Had a muzzlelaoding only shop near Estes Park CO (Buckhorn Rendezvous) we got involved as a sponsor for the BSA Exployers. We also had a club that hung out here (Buckhorn Skinners), everything was going along nicely. Then the GSA girls wanted to join.
Some of the members of the Buckhorn Skinners didn't think we should get involved with this program. We told them these kids are our future muzzle loaders, think about that?
One of our members Jim "Hot Irons" Sieri was a BSA Scout Coordinator. Jim comes into Buckhorn Rendezvous asking a favor. He has a group of BSA Employers that are interested in learning the skills of survival (Mountain Man Skills).
They would like to hold there meetings once a month in the evening at my store ? This was fine by me & Ben, we setup a time & date, then started putting together what these young folks would learn. With Jim's help we had "clothes making", "foot ware", "camp equipage", "knife making" on Jim's forge that would be setup in my barn. I wrote to all our suppliers we used telling them of this experiment & asking for donations.
Within just a few weeks we had supplies coming in from our beg letters daily, plus CVA would sell rifle kits at their cost (below dist. price). This project was going better than we had planned, then came a problem.
Always there are problems with anything one does ....
The problem is several GSA scout (young ladies in their mid to late teens that look like early 20's. The girls never looked like these kids when I went to school?) & they want to join the new BSA group. I don't know what to tell them & call Jim Sieri for his thoughts & what would the Boy Scouts of America Council in Greeley think?
After several weeks the BSA Council comes back with their approval & a warning about having both groups together. "Boys will be boys, just like any young man thrown into a nest of honey, he may go wild" was the opening statement.
We were instructed to get as many parents involved as possible, never take them any place unsupervised, always have parents involved in every outing. We followed this to the letter of the law, scary issues.
We finally asked what the reason was that the girls wanted to learn the skills being taught, their reply was they wanted to know how to survive in troubled times.
To make a long story short, this project lasted three years. The whole group took part in everything we could think of for learning various skills, girls listened better than their counter parts.
In the first year each young person (males & females) had a shelter, cooking & eating wares, full set of clothes, foot ware & misc. items like hand forged knives, fire irons, etc. For Christmas all the parents got them CVA rifle kits through the deal CVA offered, all we had to do was send them pictures of our group.
NOTE: The girls were better at all skills taught by far; working on the forge, making clothing, foot ware, learning the history of the mountain men & better at shooting. All because they listened to what was being told them, boys have the "macho" problem to get over, among them slower learners. Sorry guys that was the way our project was & reported to both the BSA & GSA Council.
Even today my wife Karen & myself may run into one of these folks if visiting Ft. Collins CO. In the past I would usually get a big hug & sometimes a kiss on the cheek from these young ladies now with their children. First time this happened the ex-wife raised her eye brow & said "and who was that", then the story is retold one more time. Fun Stuff ...
