Cleveland State Community College Wildlife Society is hosting an inaugural wild game dinner on Saturday, April 25 from 4-8 p.m. in the L. Quentin Lane Gymnasium. Admission is $10 per person or $5 if you bring a dish. All proceeds raised from this dinner will go to fund activities for the Student Chapter of the Wildlife Society.
“The proceeds from this game dinner will be used to support activities the Wildlife students are involved in,” said Robert Brewer, associate professor of Biology and Wildlife Society sponsor.
“As the wildlife program grows, mores supplies for research and the classroom will be needed. The Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society hopes to ease the burden on the college by purchasing some of those supplies through fundraisers like this.”
Erich Bell, vice president of the Wildlife Society and president elect, said, “Most every college that has a wildlife society has a wild game dinner fundraiser. This was our third year at a wildlife conclave, which is the southeastern wildlife competition. Other schools use the wild game dinner as a fundraiser to send the students to the conclave so they don’t have to pay out of pocket. We hadn’t had a dinner yet, so we had a brainstorming session and came up with our own.”
Mr. Bell said the majority of the food will be different variations of deer—deer chili, deer steaks, deer burgers, but there will be some “surprises,” as well. All foods will be clearly labeled so participants will know what they are eating. Bell had previously attended UTK’s wild game dinner, and said participants were able to enjoy beaver and raccoon, in addition to the other more typical wild game dishes.
“We are very excited about this day with it being our inaugural dinner, but we will be grilling, smoking and cooking all day,” said Mr. Bell. “The exciting part is going to be seeing what other people bring!”
“There’s always going to be members of your club that can’t afford to pay out of pocket to do certain things and I don’t want their knowledge or intelligence to go to waste just because they can’t afford it and having fundraisers such as this one makes sure that everyone can go.”
This is only one of the Wildlife Society’s fundraisers; they also sell duck, bat and bird boxes, as well as t-shirts. The club will have all of these items for sale at the wild game dinner.
Mr. Bell said, “A lot of our students go from CSCC to UTK or Tennessee Tech, this is where we grow and move on to these other four-year schools. We see what they are doing, and how well they are doing it and how much money they are making off of it, so why would we not want to mirror that?”
There will be door prizes, a silent auction and a drawing for a large prize to be revealed at the diner. Tickets will be available for a donation to the society for the drawings. For more information on the wild game dinner, contact Mr. Brewer at (423) 472-7141, ext. 342.