Changes At Youth Outdoor Field Day Lead To Greater Usage

Individuals enjoyed lunch at the Mahaska County Youth Outdoor Field Day on Saturday.

Individuals enjoyed lunch at the Mahaska County Youth Outdoor Field Day on Saturday.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Youth Outdoor Field Day is a yearly event hosted by the Mahaska County Conservation Board, that has in past years been a guided group tour of events.

This year, these were changed, and participants were able to take in many or a few of the events they wanted to, and for how long, as each individual chose where to spend their own time.

“We’ve really seen an uptick in our registrations”, said Mahaska County Conservation Director, Dave Sedevic.

Sedevic believes that increase in registrations came from the fact that individuals could spend as much or as little time at the event as they wanted to. This format allowed for those involved in other activities at other places to come and enjoy some time in the outdoors.

Sedevic said that the number of stations available also increased this year. Individuals could learn about things like wilderness first-aid, water safety, dog training, dutch-oven cooking and tree identification.

Other activities also included rifle and shotgun shooting, archery, bow fishing and fly casting. “We’ve got a lot more stations and people are getting spread out”, said Sedevic.

The fishing station happened to be the most popular station for individuals. Sedevic said that historically, the fishing station is where kids would tend to linger. “Fishing is great because, a lot of the things we do out here are what they call lifetime activities. You can only play football or basketball for so long, we’re showing them things they can do for their rest of their lives”, said Sedevic.

Youth Outdoor Field Day is now in it’s 16th year, and is the largest education event hosted by Mahaska County Conservation. A big event like this has little impact on the budget for the conservation board, as nearly all expenses for the day are donated by civic groups or area businesses. The only expense for conservation comes in the form of wages.

When it comes to those that registered, 151 pre-registered for the day, but many more arrived at the day of the event. Those registered users brought along an adult as well. With the volunteers and participants, nearly 500 people took part in the day, with nearly 200 of those being kids alone.

You can find out more about upcoming events with Mahaska County Conservation by visiting them on their website – http://www.mahaskaconservation.com/

Posted by on Sep 26 2016. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed

         

Search Archive

Search by Date
Search by Category
Search with Google
Log in | Copyright by Oskaloosa News