UBNJ had another successful UBNJ Northern Region meeting this past month at our Northern Region Headquarters in the dining hall of Camp Ocawasin. The weather had been cold and icy but that didn’t deter the 80 or more members and their guests to turn out for the 5th Annual meeting. Alison McHose honored us with a short speech to kick off the meeting and this is the first time any legislator attended. She spoke about the two bowhunting bills that and how to support them. After her talk, the Northern Region VP continued with a discussion on the UBNJ membership totals, why it’s important to be a UBNJ member and how UBNJ serves the community as well as bowhunting and archery in general.
One of the next topics for discussion was our Deer Management program. This is one of the major items of discussion that our members seem to want from our comment cards feedback. The discussion was geared around the membership participation, # of locations that UBNJ offers and the quality of land that is available. I also spoke to two other points about the program; 1- That all the work that is done for these programs is from the dedicated council members volunteering their time to make it happen and 2- Our members seem to be very aggressive in the beginning of the hunt and then seem to slack off later. The main point here was that if a UBNJ member wants to hunt one of the properties, they must plan to hunt that property as their main hunting area. In addition, UBNJ will be administering proficiency testing and certification every year for insurance purposes.
Our next item on the agenda was a presentation by wildlife biologist and Quality Deer Management representative, Gino D’Angelo. Gino had some great information and first hand knowledge on how the whitetail deer see, hear and smell as well as their reproductive capabilities when not managed correctly. His presentation was well received and UBNJ thanked him for making the trip from south Jersey with a dedication trophy.
After a short break for some food and refreshments provided by Camp Ocawasin, the door prizes were given out. UBNJ had collected over $1000.00 of prizes from all the Northern Region Sports Shops, manufacturers and other establishments. Please thank them for their support if you happen to stop in their shop. Here is the list of our supporters. Special thanks go out to Division of Fish and Wildlife for their loan of the projection screen and to UBNJ council member, Brian Burch for his artwork on my presentation.
Thank you to our meeting sponsors
Frank's Bait and Tackle
CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS HERE!