Milk River Gobblers Second Annual Youth Fun Day a success

The Milk River Gobblers Second Annual Youth Fun Day at Havre Trap Club was a success, organizers said, with more than 55 people braving the cool, windy weather to participate in the fun and educational activities.

The Youth Fun Day is organized to help the Milk River Gobblers get youth interested in hunting, the outdoors and wildlife, group spokesman Jeff Dibblee said, and to help give area youth the knowledge and resources to be successful hunters.

The Gobblers members came together because of a shared interest in preservation and enhancement of the wild turkey in the area, as well as promoting turkey hunting, along with hunting in general, Dibblee said, to encourage people, especially youth, to get outdoors.

To that end, all youth accompanied by a parent or guardian were invited to the Youth Fun Day, which included games, informational tables on animal track and bird identification and hunting, turkey and duck call demonstrations, camouflage face painting, a clay pigeon shoot, an archery demonstration and presentations on predator control.

Many different volunteers and vendors helped make the day possible, Dibblee said.

Montana Trappers Association had a display about the importance of predator control. Animals like skunks, raccoon and weasels go after the eggs and hatchlings and larger predators like coyote and fox will kill the young birds, Dibblee said, hurting not just turkey populations, but other game birds as well. Different traps were on display and informational pamphlets available to take home.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks was on hand with plaster of paris animal footprint displays and pelts to help teach people how to identify wild animals.

Chuck Bartlebaugh with the Be Bear Aware Campaign program in Missoula came for the weekend, giving a presentation on bear safety Friday at Pepin Park and again Saturday at the fun day. The program is part of a national non-profit organization that has volunteers who travel to communities and provide educational and common sense information and literature on bear awareness.

With the increase in grizzly and black bear sightings in the area, the Gobblers thought it would be a good idea to help inform the community about safety measures that should be taken, Dibblee said, for the safety of public as well as the bears.

The Be Bear Aware Campaign website says its mission is to decrease the number of human-wildlife conflicts. The campaign emphasizes the importance of not trying to approach, follow, interact with or feed or touch wildlife.

It also emphasizes the importance of safety precautions, bear spray and the use of optics such as binoculars, spotting scopes and telephoto lenses.

Milk River Archery representatives provided information about bow hunting, he said. And Matt Sasaki and Jim Bachini, members of Havre Trap Club, taught attendees about the safe handling of firearms and proper shooting stance, then many youth and some adult attendees took the opportunity to shoot clay pigeons.

Dibblee said they had originally planned to let participants shoot balloons with the shotguns using the trap club facility, but the windy conditions were hard on the balloons, so everyone big enough who wanted to shoot got to try to prove themselves shooting clay pigeons.

"The kids had a ball with the clay pigeons. ... A lot of the little kids that I thought would never be able to hit one, they actually shot some pigeons, they did well," Dibblee said.

Two of the youth eligible for the drawing won Mossberg pump action shotguns. Maci Wood won the girls' teal camouflage shotgun, and Daniel Conrad won the blue camouflage shotgun in the boys' raffle.

Milk River Gobblers used to be affiliated with the National Wild Turkey Foundation but the local group went out on their own a few years ago, Dibblee said, because they wanted to direct the funds they raised more to local objectives.

And local youth are the biggest beneficiaries of this move.

"We found that we could work better with the budget that we were making on our own local event such as the banquet, raffle drawings, etc. That money could be put right back into the community with events like this Fun Day and scholarships to local youth," Dibblee said.

The group gives out at least two $1,000 college scholarships to youth in their region that extends from Malta to Shelby and south to Big Sandy. Last year's scholarships also included two $250 scholarships, he added.

"We try to turn it right around and put it back into the community," he added.

That effort isn't just monetary. Dibblee said that they work with Fish, Wildlife and Parks to locate areas that would benefit from introduction of wild turkeys and advocate transplanting of the birds.

Wild turkeys are scattered throughout the group's area, but right now the Bear Paw Mountains have the largest flocks in the area, Dibblee said, though the Missouri River and into the Breaks has a growing population. Montana has the Merriam's wild turkey subspecies, and the birds harvested in the Bear Paws, especially, he said, taste just like turkeys grown commercially.

Dibblee added that he is also campaigning FWP to have the eastern wild turkey subspecies introduced to the area because the birds grow a little bigger than the Merriam's.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks is very helpful with pointing people who want to start hunting turkeys in the right direction for finding local flocks, he said.

Members also make themselves available to people who want an introduction to turkey hunting or hunting in general, with what they call sharing the hunt and spreading the heritage.

"Those who have hunted a lot, like myself," Dibblee said, "we want to spread our knowledge of what we have found over the past years of hunting and enjoying this great outdoors to the young kids."

It's an informal assistance effort right now, but they are negotiating the legal side of starting a formal hunter-mentorship program.

"I'm pretty confident that it won't be too long and we'll have something on the order of a hunter-mentor program," he said.

But in the meantime, anyone wanting some advice on wild turkeys in the area or information on the the Milk River Gobblers can contact Dibblee at 406-945-1632 or [email protected].