THE NEXT GENERAL MEETING, REMEMBER THE DATE, THURSDAY DECEMBER 7 TH , 7:30 PM, AT THE CLUB HOUSE, LINCOLN PARK ROAD, IN THE TOWNSHIP OF GEORGIAN BLUFFS.

NIBBLE NITE is always a popular meeting at the SSA. in DECEMBER. We are going to try something a little different this month for the LUCKEY DRAWS!! We will have a series of draws for MEAT. Tickets will be $2 each or 3 for $5 The money we raise from these draws goes toward our daily operating expenses. The CLUB needs your support!!. We will have a master CHEF    at the meeting to determine the most creative, delicious, wonderful, exotic, tastiest----well, you get the idea that it will be special because you created this wonderful dish! For you new club members, the DEC. meeting features a TASTING NITE of NATURES BOUNTY supplied by members who want to share their success with others. Anyone can bring something that they prepared for the event. PLEASE bring what you need to let people sample what you created. eg paper plates, cups, toothpicks etc. YES, trophies will be presented!!!    THERE WILL BE A BEER BAR, ( no liquor or wine.) This is a fun night   where members provide   the entertainment!!

SPOUSES are   always welcome

Congratulations to Ab McMillan who will be 90 years young on December 9 th .   

SSA Bylaw amendment proposal

It has been recommended by the Board of Directors of the Sydenham Sportsmen's Association that the SSA bylaws be amended in relation to the age limit for student membership.   At present the SSA student membership allows for the extension of "full rights and privileges of the Association" to be extended to those who reach their 18 th birthday and are in full time attendance at an accredited educational institution.   It is recommended that the SSA "Student Member" be changed to match the age limit of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters of which SSA membership provides as a member benefit.    The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters provide a "Junior membership" to those under 21 years of age.

Membership in the SSA for student members at present reads as:

" 17 (b)             The Association will accept Student Members on a yearly basis for those who shall be 13 years of age or more.

            1.          Full rights and privileges of the Association will be extended to those who reach their 18th birthday and are in full time attendance at an accredited educational institution. "            

the recommended bylaw change is to read as:

" 17 (b)             The Association will accept Student Members on a yearly basis for those who shall be 13 years of age up to their 21 st birthday.

            1.          Full rights and privileges of the Association will be extended to those who reach their 18th birthday and are in full time attendance at an accredited educational institution up to the Student Members 21 st birthday. "       

This proposed bylaw amendment will be published a minimum of three times prior to the Annual General Meeting on January 4, 2007 at which time it shall be voted on by those members in good standing and having fully paid membership dues present.     Discussion is encouraged from the membership as the appropriateness of this change at the General Meetings in advance of the matter to be put to a vote in January 2007

PRESIDENTS CORNER

I am pleased to announce that the Sydenham Sportsman ' s Association have won the very prestigious " Deryin K. Valley Memorial Trophy " for the club doing the most for conservation in Zone H. This was presented to us at the Zone H Annual Meeting and Awards Banquet on November18 th /06. Having won this category will now allow us to compete for the Mary Pickford Award in the OFAH provincial contest, whose winners will be announced at the OFAH Convention in February 2007. On behalf of all our members and executive I would like to congratulate Jack Doherty who won the Os Mac Arthur Award for " Conservationist of The Year. " a well deserved award for all his time and dedication to conservation and the Club.

At last some hopeful news about the Cormorant situation

The O.F.A.H. and the Sydenham Sportsmen ' s Association strongly support the introduction of Bill 156, An Act to Amend the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, 1997 by Ernie Parsons, M.P.P. for Prince-Edward Hastings. The introduction of this Bill is a significant step forward in terms of dealing with the growing threat to fish populations and the environment by Cormorants in many areas of the province. This private members bill, when/if passed, will de-list cormorants, effectively removing the protection they currently enjoy, treating these birds the same as common crows and grackles and allowing for culling of the birds in addition to other population control methods currently being used. . In a nutshell, we will be able to effect cormorant control when and if the situation requires it. We urge you to sign the Petition which will be available at the next general meeting on Dec. 7 th or download a copy of the petition from the O.F.A.H. website and follow the instructions given there.

Bill Douglas, President

HANDGUN.

A TT RENEWAL 2007 .

Renewal of A TT's issued through SSA has been simplified by the CFO.

Most A TT's will expire in April 2007 and the CFO has offered to fast track our applications as long as all renewals are in their hands by mid January 2007.

