11/17/08

Participants in the Wheelin’ Sportsmen NWTF’s Ultimate Team-Up enjoyed another great year of fellowship and white-tailed deer hunting. Click image for print quality version

EDGEFIELD, S.C.— Thirty hunters with disabilities from across the Southeast enjoyed two days of sharing stories, lots of laughs and some white-tailed deer hunting during the eighth annual Wheelin’ Sportsmen NWTF Ultimate Team-Up, held Nov. 12 to Nov. 13, 2008, at the National Wild Turkey Federation’s headquarters in Edgefield.

The event paired veterans with disabilities with experienced hunting mentors and gave all participants an opportunity to forge new friendships and enjoy time afield.

Since its founding in 1973, the NWTF has made continual advancements in its mission of wild turkey conservation and protecting America’s hunting traditions. Its Wheelin’ Sportsmen NWTF outreach program provides people with disabilities the opportunity to participate in outdoor activities, including hunting, fishing and archery.

Other partners in the event included the Disabled American Veterans, HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Columbia, S.C., Primos Hunting Calls and Ameristep Hunting Blinds.

One pairing at the Ultimate Team-Up included Clint Jones, who is stationed at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga., and was injured by shrapnel while serving in Afghanistan, and Benny Smith from Anderson, S.C. The duo shared a hunting blind just outside of Edgefield, and Clint used Benny’s .30-06 rifle to bag a nice doe at dusk.

“My hands were shaking the whole time,” said an excited Jones, who immediately called friends and family to spread the good news as soon as he was able to get a cell phone signal. “This is awesome to come out here and take part in something like this.”

The two shared mutual excitement with other hunters back at NWTF headquarters as they admired the day’s harvest. Just hours before, many of the men had been strangers, but after a couple of hours of experiencing the fellowship of hunting they were buddies.

“I told Clint my gun was sighted in straight and true, and he didn’t miss,” said Smith, patting his new friend on the back. “He might have been shaking like a leaf the whole time, but he didn’t miss. I just want to say thanks to the NWTF and their partners for making this happen, as well as the local landowners for letting us hunt on their property.”

Illana Burkhart, Wheelin’ Sportsmen NWTF program coordinator, said that seeing the enjoyment on peoples’ faces as they experience the thrill of the outdoors is one of the most satisfying parts of her job.

“Getting people involved and helping them discover a new hobby, or rediscover something they loved to do before an injury is really rewarding,” said Burkhart. “The NWTF has always been a proud supporter of our servicemen and women and their families, and this is just our way of showing our appreciation for all that they do for our country. We also want people to know that just because they have a disability doesn’t mean they have to give up a way of life that they love.”

To learn more about Wheelin’ Sportsmen NWTF, Click Here.

New regulations concerning venison donations by meat processors have led many area processors to stop their donation programs.

Deer hunters would donate venison to a processor, which then gives meat away to area food banks. The state reimburses processors for the time it takes to prepare the meat.

BRIAN BASHAM/TRIBUNE Jeremy Rodewald transports a deer carcass from cold storage to the cutting block at Hoffman’s Town & Country Meat Market in Detroit Lakes.

“The regulations made it hard for us to put out a good product,” said Henry Hoffman, owner of Hoffman’s Town & Country in Detroit Lakes.” 

The new rules have come about because of concerns over lead contamination in venison.

Alice Hammer, an administrative assistant at the Becker County Food Pantry, said that over 2,000 pounds of venison was donated to the pantry last winter.

The donated venison used to come to food banks in a variety of forms such as whole cuts, stew meat and ground venison.

However, the concerns over lead contamination have led the state Department of Agriculture to prohibit donating ground venison.

Hoffman said he questions the value of providing the stew meat.

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THE POST-STANDARD

Central NY Local News from The Post-Standard Daily Newspaper

There’s not much that Lin Menninger won’t try when it comes to the outdoors.

“I tell this to everyone. I’m a man trapped in a woman’s body. I love all this outdoors stuff,” the 56-year-old Lakeport resident said Tuesday, while walking to a camouflaged ground blind on a farm in Kirkville, which she set up to bowhunt for deer.

