TMSM

"Any life scout who wants to do an Eagle project may do so. There is no reason deny him that privilege. I certainly would never say to a boy, "You can't do a project. You earned Life rank at age 17.51."

No doubt that any Life Scout can do a project - is it still called an Eagle project if he has no way of earning Eagle? 

"Nobody besides the scout needs to pay attention. Nobody should. Even if nobody else is paying attention, he should read his Handbook." 

True nobody needs to pay attention but a scout is Friendly and I would have had him do the math when he became Star Scout or at least when he brought the project forward. He may have known when he started his project and hoped to squeeze through the cracks. Wonder if he got donations and help by telling people this was his Eagle project.

7 minutes ago, ValleyBoy said:

Per the article he became Life Scout in February and started the project in March.  

Isn't there an approval process before you start? I would the troop or district would say something. 

At the end of the story her proves he a true scout by saying "I accept the National Council's decision. No regrets" 

I thought you needed to be  life Scout to even start an Eagle Project - Who approved this project?

So they don't do summer camp, earn Swimming Merit badge, Kayaking MB, Canoeing MB, or Sailing MB go to Sea Base or Northern Tier and I would assume the troop or the patrols don't do weekend trips on the water. 

I wonder what else they sign off on just to keep the peace.

I am guessing there is more to this that was not said. Perhaps they passed the swim test for summer camp so the do not retest before signing off.  

Kettle Moraine - has a few different options.

Meh, not much excitment for it here in the midwest at least not in our council. It would be nice to get at leaset one Girl Troop up and running to help lead the way.

On 8/2/2018 at 11:35 AM, bearess said:

I’m doubtful, frankly, that talking to the ASM will be effective.  He has a long history of stuff like this.  He’s not changing.  He’s a SuperScout— Eagle, Wood Badge instructor, etc.  Getting rid of him, full stop, will be tough, and may not happen.  Focusing on that as a goal might not be realistic.  I don’t know.

I would recommend that you speak up, talk to him and set expectations of him when it comes to dealing with your scout or all the scouts. Send an email if he is intimidating and copy the CC and SM. This is always the best first step - then you can put the onus on the SM or CC to deal with this problem. 

1 hour ago, ScouterNorth said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but...

Is a pistol even a viable hunting firearm?

 

 

FYI - Illinois does have a handgun season for deer and when you hunt quail you do move quite a bit.

https://www.scouting.org/programs/boy-scouts/youth/awards/noa/ 

I have a scout who is close to completeing this award. How would I find out how many are awarded each year. Does the BSA publish this info?

I allow (as SM) the WC to cover having a knife for a new scout for the first few months. If they refuse to take one of our TC training classes then we have a discussion on why TC is important for a boy scout. That seems to motivate them.

Thanks for all of your input - Our scouts decided to do the Superior Hiking Trail (SHT) vs Smokies or Yosemite. They wanted to go low budget to save for Philmont in 2020. It should be cooler there near the lake and we hope to get some great vistas in. 

3 minutes ago, Hawkwin said:

Not necessarily. Don't forget, you are still 4000-6000 ft high in the Smokies too so it is cooler. Ave high is 80 with an ave low of 57.

From a quick search on Philmont, ave temp in July is 84 with an ave low of 52.

Any idea what the humidity would be vs 15% at Philmont?

18 minutes ago, CalicoPenn said:

Are you looking for guided or can you put something together yourselves?

Contrary to popular belief, the Midwest does have a small mountain range in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and a very large state park called the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.  Some of the Wisconsin BSA summer camps would offer treks to the Porkies (not sure if they do so anymore).

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is about a 10 hour drive from the Chicago area.  The Appalachian Trail runs through it.

For another set of Midwest mountains, that might be more like Philmont, there's the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota - about 14 hours away.

For guided trips. you can try to Katahdin Area Council (in Maine) to see if they have any capacity for tours of Katahdin and environs - its about 26 hour away by car.

 

 

Thanks - We do the Porkies with our 11 year olds, its a great place. Smokies might be a little hot for us in July. A message was sent to Maine HA thanks for the input. 

My scouts have no interest in Summit. In fact they call it the Epcot of boy scouting due to the groomed trails and planned activities.

Any ideas for Plan B?

We are in Illinois so we could do BWCA but the scouts wanted mountains.

27 minutes ago, shortridge said:

What is your marking method? Colored rope or string, cloth “flags,” patches, etc.?

Off-topic, but just because I’m curious - What do you consider tents vs. backpacking tents vs. pup tents?

Our marking method is electrical tape for most items and paint marker for others. we also have an engraver we use on DOs

a normal weekend Tent is 4 person wheighs 9 pounds, Backpacking is a 2 man and weighs 4 a pup tent is really a pre-ownd tent from Philmont that is A-framed and we think ours were bought in the 90's. We only use the backpacking tents back packing and the pup tents when we run out of space in the back packing tents.

53 minutes ago, thrifty said:

Did you mark the dutch ovens somehow?  I could never find a good idea on how to mark those so they could be easily identified.    

We don't mark our ovens but we did switch to using aluminum liners and they alway come back clean. Our District uses brass number tags on a ring and that seems to be a good solution

We provide tents, ground tarps, dinning fly for each patrol(different colors), patrol boxes will all the required cooking gear, small dutch oven tables, charcoal stove (we only do propane at summer camp),water jugs, dutch ovens. We have 30 tents, 6 backpacking tents, 5 pup tents and 14 dutch ovens. Every bit of equipment is marked with 1 of 5 colors and each patrol is assigned a color, this helps to reduce arguements when someone didnt pack their (stove, tent, jug etc).

PLC stepped up and helped the QM fix a sloppy paint job. They all learned how to spray piant and how to stencil and are happy with the results

We used Silk screen last year and they all peeled off which is why the numbers they tried to use this year were off by 4 or 5. By the way the picture above is and example of how they use stencils,.

I didn't expect them to do this to adult or my standards but I did expect and tell them that I would give them some instruction before they started. I give them an A+ for effort and i'll let te PLC grade the rest which should be interesting since the SPL was the one who helped the QM. 

As for sloppiness of this not being debatable I'll ask you to enlarge the photo and take a good look. Coleman fuel worked great on cleaning up some of the splatter and all will be good once they redo. 

We have been numbering our tents since at least the 80's based on some of the bad tents I threw away. We use the numbers to audit condition on a yearly basis and to make sure tents with bad zippers don't go back into rotation. 

As SM I tried to get our troop to just mark each with a sharpie with year and number but that's not what the commitee wanted. I'll pick my battles and gear marking is not one of them. 

Good advice all - the funny thing is that he got the numbers all wrong, we are in the 30's for the tents so not sure how he even started at 23. regardless of sloppiness he would be re-doing them anyway. The PLC meets tonight and there is a suggestion that they provide some guidence to the QM. With only a few days left to Summer Camp they'll have to pitch in to get this done.

Maybe have the past QM write-up how to mark tents would help and maybe the PLC will suggest that. 

We have a new Quarter Master and he was assigned a few things to do. We have some new tents and I was hoping to get them numbered so I showed him the supplies and told him I would help him get started so that he knew how to paint and stencil. 

We have a new ASM that has a key to where we meet and store the tents - he tokk it upon himself to let the new QM and the SPL in to work on the tents without instruction or adult supervision. Both SPL and QM are sophmores in high school so I was pretty disappointed when I saw what they had done. On one hand its great that they took some initiative but they on the other they didn't wait for instruction. The picture is one of the better ones. most have over spray and drips all over. They numbered 3 tents, flys, pole bags and tent bags and most are unreadable and sloppy. My new ASM says I am making a big deal out of nothing so asking your opinions.

1 hour ago, qwazse said:

@TMSM, where is it written that you have to have two of every POR? If you get a new patrol of boys, do you all say, "Oops, time to get another SPL, QM, Scribe ..."?  When a troop is down to 16 (let alone 5) boys, we make it clear they don't need an SPL/ASPL. Two PLs and their assistants can do the trick. If they plan an activity with another troop, they may choose who will serve as SPL for the event.

When I was a scout, the Girl Scouts would check out gear from the QM just like our PLs would. We didn't have them appoint their own QM to get trained before they could borrow our tents. They came back no worse for the wear than if a patrol of our boys used them ('cept for the perfume smell).

If you're linked, you share resources ... PoR's are a resource. Tell your boys and girls that you'll support their decisions in how to share them. Why make this hard?

Not sure you got my point. It really doesn't matter because none of our 6 feeder packs are adding girls to their packs and our CO has no interest in adding a girl troop. I hope this works out for the girls wanting to join Scouts but when I look at the local Venture crew numbers crumble I just dont see the interest from them.