FROM THE PRESIDENT
The ice fishing this year got off to a slow start, but the weather is providing plenty of good ice now. I have been able to get out a number of times with varying success. Hopefully we can do another ice outing or two, maybe an evening outing. With Deer season over the members in the Big Buck contest need to let Tom Bilowsky know of their entries, so he can determine the winner.Please join me in congratulating Bernie Shocklee as sportsman of the year, and thanking all the members who were on the ballot for their participation and support of the club.I know the fish fry is still months away, but we need to get started on donations for the Chinese raffle. Last year’s raffle was a great success do to prizes we had, so let’s see if we can repeat that this year.May is going to be a very busy month this year, and the outing and event chairman will be looking for members to help. The success of these activities depends on our members support.Hope to see everyone at the meeting and bring a friend.
Harold
BERNIE SHOCKLEE SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR FOR 2014
Bernie Shocklee was awarded the SSA 2014 Sportsman of the Year at the January Meeting. Congratulations Bernie!!
Bernie is shown here receiving his award from Harold.
WEB SITE NEWS
The club’s website is up and running!! If you haven’t visited it yet YOU should!
The web site involvement is a bit sluggish, we need to have more members participate and visit and/or add content to the web site to make this thing work!! The holidays are behind us so there is no excuse now not to take a couple minutes and visit the club’s web site. Bernie Shocklee has and is putting a tremendous amount of effort into this project to get it off the ground. Get involved!!
Visit the Web Site!!
FEBRUARY SPEAKER
Bernie Shocklee will be showing a movie on the correct way to field dress your deer.
DUES ARE DUE AGAIN
Bernie Babb will begin collecting dues again at the February meeting. DON’T wait until the last minute PAY those dues!!! New Membership $40.00, with this fee the new member receives a club hat and a ticket to the Fish Fry. If he does not want the club hat it would be $30.00. Renewals are $30.00 which also comes with one ticket for the Fish Fry. All dues are to be paid to only Bernie Babb! You can pay at the meetings or send a check payable to Summit Sportsman’s Association to:
Bernie Babb
1451 Wimbelton Circle.
Stow, Ohio 44224
PORTAGE LAKES ICE OUTING
The Portage Lakes Ice outing was held January 17th at Ron Slater’s Portage Lakes Bait 354 Portage lake Drive Akron, Ohio 44319. There were 12 members who participated with 5 of them checking in fish. The results are as follows:
First Place Steve Bower 3 lbs 11.5 oz.
Second Place Bob Doyle 2lbs 11.5 oz.
Third Place Bernie Babb 2 lbs 11.5 oz.
The Big Fish Other pot was won by Bernie Babb with a 14 oz. Crappie.
Here some of the participants
gather for photo op.
SSA has signed a cooperating group accord with Boat Owners Association of the United States.
*Equipment at a guaranteed lowest price
*Insurance at special group rates
*Representation for boaters on Capital Hill
*Towing Reimbursement service
(Up to $2500 per year)
*Trailer insurance available
*Travel and Yacht Charter Service
*A monthly BOAT/U.S. “Reports”
and much more!
Our SSA administrator Is Tom Bilowskycontact him for more details at
330-658-6555.
NEWSLETTER BASICS
Any member in good standing can submit articles, ads, stories or photos FREE of charge for publication in the newsletter. PLEASE SUBMIT ALL ARTICLES IN MICROSOFT WORD FORMAT!The DEADLINE to make the February edition is January 28th. Items notmeeting the deadline will be published in the following month’s edition assuming they are still relevant. Items may be submitted via the following channels:
Email:
Mailed to:
SSA Editor
630 Eastwood Ave
Tallmadge, Ohio 44278
Or hand delivered to the newsletter editor, Dave Phillips at any meeting. The items need to be SSA appropriate and the club reserves the right to refuse any item.
AREA GUN SHOWS
Berea
February 21st &22nd
Dalton
February 28th & March 1st
Show times are Saturday 9 am to 5 pm
and Sunday 9 am to 4 pm.
50/50 DRAWING WINNER
Butch Jarvis won the January 50/50. Congratulations Butch!!
ATTENDANCE DRAWING
We will have a carry-over for the attendance drawing at the February meeting.
BIG BUCK CONTEST 2014-2015
Tom Bilowsky will make the presentation of the 2014/2015 big buck winner at the February meeting. Make sure you come out to see who will be crowned this season’s winner!!
BI LAWS
The board has listened and is putting the final touches on the changes to the club’s bi-laws. The February Board meeting on Thursday the 19th will be the last time until next year to make any changes. ALL members are welcome and encouraged to attend the board meetings. Any input is welcome and appreciated. See any officer to pitch your ideas or for more details.
CRUNCH TIME FOR THE OUTINGS
It’s never too late! Check out the back page to see what outing have been scheduled for the upcoming year! If you have already committed to chair an outing GREAT if not it is NEVER too late to step up. Please come prepared to pitch your idea to an outdoor advisory member and get it penciled into the schedule. I know this is going to sound like a broken record but.. We need more, different members to come forward and share in some of the work of chairing an outing. There are plenty of veteran chairmen who would be more than willing to show you the ropes. Get involved this is your club!!!!
