Willie
06-25-2007, 09:41 PM
As a youngster, I learned about outdoors from the best
By John Lucas
Monday, June 25, 2007
Somewhere in a drawer at the house, I still have a couple of sleeve patches that verify a long time ago — when I was in the fifth grade — that I passed a safe hunter test.
I was so proud of them. I had my mother sew them on my hunting coat — one on each sleeve. I hadn't thought about them for years, until last week when I learned Doug Travis had died.
He was the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife conservation officer who visited our school and others throughout Western Kentucky to talk about conservation, wildlife, hunting and fishing. He showed us Disney-type movies of deer, bears and wildcats in their habitats.
And in good weather, he took us out onto the school grounds to demonstrate fly-casting techniques and to shoot bows and arrows, air rifles and shotguns.
That alone demonstrates how much times have changed. It's hard to imagine in today's climate anyone bringing guns into schools, much less letting 11- and 12-year-olds shoot them at paper targets and clay pigeons.
We kids loved for him to visit, and part of what he taught — an appreciation for the outdoors, the environment and its wild denizens — has stayed with me all these years.
What we didn't realize at the time was how much he loved what he did or that he was a pioneer at it.
Conservation education even in the 1960s was relatively new, and Travis wrote the curriculum for Kentucky and much of the nation.
A graduate of Murray State University, he had taught and coached football for a while before joining the department and designed a nine-month course taught by officers in the public schools one day a month.
"When we wrote it up, there was nothing on paper anywhere. We were one of the first states," he told me in an interview a couple of years ago.
The curriculum made Kentucky the first state to train 100,000 youngsters in hunter safety.
It was a job he loved, one he couldn't and didn't quit. When he died June 18 at age 88, he was still wearing the khaki-and-green uniform of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
He had been a conservation officer for 59 years, making him the longest-working state employee ever.
He was recognized for that distinction a couple of years back by Gov. Ernie Fletcher, and last December the Fish and Wildlife Department named a 4,100-acre wildlife management area in Hickman and Carlisle counties in far Western Kentucky in his honor.
But Travis will likely be best remembered by thousands and thousands of boys as the director for 25 years of the department's Camp Currie on Kentucky Lake. At summer camps, he directed a staff that taught kids how to swim, canoe, hunt, fish and respect the out-of-doors.
The Crittenden County native, who had lived for several years in the Paducah, Ky., area, joined the Fish and Wildlife Department in December 1947. He had been a small arms instructor in the Army during World War II and put those skills to good use in his youth education programs.
He could flip a penny into the air and drill a hole through it with a shot from a .22 rifle. He was an avid bow hunter and had a special relationship with Fred Bear of Bear Archery Co. He was instrumental in starting Kentucky's first modern bow-hunting season.
Charles Martin, current chairman of the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, was another kid who encountered Travis as a fifth-grader.
He recalled Travis "had a special relationship with children that cannot be replicated."
"He would motivate kids like nothing I've seen," he said. "I don't think this state will ever have a conservation education leader like him again."
Contact John Lucas at 464-7433 or lucasj@courierpress.com.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/jun/25/as-a-youngster-i-learned-about-outdoors-from-the/
By John Lucas
Monday, June 25, 2007
Somewhere in a drawer at the house, I still have a couple of sleeve patches that verify a long time ago — when I was in the fifth grade — that I passed a safe hunter test.
I was so proud of them. I had my mother sew them on my hunting coat — one on each sleeve. I hadn't thought about them for years, until last week when I learned Doug Travis had died.
He was the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife conservation officer who visited our school and others throughout Western Kentucky to talk about conservation, wildlife, hunting and fishing. He showed us Disney-type movies of deer, bears and wildcats in their habitats.
And in good weather, he took us out onto the school grounds to demonstrate fly-casting techniques and to shoot bows and arrows, air rifles and shotguns.
That alone demonstrates how much times have changed. It's hard to imagine in today's climate anyone bringing guns into schools, much less letting 11- and 12-year-olds shoot them at paper targets and clay pigeons.
We kids loved for him to visit, and part of what he taught — an appreciation for the outdoors, the environment and its wild denizens — has stayed with me all these years.
What we didn't realize at the time was how much he loved what he did or that he was a pioneer at it.
Conservation education even in the 1960s was relatively new, and Travis wrote the curriculum for Kentucky and much of the nation.
A graduate of Murray State University, he had taught and coached football for a while before joining the department and designed a nine-month course taught by officers in the public schools one day a month.
"When we wrote it up, there was nothing on paper anywhere. We were one of the first states," he told me in an interview a couple of years ago.
The curriculum made Kentucky the first state to train 100,000 youngsters in hunter safety.
It was a job he loved, one he couldn't and didn't quit. When he died June 18 at age 88, he was still wearing the khaki-and-green uniform of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
He had been a conservation officer for 59 years, making him the longest-working state employee ever.
He was recognized for that distinction a couple of years back by Gov. Ernie Fletcher, and last December the Fish and Wildlife Department named a 4,100-acre wildlife management area in Hickman and Carlisle counties in far Western Kentucky in his honor.
But Travis will likely be best remembered by thousands and thousands of boys as the director for 25 years of the department's Camp Currie on Kentucky Lake. At summer camps, he directed a staff that taught kids how to swim, canoe, hunt, fish and respect the out-of-doors.
The Crittenden County native, who had lived for several years in the Paducah, Ky., area, joined the Fish and Wildlife Department in December 1947. He had been a small arms instructor in the Army during World War II and put those skills to good use in his youth education programs.
He could flip a penny into the air and drill a hole through it with a shot from a .22 rifle. He was an avid bow hunter and had a special relationship with Fred Bear of Bear Archery Co. He was instrumental in starting Kentucky's first modern bow-hunting season.
Charles Martin, current chairman of the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, was another kid who encountered Travis as a fifth-grader.
He recalled Travis "had a special relationship with children that cannot be replicated."
"He would motivate kids like nothing I've seen," he said. "I don't think this state will ever have a conservation education leader like him again."
Contact John Lucas at 464-7433 or lucasj@courierpress.com.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/jun/25/as-a-youngster-i-learned-about-outdoors-from-the/