“Even my sisters, they don’t hang with me. They think I’m weird, you know, I’m the oddball.”

The recently retired special education teaching assistant has an impressive outdoor resume that includes being a seasoned hunter, angler, professional mantracker (who teaches both DEC and police) a Search and Rescue team member (she handles the tracking dog), hunting and bowhunting safety instructor, NRA-approved firearms instructor, competitive archer and trap shooter.

Most recently, she has become involved with Advanced Strategies Adventures, an organization dedicated to getting young, old and disabled outdoor enthusiasts into the hunting and fishing scenes.

One thing for certain, her final years at the Pine Grove Middle School in the East Syracuse-Minoa school district were eye-opening.

With a reputation as a disciplinarian, this 5-foot, 7-inch, 138-pound dynamo commanded respect and often dealt with students no one else wanted to handle. During her last three years she formed The Great Outdoors Club - a group that introduced students to hunting, fishing, trapping and a variety of other outdoor activities.

“I started getting the kids together because they didn’t connect anywhere. Initially, I was told it couldn’t be a club because their grades were so bad. No one was eligible to be in a real club,” she said. “So I asked the principal (Lee Carulli) if it could be a club for community service.”

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By Bob Frye
TRIBUNE-REVIEW OUTDOORS EDITOR
Sunday, October 26, 2008

A broken back suffered while stationed in Bosnia with the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division in 1995 changed Robert Morris’ life in many ways.

He’s an “incomplete paraplegic” now. That means he can stand and even walk very short distances with the help of his braces and/or canes. But the once-active outdoorsman spends much of his time in a wheelchair.

That does not keep him out of the woods, though.

The 37-year-old who grew up in Vanderbilt and now lives in Grindstone, is as passionate a hunter today as he ever was. Any frustrations he experiences are generally the same ones felt by anyone who’s tried to cross paths with a particular wild animal in a particular season at a particular place.

“Sometimes, on these doe hunts, the deer I want to shoot at are busy getting out of there. And the ones I can’t shoot at, like bucks, stand there and look at you,” he said.

But at least he’s getting out. That’s more than many would-be handicapped hunters are doing.

No one knows just how many disabled hunters there are in Pennsylvania. The state Game Commission issues permits to those who need to hunt from a vehicle, but spokesman Jerry Feaser could not say how many have been issued. It’s true, too, that once a permit is issued, the commission does not track it, so some permits on the books may belong to hunters now deceased, he said.

What is known is that, according to statistics from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 39 percent of the nation’s residents participated in wildlife related recreation in 2001. Just 12 percent of America’s disabled did the same.

Not surprisingly, physical limitations were identified as the primary limiting factor in keeping them from getting outdoors.

“Nature is not always wheelchair friendly,” as Morris said.

There is help available, however.

Over the past three days, for example, South Fayette Township held its sixth annual doe hunt for disabled sportsmen. Thanks to a corps of volunteers who do everything from put on deer drives to drag dead deer out, and donations and grants that provide any needed equipment, the township was able to get as many as 10 handicapped hunters a day into the woods around Boys Home Park and the Alpine Club.

“Our philosophy is, we take away the can’t,” said Jerry Males, the township’s director of parks and recreation. “We can’t do anything about the want, but we’ll take away the can’t.

“I tell these guys that if they can get to my doorstep, I’ll get them hunting. And if they can’t get to my doorstep, we’ll go get them.”

Sometimes, South Fayette’s disabled hunters — like Morris, who’s participated every year but one — kill deer. Always, though, they have fun, like when they gather with volunteers for lunch. It was chili Thursday, stew Friday, and a pig roast Saturday.

“This is as much about the social experience as it is about hunting,” Males said. “It has very much a hunting camp atmosphere.”

There’s a real demand for such events, said Illana Burkhart, program coordinator for the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Wheelin’ Sportsmen, an initiative aimed at getting the disabled into hunting, fishing and the like. About 20,000 disabled sportsmen attended Wheelin’ events nationwide last year alone, she said.

“And I think we could easily triple that,” Burkhart said. “I get 10 to 15 requests a day from people looking for events to go to, and we just don’t have anything started in some areas yet.”

