Shooting Sports - What Your Must Know

Important things all scout leaders must know before planning a Shooting Sports related activity:

1: File a tour plan!  The only time a tour plan is not required for a shooting activity is if it is council or district event.  Otherwise a tour plan is required even if it is happening within council boundaries. If a council office staff member says you do not need to file a tour plan, they are wrong.  See scouting.org and search for Tour and Activity Plan FAQ. 

2: Each youth must have a permission slip signed by a parent or guardian.

Cub Corner November 2014

For those who don’t know, there are changes coming to the Cub Scout program. Beginning in June 2015, all cubs will begin using a new program designed to bring out the adventures in scouting. I know, a lot of people hate changes. It isn’t fun to change. Why do we need to change this program? Membership in the Boy Scouts of America is down nationwide. Here in Salt Lake, things are a little brighter as we are growing, but we need to capture the attention of boys in a world where there are a lot of distractions.

Did you know that there have been changes to the Cub Scouts about every 10 years since the program was introduced? In 1930, the Cub Scout program started with 9 year-old Wolves, 10 year-old Bears, and 11 year-old Lions. Women were only allowed to serve as “Den Mothers” and the Cub Promise included the phrase “to be square.” In the 1940’s, we changed ages, allowing 8 year-olds to join. In the 1950’s, the Webelos rank was added (for Wolf, Bear, Lion, and Scout), as was the pinewood derby. In the 1960’s, the Lion rank disappeared and was replaced by a new Webelos program. The 1970’s added the Arrow of Light rank. The 1980’s added the Tiger Cubs, drastically changed the Bear rank, and introduced knots for the leaders. In the 1990’s the Academic and Sports Belt Loop Program was added. The 2000’s brought the latest batch of changes introducing the books that we use now in Cubs.

A Mother's Sacrifice

After the Earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman's house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. But her pose was somehow strange that she knelt on her knees like a person was worshiping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supporting by an object. The collapsed house had crushed her back and her head.

With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescuer team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman's body. He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure.

He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. For some reasons, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman. Again, he knelt down and used his hand through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body. Suddenly, he screamed with excitement, "A child! There is a child!"

Boy Scouts - Tracking

“I wish I could go West and join the Indians so that I should have no lessons to learn,” said an unhappy small boy who could discover no atom of sense or purpose in any one of the three R’s.

“You never made a greater mistake,” said the scribe, “for the young Indians have many hard lessons from their earliest days – hard lessons and hard punishments.  With them the dread penalty of failure is ‘go hungry till you win,’ and no harder task have they than their reading lesson.  Not twenty-six characters are to be learned in this exercise, but one thousand; not clear straight print are they, but dim, washed-out, crooked traces; not in-doors on comfortable chairs, with a patient teacher always near, but out in the forest, often alone and in every kind of weather, they slowly decipher their letters and read sentences of the oldest writing on earth – a style so old that the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the cylinders of Nippur, and the drawings of the cave men are as a thing of today in comparison – the one universal script – the tracks in the dust, mud, or snow.