FAIRFAX, Va. – The National Rifle Association has selected three of its top Junior Members to receive the 2007 Outstanding Achievement Youth Award, recognizing them for their active participation in the community, the classroom, and the shooting sports.  Overall, $10,000 in scholarship money was awarded to the winners thanks to a generous donation from Brownells, Inc., the world’s largest supplier of firearms accessories and gunsmithing tools.

A $5,000 scholarship was awarded to first-place winner Juliann Terry, 18, of Newcastle, Wyo.  A member of the Rapid City Rifle Club, Terry placed first in .22 rifle at the 2006 Wyoming 4-H Shooting Sports competition and later represented the state of Wyoming at the 2006 4-H Nationals, placing fifth in the country in smallbore competition.  In addition to being a fine shooter, Terry is also active in her community, having presented the Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program to local elementary school students and volunteering as a teen leader at 4-H workshops and summer camps in her home county.  She excels in the classroom as well, sporting a 4.0 grade point average while playing clarinet in the Newcastle High School Band.    

“Juliann exemplifies all of the qualities that we look for in awarding the Outstanding Achievement Youth Award,” said NRA Youth Programs Manager Larry Quandahl.  “She is an exceptional young person, one who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership qualities, complete dedication in the classroom, and an unwavering commitment to the shooting sports.”

The second-place award and its accompanying $3,000 scholarship went to eighteen-year-old Scott Thomas of Poca, W.Va.  Thomas, an NRA Life Member, is a member of the Putnam County Gun Club Junior Smallbore Team.  He is a three-time smallbore competitor in the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, and he has served as a volunteer at numerous shooting camps.  Thomas was selected to attend the 2006 Youth Education Summit (YES) in Washington, D.C., earning a hunting trip for his exceptional performance at the event.  He hopes to one day shoot on the West Virginia University rifle team. 

Jonathan Warhol, 16, of Leonardo, N.J., was the third-place winner, earning a $2,000 scholarship.  Warhol is an apprentice NRA Certified Shotgun Instructor and has achieved the rating of Distinguished Expert in the shotgun course of fire of the Winchester/NRA Marksmanship Qualification Program.  Warhol has distinguished himself on the skeet field, becoming the 2006 New Jersey Junior Champion in 28 gauge.  An honor student at New Jersey’s Mater Dei High School, Warhol teaches others the joys of shotgun shooting through the Women On Target® Program, youth day events, and the junior shooting program at the Central Jersey Rifle and Pistol Club. 

All NRA Junior Members (or NRA Regular or Life Members under age 18) who are current members of an NRA-affiliated club or state association and who have completed one NRA Basic Firearm Training Course are eligible for the award.  Applicants must also have earned at least one rating through the Winchester/NRA Marksmanship Qualification Program and submitted three letters of recommendation, a copy of their school transcript, and a 1,000-word essay entitled, “What the Shooting Sports has Taught Me.”

Aside from these core requirements, applicants must have participated in at least five NRA-sponsored programs.  These elective requirements include presenting the Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program, attending the Youth Education Summit, competing in the Youth Hunter Education Challenge (YHEC), entering the NRA Youth Wildlife Art Contest, or participating in the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, among others.

Applications for next year’s Outstanding Achievement Youth Award are due at NRA Headquarters no later than May 1, 2008.  To learn more about the program or how to apply, please contact NRA’s Youth Programs Department at (703) 267-1505 or visit www.nrahq.org/youth/achievement.asp.  To learn more about Brownells, Inc., visit www.brownells.com.