There is no longer the need to be at the club in person to fill out the confusing renewal form as in previous years. The only form required by the CFO is the certification from the SSA executive stating that the member is a member in good standing with SSA ( 2007 dues MUST be paid) and that the required attendances at the range have been verified.

To this end, this is what is required by me, as Handgun Chair, to renew your A TT:

Send to me, postmarked no later than January 5th. 2007, the attendance form that you sign when attending at the range (with a minimum of two attendances ). Sign the sheet and print, LEGIBLY, your full name, POLIPAL # and full mailing address. If you have multiple sheets, please send only one.

Any renewal applications that are not at the CFO's office by mid January will go to the bottom of the pile and you know what that means! The CFO is making a major concession to speed up our renewals so let's take advantage of it.

TARGETS .

For 2007 there will be a supply of targets available at the range. Please use these targets so that some consistency can be established for our awards programme. They are available, at SSA cost, for $1.00 per bundle of20 targets. Use the honour system and put the money in the container provided and please don't hoard them as we have a plentiful supply.

Shoot, shoot safely, shoot often and remember ...' If you don't use it, you lose it !

Stew. Wallace ,

119 Douglas Street, Williamsford, NOH 2VO

               .

FORESTS, WILDLIFE & WETLANDS

Our fall hunting season is well under way. Needless to say, our politically-correct, disconnected do-gooders will once more be lecturing we hunters on the evil that they perceive we do. Therefore, it was with some pleasure that I saw certain people taking issue with the urban elite and actually coming out in support of hunters. I was very pleased to see the staid old Globe & Mail produce a couple of excellent articles that demonstrated outright support for outdoors sportsmen.

Roy McGregor wrote a very good column on hunting and the difference between small town rural and urban views on our sports. McGregor says "people will find out you hunt and ask why do you hunt? Timorous hunters will duck and run every time".

McGregor makes a very good case for hunters and the gist of the article is that hunters should stand up and identify themselves as hunters. I agree most heartily with this.

We should let people know that hunting is what we are - we love it, hunt within the game laws and stand for sound conservation and healthy wildlife Populations. We should make it clear that most of us do more for wildlife conservation than a boatload of anti-hunters and that our wildlife is here because of us, not in spite of us.

We should be proud of what we are and not apologize for our activities.

Christie Blatchford, in her splendid politically-incorrect style, wrote a dandy column in the weekend Globe. Much of her article concerned the way most of the citizens of Toronto view hunters - and Christie does not like their view. I illustrate her point with a small excerpt from her column:

"After all, I had broken about a dozen Toronto conventions in one fell swoop:

Thou shalt not speak of guns; thou shalt not speak of guns but to condemn:

thou shalt not suggest, by word or deed or inflection or lift of brow, that there are good owners and bad ones; thou shalt not speak in any manner approaching approbation about hunting (for one thing, it may lead to meat-eating) and thou shall always and at every turn, defend the liberty-encroaching yet entirely useless national firearms registry, while simultaneously attacking the liberty-encroaching but undeniably useful notion of imposing reverse onus bail conditions upon those thugs caught actually using guns in the commission of an actual crime".

"The odds of the average citizen in this city being shot by a law-abiding, registered up-the-ying-yang, taxpaying, gun-club-using fellow are next to nothing, but we here live in fear of that guy."

"Him we want banned, or his guns anyway. And his pal, the hunter. We have no patience for any of his nonsense about shooting being a sport (what, biathlon?) or for any of the hunters'BS or the varmint-shooting farmers. But give us a dude with a criminal record longer than your arm, a habit of not showing up for court and a well-documented taste for violence, and honey, we will turn ourselves inside out in search of' root causes." .;

"I didn't mean for this to be so much about guns, but this is one of those issues that really captures so much that makes Toronto so breathtakingly irritating and. well, distinct."

"There are others, but chiefly what distinguishes the Torontonian is that, from the sanctity of his SUV-loving life, he desires to tell other Canadians how we all ought to live"

Thank you, Roy and Christie! It is great to see a national paper with the stature of the Globe & Mail finally coming around and showing some support for rural values.

