DELTA verses DU

[MSDuckmen]

Softcall

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In other words, the fact that it provides nutrients for the ducks to migrate is a by-product of the main objective. It's a great by-product. I try not to blow smoke up anyone's butt.

Who's main objective? yours?.
That is exactly what I'm talking about. Feeding the ducks is so far fetched for some people that they can not or will not plant a food crop that they can't hunt. I have seen it a hundred times. Unless it will benifit you directly your not willing to do it.
I don't have to blow smoke either softcall it gains me nothing. But I can do things that make a difference without it benifiting me directly.

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Plant areas you will not hunt as well as those that you will.

What part of my quote did you not get? I don't always have to have a by-product, that is exactly what I'm trying to tell you and others. It's not all about what is good for you the hunter. (period)

[Wildfowler]

I went into this meeting thinking that DW was here to identify whether there was enough local support to merit creating a local area chapter. Currently, there is no Jackson chapter. I know there were some very capable individuals who attended the meeting that know how to well organize a fund raiser. Personally, I think this was a logical first move on DW's part to have an informal meeting just to introduce themselves, and to introduce their intentions. You've got to start somewhere.

Realistically, I know that I can't offer very much of my time, but I'll be glad to help out in any way that I can. Be it through a monetary donation, or a donation of a portion of my time. I think everyone should do whatever they can to support these types of organizations.

[MSDuckmen]

Wildfowler
How did you hear about the meeting? Was there an ad in the paper, Did anyone see it on TV? I didn't see any flyers or get a call from my local hunting retriever club or see ads in any of the local gun shops.
If you wanted to see if there was a local interest would you not let the public know?
Once the meeting came about it was a short PowerPoint presentation and a jam session.
I had to ask what we were doing there and where do we go from here just to get to the meat of the gathering.
Maybe this meeting was supposed to be for just a selected few and grew to more than expected. I don't know, but what I do know is that for an organization of this size you would have thought it would have been more structured with an outline and goal.
I personally have had better hunting club meetings than this meeting was. With that said I'm open to where ever they go from here. My time is valuable to me; I'll not be wasting it again if the next meeting is just as unproductive.

[captain duck]

Man, you guys are on roll. I did not have high expectations of the Sunday nite meeting so I guess I wasn't as disappointed as Duckmen. I wasn't expecting advertizements at kennel clubs and gun shops. I did expect a few interested people that heard through the grapevine to get together and learn more about DW to see if volunteers would emerge to start a local chapter. Once the volunteers organize then the advertizing of the local events follow when appropriate. This procedure happened last summer in West Point where there was only a DU chapter.The volunteers put the chapter together and low and behold 125 people attended the first banquet in Nov at Old Waverly C.C. The identical sequence of events led to a very successful first banquet last Jan in Stuttgart. Give these people at DW some credit that this meeting in Jax was not their first and that they know how to successfully start a chapter. If you expected something as organized as the Republican Convention no wonder you were disappointed. This controversy over these two organizations is like controversy over farmers. Don't talk bad about farmers with your mouth full! Don't criticize those organizations that are providing you and your chidren with ducks while calling yourself an avid duck hunter. Find something positive and get involved. Thats my story and I'm stickin to it!

[Wildfowler]

Duckmen, I don't know who called this meeting, but I heard about it from this website. I went to the meeting because I wanted to learn more about DW and to find out if this was going to be another "dinner banquet" type of fund raiser. Dinner banquet's don't get me too excited. I guess I might be a little naive to think that a DW fundraiser would be any different. My point is that I didn't attend a meeting for a non-existent chapter, expecting non-existent committee members to have a clear plan established. Believe me, my time is just as important to me as is yours and I'm not trying to take charge of this committee by any means. I just didn't think the meeting was a total waste of my time. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. And my opinion is that I think fellow duck hunters should do what they can to support these types conservation organizations. Be it an allotment of their time, or with their checkbooks.

[SoftCall]

Duckmen - your quote:

"But I can do things that make a difference without it benifiting me directly."

You obviously let your emotion get in the way of reading comprehension. Did you bother to read the last paragraph of my post? It clearly states that I support both organizations. Based on that - I would interpret the comment as stating that I can do things that don't benefit me directly either.

[feedcall]

No reason to be angry dude. If it was a waste of your time then please, don't come back.

