Leopold with his bird dog, Gus.

January (the 11^th to be exact) would have been Aldo Leopold’s 125^th birthday.  What is remarkable is that people still notice and publicize his birthday 64 years after he died.  It speaks to the legacy that Leopold left with his land ethic and stewardship message and his still well-read book A Sand County ALMANAC (published in 1949 a year after his death).

Leopold’s message of restoration of the land and concern for the health of wildlife echoes the mission of Pheasants Forever.  Leopold was a hunter and enjoyed hunting pheasants.  He was an astute observer of the natural world and worked to live a peaceful co-existence with nature while understanding the need for balance.  He raised his five children to also appreciate the natural world and time spent outdoors was special to all of them.  I think he would have liked our No Child Left Indoors® initiative and I know he would have approved of the Leopold Education Project and the work PF does with educators, our chapters and others to teach about the importance of habitat and restoration of land.

If you have not read A Sand County ALMANAC, I really encourage you to do so (available in paperback from Pheasants Forever).  If you don’t know about the Leopold Education Project, PF’s award-winning conservation education program, and the materials we have, go to www.lep.org for more information.  Leopold’s messages are even more important today and can be used in schools, book clubs, churches (great Earth Day material), community centers, PF chapter events and university classes.

Get ‘em Outdoors is written by Cheryl Riley, Pheasants Forever’s Vice President of Education and Outreach. Email her at CRiley@pheasantsforever.org. 

Upon graduation from high school, Ashley enrolled in Illinois State University at Bloomington with a major in geography and agronomy and a minor in environmental science, her choices influenced by her involvement with PF. Just recently she founded a college PF chapter at ISU – the fourth college PF chapter in the country – and is looking forward to doing habitat and other projects with its members. Ashley says her work nationally with the Youth Leadership Council and locally with her chapter has been life changing. “It led me to a career that will affect the rest of my life and how I view the world.”

 I could not be more proud of Ashley. I know that our organization’s future will be strong because of Ashley and other young people like her. Our investment in her has been repaid many times and will continue to be as Ashley enters the work force, volunteers in her community, has a family and becomes a conscientious citizen who cares about conservation.

 Who are the “Ashleys” in your world? What opportunities are you providing them? I’d love to hear their stories!

 Get ‘em Outdoors is written by Cheryl Riley, Pheasants Forever’s Vice President of Education and Outreach. Email her at CRiley@pheasantsforever.org. 

Right now they are having a chance-of-a-lifetime auction to raise money for their programs. Beginning at 1 p.m. EDT on December 5, Pass It On – Outdoor Mentors will be auctioning a spring 2012 Kansas turkey hunt, with lots of goodies, on GunBroker.com.  The winning bidder will hunt for three days with Jim Zumbo and a youth on the Z Bar Ranch in south-central Kansas.  This is an all-expense paid hunt, including tags, licenses, travel and lodging.  The auction will be featured on the GunBroker.com homepage for seven days.  Here is a link for more information:  http://www.outdoormentors.org/zumbohunt.htm

Please consider joining the auction.  It will be a great trip to win for you and a young person in your life.  Good luck!

Scenes like this are happening all across pheasant country this fall.

volunteers are not only going afield, they are also providing opportunities for kids to hunt.  Throughout the pheasant range, chapters are hosting youth mentor hunts. 

 If you have not participated in one of these events, you may not realize how much work is involved before the actual hunt.  Mentors and dog handlers must be recruited, sites secured, events for the day organized and people assigned to cover, meals planned and food bought, donations solicited, publicity arranged and on and on. It takes a committee of dedicated Pheasants Forever volunteers.  At the minimum, the hunts cover firearms safety and trap shooting before going out to hunt.  Many provide mini seminars on game management, dog handling, conservation ethics, pheasant cleaning and cooking and even how to ask permission to hunt on private land.  At some hunts, kids are not only fed lunch but go home with vests, hats, sweatshirts, mugs and other souvenirs of the day.  I guarantee you that everyone has a great time.

