An Outdoorsman's Journal

   Five Kids and a lot of Hunts

Hello friends,

              This past weekend I participated as a mentor in Wisconsin's Youth Deer Hunt. Once again, I was fortunate enough to help Kensie Reifsneider on what would be her final youth hunt as she will be 16 next July and aged out of what I feel is a really great way to help our youth hunt deer and at other times ducks and turkey.
                We would be hunting on the Jeff Pausma dairy farm which is located in Dodge County between Burnett and Fox Lake. Jeff and his family love their land and their animals and it was a good day several years ago when Jeff reached out to me as a reader and we have since become friends.
                 We would be staying in a small and very comfortable shack that is the headquarters of the Fowl Mouth Hunt Club and is run by Tyler Thiede of Mayville and several friends and family members. Tyler would be this weekends’ cook and also helped mentor 12-year-old Bennet Reifsneider. We hunt and laugh a lot both at night and between the morning and afternoon hunts.

Saturday, October 10th
High 82, low 52,

              I am going to dedicate this column to writing about Kensie and some of the experiences that I have had with her, her 17-year-old brother Joey, 12-year old brother Bennet and cousins Carsyn 16 and Conner 14 all of whom I have helped mentor. Kensie is a sophomore at Beaver Dam High School and loves animals and also very much enjoys hunting, cross country, being on the Beaver Dam High School trap shooting team and playing softball.
            Kensie hopes to become a large animal veterinarian someday and I believe that she will as her love for animals was very obvious when I watched her with the Pausma's calves. After we left she told me she would like to volunteer on their farm. Kensie is also an officer in her schools FFA chapter and to top it off she has a pet turkey that she named Nugget, and she has every intention of making nuggets out of Nugget.
                Last year on the last night of our hunt I watched Kensie make a 100-yard-shot on a doe and it was really sweet to observe, especially knowing how much her family enjoys venison.
             My buddy Jeff Pausma had one small request on this hunt, in June while mowing hay he rescued 3 fawns from the mower and the mother observed the entire experience. The doe was off limits as were her fawns and for good reason as they had become regulars around the barn area and this request would not be a problem as we hunt a different part of the property.
              Last year on Saturday night I sat with then 11-year-old Bennet Reifsneider and was very impressed when he made a 120 yard shot on a doe and the really cool thing about both experiences, both Bennet and Kensie were using rifles that they had won through KAMO "Kids And Mentors Outdoors" experiences
             I have been running with these five young outdoorsmen and women and we always stay at the shack except for when we hunt KAMO's "Joe Hunt." I was sitting with Conner when he shot what woulda/shoulda been his first buck. When we walked up to it, the buck had no horns, was 2.5 years old and was registered as antlerless. I have also sat with Conner for several successful turkey hunts.
      Then there is 17-year-old Joey Reifsneider who also attends Beaver Dam High School. Joey loves to duck hunt and had a great hunt while Kensie and I were hunting Sunday morning. When Joey was 15 and on his last Youth Deer Hunt, I mentored him and grunted in a 6-pointer which would be his first buck, like Kensie, Joey has the farming bug and milks
cows on a local farm.
         Last but not least is Carsyn Thiede, Carsyn is 16 so she is aged out of the Youth Hunts. I sat with Carsyn when she put a heck of a shot on her first buck when I believe she was 11 and that was a memorable experience. Twice her gun would not fire and it looked like the
8-pointer was going to live to see another day. I messed with the action and Carsyn did the rest.
                Carsyn and Conner both attend Mayville High School and Carsyn is very active on the Mayville High School Ice Fishing Team and Conner will enter his freshmen winter doing the same. I was fortunate enough to spend the weekend with this team during the state championship and loved every minute of it.
                 As I am hoping that you can see, taking a young hunter hunting is not all about filling a tag, I feel it is about helping create a lifetime of shared memories and perhaps a lifelong interest in becoming an outdoors person.

Sunset