At the most recent board meeting, we have made the very difficult decision to cancel the in-person annual banquet in 2021 due to ongoing concerns related to COVID-19. Although we are hopeful and optimistic that conditions will improve in the next five months, we are required to make many decisions related to the banquet far in advance, and therefore must make our decision on the banquet early based on the information currently available.

We will continue to host as many of our events and programs as possible, in keeping with local guidelines and keeping our members and volunteers safe. Thank you for your understanding; we regret having to make this decision and look forward to simpler times ahead.

Please be aware that Outdoor Buddies will be following all state and local guidelines for our events, including the mandated use of masks and social distancing. If you have a fever or other flu-like symptoms, have traveled out of state in the past 2 weeks, or have been in close contact with anyone testing positive for COVID-19, please do not attend these events. Furthermore, if you are in a high-risk category, carefully consider your risk before attending. Participants will be required to sign a waiver prior to attending events until further notice.

We will be continuing to update our events and precautions as the situation develops. Thank you for your patience, optimism, and understanding. Hope all is well with you and yours!

If you were selected for a hunt with Outdoor Buddies, don't forget to apply for your tags as instructed through CPW by 4/6/2021. You should have received the appropriate hunt codes when you were notified by the hunt committee. If for any reason you are not able to hunt with us this year, please notify us as soon as possible so we can find a hunter to take your slot.

We would like to remind hunters that if you cancel at the last minute, you will be ineligible to hunt with Outdoor Buddies for one year. Exceptions will be made for legitimate emergencies.

Can't wait to hunt with you this year!

Green Mill Sportsman’s Club is hosting an Outdoor Buddies sight-in at their facility to honor the memory of Richard (Rich) Cori who passed away on July 28, 2015. Rich was a staunch supporter of Outdoor Buddies and served on its Board of Directors for several years.

The event will be held on Saturday, July 24th and is intended to help our mobility-impaired hunters prepare for the upcoming hunting season. Please bring the rifle and ammo you will be hunting with, as well as any adaptive equipment you plan to use.

Participants will be limited at this event so make your reservations soon. To reserve your spot at the sight-in please contact Bill Gowdy at (303) 489-9411 or billgowdy@msn.com.

Masks will be required at the event. Shooters are asked to bring their own mask. Shooters should also bring their own eye and ear protection. Hand sanitizer will be available for participants.

We are scheduled to use three ranges: Big Bore, Law Enforcement (LE) long range and Pistol. We will only use every-other shooting bench to keep separation enforced.

There is no charge for the event & light refreshments will be served. Accessible restrooms are available.

Location – Go three miles west of I-25 (Exit 232) to Bonanza, take first left at Green Mill Road (dirt road) and continue for ¾ mile to the facility.

Eligibility – Outdoor Buddies Mobility-Impaired Members and their Helpers. Youth (under age 18) who possess a hunter safety card are welcome, but must be accompanied by an adult relative or guardian. Outdoor Buddies mobility-impaired members will be given an opportunity to shoot first, before others. If you are hunting with Outdoor Buddies this year, make sure to bring the rifle and ammo you plan on using for your hunt.

Registration – Registration will begin at approximately 8:00 AM and shooting will start at approximately 9:00 AM. A valid driver’s license, passport, or other photo identification is required and a liability waiver must be completed by all attendees.

Ranges – Rifle ranges with 25, 50, 100, and 200 yard targets are available. A pistol range is also available for use upon request. Range qualified personnel will provide assistance. Targets, spotting scopes, shooting benches, and sandbags are provided.

Eye and ear protection are required! Keep in mind that in an effort to keep equipment clean, borrowed eyes/ears may be limited depending on health guidelines on the date of the event. Sporting rifles, handguns, and black powders guns are okay.

No fully automatic weapons will be allowed.

Greetings, everyone! This is retired Marine sergeant Christopher Fesmire with a report back from an Outdoor Buddies elk hunt in February 2021. I am a medically retired Marine rifleman who lost both of my legs above the knee due to some mines in Iraq, and hunt from a vehicle. This was my first elk hunt with Outdoor Buddies, and my first time out since the coronavirus pandemic. I was very excited, and feeling good about the whole thing.

