Claycomb

The Scooters Youth Hunting Camp (SYHC) was held this past Saturday at the Gem Co. Rod & Gun Club in Emmett, Idaho. I get to hit most of the big shows in America and conduct seminars at a lot of them. But the SYHC is my most favorite show. I don’t understand it but I think you get more joy when you give to someone who can never repay you.

The camp is put on by a multitude of volunteers and none of them makes a penny. Due to this and some over-the-top donors, the kids get to attend for free. Scott McGann (the founder) works year-round getting things lined up and the volunteers have weekly meetings, hustle up donations and work their tails off setting up the camp.

I attended my first SYHC in 2005. My wife signed up a couple of young boys in her school to attend and corralled me up to take them. Being the self-centered type, I about had the big one. The camp is held the first Saturday in May — right when bear hunting, mushroom picking, crappie fishing and whistle pig hunting is red-hot! I about died. But after that first camp I’ve been a volunteer ever since.

In the early days, kids mailed in a registration form. If I remember correctly, we were lucky to have 140 kids in those days. Then it progressed to where we had to go to an online registration system. This year the camp filled up with 250 kids in 49 seconds!

Here’s the system. At 8:30 a.m. registration is open and kids sign in. The kids are divided into six groups and wear a colored wrist band depicting which group they are in. After that we say the Pledge of Allegiance, a prayer and then it is game on.

There are six stations that the kids rotate through — shotgun range, .22 range, black powder station, archery range, gun cleaning/knife sharpening and survival station. They hit their first station and then reconvene in the main area for a seminar. The seminars are put on by some good pro-staffers and are super interesting. After the seminar they rotate to their next station.

At noon, the kids eat for free due to the over-the-top generosity of local companies donating hamburgers, hot dogs, milk, snacks and more.

There is also a raffle table that helps support the camp. Outdoor companies such as Smiths Consumer Products, Knives of Alaska, Umarex Airguns, Spyderco Knives, Otis Technology, Swab-Its!, Mister Twister, MyTopoMaps, Birchwood Casey Shoot-N-C targets and many more companies donate items for the raffle table and for the kids drawing.

These companies are amazingly generous. (The doughnut wagon by Hebrews Coffee is also a popular one.)

After the kids have rotated through all of their stations and the seminars are completed it is now time for Scott’s most favorite time — the gift drawing. Again, due to the generosity of numerous companies every kid draws at least one gift. And they’re not rinky dink little Chinese finger pullers like you win at a carnival. They are nice gifts.

If you have a kid, grandkid or a kid you are working with between the ages of 9 and 16 you ought to try to enter them next year. It is an awesome camp.

On a side note, it is a lot of work and I always wondered why Scott put so much work and energy into the camp. The last few months prior to camp they have regular meetings. At night after work volunteers are scrambling to get donations and things lined up. The night before the camp a host of volunteers spend the night up there setting up (not me). Saturday morning everyone is hustling with final details. Then they work all day and then tear down until 8 p.m.

Then Scott shared with me why he does what he does. He didn’t have a good dad and if it hadn’t of been for his grandad, he and his brother wouldn’t have been taught how to hunt. Scott started doing the SYHC to help single moms get their kids into the outdoors. Of course he couldn’t tell a kid with a dad and mom that they couldn’t come but he really did it to help single moms. He knows from personal experience how hard that is. More so now than ever. His beautiful wife Kami died a couple of years ago so he’s raising two young boys on his own now. Tough duty.

(Some of you parents ought to throw together a camp like this. Start off small and let it grow. I helped a guy start one over in Oregon. We started with only 30 to 40 ranch kids.)