2010 ADA Deer Hunter Clinic

This young hunter won a .22 rimfire rifle at the clinic.

The Arizona Deer Association hosted its annual Deer Hunter clinic on August 23, 2010.  This year’s clinic was held at the Ben Avery Facility and was geared towards new hunters.  The clinic was a combined effort between the ADA and AG&F Department.  A special thanks to them for allowing us the use of their facility.  I would like to extend a special thanks to everyone who came out to assist with the clinic as we had help from a lot of people who were not associated with the Game and Fish Department or the Arizona Deer Association.  It’s because of this type of volunteer help that we are able to sponsor clinics such as this.

This year’s clinic was both a hands on clinic as well as our normal seminar.  The hands on portion of the clinic consisted of youth archery shooting, rifle sighting in and hands on glassing of 3D targets strategically placed on the mountainside. Along with the optics glassing there was a presentation setting up your backpack for your hunt.  The optics portion of the clinic kept people busy all day and a special thanks to Jim White and Cortlund Thude of Vortex optics for providing the equipment necessary to put this on.  This was a great exercise for anyone who had never glassed up a deer or javelina through a pair of binoculars from over a half mile away.

 Game and Fish did an excellent job with the youth archery shooting.  This portion was run as an introduction into archery shooting and was a big hit with the younger hunters.  Proper technique and archery safety was a priority as well as learning the importance of shooting from a firing line of multiple shooters.  Hopefully we recruited some future archery hunters out of this.  Over the past 10 years I have been teaching Hunter Ed and my favorite part of this has always been working with youth archery shooters.  If you have never picked up a bow and shot at a target you don’t know what you’re missing.

 Over on the rifle range several people stopped in for assistance in getting their firearms sighted in.  For those who just wanted a chance to try out new and different rifles we had several available for them to try.  When it comes to purchasing a rifle for the new hunter there are always lots of questions and by allowing them to try out several different calibers of rifles hopefully we helped answer some of these questions.

  
Sighting in their rifles at the range during the hunter clinic. Click on images to enlarge.

 A big topic that everyone seems to be interested in and probably have the least amount of knowledge in is proper field care of your animal once you have it on the ground.  We brought in two guest speakers to cover the topic of proper game care for both processing and mounting.  Mike Miller, who owns Millers Southwestern Processing, spoke about field dressing and proper game care.  Mike has been a long time supporter of the ADA and has helped sponsor numerous events in the past.  If you’ve never had a chance to listen to Mike speak about hunting and game care you’re missing out as you can tell that he truly has a passion for hunting and its future.  If you had a chance to sample some of the sausages that Mike brought to the clinic you would know that this is the place to have your animal processed.  Another new speaker at our clinic was Dale Robertson, owner of Wild Heritage Taxidermy in Young Arizona.  Dale was thrilled when asked to speak at the clinic and once you heard him talk about hunting and proper field care of your animal you knew why.  Dale not only spoke about taxidermy but also brought in a full size insert for a mount and drew on there where you would need to make all of the proper cuts while skinning an animal to get the mount that you want.  Unfortunately for many people they don’t think about making arrangements ahead of time to have their animal taken care upon returning from the field so Dale is definitely someone that you should contact prior to hunting as his willingness to share information can only help.  Jim’s website, www.wildheritagetaxidermy.com , also has valuable information on caring for an animal in the field.

Brian Wakeling the Game Branch Chief for AGFD provided some excellent data about deer management in Arizona and Amber Munig also from Game and Fish presented a detailed overview of how the draw process worked and how to better increase your odds of drawing a tag.

AGFD presented information on deer habitat management in AZ. Click on image to enlarge.

After the seminar was completed the ADA provided a free lunch and a free youth raffle where everyone won something.  The big winners were for a 22 rifle and a pair of Vortex binoculars donated by Jim White.

A good time was had by all and with everyone’s continued support we will be able to make next year’s clinic bigger and better than this year.  Good luck on your hunts, be safe, shoot straight and don’t forget, take a child hunting when you have the opportunity.

View More Clinic Photos Here

 copyright © 2003-09 Arizona Deer Association - AZDeer.org - content may not be used without written permission - contact our webmaster for permission
website design by CouesWhitetail.com