It was a beautiful trip there, down the Arkansas valley, over to skirt the base of the Sangre De Cristos to Westcliffe, down the Gardner valley and out to Walsenburg. Fresh snow makes southern Colorado one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was an auspicious start to the trip. I met Dwaine Robey and Mike Smith at the Big R Store in Trinidad, and everything went smoothly getting my license. Off to the ranch we went.

We arrived at the ranch and sighted in with the rifle. I could not get to the range to sight in my personal rifle due to weather so Mike Smith was kind enough to let me use his suppressed .270, “Dakota”. I was nervous about maintaining the esteem of USMC riflemen everywhere, but it went well and that rifle was a joy to shoot. We had lunch, then it was time to hunt!

The hunt started Wednesday afternoon. We were just supposed to scout but Mike said if we had a shot we were gong to take it. It was February, and the animals were skittish after being hunted all season. We saw a herd of bull elk and they took off as soon as they saw us. Driving along a bit further and we spooked the cow elk. They immediately fled to the horizon, and as we crested the next rise they take off again. With that turnover country terrain, the snow cover, and the weather moving in it looked like elk just ran off into the sky. It was an impressive sight, but would we see them again? That night Larry Sanford arrived, and we had an excellent elk pasta dish courtesy of Mike’s wife. The snow was coming down as we retired for the evening.

Day 2. Thursday started as a cold, snowy morning on the ranch with 6 to 8 inches of snow having fallen during the night. Things were very quiet out there with the snow and the polar vortex. Every time we saw any animal or animals they would just take off for Oklahoma, it seemed. This was going to be a challenge, if I did manage to get a shot it was going to have to be quick. We didn’t see much of anything that day, basically we were just touring the ranch four wheeling.

Day 3. Friday was supposed to be the final day of the hunt. Right from the start we saw more animals. The ranch was like an American Serengeti, deer down by the river and pronghorn played chicken with the jeep. Absolutely huge mulie bucks stared us down. We caught up to the bull elk herd, where I was able to get a good sight in on them, my aim getting steadier and steadier.

After breakfast all the animals disappeared. Seeing how the animals ghosted us I tried to prepare myself for a quick shot. Whenever we stopped to open a gate I would practice my quick draw aim in the jeep. If these gentlemen were working so hard to put me in front of an elk I would be ready if we found them. As we were hunting I kept hearing, “One of these times we are going to pull up to a clearing and there is going to be a herd of elk in there…” The last time I saw the cow elk they were running away into the sky.

I started to think they were just hazing the new guy. “There is a herd of 400 elk out there! Go find them…” kind of thing, like looking for a box of grid squares. I was hallucinating elk, seeing the cows in cacti, rocks, and trees. But alas, there were no cow elk. Then, at the end of the day, while heading to a vantage point on the ranch where Outdoor Buddies does not normally hunt, Larry stumbled into a herd of cow elk, not a herd of 400 though. Friday night was much subdued. It felt like hope was fleeting, and we all had an early night.

While boiling water first thing Saturday morning there is a knock on the door. Robbie, the ranch lion hunter comes in and starts asking where we have been hunting so I direct him to Larry and Mike in the other room. I overhear “Cow elk feeding on the highway. We should go.” My heart immediately started pounding and my adrenaline spikes, who needs coffee now. We threw on our gear and load up in the truck, doubletime. Right as we were heading to where the elk are we saw them cross the road ahead of us, to another ranch. They joined up with a herd of about 40, and are off limits to us. Those girls were like my last love interest, here and then gone. Stand down, breathe, lower your heart rate. And by the way did I mention we were in a completely different truck than the one I had been practicing in all weekend, with a professional hunter and my self esteem as a Marine rifleman on the line…

Robbie said he has some time if we want to check out where Larry saw the elk the previous evening. We headed out to the area where Outdoor Buddies does not normally hunt, due to the wide open spaces, and long distance ranges. We pull up to a small mesa and THERE THEY ARE. It is not cacti or rocks or cedar, it is a herd of cow elk, but can we get close enough for a shot? We creep around the backside of a hill, as much as you can creep in a diesel truck. And when we come around the herd is still there but they are definitely checking us out. We creep a bit closer and there they go… running off into the sky again, I presume. We take off, chasing them in the truck but the elk can outpace us over that terrain. Robbie, who just happened to stop by that morning, blows a cow elk call and some of the tail end of the herd stop a couple hundred yards from us. I only had eyes for one of those girls, staring at me through the crook of the rearview mirror.