Our events get a lot of coverage from local media too, like this hunt held by the Black Hawk County Pheasants Forever chapter in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  And Pennsylvania Outdoor Life covered in depth the Northeast Pennsylvania Pheasants Forever chapter youth hunt on their program (10/16 video). 

 These are only two examples of proud communities all over the country.  If you are a pheasant hunter and care about passing on the tradition you love, please consider contacting a Pheasants Forever chapter near you and offering to help with their youth hunt or any other activities they are doing for the next generation.  You will have more fun than you can imagine!

 Get ‘em Outdoors is written by Cheryl Riley, Pheasants Forever’s Vice President of Education and Outreach. Email her at CRiley@pheasantsforever.org. 

PF's FOREVER Shooting Sports program aims to create shooting opportunities and a gateway into conservation.

Pheasants Forever launched its new FOREVER Shooting Sports program this past July. We are excited about the potential of this new program because we know it’s a good addition to our No Child Left Indoors® initiative.

Shooting is a great way to get kids and their families involved and girls enjoy it as much as boys. Did you know it’s a sport seeing actual growth in numbers? It’s not only fun; it teaches participants how to handle guns safely. There are lots of good shooting programs out there and we don’t want to re-invent the wheel, just provide additional opportunities.

For the first year, the program is targeting five states – Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Ohio. Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever chapters in these states will be able to apply for grants to start recreational shooting programs. In some of the states, chapters will enlist the help of scholastic clay coaches and teams to mentor new shooters. There are guidelines that need to be followed including helping other chapters and providing youth leadership opportunities. What we would really like to do is form shooting or conservation clubs where young people can shoot regularly and also be involved in other fun outdoor activities. We believe that repeated opportunities and good mentors are what make a difference between an occasional shooter and a future dedicated outdoors person and conservationist.

All of our chapters can apply for ammunition grants that will pay for half of the ammunition at a shooting event. We truly have an opportunity to help our chapters grow and offer fun events in their communities. It’s so important to get our kids involved in something that helps them interact with others and gets them away from computers and television. I think this just might do that for many.

What shooting experiences – plinking, competing or mentoring – are you involved in?

Get ‘em Outdoors is written by Cheryl Riley, Pheasants Forever’s Vice President of Education and Outreach. Email her at CRiley@pheasantsforever.org. 

The Eye of the Hunter™ Extreme Huntress Contest will be judging 500 words-or-less essays about why you are the most hardcore huntress along with two photos of you hunting. If you win, you will be declared the Extreme Huntress 2012 and will win a trip to Africa to hunt cape buffalo plus be completely outfitted. The hunt will also be filmed and will air on NBC Sports. Deadline is October 1, 2011, so hurry and enter. Let me know if you win!

When kids do something like plant a tree, that particular tree suddenly becomes more personal and important.

Pheasant Forever’s Leopold Education Project just convened in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and participants were treated to learning more about how Aldo Leopold formulated his land ethic from his early career with the U.S. Forest Service.  At the beginning of his career, Leopold was given the responsibility of working with landowners on grazing issues and put in charge of developing consistent grazing laws.  Leopold’s work with private landowners set a precedent for looking at how we treat land and his definition of conservation as “a state of harmony between men and land.”  Leopold was always interested in helping his students and everyone he encountered to see, understand and enjoy the land upon which they lived. 

I believe that personal connection with land is vital.  Take for instance a small child that plants a tree and returns to watch “his” tree grow.  Or the young girl who goes fishing in a nearby river and is suddenly concerned about how clean the water is for fish.  Or the first-time hunter that doesn’t flush a pheasant and begins to look differently at the landscape and why the pheasants don’t appear to be there.  Their connections are suddenly personal.

 What’s your connection to land or to a place that makes you want to understand more and take care of it so you can enjoy it?  Share your story.

The author enjoys sunset on a Boundary Waters canoe trip in northern Minnesota.

