2025 Winter Newsletter

Kyle Nakamoto 23226 Centre Drive Glenwood, IA 51534 A FEW WORDS FROM CRAIG As the years start to rack up, time sure flies by….faster than you would have realized. Looks like another year will be gone soon and Iowa FNAWS will be celebrating its 46th year in existence! Wow! What an accomplishment…all starting from a few passionate philanthropic mountain hunter-conservationists who, back in the mid-1970’s wanted to give back to their passion for mountain hunting. I was very fortunate to know a few of them. Dr. Roy Schultz and Dr. Jerry Waite in particular, who were both very instrumental in the early days of the conservation of the North American Wild Sheep, and as long as I’m involved, in their honor, Iowa will always be the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep….Iowa FNAWS. In the recent years, Iowa FNAWS has been having tremendous success in accumulating funds which are directed and utilized towards projects which we feel are best suited and aligned towards Iowa FNAWS’ goals. As of the first of October year to date Iowa, FNAWS has funded over $925,000 ($925,058.89 to be exact) towards various endeavors. These include; college scholarships for students majoring in outdoor conservation, various youth-related outdoor causes including mentoring, shooting sports and sponsored hunts, veteran-based causes, several on-the-ground projects including guzzler repair and construction, sheep capture and collaring, disease research and development, Iowa land acquisition for outdoor activities, various state-agency directed funding for wildlife conservation, ungulate enhancement projects and wildlife harvest initiatives. In addition, this year Iowa FNAWS has agreed to fund approximately $20,000-$30,000 towards additional worthy projects. So, to say the least, your Iowa FNAWS has had a tremendous 2024 and before the year ends, we will approach a million dollars in 2024 funding! Imagine, all of this without any paid staff and very little overhead! I challenge anyone reading this, to find another outdoor conservation-related organization who can boast similar accomplishments. As you know, to make all of this happen, we rely heavily on our annual fundraiser which will be held on the weekend of March 28-30, again at the Sheraton West Des Moines. Traditionally, our fundraiser attracts around 200 attendees, however, due to the increase in attendance over the past several years, and to attempt to make the registration process a little easier, streamlined and less hectic, this year we are going to have the option for Reserved Tables which can be purchased during the early bird registration timeframe . A reserved table consists of seating for 10. The normal early registration cost is $75 per person. With the Reserved Table, the price will be $1000, however with that price will include $250 worth of raffle tickets, AND each Reserved Table will have a ticket for a chance to win a firearm. Only Reserved Table holders will be in this drawing for the firearm. So essentially, the odds of winning the firearm will probably be one of the best ever! So, if you are coming with a group of friends, I highly encourage you to pre-register for a reserved table. Attached is the Early Bird Pre-registration form. Whether you are registering individually, with a small group or for a reserved table, I would appreciate it if you would consider filling it and sending it back as soon as you decide on coming, for I feel this year we may hit the capacity of the ballroom and may have to turn away late registrants. Individual early bird registrations are $75/person and youth ( under 16 years of age), $35 as compared to $90 and $50 respectively. The cutoff for early bird registration is February 15, 2024. After that date, the Reserved Table registration, if available, will be $1250.00. And anyone without a Reserved Table will be subject to open seating as they are available. As always, we will have the Iowa FNAWS’ hosted hospitality room on Friday night which will be open to all registrants. We would like to have potential sponsors for this event. Last year Bank Iowa and Brocker, Karns and Karns Insurance graciously donated funds to help pay for the evening’s liquid refreshments and Kyle Nakamoto of Straight Shooter Armory paid for the pizzas. We also had several individuals bring in appetizers and other goodies which were greatly appreciated by the attendees. As always, we welcome anyone who wants to exhibit at the fundraiser, so if you know of any interested parties, please have them contact me. Again, there is no charge to exhibit; however, we do ask that the exhibitor donate to our fundraiser. We would like to have the donation have a realistic value of at least $1500. This would assist in covering some of our expenses. Last year we had several businesses who exhibited that mentioned that they did very well. At the annual fundraiser, we try to recognize people who have been long-standing supporters of Iowa FNAWS and FNAWS (the Wild Sheep Foundation) by recognizing them as “Living Legends of FNAWS”. If you have