An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog that just may be the biggest pig ever found.
Jamison Stone’s father says the hog his son killed weighed a 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.
If the claims are accurate, Jamison’s trophy boar would be bigger than Hogzilla, the famed wild hog that grew to seemingly mythical proportions after being killed in south Georgia in 2004.
Hogzilla originally was thought to weigh 1,000 pounds and measure 12 feet in length. National Geographic experts who unearthed its remains believe the animal actually weighed about 800 pounds and was 8 feet long.
After seeing the pig in person, taxidermist Jerry Cunningham told The Anniston Star it was “the biggest thing I’d ever seen … it’s huge.”
The Anniston Star reported that the feral hog was weighed at the Clay County Farmer’s Exchange in Lineville. Workers at the co-op verified that the basic truck scales used were recently certified by the state. But no workers from the co-op were present when the hog was weighed.
Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig, which has a Web site put up by his father — http://www.monsterpig.com — that is generating Internet buzz.
“It feels really good,” Jamison, of Pickensville, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s a good accomplishment. I probably won’t ever kill anything else that big.”
Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.
Through it all there was the fear that the animal would turn and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation of doing.
“I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited,” said Jamison, who just finished the sixth grade on the honor roll at Christian Heritage Academy, a small, private school.
His father said that, just to be extra safe, he and the guides had high-powered rifles aimed and ready to fire in case the beast with 5-inch tusks decided to charge.
With the pig finally dead in a creek bed on the 2,500-acre Lost Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve in Delta, trees had to be cut down and a backhoe brought in to bring Jamison’s prize out of the woods.
It was hauled on a truck to the Clay County Farmers Exchange in Lineville, where Jeff Kinder said they used his scale, which was recently calibrated, to weigh the hog.
Kinder, who didn’t witness the weigh-in, said he was baffled to hear the reported weight of 1,051 pounds because his scale — an old, manual style with sliding weights — only measures to the nearest 10.
“I didn’t quite understand that,” he said.
Mike Stone said the scale balanced one notch past the 1,050-pound mark, and he thought it meant a weight of 1,051 pounds.
“It probably weighed 1,060 pounds. We were just afraid to change it once the story was out,” he said.
The hog’s head is now being mounted on an extra-large foam form by Cunningham of Jerry’s Taxidermy in Oxford. Cunningham said the animal measured 54 inches around the head, 74 inches around the shoulders and 11 inches from the eyes to the end of its snout.
Mike Stone is having sausage made from the rest of the animal. “We’ll probably get 500 to 700 pounds,” he said.
Jamison, meanwhile, has been offered a small part in “The Legend of Hogzilla,” a small-time horror flick based on the tale of the Georgia boar. The movie is holding casting calls with plans to begin filming in Georgia.
The Anniston Star reported that congratulatory calls have come all the way from California, where Jamison appeared on a radio talk show. Jamison apparently has gotten words of congratulation from Rickey Medlocke of Lynyrd Skynyrd, country music star Kenny Chesney, Tom Knapp of Benelli firearms and Jerry Miculek of Smith and Wesson.
Jamison is enjoying the newfound celebrity generated by the hog hunt, but he said he prefers hunting pheasants to monster pigs.
“They are a little less dangerous.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Since NSSF helped launch Families Afield nearly two years ago, 10 states have passed new laws creating additional opportunities for young people to get involved in hunting. Now, as hunting seasons near, some of those states are preparing for larger-than-normal numbers of newcomers.
In Michigan, a group of Perry sportsmen are rounding up prizes for youngsters who participate in the third annual “Youth Hunt Buck Pole.” Organizers are expecting “dramatic increases” in young hunters this year. In Ohio, Department of Natural Resources personnel are utilizing the media to inform the public of new hunting opportunities as well as new apprentice hunting license requirements.
Click here for more information on Families Afield.

About half of U.S. hunters live in states where parents - not politicians - decide when their sons and daughters are ready for big-game hunting. More and more states are creating opportunities for families thanks to efforts by NSSF, the National Wild Turkey Federation, U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance and the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses.
NSSF’s STEP OUTSIDE® program, which encourages hunters to introduce newcomers to the outdoors, offers parents 10 tips on introducing youngsters to hunting.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission will meet Tuesday to consider a formal proposal for the state’s mentored-youth hunting program, but sources say the program is not likely to include deer, reports the Morning Call. A commission spokesman cites concern that a large influx of new hunters could negatively impact the state’s deer herd. However, statistics from other states suggest that hunters age 12 and under would account for only a small fraction of Pennsylvania’s overall deer harvest.
Creating opportunities for young people to hunt deer in an adult-supervised situation was the original intent of the mentored-youth hunting program, which overwhelmingly passed the legislature and Gov. Ed Rendell’s desk late last year. The program is a result of the Families Afield initiative of NSSF, National Wild Turkey Federation, and U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance.

