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Hello Venture Crew Parents and Scouts,
It has been a while since we have spammed your inbox with Venture Crew announcements. Sorry about that.
Since the last communication, we have had two Venture Crew Campouts ...
A dove hunt in Sept, and a deer hunt in Oct (last weekend).
The Dove hunt was a lot of fun. The weather was wonderful. The doves were a lot harder to hit than most of the inexperienced hunters counted on. Generally, that means the doves were safe :-)
We did manage to have a dozen or so doves to clean and cook. We all learned that cleaning doves is essentially a manual process using mostly your hands and no other tools. I'll let the boys explain how that is done :-) After wrapping them in bacon and grilling them, they were a tasty addition to our lunch menu.
We also managed to goof around between the morning and evening hunts. The left-over hot dogs and buns were sacrificed on Rob Carringer's Clay Pigeon launcher and were shot with the shotguns. Been a long time since I've seen boys laugh so hard. We also managed to find some raw potatoes to launch as well :-) And ... pretty much anything else we could find ... There were a few sunflowers that gave me the evil eye, so I had to dispatch them as well ...
We may make a Sept Dove hunt a regular feature ... the trip was well attended and a tremendous amount of fun. If you could not attend this year, consider joining us next fall.
The Deer hunt was a fantastic experience. The Texas Youth Hunting Program is a 1st class outfit. Each scout had an extremely experienced guide. We learned about the lifestyle and habits of these magnificent animals and how healthy populations are maintained via hunting. For the youth that managed to bag a deer, they had hands on experience with field dressing, skinning, and quartering the deer. The guides were very knowledgeable and we had a science experiment style education as we processed the deer (we learned about the functions of each organ of the deer and how to identify each organ).
We had some great wildlife viewing from the deer blinds. Bobcats, Coyotes, trophy deer, skunks, raccoons, eagles to name a few animals. Very cool experience. I just wish I would have remembered to take photo's of the animals. The animals were so beautiful, we were often mesmerized and forgot to snap photos.
We stayed at a ranch that breeds trophy bucks for a living (with great food and lodging provided). Picture a 570 acre ranch with hundreds of trophy deer. 8 point, 10 point, and even 12 point bucks were common. Normal population density of deer is 1 deer per 10 acres. In this intensively managed ranch, there were 2 deer per acre ! Lots of beautiful animals.
Two out of three of our scouts managed to bag a deer and they were very proud (along with their Dad's). We were equally proud of the scout that did not get a deer as he exercised good judgment and would not take a marginal shot.
All in all, these were great experiences. Please consider attending venture crew activities with your son's. Sharing these activities with your son is priceless. Memories that will last a lifetime ....
We have another activity in Nov. We will camp with Troop 261 at the annual shooting campout. But ... we will be cooking on our own with a smoker (brisket, sausage, etc) and will be attempting to locate some more exotic weapons for the venture crew members to shoot. Michael Johnson and Casey Carringer (our program advisor and VP of Program respectively) will send out more info on this as soon as we can. If you have some exotic stuff we can shoot, let us know.
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