Jason Forest
KAGAWONG—Its official, a Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA) branch has been re-established on Manitoulin Island.
QDMA’s operations and outreach coordinator for Canada, Rob Argue, hosted a meeting at the Kagawong Park Centre on February 3. His goal was to find out if there was any interest in starting a new QDMA branch on the Island, answer questions regarding QDMA’s vision and role in the community and to offer direction to help promote the association in this area. Before Mr. Argue became national coordinator, the overall membership (in Canada) was under 500 members and dropping; now it has grown to almost 900.
Interest was quickly shown as members signed up and were voted in before the first hour was up. Peter Craig was elected president of the branch, Mike Spry as the vice-president and Ian Anderson as one of the directors.
“I definitely want to be a part of this. I see the momentum and don’t want the ball to be dropped,” Mr.Craig said. “There is a lot of interest here and I already see a lot of help offered and responsibility taken from the other members.”
According to their website, QDMA is a national charitable wildlife conservation organization and the leading advocate in deer management philosophy. Their mission is to ensure the future of white-tailed deer, their habitat and hunting heritage.
Mr. Craig noted the number one thing people think about when they hear QDMA is food plots. He said people are interested in knowing how to prepare seeded plots to help enhance deer populations.
“Everybody has their own scale of how to practice quality management. It could be as easy as purchasing a couple salt licks and not shooting (first and second-year) bucks. If you do only that it costs you seven dollars and you’re already making a difference,” Mr. Argue said. “After that the sky is the limit depending on how much money and time you can spend on food plots, habitat management and getting stricter on what you harvest from your area.”
He noted Manitoulin Island had a QDMA branch in the past so the contacts are in place to restart relations, to get more people in the community involved and to get a jump start on fundraising and events.
The minimum requirement for a branch is to hold one educational event and one fundraising event per year. The fundraising event, Mr. Argue said, is usually a banquet dinner. He explained how the money fundraised from the main event is split between the association and the local branch to be used for events and other fundraisers. All profits from any other events held by the branch are theirs to put into their coffers. He said the percentage of profits going back to QDMA Canada will be used to leverage bigger corporate sponsors to build the core package, in turn having more ways to increase profitability in the branches across the country.
Most of the 20 individuals who showed up to the meeting have been members of the past QDMA branch or other outdoor associations like Ducks Unlimited and the National Wild Turkey Federation, so they were familiar with banquet dinners and fundraising events.
“A centralized public attraction like the whitetail deer show would be an incredible opportunity to hold educational events at,” Mr. Argue said. “Having speakers like Kip Adams and Matt Ross I can see a seminar series where we discuss things like food plots, soil sampling, land management, youth awareness and more; the sky’s the limit.”
Other ideas like local landowners giving seminars on land management, youth hunts and education events, family events, meat processing demos and inter branch events between Manitoulin Island and Sault Ste. Marie were suggested by the group who were “enthusiastic” about starting a branch on the Island.
Neil Debassige, principal of Lakeview School and co-creator of Fuel the Fire TV, was interested in helping create a Facebook page and other multimedia aspects for the new branch.
“The way to get things going now is through youth education and marketing; we need things like how- to-videos and information that needs to be instantly accessible online,” Mr. Debassige said. “Once we do that, we get the high schools and even the elementary school involved. An archery program in the schools, for example, shows there is a lot of opportunity for education and getting this new (generation) invested.”
Mr. Argue explained that while local branches focus on events and fundraising, he will be looking for corporate sponsors to donate products and supplies to provide items like hats and knives with the QDMA Canada logo to increase visibility and awareness in the area.
“I will even be looking for corporate sponsors like Browning Canada and Remington Canada so we can have guns and other hunting gear to raffle off, which in turn will raise money and visibility for the association,” Mr. Argue said.
“We are growing quickly; you can feel the excitement and the momentum taking off,” said Mr. Argue. “More and more people are wanting to get involved. It’s great to see the emails and get phone calls wondering what it’s about and how they can help.”
