IA Born

TTT

Congratulations! Life and schedules have been stacked against me. Hoping to get out in 6A or 6B this Friday and Saturday, finally!

Good to know! Mine loves H1000 and Barnes 127 LRX with Federal GM215Ms. I'm just ready to go another direction.

Thanks! Like everything, I have my list price and what I'll take price.

I'm going a completely different route and using the sale of this to fund a different project. It crossed my mind, but I'm ready for something different.

I actually looked into that a while back after I saw you had the same round! I saw mixed reviews of the quality, but that was a quick search without much focus. How is the quality of your brass? In reality, I'm just ready to move to a different rifle. Turns out, I'm not much of a wildcat round person when it comes to rifles.

I just received an email from AGFD reminding me to update my portal account in preparation for the elk/pronghorn applications. Guessing the regs are coming out in the next few days/week.

Bump

This and I don't put mine more than 15 yards out in front of me. Usually closer to 10 yards. I've seen too many instances of decoys being placed 20+ yards out and toms getting hung up out of range if they don't like something in the decoys. Toms usually (key word: usually) hang up 10 or so yards out if they don't like something. Putting decoys at 10-15 yards keeps them in range if they get hung up. And, no, the Rio decoys won't matter. I got standard (Eastern looking) Avian-X decoys years ago and the Merriams out here and the Rios in Texas don't care that much, like others have said.

Way cool!

We are hosting an in-person classroom Hunter Ed class in Flagstaff Feb 9-12. I set it up three weeks ago and only one kid has registered so far. Class will be 6-8pm Feb 9 and 10, 8am-5pm Feb 11, and the field day will be 9am-1pm Feb 12. Classroom portions will be at the Flagstaff AGFD office and the field day will be at the NAZ Shooting Range. 100% attendance for all portions is mandatory. NAZ NWTF will be providing pizza lunch on Saturday, Feb 11. All firearms and ammunition will be provided. https://www.register-ed.com/events/view/190843

As of this morning (12/29), there are 3 slots left in the class.

Bump back up for post-Christmas shopping

Not much else to say that I didn't say on your FB post. Your dad is awesome and that's a great buck!

I don't take it as rude at all. It's a valid opinion and I always appreciate constructive feedback. I don't disagree and also don't mean to be rude (I promise no sarcasm intended), but, we set up our classes here in Flagstaff to cater to our local kids (Flagstaff, Williams, Parks, Bellmont) first and foremost. I would expect an instructor team in another town to do the same (cater to local families' schedules and their availability). I took the class with my daughter in 2013 in Pinetop because getting into a class in Flagstaff was impossible at the time. We arranged our schedule to be there when we were supposed to be because she needed the class. That's actually what prompted me to become an instructor; I wanted to provide more opportunities for our local kids. Classroom classes have a 16-hour requirement, including the field day. We've been doing Thurs-Sun classes like this for 9 years with great success. From experience and feedback, the classroom classes that drag on for 2-3 weeks get really long and students forget the material really easily. It's painful for instructors (at least that's our team's perspective) to have classes 2 hours/night 2 nights/week for 3 weeks. Several folks from Camp Verde, Prescott, Prescott Valley, and even Tucson say they prefer our class schedule and are willing to put in the time because they prefer the in-person classes to the online classes. Several of our locals up here are asking for in-person classes for their kids because of the more in-depth coverage of material, quizzing, and testing we provide. You are correct that there is a backlog of online students and we offer several online field days May-October, including some 2/day online classes (morning and afternoon) when the weather is cool enough. At the same time, AGFD is encouraging all instructor teams to get back to in-person classes as much as possible, while still catering to the need for online field days. All of the requests we've had up here for in-person classes is why I was perplexed that nobody had signed up even after we advertised it 3 weeks ago. And, to be perfectly honest, we see much better test scores and material retention from kids who take the in-person class vs those who take the online class. We have much less need to provide test corrections to get kids passing grades in the in-person class compared to the online class. It certainly can be, but we break it up with rotations. between chapters taught. We break all classes up into three groups for Saturday and the field day. We have the AGFD room split with a divider for Saturday and rotate between each side, pulse the lobby so kids aren't sitting in the same seat all day. Throw in plenty of breaks, an hour lunch with a test review, and plenty of jokes, and the day flies by. The kids get plenty of time and opportunities to blow off steam and pent-up silliness and wiggles. On top of that, we rarely, if ever, go until 5 pm. We reserve the conference room for all day just in case there is a kid who needs extra help with their test. We just don't want parents showing up too early to get their kids and I'm personally communicating constantly with parents and students so they know what's happening and what to expect. We've never gotten any negative feedback from kids or parents about the length of the day or how our classes are scheduled. I've even had parents tell me they appreciate the opportunity to have a day to themselves.

Forgot to mention that there are only 30 seats available and 11 have been taken as of this morning.

Thanks! What perplexes me now is how hard it is to fill a class up here when I know how the demand is. I get asked constantly when we're having in-person classes. We try hard to favor our local NorAZ kids, but then nobody signs up.

Target is sold. Everything else is available.

