The DBGR Wildlife Club is always busy on campus and in the community, but recently they added another award as evidence of their outstanding work in the state.

The club placed second in the O.W.L.S. contest offered by the N.D. Game and Fish Department for project hours.

According to N.D. Game and Fish, “Outdoor Wildlife Learning Sites (O.W.L.S.) are outdoor conservation classrooms located near schools where students can learn about the importance of habitat and conservation of wildlife resources in a hands-on setting. This learning is accomplished through a variety of interpretive stations and demonstrations including native flower, grass and tree plantings, wildlife nesting structures, wetlands, brush piles, and wildlife track identification plots. The number of demonstrations designed into an OWLS project is limited only by one’s imagination and area size.” North Dakota has more than 75 O.W.L.S.

Jim Miller, one of the leaders of the club quite appropriately called the award “a feather in our cap.” The club has received a national award and is known state- and nation-wide for helping to proliferate the Wood Duck species by placing Wood Duck houses in nesting habitats.

The club’s latest project was making venison sausage.

“We spent three evenings preparing, grinding and stuffing 50 ducks into sausage to be used on outings and at meetings,” said Miller. Half the sausage was later smoked by co-leader of the club Tony Geer, in the smoker the club had made out of an old soda machine.