President — Shannon Sheffert, 1301 Old Bumpy Rd., Stillwater, OK 74074; cell phone: 405-742-7884; e-mail: ssheffert@odot.org
Vice President — Janice Johnson, 18197 S. 337th W. Ave., Bristow, OK 74010; phone: 918-367-3810; e-mail: jjohnson6431@sbcglobal.net
Secretary — John Weygandt, 4720 S. 26th W. Ave., Tulsa, OK 74107; phone: 918-645-5667; e-mail: j.weygandt@maccor.com
Treasurer — Vivian Scott, P.O. Box 179, Alderson, OK 74522; phone: 918-426-6918; e-mail: littlerockmeme@msn.com
FTA Director — Terry Thornton, Rt. 2 Box 71, Hartshorne, OK 74547; phone: 918-297-2073
NTA Director — Darrell Woodward; P.O. Box 580416, Tulsa, OK 74134; phone: 918-625-3891; e-mail: ibtrapn@aol.com
Membership Options:
• 1-year membership including subscription to The Trapper & Predator Caller — $20
• Family membership with subscription to The Trapper & Predator Caller — $25
• Lifetime (Over 70) with subscription to The Trapper & Predator Caller — $150
• Lifetime with subscription to The Trapper & Predator Caller — $300
• Youth membership — $10
Complete membership application on first page of association section and send dues to:
OFBA, Treasurer
Vivian Scott
P.O. Box 179, Alderson, OK 74522
918-426-6918; littlerockmeme@msn.com
http://oktrapper.com
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
I would like to thank everyone for their vote of confidence in electing me as your new president. I will try to do my best to help protect and preserve our rights to trap in oklahoma and promote OFBA.
Join me in congratulating our new officers and board of directors: President — Tom Peterson
Vice President — Shannon Sheffert is our outgoing president. Shannon has done a good job leading OFBA for several years. He will be hard to follow and I will be bending his ears a lot in the coming two years for advice and direction.
Treasurer — Vivian Scott. She keeps the money right and has done a bang-up job for several years. I think it would be easier to get money from Fort Knox if she doesn’t think you need it.
Secretary — John Weygandt. John keeps everything straight and in order. I’ve watched him at the fur sales. He doesn’t have time to look up, if he does, he has missed your sale and you would be mad. I wouldn’t want his job.
Board of Directors — Gene Callaway, Josh Mattox, Richard Thornburg, Ron Covington, Sam McGill, Cathy Sheffert, Terry Waggoner, Will Drumgold, Joe Stanbro, Jeb Hillingshead, Cody Presley, Loyd Teeter. Give theses guys and gals a call if you have a issue or problem. I’ll bet they can get you an answer.
FTA Director — Terry Thornton. Terry has served as NTA Director for several years and has done a good job.
NTA Director — Leo Farmer, this is Leo’s first time as NTA director. I’m sure Leo will do a good job keeping us informed of issues at the top.
I would like to thank all the outgoing directors for their hard work the past two years.
Thanks to Jeb and Dub for bringing their trap supplies. I know they saved us a lot of shipping charges.
Thanks to all who did a demo. They were very good and informative.
North American Fur Auctions’ demo on skinning and fur handling was awesome. I’ve got a couple of places to use tricks from the ’cat trapping demo.
Thanks to Reginald Murray for his hard work on our Web site. Check it out. There is a lot of information there.
Thanks to everyone who has sent (3) trap tags. This is going to be a good fundraiser and a chance to own a part of Oklahoma trapping history. We still need about 100 tags to fill the board. So, please send them to me: Tom Peterson, 3506 Everett, Sand Springs, OK 74063.
Fur prices look pretty low again this year, but some of us diehards will still be stringing steel, so get your last-minute gear ready. You know the old saying, “We really ain’t in it for the money, but it sure does help.”
You should be reading this about the time the turkey is done, so have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
— Tom Peterson
VICE PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Hello all,
Tom Peterson sent in the president’s newsletter, which covered most of the new news about the elections at our fall meeting. I will just cover a couple more topics relating to the meeting. We want to thank a couple more people that put on demos, helped around the meeting and list a few people who made donations to the association. Mr. Scott Gladden from Arkansas gave a bobcat demo that should be helpful to anyone that watched to add a couple more pelts to the fur shed. Mr. Sterlen Kirschman and Greg Schroder with the North American Fur Auction Company gave demos and supplied us with another avenue to market your furs to receive the most money possible.
If you work up your furs and get them dried like they show, you will receive the best possible price at our local auctions and/or you have other options to sell your furs. The best thing is that you don’t have to worry about a freezer going out and losing your furs and they are ready to go in any market you would like to sell them in across the state, the nation or the world. We also had a nice demo by Kelly Jackson on predator calling. He gave out calls to the kids, taught them to blow the calls and then even had a calling competition. I, unfortunately, don’t have the results of the competition or the trap-setting competition, but I think that they will be shown on our association’s Web site. Thanks again to Jeb Hollingshead, Terry Waggoner and Dub Shankle for bringing their traps and supplies. Ron Scott had built and brought bird houses for the kids to paint and the Presley’s helped the kids with that activity.
And, as usual, we had a great meal and I want to thank the kitchen help who made it possible, Mrs. Covington, Mrs Presley, Cathy Sheffert and others who helped and brought food. We had many donations for our fundraising auction and we will list the people and businesses that donated items on our Web site. I do want to make special mention of few people who made donations, and there are many more who need to be listed, but thanks to Tracy Anderson, and Joe Stranbro for their traps, lures and other things. Janice Johnson needs to be recognized for her efforts at the NTA convention this past summer for not only asking for and obtaining donations, but for the traps that she and BJ donated on their own. And we all need to thank Janice for taking her time to represent us at the NTA convention this summer. She had a good summary of the convention and what is happening nationwide.
And one last person I would like to thank for a donation is Noel Carouthers for his check that he handed to Vivian for seed money to buy trapper supply kits for kids in our youth trappers camp! We decided to try to work up beginner supply kits that the kids could purchase and use and then take home. Hopefully this will help them get started right after the youth trappers camp. I just saw some statistics that show that you can forget half of what you learn in a class if you don’t use the information within two weeks of learning something new. If you wait past six weeks, you forget about 90 percent of what you learn. What this means is that we need to send the kids home with the tools to keep trapping through the rest of the season.
We also received a check from the rebate program that the North American Fur Auction NAFA company gives to the state associations for trapper education programs. The furs that you send to NAFA generates a rebate that is sent back to each state that can be used in youth education programs. Our check this year amounted to $109 that we can use for our trappers camp program.
I also want to recognize John Weygandt for taking his time recently to attend the Arkansas Trapper Weekend Camp. John and Renee went to the Arkansas camp to see how they were putting on the course and see what we can do to improve our education class. This is going above and beyond and we all need to thank John for this effort.
By the time that you read this newsletter, deer season should be about over, the buck at the taxidermist and the freezer full of meat. Trapping season is right around the corner and very few others are trapping. This is a great time to get others started as there is no competition. Furbearer populations are at an all time high and this is a great time to learn to put up furs. If you mess up on skinning or scraping a ’possum or ’coon, you have only lost a few dollars. Then when fur prices come back up, and they will some day, you will know how to skin and stretch to get maximum dollars for the pelts.
Good luck on the trapline and be safe.
— Shannon Sheffert