We've have decided its time to pick a winner for these three items. These raffles have been running too long We will be drawing a winner December 15th and shipping them out in time for Christmas! Go to our website and get your chances while you can. $500 in Sportsmans Warehouse gift cards for $20/chance, a Marsupial upland bird system for $20/chance, and a Prois ladies turkey vest for $10/chance. Get your chances while you still can! Again, we will pick a winner for each of these December 15th. https://www.naznwtf.org/shop

My offer stands, but fair enough. Merry Christmas to you and your family.

This is a NWTF State Chapter hosted Raffle. All of the local chapters in each area help sell tickets for this. There are 3,000 tickets printed for sale each year and each local chapter is sent 300 to sell. This was based on when we had 10 local chapters across the state. Even then, the State Chapter rarely sold all 3,000 tickets. Its been more like the 2000-2500 range most years. Some Chapters have always sold more and some have not sold their 300. We're down to 4 active chapters in AZ now. Our chapter in Flagstaff sold 350ish (give or take) tickets of the 3,000 and mailed everything to our Regional Director to be entered into the drawing. I've never asked for an exact number of total tickets sold because nobody has ever complained before. I can ask if that's what you want. When it comes to our local chapter raffles up here, I know exactly how many tickets are sold and we have spreadsheets for every drawing. Some people who buy multiple tickets are lucky enough to win multiple times in a year, even multiple years, and I know people who only bought one ticket who have been drawn. I honestly don't know what else to tell you that's going to make you happy and help you understand its legit. So I'll just say Merry Christmas to you and your family. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

I hate to lose your support and I thought I had explained why tickets were cut down from 100 to 50. Back when this was set up, we opted for 100 tickets. We sold about 20 tickets over 6 months. It wouldn't move, no matter how much I tried to push it and promote it. I can show you the email confirmation of your tickets being purchased. We cut it down to 50 tickets in order to try and push it to sell out quicker. That should have increased your odds because you were always entered into the drawing. Again, I can show you that you were entered. Even after cutting the chances down to 50, we still didn't sell all 50 tickets when we drew a winner, and I'm pretty sure we took a loss on this raffle. We tried something new and different, hoping to hit the upland bird hunters, and it failed. Lots of lessons learned. As for the other post regarding the ticket stubs, we've never mailed out stubs for online raffles. I've never had stubs mailed to me when I've bought chances at online raffles and I've never doubted the legitimacy. That individual is the only person who has ever complained to me about not getting stubs sent out with all of the online raffles we've done. I've learned over the years that I can't make everyone happy; all I can do is my best and try to learn from any mistakes and legitimate feedback. I'm going to send you a PM with an offer of reconciliation. I hope you'll consider it. If you're ever in Flagstaff, my long-standing offer to buy coffee and chat is always good. Here are the winners, as posted on our Chapter's FB page: Congratulations to our fall raffle winners. Terry Reese won the Sportsman’s Warehouse gift cards. Minnie Wooldridge won the Prois Turkey Vest. Donald Balach won the Marsupial Game Bird Bag. Drawing was conducted randomly using www.wheelofnames.com by NAZ NWTF Treasurer.

Our chapter treasurer did the drawing on Thursday and called the winners. I've been out on my Coues hunt with limited reception. I'm in a ridge glassing now and saw your note, so wanted to reply. The winners were posted on our Northern Arizona NWTF Facebook page by the treasureer. I'll get them posted here when I get back. I have no idea why the Marsupial bag said 50/50 tickets remaining. That was wrong. I'll work with our person who runs the online raffle to correct that moving forward.

Today's list of winners: NWTF 31 Day Gun Raffle Winners Early Bird Gun Safe- Michael Hull Nov 24th Tikka T3X 6.5- James Lynch Nov 25th SIG P320 9mm- Tim Brown Nov 26th Ruger American 7mm-08 Donald Haight Nov 27th S&W .38 spl- Terry Reese Nov 28th Henry US Survival .22lr- John Branch Nov 29th CZ Bobwhite 20ga- Eric Johnson Nov 30th Henry Golden Boy .22lr- Michael Wantz Dec 1st Stoeger STR 9mm- Lonnie Green Dec 2nd Franchi Momentum Elite .308 WIN - Mike Bretz Dec. 3rd Heritage RR Revolver .22LR/.22WMR- Mike Skiles Dec. 4th Howa 1100 17HMR- John Jordan Dec. 5th CZ 612 Home Defence 12ga- David Keesler Dec. 6th Browning AB3 Striker LR 6.5 Creedmoor- Josh Barlow Dec. 7th S&W Bodyguard .380 ACP- Charles Hernandez II Dec. 8th Rossi RS 22 .22LR- Rob Zimmerman Dec. 9th CZ P-10 C 9mm- James Lynch Dec. 10th Ruger American Predator .243 WIN- Mark Gibson Dec. 11th Winchester SXP Hybrid Hunter 12ga- Mike Skiles Dec. 12th Ruger 10/22 Viridian- Wayne Kaiser Dec. 13th Springfield Hellcat 9mm- Jim McAnally Dec. 14th CheyTac 5.56/.223- William Morehead

I didn't save any of the stubs. I just received email notices when tickets were purchased on line. If you PM me your name, assuming you bought from our chapter, I'll be happy to screen shot the email notice confirming your purchase. All the stubs have is the list of guns and some cool graphics. All I can say is I'm sorry if I offended you with our approach this year, you're in the drawing if you bought tickets, and we'll work to do it better on our end next year.