Lady Luck!

I'm not usually very lucky. I've come to accept that. But on Saturday night Lady Luck came my way. There were so many things to win. Everything from a freezer full of meat to a wheel barrow full of booze (of course I bought some chances on that). There were quite a few guns. A couple for door prizes, several on the general raffle and a few you could buy chances on. One of them came with the Bird Package. For $20 you got a stretch (as many as you could stretch from one hand to the other across your chest) of tickets. Well Dave Boeckermann Jr. Had just bought his stretch when I went over there to buy my stretch. We compared stretches and his was longer than mine, so he so kindly did my stretch for me.

When they finally drew for this prize there was a five gallon bucket damn near full of tickets. Wow ....It was a very popular raffle and even though I had somewhere around 40 tickets from Dave's very nice stretch, it was pretty small odds that I was going to win. Besides all my tickets would have been way down on the bottom of the bucket because I was one of the very first people to buy my chances.

Well they called the number. I think I looked at my tickets. But I guess I didn't hear right or didn't look at them right because I didn't think I had won. I actually threw my tickets down on the table. And then no one came forward. The emcee kept reading it over and over. He was going to draw again. He read it one more time and for whatever reason I picked up my tickets and it was the last one on my long stretch. Dale Kaiser was standing next to me and he said something like "you have the ticket". Good grief... I jumped up and down and ran up there to claim my prize. I almost missed out on it. And it was a goodie! The Bird Package had a pair of $90 Rocky Boots (men's but I can trade them for women's), Browning chaps with the Pheasants Forever logo embroidered on them, blaze orange bird hunting vest with the Pheasants Forever logo embroidered on it, leather Pheasants Forever shooting gloves, a Pheasants Forever/Miller High Life cap and a $1500.00 Ruger Red Label Over and Under 12 Gauge. It's awesome. I still can't believe it. Thanks Jr. for the good stretch. It was the last ticket on the end. If I would have pulled my own tickets I probably wouldn't have pulled as many as he did and would have shorted myself the winning ticket. Thanks Ellie and Dave for inviting me to join you guys at the banquet.
Here I am with a stupid "I'm in shock" grin in front of my Bird Package Prize.







The Dave's (Boeckermann and Makita) where very very busy with the Dave's Dice Game. They brought in over $2600 running it. They gave away a gun just like the one I won. Out of all the folks that played only one guy qualified for the drawing for the gun. He was one happy dude. But it's not Jeremy Jansen (pictured here rolling the dice). Jeremy was probably the most popular player and spent the most money on the game but didn't win for all his efforts.