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February 5, 2008
The Walkfar Coon Club had a good year in 2007; our membership was good but a little under 2006. By dropping our age limit from 16 to 13 we picked up several young members. We held seven sanctioned UKC nite hunts and bench shows; our last hunt in June was a benefit hunt and proceeds went to one of our members that had to stay away from home all summer taking cancer treatments.
The Cold Mountain Shooting Range was named after one of our Walkfar members. Wild Life Resource Commission named the Range the Wayne E Smith Shooting Range for the five years and many volunteer hours he gave toward getting this project established. The good part is how well the range is doing and considered the most accessible in the state. According to a top official with WRC in his own words “we plan to use it as a model for other ranges across the state”, this was a breath of fresh air from what we heard five year ago, except for the public support their was very little support for any kind of shooting range when it was proposed.
We have fought several bills both Federal and state and voiced ourselves on local laws when it concerned our hunting or restricting our rights as a sportsman in some way. Our success on Federal and state issues has been from joining forces with other groups to form a large voice. The anti groups are working every day to cut out your hunting and you have other well funded groups trying to take away your rights as an animal owner and we need to watch them with a watchful eye and be ready to fight their crazy legislation.
The Walkfar Coon Club feels the best way to fight the anti hunters are to bring on young hunters; last year we dropped our age limit to thirteen to pick up the youth. There are so many other things out there in the world to attract the young if you don’t catch them at an early age you have lost them. We have now introduced a new program to encourage our youth; we have set aside some time to work with our youth on working his or her hound on the bench and the nite hunts and how to correctly score their hound. It will work on a point system, eighteen and under will receive points for entering and receive points for each win for both the bench and nite hunts. A Master of Hounds will keep a scorecard and at the end of the season the scores will be added up and the winner in both categories will receive a hundred dollar gift certificate. The club feels to put time money and effort in our youth today will pay off later by getting more young people interested in hunting and sport type activities. Besides our hunts we have field events that our younger boys and girls seem to enjoy.
We would like to encourage all clubs and hunters to stay ahead of the anti's that are trying to take away your hunting rights and rights to be a responsible breeder and dog owner. Get on your local governments mailing list so you will know when something is taking place. The anti’s will try to go behind closed doors or keep it quiet and get laws passed with out your knowing, stay on top of the know and ready to fight for your rights.
Walkfar Spokesman/Chairman
Wayne Smith
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