Highs and LOWAs

The Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association held it’s annual meeting last weekend in Morgan City and it was one of the high points of the year for yours truly. Our professional outdoor writer group has an annual Excellence in Craft competition each year for outdoor articles in magazine, broadcast, newspaper, photography and electronic categories.

Before I go any further, let me say “Thank You” to all the folks that give folks like me such good stories to tell about our wonderful God-given outdoor resources. Without you, I’d just be writing about Tulane football or Louisiana politics or something.

I was blessed to win First Place and Third Place in the Magazine Feature category for articles in the Louisiana Sportsman featuring some prominent area outdoorsmen. My story on “Tag Team Crappie” featuring the Maxwell family — Josh, Justin and Warren – won First Place in the competition. My story “Keeping up with the Joneses” featuring Ben Jones and his family won Third Place.

I was also pleased that our lakedarbonnelife.com story about perhaps the most famous fishing dog in the area — Watson — and his person, Jay Kavanaugh, won third in the electronic division. The blog entry was titled, “Watson’s bark found it’s bite“.

As I said earlier, it’s a thrill to win an award, but it isn’t just for me. I love seeing deserving outdoor folks receive that kind of recognition as well. I tell people all the time that I just tell the stories, it’s the guys and gals that actually go out there and do amazing things all the time that give me the ammunition.

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And wait, there’s more….

My two teammates on Team 318 at the conference, Glynn Harris of Ruston and Terry Jones of West Monroe, also won writing awards for their excellent work.

Glynn won Second Place in magazine short feature for his piece “Why Am I Being Snubbed By Purple Martins?” about the birds not coming to his house.

Terry won Third Place in the Newspaper category for “Deer Hunting Evolution” about how deer hunting has changed over the last 50 years.

We call it Team 318 because we are the only three current members of the organization that reside in north Louisiana.