fly fishing, conservation and politics.
By Tom Sadler
Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing has become a valued participant at the Jim Range National Casting Call. This year Ed Nicholson, PHW’s president, was on hand to “christen” the Mending, PHW’s warrior built drift boat.
After a brief ceremony the Mending was launched and proceeded out to the Potomac and a successful morning of shad fishing
By Tom Sadler
Here is the Wildlife Management Institute’s announcement:
The Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) announced the launch of a new Website dedicated to sustaining and enhancing North America’s hunting heritage. The Website, www.huntingheritage.org, will serve as a clearinghouse for information, programs and contacts related to programs that advance safe and ethical recreational hunting. The Website was premiered at the 74th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference last month in Arlington, Virginia.
The Website currently hosts the Recruitment and Retention Assessment Survey Report. This report was designed and prepared by WMI in cooperation with D.J. Case & Associates. It provides the most comprehensive assessment of current efforts by all 50 states and 19 conservation organizations to recruit and retain hunters nationwide. In addition, the Website provides a real-time compilation of recruitment and retention program details. State agencies and conservation organizations are encouraged to share their program details with colleagues from other agencies and organizations. WMI and D.J. Case & Associates expect a summer release of a companion report about hunting-access programs for each of the state and federal resource and land management agencies.
The above efforts form a basis for the Hunting Heritage Action Plan (Action Plan). The Action Plan was conceived by the Hunting Heritage Steering Committee. It will entail assessment, analysis and strategies to enhance hunting by examining seven programmatic areas: the role that hunting and hunters in conservation; conservation education; hunter recruitment and retention; social and economic impacts of hunting; political and legal obstacles and opportunities; outreach; and a funding plan to address gaps in program coverage.
The Action Plan was modeled after the successful North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP), which was developed to counter declining waterfowl numbers. Just as NAWMP became a rallying mechanism for wetland and waterfowl enthusiasts in the mid-1980s, the Action Plan will provide comprehensive information for the determination of national strategies, objectives and priorities to counter declining hunter numbers. Individuals, agencies, organizations and industry are encouraged to provide support for this important effort.The Website and Action Plan were partially funded by the Multistate Conservation Grant Program and the Wildlife Restoration Program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“The launch of www.huntingheritage.org provides the information system that will drive future efforts to sustain our hunting heritage,” remarked WMI President Steve Williams. “WMI would like to thank the federal and state agency and conservation organization contacts who helped compile this critical information. Thanks also are due Bob Byrne, Jon Marshall and other D.J. Case & Associates staff who developed the informative Website. The success of efforts to advance hunting through effective hunter recruitment and retention requires comprehensive and accurate baseline information. WMI encourages agencies, organizations and individuals to update and utilize the Website.”
By Tom Sadler
Two weeks ago, I had a chance to spend some time at the Western Virginia Sports Show. Mark Hanger, the producer and owner of the show impressed me with his commitment to conservation and getting families interested in the great outdoors.
When I caught up with Hanger at the show I asked him how the attendance was. He told me it was better than they expected given the economy, then he made an interesting observation.
“The only thing we can point to is they want to be happy for a while, they don’t want to hear any bad news. They want to be enlightened, entertained and come out and spend some time with their family at a reasonable cost and have some good entertainment,” he said.
In his show brochure Hanger said “on your next trip, take a young person with you and teach them to love, respect and enjoy God’s great outdoors.”
I asked him about getting kids into the outdoors.
“There is no doubt about it that that is the most important because it is our future. If we don’t get children in the outdoors, then our sports are going to diminish and be gone forever,” he said.
Hanger pointed out a number of educational elements at the show including the Bucks, Bows and Does, Outdoor Adventure archery education trailer and the show’s wild game display.
A great example of getting kids engaged in the outdoors was the Orange County High School Anglers Club. They are a 4-H and Junior B.A.S.S. Federation Nation club.
The club is made up of students ages 11 to 19 who love to bass fish competitively.
I spoke with Becky Gore, the club’s advisor. Gore is a teacher and a former coach. She is the power house behind the club and a joy to talk with. If every school in the Valley can find a Becky Gore, then fishing will have a very bright future.
Gore told me how she got the club started.
