My column this week tells how Frank Jezioro, director of West Virginia’s Division of Natural Resources and a renowned bird hunter, earned Top New Shooter honors at the recent Grand National Quail Hunt in Enid, Oklahoma:

Despite being “the only poor boy there,” West Virginia’s top wildlife official made quite a splash during the recent Grand National Quail Hunt.

Jezioro, Director of the state Division of Natural Resources, earned two plaques and a new shotgun for winning the competition among first-time participants in the annual event. Jezioro said he’s thrilled to have won, but he still wonders how he got invited to the rather exclusive affair.

“A lot of the people who get invited are celebrities and CEOs,” he said. “Some of them said they’d read my articles on dog training in Pointing Dog Journal, so maybe that’s how I got nominated.”

The nomination was only the first step in Jezioro’s eventual trip to Enid, Okla., for the hunt. “After somebody nominates you, you’re required to send in a resume that outlines your qualifications. Then a board of selectors decides which among the nominees will actually be invited.”

The goal of the event is to raise money for preserving and enhancing quail habitat.

“They’re trying to hold on to the tradition of hunting wild quail,” Jezioro explained. “A lot of the people involved are CEOs and owners of companies involved in conservation.”

Jezioro showed up in Enid, Okla., not knowing exactly what to expect. He quickly found out

“They assign a greeter to pick you up at the airport and make sure you get to the various events,” he said. “There were a couple of different banquets to attend, and for us first-time shooters there were also a clay target competition and a hunting competition.”

At the end of the 50-target clay bird competition, Jezioro found himself tied with Atlanta’s Rex Baker for first place.

“We had a 25-shot shoot-off,” Jezioro said. “There must have been 100 people standing there watching us, and I guess the pressure kind of got to my competitor. He didn’t shoot particularly well, and I ended up winning.”

The Marion County native fared equally well in the two-day quail hunting competition.

“The bag limit in Oklahoma is 10 quail a day, but since conservation is the idea behind the hunt, the organizers set our limit at six quail. The idea is to see who could take the most quail with the fewest shots. You got bonus points for getting a limit without a miss, and you got bonus points for using a small-gauge shotgun,” he explained.

On the first day of the hunt, Jezioro took six shots with his 28-gauge Ruger and downed six quail. A day later, he duplicated the feat. His 12-for-12 performance topped the first-time shooter field.

“I ended up getting real nice plaques for the individual events – plaques in the outline of the state of Oklahoma, with brass relief-carvings of bird dogs in the middle,” he said. “And for winning the overall championship, I got a real nice Beretta semi-automatic 12-gauge,” he said.

As nice as the prizes were, Jezioro said he received nearly equal gratification from other hunters asking him to share his dog-training expertise.

“They pride themselves on having very good bird dogs,” he said. “Some of them asked me to look their dogs over and critique them. That was very satisfying.”

He said he’s also pleased to be able to show that a West Virginian can hold his own among serious bird hunters.

“I think this should give our hunters and shooters confidence that we know what we’re talking about,” he said. “Anytime a West Virginian wins something, it gives us all a little bit of pride.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 11:26 am and is filed under Hunting, Shooting Sports, West Virginia, WV DNR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.