Archive for November 27th, 2007

Outdoor Families

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Wildlife Restoration Program

A generation ago, families spent some part of every day together outdoors. That doesn’t happen as much today; Ashley Mathews says that may have to do with location.

My generation of adults have typically been raised in urban settings, and unless we were involved in scouting, have not often been taught those basic outdoor skills that we might have learned on the farms, or out on our families ranches.

Mathews oversees the Outdoor Families program for Parks and Wildlife.

Now that we have children — young children – we might not feel capable of taking them on these outdoor experiences, or we might feel a little foolish is we didn’t excel at it.

A typical Outdoor Family event includes an overnight family camp out, where families learn the skills they need to get the most from their outdoor experience.

It’s a two-day event; we usually start early on Saturday mornings and run through Sunday about lunchtime. Saturday afternoon we break up and go to various classes of their choosing…everything from fly-fishing, to fishing basics, to camping, air rifle, archery, kayaking, and then we have a lot of youth nature activities as well. And then we transition the group to a camp out experience.

We’ll have more about Outdoor Families tomorrow.

That’s our show for today… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… working to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating in Texas.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti