Beagle Scout

Tiger electives were discussed awhile back in this thread:

http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=127226

In my post in that thread, I commented that when my older son was in Tigers, the other leader and I decided that since there are 100 tiger paws in the back of the Tiger book, we would allow each elective twice. Our hope was to encourage the boys to try different things. Otherwise, my son could have signed off the reading elective every night! As it turned out, the most yellow beads earned by a boy was five or six, which seems reasonable to me.

See this recent thread:

http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadId=136011

If I remember correctly, all that needs to be done to earn the PACK award is to offer an event in June, July, and August--no minimum attendance.

To earn the DEN award, at least 50% of the den members must attend an event in each of the three months. I think if you offer multiple events in a month, at least 50% of the boys need to attend one of the events (IMO it qualifies if you have 8 boys and 2 show up for event A and 2 different boys show up for event B).

To earn the INDIVIDUAL award, a scout needs to attend at least one event in June, July, and August.

Do you have a day camp or other council- or district-sponsored activity that your pack is participating in? I believe that these events also count toward the National Summertime Pack Award.

The current and next month's program helps are available as Acrobat PDF files at:

http://www.scouting.org/cubscouts/resources/34304/index.jsp

Hope this helps!

There is a possibility that twins will be signing up as Tigers during our spring recruitment. Would they have to have more than one adult partner attending meetings?

I was looking through my nephew's old Bear book (1998 edition) to get an idea of some of the things my son will be doing next year. I'm not sure if the 2003 edition is the same, but if I remember correctly, in the 1998 edition there are places to sign off achievements used as electives. Since there are no similar signoff lines in the Wolf book, I would conclude that achievements cannot be used as electives for arrow points during the Wolf year.

At the bottom of the home page for the Trax spreadsheets (http://trax.boy-scouts.net/) there is the following disclaimer:

"Frank Steele of Pack 615 and Troop 615, League City, TX is solely responsible for the CubTrax, ScoutTrax, VenturingTrax, and OtherTrax series spreadsheets and their support. The BSA does not endorse, support, or in any way acknowledge them."

I have been using the WolfTrax spreadsheet this year for our Wolf den. However, I modified it to conform to my understanding that achievements may not be used as electives during the Wolf year.

My council has "Uniform Day" twice a year, once in September during Fall Round Up Week and once on February 8, the anniversary of Scouting in the U.S. However, it does not seem to be very well known, and without encouragement from the unit leaders, participation is low. I know of several Scouters where I work, but I was the only one wearing my uniform this past year, and none of the others seemed to know about it. My son was the only boy from his den (and possibly the entire pack) to wear his uniform.

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bakerjw,

No offense taken. You asked for official references, so I pointed out the USSSP site, which may not be official but seems close. Neither the Wolf book nor the USSSP site says anything about counting unused Wolf requirements as electives. Without considering any other sources of information, I would have to conclude that unused Wolf requirements may not be counted as electives. I don't think that most people would think to do so unless they were also aware of the Bear program. The question arises once people are aware of how the Bear electives work, prompting some to go back and reinterpret the rules for Wolf electives. I believe that is why the USSSP sites points out that there is "a big difference in the achievements for arrow points for Bear." After the Wolf program, the Bear program treats electives differently. However, I agree it would be clearer if the Wolf book explicitly stated that unused requirements may not be used as electives.

I would never try and take away an award that has already been given to a boy. If arrow points have already been given based on a different interpretation of the program, I would let the boys keep them, but I would consider the information in this thread for how the awards are handled next year.

Beagle Scout

Check out the U.S. Scouting Service Project's Arrow Point Trail page for Bears at

http://usscouts.org/advance/cubscout/beararrow.html

"There is a big difference in the achievements for arrow points for Bear. In this rank the Cub Scout can go back and do requirements from the ACHIEVEMENTS section of the book and use them as requirements for arrow points, as long as they do not count any requirements from achievements that they used to earn the Bear Badge. Unused parts of achievements that were used for the Bear badge may NOT be counted toward Arrow Points."

The implication is that the Wolf achievements do not work like this.

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Our council offers 3 Cub Scout resident camps (4 days, 3 nights each). I'm not sure how well attended they are, but as far as I know, no boys from our pack have attended in the last couple of years. Within our pack, I would not say that boys are discouraged from attending, but they certainly aren't encouraged to go. We do have 2-day day camps for Cubs and for Webelos that are well-attended by our boys, and the overnight family camps put on by our council are becoming more popular in our pack, too.

I think the feeling among our leaders and parents is that if the boys go to resident camp as Cub Scouts, it will take away some of the uniqueness of Boy Scout summer camp, so that when the boys eventually go to Boy Scout summer camp, it will be more of a "been there, done that" experience. Has anyone out there found this to be the case? If not, at what age/rank would it be best to have boys attend Cub Scout resident camp?

I think the difference is, Wolves must do 12 out of 12 achievements to earn the rank, Bears get to choose 12 out of 24 achievements to earn the rank. If I'm not mistaken, Bears can only use requirements from the extra achievements toward arrow points, not requirements from achievements used for the rank. For example, if a Bear uses Achievement 9 (What's Cooking - choose 4 of 7 requirements) for his rank and completes requirements 9a-9d, he cannot use 9e, 9f, or 9g as electives.

I also noticed that WolfTrax suggests extra achievement requirements may be used as electives. Here is another thread I found that says that they CANNOT be used:

http://www.scouter.com/Forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=80940

Hope this helps!

Does anyone know if it is possible to purchase single issues of Boys' Life? My son is one of last year's reading contest winners and our friends and family would like copies of the magazine when the essay is printed in May.

I was just at our Scout Shop, which I believe is a National Supply Division store (separate from our council). I spoke with the manager, who is very knowledgeable, and she told me that there is supposed to be another printing of the Tiger books available in June or July, both spiral-bound and non-spiral-bound. They do have quite a few of the 2005 printing books to use up first, though, so I guess if someone really wants the latest printing, they'll have to buy the spiral-bound book.

I went into our local Scout Shop yesterday and checked out their Tiger Cub books. They have the 2005 printing now, and it does indeed show the boys in the blue shirts on the cover. Same picture, they just changed the boys' uniforms. It also looks like they redid all the uniforms in the artwork inside, too.

The other difference I noticed from the 2003 printing is that the Tiger Cub belt totem has become the Tiger Cub Immediate Recognition Emblem. It is now worn on the button of the right pocket like the Wolf and Bear Progress Toward Ranks emblem.

The 2005 printing does not say anything about the changes on June 1, 2006, though. I guess if there is not another printing before the new Tigers start, which seems unlikely, I will make up a short errata sheet and hand it out to all the parents.

I have not seen the 2005 Tiger Cub Handbook. The one available in our local Scout Shop is the same one shown on scoutstuff.org, which still shows the boys in the orange shirts.

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I know that not everyone is comfortable knocking on doors and would rather just collect bags that are already filled, but I would estimate that we double the amount of food collected when we do check with people who have not left their bags out.

We've also found it's best if the same scouts who dropped off the bags work the same streets the next week to pick up the donated food to lessen the chance that someone's donation is not picked up. Still, I'm sure it happens, which is why the bags provided by our council have instructions to take the bag to the local food bank or drop it off at any of the partner grocery store's locations.

Our council does Scouting for Food in November, too. We usually distribute the plastic bags on the first Saturday and pick them up the next Saturday. We have pretty good participation in our pack, with about 2/3 of our scouts showing up each day. It takes us about 2 hours to drop off the bags in our assigned area and about 3 hours to pick up the filled bags. I think we have pretty good results, possibly because we carry extra bags during pickup day and knock on doors if the bags are not out already. We don't measure number of items collected, we measure by weight instead. I don't know what our individual pack results were last year, but at the district or council level (not sure which), I think I heard we collected about 60,000 pounds of food!

I've been the assistant den leader for my older son's den for the last two years (Tiger and Wolf), but beginning in June, I'm going to be the Tiger Den Leader for my younger son. I recently purchased the latest version of The Cub Scout Leader Book and discovered a couple changes have been made to the Tiger program effective June 1, 2006:

1. The Tiger Cub Motto has been replaced with the Cub Scout Motto.

2. The Bobcat rank must be earned before the Tiger rank (previously it was the other way around).

I have some questions about these changes, but I seem to be the first person in our district to have seen them, and I have not been able to find any information online (not even on the national BSA website). I'm hoping someone here can help me out.

1. Given that the requirements to earn the Tiger Cub emblem are a subset of the Bobcat requirements, can the boys earn the Tiger Cub emblem before earning the Bobcat rank?

2. Can the boys earn beads for Tiger Cub achievements before earning the Bobcat rank?

3. When will a new edition of the Tiger book that reflects these changes be available?

Thanks!

When my oldest son was in Tigers two years ago and I was the assistant den leader, the den leader and I talked about this. We decided that since there are 100 tiger paws in the back of the Tiger book, we would allow each elective twice. Hopefully this encouraged the boys to try different things. Otherwise my son could have signed off the reading elective every night! As it turned out, the most yellow beads earned by a boy was five or six, which seems reasonable to me.