I have always loved summer evenings – some of my favorite childhood memories are of summer evenings playing with the neighbor kids, walking to get ice cream, catching lightening bugs and star gazing.  Even as an adult, I love summer evenings, especially just at dusk when it’s not quite day and not fully night.  There’s something magical about that time when the natural world begins to change as some animals go to bed and others come out.  Have you ever seen bats emerging at dusk, darting here and there?  Or watched a chimney swift circle a chimney that holds its nest and then dive into it?  Living up north now, we can enjoy longer summer evenings too.  My husband and I like to take a walk after dinner before it’s too dark.  Sometimes we walk the neighborhood and sometimes we walk the jetty that goes out into the St. Croix River in the town near where we live.  I love to see families out and about at that time of day. 

 Have you ever canoed at dusk?  The photo I’m sharing was taken last fall in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota.  Campfires on summer evenings are just icing on the cake!  Evenings can be the best time to fish too.  And it’s a great time to watch deer and other animals in fields along country roads.  Night sounds are different too – owls hooting, coyotes howling, frogs calling for mates.

I hope you’ll take time to introduce kids to this magical time of day.  You don’t even have to venture from your yard.  Our neighbors next door have a fire pit and summer evenings the kids are playing hide and seek and roasting marshmallows over the fire.  We’ve had a good crop of lightening bugs this summer too – along with mosquitoes.  Make sure you aren’t missing out this summer on those twilight moments.  And if you’ve put on the bug repellent, why not stay out to watch the stars emerge or the moon come up!

Campers play a pheasant predator/prey game at T.U.N.E. camp.

I have fond memories of going to camp when I was young – 4-H camp, church camp and other camps my parents thought good for me.  It was a time of making new friends, playing, learning new skills, discovering leadership roles and coming home tired and happy.  As an adult I have helped run camps and have seen kids experiencing the same things I did.  Nowadays, camps take on a new significance in that most are OUTDOORS!  With a generation that spends most of their time in air conditioning and plugged into some kind of electronics, camp provides a chance to get away from that.  Pheasants Forever sponsors a camp called The Ultimate Nature Experience (T.U.N.E.), which is geared to habitat, conservation and outdoors skills.  Kids canoe, fly fish, shoot guns, learn about dog training and discover why habitat is important to wildlife.  T.U.N.E. camps have been sponsored by PF chapters in Minnesota and Colorado and next year in Illinois.  Some PF chapters also sponsor their own camps and for years Iowa chapters have sent boys to a Hunting and Conservation Camp and girls to Outdoor Journey for Girls camp.  PF volunteers help teach at the camps too. 

There are lots of camps out there.  If you are checking one out for your children, make sure they have a reputation for being safe and responsible.  Ask other parents who have sent their kids.  If your young person is not interested, encourage them with the “try something new” argument.  They may not realize what they are missing.

Did you go to camp?  What are your memories?  If you have kids, are you sending them to camp this summer?  Weigh in with your thoughts!

PF chapters sponsor summer camps around the country - a great way to both play and learn in the outdoors.

There really is a concern all over the country about kids not getting outdoors and many organizations are joining forces to try to do something about this.  One of the most recent groups to form, and both Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever are members, is the Outdoors Alliance for Kids, better known as OAK.  This national alliance is working to reconnect children, youth and families with nature and the outdoors for their health and the health of the planet.  OAK has created a Get Your Nature On challenge to support the Let’s Move Outside Campaign to end childhood obesity within one generation.  Did you know that one in three children are now considered obese?  I don’t know about you, but that statistic really bothers me.  To get our young people healthy, we have to get them outdoors and active.

If you would like to get involved in the Get Your Nature On challenge, go to Outdoors Alliance for Kids and you can sign up to take the challenge, report what you are doing and even earn patches.

Pheasants Forever’s No Child Left Indoors® initiative is all about getting kids outdoors and teaching them activities they can use for a lifetime, like shooting, hunting, fishing, archery, camping.  With the help of our chapters, kids not only get to experience such activities, they get to spend time with adults who care that they have a positive experience.  Most of our events encourage family participation too.  We even like to have the dogs come along!

Summer is a great time to be outdoors.  Please make sure you are taking a kid with you!

Get ‘em Outdoors is written by Cheryl Riley, Pheasants Forever’s Vice President of Education and Outreach.