Ohio, Pennsylvania Round Out New “America’s Top 20″ List
NEWTOWN, Conn. - If you’re a parent longing to share big-game hunting with your young son or daughter, your odds of doing so legally in your home state have risen to about 50-50.
Nearly half of U.S. hunters — more than ever in modern times — now live in states where they’re free to mentor young people of any age into a cherished lifestyle that instills self sufficiency, respect, discipline and stewardship of the outdoors. Plus provides healthful table fare.
The other half live in states where that sort of parenting is considered criminal.
Lawmakers in Ohio and Pennsylvania recently eliminated legal barriers — minimum age restrictions and coursework mandates — that once prevented some families from hunting together. Those two states now join Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia as safe, family-friendly oases for residents of everywhere else.
“They’re America’s Top 20 states for hunting families to live in and visit,” said Doug Painter, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation .
Painter added, “The new laws in Ohio and Pennsylvania created opportunities for another 10 percent of America’s hunters to enjoy our country’s big-game hunting tradition with youngsters of any age. And that’s just counting residents of those states. We’re predicting that all 20 of today’s family-friendly states will become more and more popular destinations for non-residents, too.”
Across the country, sales of non-resident hunting licenses, tags, stamps and permits have risen 41 percent over the past 10 years.
The average hunter now spends $1,638 — mostly trip-related expenses — on their sport annually, up 11 percent over the past 10 years.
Painter says these statistics show that hunting families today are more mobile than ever, and more willing to spend hard-earned dollars traveling wherever they need to go for a quality hunting experience.
A year ago, NSSF partnered with the National Wild Turkey Federation and U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance to launch “Families Afield.” The program encourages states to restructure hunting laws to accommodate more family participation. Research shows that states without minimum age restrictions or coursework mandates are more likely to engage youths, maintaining healthy hunting culture, conservation funding and economic benefits in the future.
With the success in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Families Afield legislation has now passed in two of three states. The third bill appears stalled in Wisconsin.
More state efforts will be launched later this year.
To learn more about resident and non-resident hunting license requirements in each state, visit www.wheretohunt.org. The site is one of many service-oriented sites managed by NSSF, a trade association that works to keep hunters and shooters safe and active.
America’s Top 20
 
 
 
 
Family-Friendly Hunting States
 
Family-Restrictive Hunting States
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
State
Percentage of Total U.S. Hunting Lic. Holders
Average Paid Hunting Lic. Holders
 
State
Percentage of Total U.S. Hunting Lic. Holders
Average Paid Hunting Lic. Holders
AK
0.7%
97,125
 
AZ
1.2%
187,060
AL
1.8%
272,228
 
CA
2.1%
315,051
AR
2.6%
392,615
 
CO
2.2%
313,023
FL
1.2%
178,399
 
CT
0.4%
57,286
GA
2.1%
329,942
 
DE
0.1%
20,467
IA
1.9%
268,060
 
HI
0.1%
8,751
KS
1.4%
200,112
 
ID
1.7%
247,664
LA
1.9%
273,648
 
IL
2.2%
306,588
MO
3.3%
519,314
 
IN
2.1%
279,417
MS
1.6%
244,316
 
KY
2.4%
349,996
NC
3.0%
427,048
 
MA
0.5%
65,108
NH
0.4%
68,737
 
MD
0.8%
128,682
OH
3.0%
433,238
 
ME
1.4%
202,447
OK
2.3%
327,315
 
MI
5.6%
870,473
PA
6.9%
1,029,660
 
MN
3.9%
577,735
TN
4.9%
688,338
 
MT
1.6%
251,210
TX
7.3%
1,029,048
 
ND
1.0%
137,983
VT
0.6%
93,308
 
NE
1.1%
176,008
WA
1.3%
202,752
 
NJ
0.6%
84,749
WV
1.7%
271,593
 
NM
0.7%
109,234
 
 
 
NV
0.4%
60,534
TOTAL
49.9%
7,346,796
 
NY
4.2%
671,287
 
 
 
OR
1.9%
298,213
 
 
 
RI
0.1%
10,902
Average Annual Total Hunting Incidents Reported *
135.6
 
SC
1.4%
259,698
 
SD
1.6%
220,279
 
 
 
UT
1.0%
161,433
Annual Average: 1 Incident per
43,392
 
VA
2.1%
313,462
Licensed Hunters*
 
 
WI
4.9%
732,881
 
 
 
WY
0.8%
139,698
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TOTAL
50.1%
7,557,319
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Average Annual Total Hunting Incidents Reported *
229.8
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Annual Average: 1 Incident per
39,252
Sources:
 
 
 
Licensed Hunters*
 
Hunting license sales: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
 
 
 
 
Incidents: IHEA Hunter Incident Clearinghouse
 
 
 
 
*Class A incidents. Data from OH & PA, new to the
family-friendly list, are included in restrictive state
calculations

Pennsylvania’s Tribune-Democrat last week praised the state’s governor and Legislature for passing the Families Afield law that will create a mentored youth-hunting program.
“We have long believed in the value of firearms safety training and familiarity for older children and youths. Those who learn to respect a weapon and what it can do are much less likely to have firearms accidents,” the newspaper said in an editorial.
Pennsylvania is the first state to pass Families Afield legislation.

Young hunters again were receiving national media attention last week when the Associated Press featured an article about residents in North Dakota wanting to ease hunting age requirements. The story–picked up by countless newspapers nationwide–focused on statistics from the Families Afield youth hunting report funded by NSSF, the National Wild Turkey Federation and U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance.
Over the past few months, Families Afield has gained much attention from media, including reports on national television and radio and in the country’s largest daily newspapers. The initiative is aimed at eliminating barriers that prevent parents from being able to hunt with their sons and daughters.

