Families Find Fun at DEEP Free Hunting and Fishing Day

Connecticut residents on the hunt for some fun in the sun Saturday, found it at Sessions Woods in Burlington, where the Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection held a free Hunting and Fishing day.

The goal was to show residents what the great outdoors of Connecticut have to offer and expose children to different sports.

Visiting the Connecticut Hunting and Fishing Day is an annual tradition for the Cable kids of Torrington. Their father Perry said he hoped his three boys would learn gun safety and a better appreciation for spending time outside.

“I grew up in the woods, so that’s where I got to play. They don’t get to do that as much,” Perry said.

The family also got to try a new activity called archery skeet shooting.

“So, you shoot the bow, and they launch one of the disks and you gotta shoot it,” explained his youngest son Evan.

“It’s just a different experience from shooting from a non-mobile target,” added oldest son Patrick.

The siblings joined hundreds of others at Sessions Woods, where dozens of booths were set up on Saturday. Some children gathered around an empty pit to learn how to start a fire, while others learned about fire prevention and careers in forest management.

There were several areas to practice target shooting with rifles, pistols, and bows and arrows.

“It’s so fun to do everything that they have here,” said Travis Cable.

“What the state’s doing is just magnificent for introducing people to things that they might not be familiar with in the state of Connecticut,” said Rick Boucher who represented the Connecticut Waterfowlers Association at booth where wetland preservation was the topic.

One of the most popular activities were the touch tanks where kids could actually pick up bluegill and perch. The star of was a ten pound carp.

“The hands on activities are definitely the most popular because for a lot of the youth that come they’ve never had an opportunity like this before,” said Mike Beauchene, a fisheries biologist for DEEP.

Children fishing for fun found it at the casting competition where the winners were entered into a raffle to win a fishing pole.

An event just like this got Christine Peyreigne of Weston interested in working with hunting birds. She hoped to get the next generation involved, showing off her red-tailed hawk during a show dedicated to birds of prey.

“It’s definitely something that’s under spoken about because it’s such a relatively unknown sport in this region. So getting kids involved is something that’s really important,” said Peyreigne.

The annual event draws bewteen 800 to 1,200 people every year. Organizers said they held two such events this month in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Bureau of Natural Resources.

For more information on the event visit the DEEP website.

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