I really do not know if I can tell you what happened next. For all I know Larry, Mike, and Robbie were jumping up and down, whooping and hollering. For me the world disappeared, and all that existed was that cow elk and me. I put the crosshairs center mass behind her shoulder, breathed out, and squeezed. I was one with the elk, as pure a relationship as had ever existed. The elk reared once, went down in place, and stayed down. All those rifle handling drills had paid off. Everyone’s hard work had paid off.

This was as close to the perfect elk hunting trip as is possible for me. Thank you Dwaine, Larry, Mike, Robbie, and everyone involved in this hunt. I am writing this 4 days after the elk was harvested and I am still riding high on life, not to mention stocking my freezer with some of the finest meat in North America. I will see you all at the antelope hunt.

Like most normal humans, I have a thing for meatballs. And as a hunter, I love teriyaki meatballs — because, well, teriyaki seems to be one of the primary flavors American hunters turn to for cooking wild game. Obviously, I also love Italian meatballs, Greek meatballs, Laotian meatballs, German meatballs, etc, etc. Pretty much every culture that eats meat, which is almost all of them, has some sort of a meatball.

This style of meatball, called niku dango, is darn good. It’s basically teriyaki meatballs, normally made with pork, and if you are not a hunter, use pork or beef or even ground chicken or turkey. I used venison to make these meatballs instead, because that’s what I had at hand. It’s a pretty simple meatball, made “Japanese” with the addition of ginger, green onion, coarse panko breadcrumbs and soy sauce in the mix. All by itself, it’s a nice meatball.

The star of this show is the sauce, which is a homemade teriyaki. Could you use store-bought teriyaki sauce? I suppose, but I always prefer cooking from scratch. Teriyaki, if you’ve been living in a cave near the Arctic Circle your whole life, is a salty, sweet, slightly acidic sauce that goes well on everything. In Japan it’s a sort of BBQ sauce. Here it’s become a universal seasoning; I’ve even seen teriyaki potato chips.

That’s really all there is to this recipe: Easy teriyaki meatballs glazed with a homemade sauce, dusted with sesame seeds. Stick a toothpick in each meatball and you have a great party appetizer. Toss a few on top of some steamed rice and you have an easy weeknight meal. But a fair warning: Make more than you think you’ll need. People seem to be unable to control themselves while eating these…

Meatballs

•2 pounds finely ground venison, pork or wild boar

•3 tablespoons minced green onions

•1 cup panko breadcrumbs

•2 tablespoons soy sauce

•1 teaspoon salt

•2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger

•2 eggs

Sauce

•2 tablespoons sake

•1/2 cup mirin

•1 tablespoon sugar

•1/2 cup soy sauce

•2 teaspoons potato or corn starch

•Toasted sesame seeds, for garnish

1. Mix all the meatball ingredients together in a bowl. Mix all the sauce ingredients in another bowl.

2. Form meatballs anywhere from the size of a walnut to the size of golf ball. For best results, set the meatballs on a baking sheet and put it into the fridge for an hour to firm up. But you can cook the meatballs straight away if you'd like.

3. Cook the meatballs. You can deep fry them at 360°F for about 5 minutes, or you can poach them in simmering water for about the same amount of time (they're ready when they float); or you can bake the meatballs at 400°F for about 20 minutes.

4. Glaze the meatballs. Whisk the sauce together so the starch doesn't stick to the bottom of the bowl, and pour it into a large saucepan. Bring it to a boil and add the cooked meatballs. Roll them around in the hot sauce to glaze for 30 seconds or so. Move the meatballs to a serving plate and sprinkle sesame seeds over them. Serve hot as an appetizer or with rice.

I don't like a super sweet sauce, so I only use 1 tablespoon of sugar; mirin is also sweet, so that's enough for me. Feel free to increase the amount of sugar if you like.

Serves: 6

www.honest-food.net

Cookbooks: Buck, Buck, Moose. Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast.

Duck, Duck, Goose. Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail.

Raffle to be rescheduled to a later date.

Meetings are held from 6:30pm-8:30pm at the locations and dates below.