[captain duck]

Duckmen, I think that we have gotten to know each other a little bit on the board, via e-mail and now face-to-face Sunday evening. I think that you are one of the real backbones of msducks.com. I have no bones to pick over your thoughts one way or the other about DU or DW. I do recall one of our debates during duck season over fun and comraderee versus the kill instinct. I personally thought Sunday P.M. was fun. It was abiout my favorite subject. I gained further knowledge of one of the two organizations that enhances my favorite resource. I got to place faces with message board posters and overall had a good evening. In fact, I e-mailed you and informed you of the meeting. I am just curious, what different could have come out of a first meeting that would have excited you about DW and not made you feel that you wasted your time or had attended better hunting club meetings. I hope it wasn't my asking questions to Rob or the complimentary comment about the DU friend of mine that attended. John Belz was not invited but attended as I found out later because his office of DU here in Jax monitors this board closely and he wanted the attendees to know that DU and DW were on friendly terms and not the contrary.

[BrianB]

This is from a previous post, so pardon if you have seen it before, but basically I am trying to bring out the poin tthat if you want to see an organisation thta is involved in the political side of protecting hunters rights, here it is.
Do you know what the largest Caucus in the Congress is? The Congresional Sportsmans Caucus. Here is a link to their site. http://wwwa.house.gov/collinpeterson/CSC/
Also, Chip Pickering is one of the House leaders of this caucus http://www.sportsmenslink.org/cscleadership2.html. I say this because there is going to be a big battle this year between Chip, a Republican, and Ronnie Shows, a Democrat. There is also a Foundation. here is the link. http://www.sportsmenslink.org/
I would suggests looking at the board of directors
http://www.sportsmenslink.org/board.html

Notice the companies and organizations listed. Delta is, DU is not

[Wildfowler]

Hey Brian, I'm a little slow sometimes. I just read your post and glanced briefly at the links you provided. I didn't understand what you were trying to demonstrate to this forum. DU's name was listed as a partner of the CSF on the website. I'm sure this means that DU has to support the CSF in some capacity. Doesn't it? I wouldn't think that DU would want to support something that they didn't believe in. Would they? I don't know what the CSF does or how they operate, but I saw this on their home page. It says:
The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation ensures that current and future generations of Americans will have the right and opportunity to hunt, trap, and fish by serving as the sportsman’s link to Congress. If DU supports this concept, then I think we should all support DU.

Please pardon me if I completely misunderstood your point.
http://www.sportsmenslink.org/partners.html

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: Wildfowler ]

[MSDuckmen]

I guess I just came off a little negative with the last few post but I can’t help the way I feel.
Yes I enjoyed meeting the people from the board, but that was not why I went to this meeting. No one said anything or brought anyone that really bothered me. It was the lack of direction that wore me down. I enjoyed the short presentation and wanted to see what representatives from DW had to say. It seems to me that instead of talking about the bird counts and why the season was so bad that we should have had a goal. Never once did he ask if we thought that having a chapter here would work to begin with. I guess he assumed that it would.
My thoughts were that he would tell us why he was here and what his primary goal was. That didn’t come out until I asked them directly why are we here and where do we go from here. The talk was so much about why the ducks were so bad and bird counts and has little to do with what he was here for. I have heard all of that and much more and no one at this point has any creditable answers and I’m not interested in listening to another persons opinion until the facts start to mount.
I do think that both organizations have their place and I will support both with more vigor than most but I’m not going to waste my time when I reply to well over 50 emails a day from people that are just as devoted to this sport as I am.
Each person at that meeting can contribute and some more than others. One guy said he has two kids and could only do so much. Well guess what I do to and Duckhunt4 has five so what. You do what you can and you make use of the time you have to do it in.
Out of that 20+ people I brought five with me.
Feedcall says don’t be angry, I wasn’t and if constructive criticism is anger then maybe I need to NOT COME BACK.
I’m not into fundraisers but I know that is part of it. People need much more to have a strong chapter in this state. Never once did the Rep. Tell us in what directions other new chapters have move to. All we got was that we would receive an email so we can meet and elect a board. What about the other people that know nothing about DW and would benefit this state much more. It should have been better presented.
If I have offended you guys by my remarks I’m sorry that was not my intent. You should know by now that I speak my mind and always have. The day that I can’t express my views without worrying about stepping on someone’s toes is they day I give up on this board.
I’m glad that DW came to Jackson; Do I want to be a part of it? YES - if it is more to it than fund raising.

