CREATING PUBLIC HUNTING ON PRIVATE LANDS
Chad Chriscoe, High Falls, N.C.

The first line of Chad Chriscoe's classified read: "I know good, safe hunting land is harder and harder to find." The rest of the ad, which he posted on craigslist.org, explained how he was opening his private leases—4,000 acres in North and South Carolina—to kids and their families who otherwise had nowhere to hunt. He ended up guiding some 20 people at no charge last season. Many kids shot their first deer. Now Chriscoe, a forester, is expanding his program by creating N.C. Youth Hunts. "Lots of folks have access to hunting land," he says. "Why not share it?"

BOLSTERING THE SAUGER AND WALLEYE ILLINI
William Guerrini, Spring Valley, Ill.

The once polluted Illinois River is now a thriving sauger and walleye fishery thanks in part to the Spring Valley Walleye Club, which William Guerrini founded in 1987. The club provides fish caught in its annual Master's Walleye Circuit tournament to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which creates brood stock from them and releases some 300,000 fingerlings and millions of fry back into the river each year. The volunteer-run club also uses money raised at the tournament to aid the local fish hatchery. "Everything we make we donate," says Guerrini.

A teacher who used milk and guns to reach disadvantaged kids and help disabled sportsmen
Lin Menninger, Canastota, N.Y.

Lin Menninger used to offer breakfast to kids who couldn't afford it at Pine Grove Middle School in East Syracuse, where she taught. As they ate, she'd talk about hunting. The "milkjug meetings," as she calls them, spawned an outdoors club of 40 students. "A lot of those kids came from tough situations and had nothing else to look forward to," she says. "No one else would do anything with them." After retiring last June, Menninger helped create the Advanced Strategies Adventures Great Outdoors Club, whose students assist elderly and disabled sportsmen while continuing their own outdoors educations. They also actively promote pro-hunting legislation.