“In 1999, about ten years after my husband had died, I had just gotten my kids in college. I decided I wanted to start fishing again, so I went to the high school principal and said I would like to start a fishing club and she said ‘sure, go for it,’ ” Gore said. “We have three entities, we were first 4-H and the high school together, and then the B.A.S.S. Federation found out about me and they were trying to implement a youth program in Virginia. They called me up and asked me if would I be interested. I asked what they could do for my kids. They said they could advance to a world level. I said ‘Sure, let’s do it.’ Plus, they mentioned the word scholarship and I jumped on it.”
Gore told me what other high schools could do to get do to get the program started. She ticked these items.
“You’ve got to have someone who loves kids and loves being with kids and is willing to do it without getting compensated,” she said. “You’ve got to have some kids that are interested. Once those kids approach that principal and say ‘We want a bass club,’ then that principal may go out or tell those kids, ‘Well, you find a sponsor and then we will do it.’ ”
Gore told me the kids can receive their high school letter if they meet the criteria. She has developed that criteria and told me that all another coach or teacher needs to do is contact her and she would be happy to share it with them.
“And that is the other cool thing about this, it’s parents and kids working together,” she said. “And the other thing I have tried to do is give the kids an opportunity to be with their parents. Be with their dads or moms out on the water on a Saturday or Sunday.”
Gore credits the parents, students and her volunteers for making the program a success. She considers them all family.
Nothing is more important for the future of hunting and fishing than helping the next generation learn about the sports we love. Let’s all do a little more where we can.
By Tom Sadler
First stop TU’s National Capital Angling Show, Saturday, March 14, from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. at Georgetown Preparatory School, 10900 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD
This show is always fun with national known and local fly-fishing pros and celebs, casting classes and clinics, and great vendors.
Next week I will be at the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, March 16-21, Marriott Crystal Gateway, Arlington, Virginia.
This is the premier gathering of professionals from the hunting, fishing and natural resources community. Loaded with special sessions, workshops, meetings and great changes to socialize with friends and colleagues.
By Tom Sadler
If you enjoy shooting a shotgun and want to get out and have some fun, here is some good news for you.
The Valley has a couple of great sporting clay courses where you can really enjoy yourself.
Sporting clays started in England, but really took off in the United States in the 1980s.
The targets are thrown by machines, called traps, and replicate the flight of game birds like pheasants, grouse and ducks. Good courses present these targets in natural surroundings. Each course is laid out in a series of shooting stations.
Each station offers the shooter a challenge similar to one you might find while out hunting and can test the limits of shooting ability. You might see targets crossing in front of you, going through openings in the trees, going over your head, coming toward you or running and bouncing along the ground.
This past weekend I had the chance to visit two operations, the Flying Rabbit in Mount Crawford and Quail Ridge in Lexington.
My good friend John Alexander and his partner Rick Hill took over the operation at the Flying Rabbit last year. The course is located on Route 11 about one-and-a-half miles north of Route 257.
Alexander and Hill started working on the improvements to the Flying Rabbit in November. They changed the layout, added new stations and modernized the course by adding all electronically controlled traps.
Unlike many courses using mechanical traps that require an operator to accompany the group, at Flying Rabbit each group of shooters is given an electronic device that allows them to throw the targets.
“We are most proud of our control box,” said Alexander. “You can throw your own targets and shoot at your own pace.”
They will be expanding the operation with plans for both a five-stand course and wobble trap setup. Alexander told me the five-stand should be ready by March.
Flying Rabbit is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. until dark. They are open by appointment, Wednesdays through Fridays, call 574-2529. A round of 50 targets costs $20, a round of 100 targets costs $35. You can buy ammunition on site or bring your own.
There is a shooting league in the works and they have plans for fun shoots and tournaments as well.
Quail Ridge, open for sixteen years, is located at 336 Murat Road in Lexington. The sixteen-station course winds along a half-mile path along a wooded hillside.
All shooting is by appointment only so you need to call 463-1800 before you go. They are open from 9 a.m. until dusk Thursdays through Saturdays and noon until dusk on Sunday.
A round of 50 targets costs $20 a round of 100 targets is $30. You can buy ammunition on site and they have some basic accessories like glasses and hearing protection as well.
Quail Ridge is open to shooters of all ages.
“I started shooting trap competitively when I was 10 years old,” said Chris Salb, the owner of Quail Ridge. “There is no reason to stop youngsters from shooting.”
Quail Ridge hosts corporate events, charity shoots and tournaments.