But so much more could be done, Males said. It just takes organization.

“We’re trying to show people that you can do this,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be big. If you can only take four or five guys out, that’s four or five guys. That’s a start.”

It’s one that’s appreciated, too, Morris said.

“There are a lot of good people out there working hard to give people opportunities to hunt that maybe they wouldn’t have otherwise,” he said. “It’s a good thing.”

Bob Frye can be reached at bfrye@tribweb.com or 724-838-5148.

NEWTOWN, Conn. — The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) — the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry — issued the following statement in response to study results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released by the North Dakota Department of Health, showing no evidence that lead or “traditional” ammunition pose any health risk to those who consume harvested game meat.

Recognizing that hunters and their families may be concerned or confused by recent news reports about the study, NSSF encourages every individual who may consume harvested game meat to read the NSSF statement, fact box and CDC report made available in this news release.

The CDC report on human lead levels of hunters in North Dakota has confirmed what hunters throughout the world have known for hundreds of years, that traditional ammunition poses no health risk to people and that the call to ban lead ammunition was nothing more than a scare tactic being pushed by anti-hunting groups.

In looking at the study results, the average lead level of the hunters tested was lower than that of the average American. In other words, if you were to randomly pick someone on the street, chances are they would have a higher blood lead level than the hunters in this study.

Also of note, the lead levels of children under 6 in the study had a mean of just 0.88, less than half the national average. Children over 6 had even lower lead levels. The CDC’s level of concern for lead in children is 10.

A media advisory released by the North Dakota Department of Health cited the highest lead level reading of an adult study participant as still being lower than the CDC lead level threshold of concern for a child, and significantly lower than the CDC accepted threshold of concern for an adult. Furthermore, during a tele-press conference hosted by the ND Department of Health, officials stated they could not verify whether this adult even consumed game harvested with traditional ammunition. Correspondingly, the study only showed an insignificant 0.3 micrograms per deciliter difference between participants who ate wild game harvested with traditional ammunition and non-hunters in the non-random control group.

Also demonstrating their understanding that game harvested with traditional ammunition is safe to consume, the ND Department of Health, following the release of the CDC study results, encouraged hunters to continue donating venison to local food banks as long as processing guidelines were adhered to.

NSSF was critical of the ND Department of Health when earlier this year the Department overreacted to a non-peer reviewed study by a dermatologist who claimed to have collected packages of venison from food banks that contained lead fragments. North Dakota health officials did not conduct their own study, but merely accepted the lead-contaminated meat samples from the dermatologist. The ND Department of Health then ordered all food banks to discard their venison. Serious questions were raised in a subsequent investigative journalism piece published this summer about the scientific validity of the testing of venison samples from the ND food pantries, including concerns regarding the non-random selection of the samples.

It has since come to light that the dermatologist’s efforts were not the independent actions of a concerned hunter, as he claimed. It was an orchestrated strategy by the Peregrine Fund — an organization dedicated to eliminating the use of lead ammunition for hunting. The dermatologist serves on the Fund’s Board of Directors.

For more than a century, hundreds of millions of Americans have safely consumed game harvested using traditional hunting ammunition, and despite there being no scientific evidence that consuming the game is endangering the health of individuals, special interest groups like the Peregrine Fund and anti-hunting groups are continuing to press state legislatures around the country to support a ban on this common, safe and effective ammunition.

These politically driven groups understand that while an outright ban on hunting would be nearly impossible to achieve, dismantling the culture of hunting one step at a time is a realistic goal. Banning lead ammunition is the first step of this larger political mission. We can only hope that with the conclusive CDC results concerning the safety of traditional ammunition, legislatures across the country will listen to science and not anti-hunting radicals.

The notion by some, that any amount of lead is a “concern,” is scientifically unfounded rhetoric that runs contrary to nationwide, long-standing standards of evaluation. The NSSF is pleased that hunters and others can now comfortably continue consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition that has been properly field dressed and butchered, yet we remain unsettled that for so many months good and safe food was taken out of the mouths of the hungry as nothing more than a political gambit by special interest groups.

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