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OBSERVATIONS FROM THE 2ND ANNUAL CWA DINNER

By: Ron Wilson

February 13, 2003.... The California Waterfowl Association (CWA) held there 2nd Annual Quad Cities Dinner last Thursday at the Ripon Community Center. The evening started with the usual duck hunting talk about how good or terrible the waterfowl season was.

Committee members Greg Farmanian, Jim Fitzpatrick, Ken Johnson, Mike Garello, Rob Ronning, Rich Henry and Bob Hedman had done there job getting the event ready and laying out the items for the participants to view for the upcoming auction and raffle later in the evening.

Chef Jerry Fountain fixed another great dinner of quail, steak and shrimp with all the fixin's to go along with them. The 120 plus attendees were quickly feed and then the auction was started. It did not take long for anyone who had been to many fund raising dinners to see that this was a buyers market. Large framed pictures going for $100. A bronze deer statue sold for just $75. Whether it's the economy, the location or the low number of guests, things went pretty cheap as far as I was concerned. The last part of the event was the raffle, my favorite part of any dinner where you invest a $100 or so and hope you break even by winning something.

I had already invested $50 in cups with tickets in them to win a gun so I had 3 nice coffee cups to take home.

There were several people at the table I was sitting at that I knew. Tom Lucas Jr. and his daughter Terra who worked at Auto-Life Autoparts and Sporting Goods. Mike Monschein of Monschein Industries Inc. in Riverbank and Mark Vejar of Progressive Outdoor Marketing in Oakdale. It seems that sportsmen from cities all around the
area come to this event.

While nobody at our table won anything I got a kick out of Karen King when she won a shotgun with her husbands tickets while he had gone to the little boys room. When Butch came back she said look honey I won a shotgun. Butch said he went back to the little boys room 3 more times but Karen didn't win anything else!

The event went smooth and by 9:30 p.m. Mark and I were headed home so we could get a good nights rest to be bright eyed and ready for work the next day!

The way CWA got started was as a small group of farsighted waterfowlers who did two things that have changed the direction and shape of waterfowl management in our state: (1) they got Ducks Unlimited started in California to help deal with the need to preserve and enhance breeding habitat in Canada, and (2) they founded the Duck Hunters Association of California (the predecessor to CWA) to look after our wintering grounds and duck hunter's needs.

I just hope that the next time CWA decides to curtail our hunting season and bag limits that they remember where their working capital comes from!