody know of any groups that i should include? I believe I have all the major ones on my list.

Could you get away with slingshot or archery shoots? How 'bout a clinic on building fishing rods? A basic compass use course? Not everyone owns a GPS. Wood duck or blue bird box building?

Wild life track identification?

Build some wood duck houses.

That's a good one wabigoon.

Maybe to expand on that idea a bit...

You'd have to split the kids up into groups but you could do a nature walk where the kids could be shown:
1) How to identify any local wildlife tracks*
2) Local edible wild plants
3) Local poisonous wild plants
4) Keep a scorecard of various local wildlife that the kids can check-off when they spot them on the walk.

*Although you might not have any guaranteed tracks to work with unless you cheat. Get a hold of some plaster molds of real tracks and either leave them along a trail for the kids to find or use them to make a fake animal trail. Then have the kids identify them using a simple photocopied sheet with local wildlife prints on it.

Have a display of various animal pelts that the kids can handle and identify.

A firearms display with a variety of different types and descriptions: Muzzleloaders, falling block single shots, lever action, bolt action, pump action, semi-auto, etc.

Let the kids make pine cone bird feeders that they can take home (fun for the little ones).
1) Make a small hole in the pine cone
2) Run a string through the hole
3) Smear with peanut butter
4) Roll in bird seed mix
5) Hang on tree at home

Steps 1 & 2 can be done before hand so the little ones only have to do the rest.

Slingshot and archery are already on the docket. building rods....that takes some specialized equipment and materials. Dunno if I have access to that. Yes, orienteering and geocaching are both included (tentatively). assuming we have the manpower to staff them. that will be the next thing, can we get enough people to staff all these things! Bird houses are covered in a separate event later in the year with a local group really well. Great ideas!


wildlife track id....hmmm. How am I going to get all those stinkin' critters to parade by the booth in an orderly fashion and lay down tracks? Just kidding. I plan on having our naturalist from the DNR come out and I think he may have some cast tracks. that is a good idea.

Great ideas guys, keep them coming. The event is Aug 24, so plenny of time. And if anyone wants to bring a carload of kids, it will be a good time. I will update you more as we get closer.

Hey, maybe Stan can run a boot for us! Stan, you up for a MN roadtrip?

By the way, not one stinkin' reply on the campfire main forum. All talk over there, nobody walks the walk. I knew you guys would be better!

Oh wow! Time flies I guess. I had a savage/stevens 200 in .243 that was a lights out shooter. I traded it to get a win push feed m70 fwt, in .243 which I sold to pay for a divorce.

BM,

Trying to think of things kids like.... atv riding, fishing stuff, learning survival stuff like shelter (forts), fire stating (safely of course), casting, cooking... even if it's hotdogs over a fire, making a still for water, tree identification, animal and/or animal track i.d., trapping, pan-fishing, canoeing, climbing rocks or rock wall, ropes courses, fishing lure making.

Sling shot stuff is cool, set up targets and have contest of some sort?

Check with Capra's in Blaine. They're good people.

I like those ideas. All relatively easy and informative. The compass course is a big deal. When we had hunters safety classes,even a lot of adults didn't know how to use a compass. Set up a course with tokens or "treasures"?

When are you going to have this? If the timing is right, I could help you out.

It's getting loony over there. Harder and harder to go on there every day.

BM, check with Geocaching.com for help with GPS, there should be members in your area that geocache. If I were a little bit closer would love to help with that.

Map reading and compass use. teach them to shoot an azimuth.

I like the bird house ideas too.

Not to change the subject but I am down in Cotter Ar. and hit a gun store today that was selling 22 ammo. Blazer 40 gr. 57.00 a brick and no limit. They had about a 100 bricks sitting out. My buddy thought it might be a ok deal but my thought was it was about double what it should be going for. I / we did not by any but I did buy a couple pounds of Varget this afternoon at another gun shop.

Cool! I snapped up a pound of varget a fee weeks back as well. My .22lf spot dried up though.

BM-
We have soemthing similar called Sportsmen for Youth. Upon entry every kid gets a t-shirt. We have raffle prizes donated by local businesses too. Fire Dept. and EMS bring their rigs down for tours, local Steelheaders have a fishing simulator. Hunter Safety has treestand with harness set up. LaPorte skeet throwers rep brings by a machine that throws foam "frisbees" up for archers to shoot at. Kayak company brings a half dozen boats for the kids to try. There's various wildlife and taxidermy displays. Conservation Officers are there. Boy Scouts camp out and show the kids how it's done. We have some mountain men there camped out and they bring throwing hatchets and a big cross section of a stump to throw at. Our live fire has trap, .22, archery, 3-D archery, BB guns, turkey shoot with 20 gauge, and shotgun shell reloading. I'm just hitting the high points, but we've been doing it for over 20 years and we get about 2000 kids each year.

Ok, now I wanna come and throw some hatchets! Nuttin like a good hatchet throwin!

BM, anyone mention Biking related events, off road, on road, safety, maintenance etc...