President Bryan Slaba welcomed members to their March 23rd meeting in the “Rotary Building”. Pastor Bill Heermann offered up thanksgiving for the nourishing meal from Valley Pump and asked that the food empower us to go forth into our community to help others.

Rotarian Laurie Kidd played “America the Beautiful” for our first song and instead of singing the first verse which everyone knows by heart, we sang the second and third verses. It’s amazing how used a person gets to be to that first verse. It was a challenge to make sure to read the correct words. Our second song was “Roll on Rotary”.

Sergeant at Arms Jerry Weber immediately fined Craig Krsnak $5 for forgetting it was his turn to pick up the meals for the club members; Gerrit Juffer and everyone who raised their hand and had cheered for USD, three dollars each for the recent USD basketball win. Rotarian Slaba offered to pay the full $16.00, and Weber relented and only charged the other seven a $2 fine each. There were eight members who raised their hands. $4 to SDSU supporters for no longer being in the tournament. $2 to Jeff Doom and Jordan Weber for wearing almost identical vests to the meeting. $5 to Jeff Doom for a bathroom infraction; $2 to Bill Heerman for his new jacket that was advertising St. John’s Lutheran church in Wagner; $5 to Bryan Slaba for his season tickets; $2 to Linda Soukup for pawning off her mini tacos to someone.

Happy Fines of $2 from Amanda Bechen who was happy our Rotary Building was still standing; and $5 from Patty Frei for National Ag Day this past week.

Joe Stedronsky drew the winning ticket and tried for the Queen from the deck of cards and got as close as the six of Hearts. Craig Krsnak announced that Joe had just lost $443.00. Krsnak also stated that there is one more week for the attendance race. The Brunsing team has 18 misses, and the Woods team has 13 misses. Looks like the Brunsing team will be buying the steaks for the second quarter.

President Slaba gave an update on the condition of the building. There was a traffic accident this past week when a vehicle drove through the front door of the Katie Swatek photography studio and went almost completely through the building. Her business, the Rotary meeting rooms, and the Bakery are all a part of this old historic building. Inspections are being made on the present condition of all the parts of the entire building which contains the Rotary organization on the east side and the former bakery owned by Cheryl Swatek.

Rotarian Craig Krsnak presented his program for the day on Pheasants Forever. Krsnak has been a member for many years and is a member of the Fort Randall Pheasant Forever Chapter. Krsnak was intrigued when he read and heard about the fact that the Biden Administration 30 x 30 Land Grab was being endorsed by several wildlife organizations which included the Pheasants Forever Organization. He researched the topic and finally called the CEO of the national organization to be sure he was getting the correct information. Pheasants Forever has a membership of 138,000 members. 91.1% of their funds go to Program Services which include Habitat Projects, Public Awareness and Education. 6.0% goes to Fund-Raising efforts and only 2.9% goes to Administration of the Forever organization. A clarification was received from Pheasants Forever that they only endorse and help fund habitat on land that is VOLUNTARILY entered into the 30 x 30 program by the landowner.

The local Ft. Randall Chapter spends about 70 percent of their funds on local habitat and concentrate their efforts on youth projects to get the youth involved in hunting.

Of special interest this coming Sunday March 27th there will be a Youth Hunt starting at 1:00 p.m. at Kevin’s Feed and Seed on Main Street Armour at 12:00 p.m. You need to be pre-registered and have a h9unter safety card. It is open to ages 12 to 18.

If you wish to sign up call: Tracy Hinckley at 481-0644, Cameron Hinckly at 7770-3496 or Kevin Leonard at 770-3648. The chapter likes to involve kids that normally don’t get a chance to go hunting

Krsnak stated that anyone having questions about local habitat, conservation, or supplying help for projects to contact him or one of the above phone numbers.

The rest of the meeting was spent discussing the reasons for the lack of pheasants in our Wagner area.