By Bruce Ross, Executive Director
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s March 2020 Newsletter edition.
Event Season has started! I went to two well-attended and fun events at Northern Wetlands (Rhinelander) and Fax Valley (Appleton) in the past 10 days. Tim Lehman’s chapter team managed to avoid a major late-winter snowfall (18” last year!) and Brad Miller’s team successfully transitioned to a new venue—great teamwork to pull off these major events—kicking off our event year with big successes. I am professionally impressed with how smoothly these complex events came off. In the naval services (Coast Guard and Navy), “Bravo Zulu” is the signal flag hoist that signifies a mission well done—so BZ to these two chapters for setting a high bar for the chapters that follow!
I have some prior experience pulling off successful missions—it takes commitment and organization and ingenuity and a willingness to expand your comfort zone. And these events are great leadership “factories”. One of the biggest challenges is how we grow the next generation of WWA chapter leaders. Chapter Chairs have this implicit responsibility on their volunteer “plate”, so thanks to all of you who have embraced this leadership mantle.
Bruce had his first “big win” at our Valley banquet last week, scoring this duck call.
I have made a commitment (again) to get to all of the events this year… but one thing I hope not to repeat is last year’s remarkable run of bad raffle luck—there are still no significant prizes in my rear-view mirror. That’s if you don’t count the duck call I managed to snag at Appleton last week (which is as close to a gun as I’ve gotten at any event I’ve attended!). But it’s a really nice call, made by Appleton committee member Dominic Pingel and blows quite nicely…. We hope to feature some of his work on our e-storefront later this year.
The next event I’ll have a chance to win something at is Baraboo THIS SATURDAY – get your tickets now or miss the opportunity to rub my nose in your winning ways!
WWA’s Development Committee met last week; good energy. They re-structured the full committee (now chaired by Director and former President Pat Smith) into more-focused subcommittees to divide-and-conquer the work. Four sub-committees – and responsibilities are shown below. Want to play a role?
- CHAPTER sub-committee: How can we help each chapter be more successful (training, merchandise, organizing help, etc.), and how can we expand the number of chapters around the state?
- MERCHANDISE sub-committee: Obtaining attractive and profitable merchandise to sell in store or provide as prizes at events.
- CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPS sub-committee: Establishing mutually beneficial partnerships with organizations that do business in Wisconsin. We will provide a valuable WWA service to such businesses – how can we make that first contact?
- PHILANTHROPY sub-committee: Providing an opportunity for individuals to create a legacy through WWA (sustaining memberships, donations, estate planning, retirement planning).
Each of these sub-committees has a chair and members, but there is plenty of room for more – many hands make light work. This is important work to support the mission work of WWA – let me know if you’d like to play a role (bruceross@wi.rr.com).
The Blackwell Students that make WWA’s wood duck boxes
Wood duck boxes. It’s that time of year when your wood duck boxes should be made ready for a new nesting season. Check out the latest information on WWA’s wood duck program and an interesting article on the students that make these nesting boxes for us.
Habitat History. Jim Freck and the Habitat Committee have been busy this winter. One initiative was to make sure we know exactly how much habitat acreage we’ve put into the ground since WWA’s founding 36 years ago. This is a bigger challenge than you might think. If you were playing music back in 1984, you probably played it on a cassette player, if not an 8-track. Today you be hard-pressed to find either of those. Well, the same is true of our history of projects, some of it is paper, some of it is spreadsheet, some of it is, well, missing.
Pines project is one of WWA’s historic project sites in Columbia County. Do we have your project listed? Let us know!
Having personally talked to many of the early habitat guys, they were more interested in putting the improvements into the ground than they were in recording salient details, but now we want to make sure we have all the history we can gather. So if you have particular project in mind, take a look at this spreadsheet to Make sure your project is included. If not let us know at wwainfo@centurytel.net.