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Volunteering for Scooters Youth Hunting Camp
Posted by Junior Shooters
By: Ashley Rumble ()
Ashley Knocking back an arrow in preparation to send it fourth down range.
Three years ago I was able to participate in The Scooters Youth Hunting camp held each May in Emmett, Idaho. Scooters is a camp set up so that young kids can learn and experience firearms, survival, archery, knife sharpening, and gun cleaning. It was a lot of fun and to pay back the camp in some way I decided to volunteer to help out.
Scooters call us volunteers “The Orange Army”. All volunteers wear bright orange shirts with the camp logo.
Everyone in the Orange Army is assigned a task, and mine has been archery for both years. I enjoy archery a lot, so being at that station makes for an even better day. My dad has been on the .22 station showing kids how to shoot .22’s. The gateway gun. It’s how I got started in all this.
Tables set up with the random prizes given to the people whom came to/participated in the event.
My duties are to make sure everyone is following directions, and retrieving arrows after each round. It’s not glamorous, but it is fun watching kids shoot, and seeing their faces when they succeed. As a bonus, between each group of kids we have some time to do other things, and this year I brought my own bow, and shot it as much as I could. There are some great 3D targets for me to practice on, and I was able to get more accustomed to my bow.
Another bonus is we get lunch like all the other campers. If you leave this camp hungry, you’re doing something wrong. In the morning there are donuts, and for lunch; burgers, hot dogs, finger steaks, and chicken wings. There’s something for everyone, and enough for everyone to fill their stomachs to the max.
At the end of the day, there is a large drawing for prizes the campers can get. All the kids walk away with an armload each year. The prizes may be anything from a fully loaded Cabela’s camping set, guns, cleaning kits, fishing poles, almost anything outdoor related, and all useful.
Everyone who came to the event to participate or watch participants shooting.
All the junior volunteers get an envelope with money for us to buy our hunting and fishing license. It’s really kind of them, and something that I took care of as soon as I could.
I feel honored to be a part of this camp. I see it is for a good cause, and is a lot of fun. I get to watch all sorts of kids try their hands at new things. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, scooters is a great place to be. In the end, we hope the kids take what they learned and go outside on their own to use the new knowledge with their love of the outdoors.
About six weeks after the actual camp, and Scooter has had a chance to recover a bit, we have a volunteer BBQ and trap shoot to thank everyone for their help, and it all begins again for next year.
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