John Lambie, our MNR law enforcement co-ordinator, informs us that somewhere between 12 and 15 percent of hunter checks result in infractions. He says that most are safety-related, i.e., loaded in vehicles, etc. Apparently quite a few occurrences involve unencased firearms after dark; this should be an almost unheard of infraction in this day and age, with rollup gun socks that can be popped into a hunter's pocket and can then be readily available when the magic hour rolls up - and sundown times are published every day in the local paper. Lambie's comments really struck home with me. They made me recall my very busy times when I was in charge of enforcement and waterfowl management at Luther Marsh in the 1~60's. To make a point, I will relate to our members a little bit of why I truly support encasing firearms at the required legal time.

The need to stop late shooting became quite apparent to me when the high rate of unretrieved, dead waterfowl was vividly brought to my attention by virtue of a too well-remembered occurrence.

Two conservation officers had somehow gone out of the airboat and drowned. It was never satisfactorily explained. I spent considerable time in aircraft searching for bodies and any pertinent evidence. During this flying time, I noticed a great many small, white dots all over the 6,000-acre marsh. Later, on-site inspection revealed that these dots were dead ducks - and these were the ones with breasts showing.

The ones with breasts down would not even be seen from the air, so I knew that a great many birds were being killed, not retrieved, and as such were never included in the hunters' bag. Why? What was going on?

I knew that there was a great deal of unlawful late shooting. (Often quite late). Of course, a lot of these birds taken at this time of day would not be found in the dark. Well, it was my job to see that wildlife received whatever protection was provided by law, as well as to conserve that wildlife for the use and enjoyment of all the people.

When there could be 1,500 to 2,000 hunters in hides and blinds all over that big marsh, it proved to be very difficult to determine which one was actually doing the late shooting. However, one thing I could do was to ensure that when the legal shooting time ended, the guns would be unloaded and encased - can't shoot with the gun in the case - and it worked.

It took quite a few years, some rolling around in the mud with those who objected to my approach (yes, 40 years ago I could get quite physical when I had to). There was a lot of court time and a lot of feathers ruffled, but it worked. The late shooting dropped off to an acceptable level, and subsequent inspections showed that there was a truly substantial drop in waterfowl loss and wastage.

The moral of the foregoing being that there is usually a very good reason for most game laws and these laws can only work when we hunters are willing to co-operate when conservation demands it.

On a different topic, there has been a new major effort set out in support of cormorant control. Ernie Parsons, MPP for Prince Edwards/Hastings, has put forth a private member's bill to open the season on double-crested cormorants by re-classifying them into the same category as crows, cowbirds and grackles, etc.

This would remove their protected status and allow the general public to help control this bird that is doing so much damage to our fishing in Ontario waters.

The bill might stand a reasonable chance of passing because the member proposing the bill is a Liberal, and it just might carry some weight. It looks like the best chance for cormorant control that we have yet seen. We will have a petition for members to sign at our next club meeting. For those who cannot attend the meeting, please drop a short note in support of the bill - be sure to remember to include the name MPP Ernie Parsons, Bill 156, for cormorant control and send it to:

Mike Brown, MPP, Alqoma/Manitoulin, Room l80, Main Legislative Bldg., Queens Park, Toronto, Ontario. M7A lAB

Please take the time to do this. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes and a 51¢ stamp - this is an important effort and needs all the support it can get. Do your duty as a sportsman.

As a point of interest, we are getting really good reports from the deer hunt.

As' well, some areas indicate that grouse are finally showing improvement - not as good as grouse in the north, but still pretty good.

For your information, the Globe & Mail reports the following:

A 20-year-old Wisconsin man faces charges, after he allegedly had sexual contact with a dead deer on the side of the road, His attorney, public defender Fredric Anderson, argues that the charge. Of having sexual gratification with an animal should be dismissed because the deer was no longer an "animal", which Webster's Dictionary defines as "any of a kingdom of living beings". "The statute", he wrote, "does not prohibit one from having sex with a carcass".

So remember, if you shoot a deer in Wisconsin, and are suddenly overcome with lust, first check the deer's pulse to make sure that the creature is indeed dead.

Merry Christmas, fellow sportsmen, and have a very happy and prosperous New Year.

Blake Smith, Co-Chairman, Forests, wildlife & Wetlands Advisory Committee .

ARCHERY PROGRAM

The old tree stand that was across the road from the archery practice range was removed on November 14th as it has been very unsafe for the last year. We will be putting up a new one on the archery course next spring and I will be calling for volunteers to help build it in early May. I ' m happy to see that the archery facilities were used more frequently this past fall and look forward to any input on how to improve our course.

Bill Douglas, Archery Chairman