Though he received a few great gifts this holiday, outdoor columnist and proud father Christian Berg writes, “The greatest Christmas gift of all, however, may have come courtesy of Gov. Ed Rendell.”
On Thursday, the Pennsylvania governor signed legislation creating a mentored youth-hunting program, which will open new hunting opportunities for parents like Berg across the state. The bill, part of the Families Afield campaign of NSSF, the National Wild Turkey Federation and U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance, was unanimously approved by the Senate Dec. 13 and passed the House Dec. 14 by a vote of 195-1.
The bill is the first Families Afield legislation to be signed into law by a governor. Families Afield is aimed at eliminating unnecessary barriers for sons and daughters to hunt with their parents.

Hunting industry giant Realtree has officially joined the renaissance of the most successful grassroots sporting campaign in American history, National Hunting and Fishing Day.
“Our company prides itself on trying to do the right things for the right reasons,” said Realtree founder Bill Jordan. “We are pleased to join Wonders of Wildlife and others in the hunting and angling community in this great effort.” Wonders of Wildlife, the National Fish and Wildlife Museum and Aquarium based in Springfield, Mo., is driving the movement to energize the 35th annual commemoration, set for Sept. 23, 2006.
Formalized by Congress in 1971, NHF Day was created by NSSF to celebrate the conservation successes of hunters and anglers.

Billboards along Indiana’s busiest expressways are promoting Indiana’s first-ever “Take a Kid Hunting Day” Sept. 17. On that day, conservation clubs across the state will conduct hunts to give the state’s young people a chance to go afield. The event is being promoted with the help of an $18,000 NSSF Hunting Heritage Partnership grant.
“Like our annual free fishing day, we’d like to see it become a day you mark on your calendar to start a young person hunting and give them the opportunity for a lifetime of enjoyment,” said Mark Reiter, public lands program manager for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife. Nearly $1.5 million in grants has been distributed to state wildlife agencies in the last three years by NSSF so that states can implement programs to increase hunting opportunities.

Hunters aged 12 to 18 are invited to compete in the sixth annual Wyoming Youth Hunter Education Challenge. The event, to be held on Saturday, Sept. 10, at the Hunting and Fishing Heritage Expo in Casper, features shotgunning and .22 rifle competition, written and hands-on exams on firearms safety and a test of wildlife-identification skills. The competition is free, firearms and ammunition are provided and prizes will be awarded to winners in two age subdivisions.

The future of hunting and shooting sports will be strengthened if special measures become law in several states. Bills easing youth age restrictions — a barrier to traditional outdoor lifestyles — are in the works in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Minnesota led the effort earlier this year with a new law that opened doors for youth turkey hunters. NSSF, National Wild Turkey Federation and U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance continue to urge such action through their Families Afield initiative.

Twenty-five students from 16 states have been awarded $1,000 scholarships through the Hunting and Shooting Sports Heritage Fund. The scholarship program assists employees of fund-member companies or family members of those employees. “It is a wonderful thing to be able to assist the young men and women who are the future of the shooting sports,” said Bettyjane Swann, scholarship director. “The scholarship program is a great opportunity to show appreciation to the companies and their employees who are directly contributing to the future of the shooting sports and the industry that supports them.” Applicants were asked to write a 350-word essay. Entries were judged on how well the essay explained the importance and tradition of hunting and the shooting sports. Enjoy reading one of the winning essays by Lina Vasquez of Florida.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has signed recently passed legislation that allows hunters younger than 12 years of age, in the company of an adult certified in hunter education, to try turkey hunting. The program goes into effect in time for this fall’s turkey season, which uses a lottery system to draw permits. Only the youth hunter need have a tag.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, a proposed law has been introduced in the state House that would create an apprentice hunting license for prospective hunters of any age. Prior to completing a hunter education course, apprentice hunters under the tutelage of an accomplished adult licensee already certified in hunter education could sample the thrill of hunting. Action on the bill is not expected until the fall. In both cases, by providing a positive experience as the incentive to make the investment of time and money required to become hunter ed certified and equipped for hunting, the number of licensed hunters is expected to increase.

Kansas Big Brothers and Big Sisters stepped outside with their “Littles” on June 3, at their annual Bust A Clay Fundraiser for the BB/BS Pass-It-On outdoor mentors program. It’s aimed at introducing at-risk children to traditional outdoor activities. Unique to this year’s event — an online fundraising campaign and invitations for industry to sponsor a shooter. “The Pass-It-On program has helped me get involved in hunting,” asserts Dana Schweers. “I hope others will get involved so Kansas Littles can have the outdoor fun I am having with my Big Brother.” To learn more about the shoot and to contribute, visit www.passiton.kintera.org.