Captain Duck, I have no problem with John Belz being at the meeting and I think it is good that they see what other organizations are doing. I really feel that John made a mistake saying that he was not spying. (Spying on what). It is my belief that DU is concerned over the direction that DW is going. Many people will support both organizations and that is good. But DU knows that many more will pick and choose, when they see their membership start to fall (and it will) they will be more supportive to the hunters. And I’m not talking about season lengths and the like I’m referring to issues that they now tend to walk a fence on. (CRP, Refuges and the like)
I would like to have had a direction to move on from the DW Representative, and example would have been as follows:

We have 20+ members in the next few weeks lets recruit anyone interested in starting a chapter, reassemble for a scheduled meeting 30 days from now at which time we will make nominations for some board members and take a census of what the goal of this chapter is going to be. Besides fund raising what other local activities will we want to pursue. How far do we here want to take this chapter. Do we want to get some of the local wildlife representatives to be a part of this for guidance? Will we move to educating the youth, Youth hunts, Retriever organizations involvement etc etc etc.

What did we get? We got told we would receive an email telling us 20+ people where the next meeting will be and elect officers. Dan Hughes is the only man I met at the meeting that knows enough about DW to get this chapter off the ground. We need people of influence like Dan to move us. The young men that I met were fine fellows but their interest appeared to be more about duck counts and the like than why we were there.

Captain I’m all for fellowship but this meeting should have been a show of bells and whistles to motivate the people in this area on DW.

Again this is my opinion and mine alone.


Softcall I would say the blowing smoke up someones butt might have been the driving force. don't think it was a reading comprehension problem.

[Wildfowler]

Personally, I think there is a fundamental problem with the mindset here. Look at the title of this post, Delta versus DU. It shouldn't be one group versus the other. Both organizations are needed to support our duck hunting future. DU may not support duck hunting "equally" to every duck hunter who reads this website. I'm not a land owner and I certainly don't enjoy any direct benefit from DU or DW. But it should be recognized that both groups actions either directly or indirectly support duck hunters. If DU's actions ultimately promote the reproduction of more waterfowl, then I would never consider DU's actions as anti-hunting.

No one ever came forward and documented DU's involvement with PETA or other anti-hunting group's. Does PETA advertise in the DU magazine? Does PETA have a booth at the DU waterfowl festival in Memphis? Does DU give money to PETA to support anti-hunting issues. I don't know the answer to any of these questions because I don't know the whole story. But I do know that DU would have far too much to loose if they lost the support of the hunting population. Please, prove me wrong here, because I certainly don't know the whole story.

It was said at the DW meeting this past weekend, if you are going to shoot ducks or take away from the resource, then you should do your part to give back to the resource. That message really hit home to me. I think we should all support both groups. Who else do we have to offer our support to?

[mallardchaser]

Good post Wildfowler, UNLIKE some other posts, you offer a positive message! There is no need to be negative toward one group or the other. I too was misinformed once and thought I should support one over the other; that's not the case, both are in it for the ducks.

[Hambone]

Duckmen, look at things from a different angle. The local chapters of DW and DU have the primary purpose of fundraising for the national organization, distasteful as that truth may be. Like all nonprofits, these groups' main mission is something other than the sale of goods or services, and for that reason they have to do something to fund their operations. I have served on more DU and NWTF committees than I can count. I like being involved because I have made many friends that way and we usually throw a good party. However, generally speaking, the banquet and auction remains the most effective way of bringing in the necessary money, and since I don't have a spare fifteen or twenty thousand, this is a way I can contribute far beyond my financial means. There has never been any prohibition against doing projects on a local level...that aspect is dictated by the committee members' willingness to take on more work.

[BrianB]

Your right. DU is listed as a CSF Partner, I didn't see that page before or else I would have listed it. I was refering to whom was represented on the Board of Directors, where the Chairman is from Delta and DU does not have any representation on the board, and that could very well be a rotating gig, I don't know. I was not trying to belittle DU, but when the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the COngressional Sportsman's Foundation is from Delta, I think it is appropriate to say that Delta is involved with the protection of hunter's rights from the political standpoint in a BIG, BIG, way. I don't see another position that would have more influence than the Chairman's position, and certainly other member's of the board have influence and I was just noting DU's absence from the board. But I am glad to see that they are partners with the CSF.