Both operations offer instruction. If you are a bird or small game hunter and haven’t tried sporting clays, give it a try. If you just shoot trap or skeet, you may find sporting clays a welcome change of pace.
By Tom Sadler
My tribute in this morning’s News Virginian:
There are some columns one would prefer never to write. This is one of them.
Please indulge me as I reflect on two people who are no longer with us. Not to mourn their loss so much as to celebrate their lives.
On Tuesday morning one of my very closest friends lost his battle with cancer.
He was like a brother to me. The best man in my wedding, a hunting and fishing partner of many years and the voice on the other end of the phone keeping me strong when trouble came. And oh, the whiskey we drank.
Many of you have never heard of James D. Range. But all of you have been touched by his work. He was a conservation hero. Embodying a conservation ethic on the scale of Roosevelt, Leopold, Muir and Pinchot.
One of my most cherished memories, from many years ago, is standing with him in my dining room one night. We got choked up looking out at the fields and woods where I lived.
He told me that not a lot of folks were willing to protect the things he, I and many of you love so much like fish, wildlife and the wild things of this earth. He said, “Tommy we have to protect the wild things. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done.”
Tears streamed down our faces. Big men do cry.
Range was a modern architect of natural resource conservation. A skilled bipartisan policy and political genius with an extraordinary network of friends and contacts.
Range had wonderful oratorical gifts, a way of always speaking from his heart, sometimes in language not fit for a family newspaper. You may not have liked what he said but you surely knew what he thought.
He was the personification of “if they don’t see the light, we can surely make them feel the heat.”
Range’s fingerprints are all over the nation’s conservation laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. His championing of conservation tax incentives earned him a profile in Time magazine.
He ably chaired the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s Board of Directors pouring his enormous energy into its resurrection.
He served with distinction and candor on the Board’s of Trout Unlimited, the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, the American Sportfishing Association, Ducks Unlimited, the American Bird Conservancy, the Pacific Forest Trust, the Valles Caldera Trust and the Yellowstone Park Foundation.
Range was an original board member of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, helping to chart the outstanding course it is on today. He also held presidential appointments to the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin and the Sportfishing and Boating Partnership Council.
In 2003, Range received the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Great Blue Heron Award, the highest honor given to an individual at the national level by the Department.
He was also awarded the 2003 Outdoor Life Magazine Conservationist of the Year Award and the Norville Prosser Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Sportfishing Association.
Range’s greatest love was the outdoors. He fished and hunted all over the world. I suspect he was happiest however, at his place on the Missouri River near Craig, Mont.
Flyway Ranch was his sanctuary. A sanctuary, which, in typical Range fashion, he shared with friends and colleagues so they too could enjoy a respite from challenges both personal and professional.
Beside his multitude of friends and admirers, Range is survived by his father, Dr. James Range of Johnson City, Tenn., brothers John Neel, Harry and Peter, twin daughters Allison and Kimberly, and loyal bird dogs Plague, Tench and Sky.
Range may be gone but we will be telling stories about him for the rest of our lives.
The Valley lost another friend recently as well. She was one of Range’s favorite people and the mother of his girlfriend Anni.
Jean Marion Gregory Ince, died on Jan. 12 at the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville. She and her husband Eugene St. Clair Ince, Jr. and her beloved golden retriever “Meg” were residents of Madison.
Like Range, Jean Ince was a giver. She and Meg, a certified therapy dog, worked with patients at the Kluge Children’s Rehabilitation Center in Charlottesville and at the Augusta Medical Center in Fishersville.
Anni told me her mom, like Range, loved the outdoors and animals, particularly horses and dogs. She said that love was passed on to her children and grandchildren as well.
Jean and Bud enjoyed a special relationship. They wrote about it in the December 1978 issue of GOURMET Magazine. An Evening at the Waldorf chronicles the evening of their engagement.
It is a wonderfully engaging story of a young couple, a special hotel, and a time when doing for others was a common practice.
I hope you will take a moment to read it. It is a gift that will make any day a better one.
You can find a copy of An Evening at the Waldorf at http://www.usna.org/family/waldorf.html.
Jim Range and Jean Ince have made our world a better place. Their friends and families miss them but their memories will warm our hearts forever.
NOTE: A website, JimRange.com has been created in his honor. You can learn more about Jim and see pictures and stories from his friends.