anyone in mind who you feel has been a stalwart supporter and should be recognized, please feel free to contact either myself or any of the Board members to nominate him/her to this prestigious list. It’s always good to recognize some of our strongest supporters for we must always remember the building blocks of this fantastic organization. We are always looking for donations and auction items for our fundraiser. So, if you know of, or have connections to donors and/or outfitters who you feel might have interest in donating to our fundraiser, please contact them and try and solicit a donation. And, if you need assistance, I would be more than happy to follow up as well. We can always use more items and hunts and fishing trips. So, before going on to the next subject, PLEASE consider taking advantage of the early bird registration and get registered early. As many of you know from last year’s fundraiser, we were delighted to have LeLois Lutich and Scott Roosevelt attend our fundraiser. Iowa FNAWS donated the necessary funds to build a roof over a 180,000 gallon water tank on the JM Lutich Ranch to provide water to the various guzzlers and watering stations in the ranch for the wildlife which consists of Desert Bighorns, Mule Deer, Elk, javalina and the occasional Aoudad. Life member, Grant Stroud purchased at our last fundraiser, a trip to the Lutich Ranch. He along with fellow members Kyle Nakamoto, Aaron Deitchler, Laureen Nakamoto and myself visited the ranch this past September. We were also guests at LeLois and Scott’s annual Barbeque. LeLois and Scott were gracious guests and we spent a few nights at their lovely home as well as several days touring the JM Lutich Ranch. Scott, being a direct descendant of Teddy Roosevelt, had a lot of Teddy Roosevelt memorabilia which we all took keen interest in, for as you all know Teddy Roosevelt was a tremendous president as well as an avid pioneer of the hunter-conservationist movement. I for one was amazed at the old books and hand-written notes and letters as well as the one of a kind artifacts. LeLois and Scott’s JM Lutich Ranch also holds a lot of wildlife history. The JM Lutich Ranch is part of the Sierra Diablo Mountains which was home to a number of Desert Bighorn Sheep before they were extirpated. It was LeLois’ mother Jewell McAdoo Lutich, who, in 1982, showed a keen interest in re-establishing Desert Bighorns into the Sierra Diablos, and caught the attention of Dr. “Red” Duke, who was a great influence in the early days of FNAWS and the Texas Bighorn Society. It was through this connection and persistence by “Mama Jewell” that bighorns were re-introduced to the Sierra Diablos, and the first landowner hunting permit granting rights to hunt a desert bighorn in Texas since 1903, was presented to the Lutich family. In January, 1987, this permit was auctioned at the FNAWS convention in Nashville, TN and was purchased by Doc Thurston for an amazing $60,000! Imagine what that would be in today’s dollars and given the recent surge in permit prices. I have become great friends with LeLois and Scott and hope they continue to bless our fundraiser with their presence. What a truly remarkable couple who have given their undivided attention to wildlife management! To save on costs and time, like many of the other organizations, we have migrated to an electronic format for this newsletter. If you know of anyone who is not receiving this, please let us know and we will update our files. And, although we are trying to get away from this, if it is imperative that you or someone would like a mailed copy, let us know and we will attempt to accommodate them. This newsletter will also appear on our website, www.iowafnaws.org and on our facebook page. I know many of you are probably tired of hearing only from me, however, it appears that although I have asked members to contribute pictures and articles to our newsletter, we have not received any for the last few months. Again, this is your opportunity to share your stories and pictures with your fellow Iowa FNAWS members, so please send in any articles and/or pictures for future publications to either Kyle Nakamoto (ssafirearms@gmail.com), Greg Schultz (grschultz602@hotmail.com), or myself (cnakamoto01@sbcglobal.net) By the way, at our last Board of Directors meeting Greg was appointed as Vice President and Kyle as Director of Operations. Therefore, the officers of Iowa FNAWS are as follows: President: Craig Nakamoto Director: Laureen Nakamoto Vice President: Pat O’Neill Vice President: Greg Schultz Director: John VanBlaricom Secretary: Lonnie Cook Director: Josh Martoglio Treasurer: Ned Greer Director: Jason Sanders Director: Bob Meduna Director of Operations: Kyle Nakamoto Last Words and some extras by Kyle If you have any articles or pictures that you would like to possibly be featured in our future newsletters, feel free to email them to me at kylenakamoto@hotmail.com. As we all head into the 2024-2025 hunting season, I wish all of you good luck. See all of you March 29, 2025 for our 46th banquet! ~ Kyle Nakamoto