EARLY HISTORY OF SSA
The Summit Sportsmens Association was started in the fall of 1964. I had just returned from a 3 year hitch in the US Army and a 2 year period with a research firm in Cleveland. I was born and raised in Cuyahoga Falls and wanted to return as soon as possible. I saw my way clear when I joined a high school friend in business in Akron in 1964. My family moved into a home just 2 blocks from where I was born and raised. My wife and I had 4 children by now but I realized I needed to reestablish some fishing activity around myself. I enjoyed fishing as a boy fishing Wyoga Lake (just a short bike ride away) and in high school, the Portage Lakes. I had a high school friend whose parents had a cottage on West Reservoir, part of the Portage Lakes. Of course there was a boat, but we soon built our own. We fished every opportunity we got on weekends and summer vacation.So, needless to say, when I settled back in Cuyahoga Falls again, I needed to fish. I was also quite active in the Catholic Church, specifically Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church (IHM). It was a natural to start a fishing club for men from the church. Together with my original fishing mentor, Orville Hibinger, my brother-in-law Joe Smead and my cousin John Huffman, we approached the pastor of IHM, Fr. Thomas D. McIntyre for permission to start a fishing club in the parish and meet at IHM. So in October of 1964, we had our first meeting of the IHM Hunting and Fishing Club. It was a long name for a club, but we loved it and off we went. After 2 months, Fr. Mac didn't like the idea we were serving beer in the church basement meeting room, so we moved to the American Legion hall here in Cuyahoga Falls. We stayed there for many happy and productive years.We had a meeting every month with a full slate of officers with yours truly the first president of the club. We also had at least one outing every month and since we all were fisherman first, that's the kind of outings we had. Our object was to fish all the local lakes. We felt we had enough water all around us that we wanted to master the local lakes. Well we did but one guy, no matter where we fished (Denny Babb) got all the fish and we could catch none. (That is until Ron Scheetz joined the club years later and gave Denny a run for his money). We were quite a competitive club right from the first.By January of 1966, I started to write a monthly newsletter. I felt the way to keep a club together was to have a monthly newsletter. It would be a way to keep in touch, to tell of future plans for fish outings and report the names of those winning the fishing contests. This has been going on now for 44 years. "Way to go Club!"We soon realized that our interest was beyond just hunting and fishing, so one cold winter’s night the club voted to change the name to the "IHM Sportsmens Club". Several years later, I realized we had long since left IHM and we needed a more universal club name. We needed a name that reflected the geographic scope of the club. I proposed the name "Summit Sportsmens Club" or SSA. It was short and snappy; the membership voted; and so it is.And that is the way it went in the early years of the SSA. I got a lot of happiness, comradeship and adventure from the club over the years. They were great years. I hope those who read this will find the same joy and happiness I have received from the members and the club.
PAUL HAYDEN
(Charter & Lifetime Member)
DEER KILL IN LINE SAYS DNR
Each side in the ongoing roil regarding whether Ohio hunters are shooting too many does will find ammunition in the preliminary final four-day statewide muzzleloading deer-hunting season. This season ran Jan. 2 through Jan. 5 and a preliminary 13,726 animals were taken. That figure represents a 16.63-percent decline from the same season’s 2014 total of 16,464 harvested deer, which in itself was a marked decline from the 2013 season’s tallied harvest. Yes, poor weather played a factor in the muzzleloading season’s harvest drop, but then so did an entire possible bag of ingredients, wildlife division officials argue. Thing is, the just concluded statewide any-deer-goes muzzle-loading season continues to demonstrate the wildlife division’s commitment and success in reigning in the deer herd where necessary, the agency’s lead on Ohio’s deer management program says. “We set out to do what we had to do: Get the deer populations within targeted goals,” said Mike Tonkovich, the wildlife division’s deer management administrator. “The bottom line is that we have fewer deer; there’s no magic about that.”Nor secret, as the wildlife division has long maintained the necessity of aligning county-by-county deer populations with landowner preferences and the desire to provide recreational viewing and hunting opportunities, as well as do what is good for the herd. Even so, Tonkovich says that “pressure has been building for a long time” by a pretty substantial segment of the state’s deer-hunting community to put more animals back into the woods and fields.Yet let everyone know that no one side will dominate the conversation, now or in the months to come, Tonkovich said. “The squeaky wheel doesn’t always get the grease,” he said. But squeaking the deer-
hunting wheel does resonate, too. One issue that more than a few deer hunters want the wildlife division to jettison is the early two-day, antlerless-only, muzzleloader-only deer-hunting season. However, that season’s future is “rock-solid,” Tonkovich said. This sophomore season is already becoming very popular, one where a lot of hunters would much rather hunt during pleasant October than endure the cold, wind, and snow all too often encountered in early January, says Tonkovich. “We have a changing population that isn’t hunting the way it did in 1985,” Tonkovich said. “There is high participation for this hunt.” “Some counties may see fewer antlerless tags or fewer deer damage permits, or maybe a reduction in bag limits,” says Tonkovich. But some sportsmen are not at all happy with a snip here and other nip there.One can count Dennis Malloy among the disgruntled Ohio deer hunters who are unhappy with the wildlife division’s current deer management program. Speaking for himself and not as an employee of a deer advocating organization, Malloy said in an open electronic exchange with a number of Ohio outdoors writers that “Sometimes no action is best… (W)e are tinkering Deer management to death.” Importantly, Malloy said, if the wildlife division is under pressure by politicians to reduce the state’s deer herd instead of it being based on science “… then tell us – let us – the Sportsmen who pay the bills and vote – battle the Governor and (Natural Resources’) Director.” “I have one main issue that is on top of them all,” Malloy said in the electronic string. “We need to find a way for more hunters to harvest one deer, before exploring ways for landowners or their designees to harvest multiple deer.”
FINAL THOUGHT
We still have some room on the schedule for plenty of outings! Hunters/Marksmen we need some help to fill the fall slate. We are working on some non-sanctioned outings (fun outings) to take place in the summer. Come on guys it really isn’t that difficult to chair an outing or schedule an event. See any board member or outdoor advisory member to get the ball rolling!!