concerned_scout66

I think you might be remembering references to Jonathan Hubble, the 15 YO Scout who was found last week after spending 2-3 days lost in the mountains above Fresno. In both situations, however, these boys both violated even the most basic rules about being found. Brennan Hawkins was just too young to have ever been allowed on that trip. Jon Hubble was 15, prepared, experienced, and convinced that he could self-rescue himself. I don't think I've ever seen both ends of the spectrum show up in the same month. Concerned

OK, somebody in the LDS Church is noticing that LDS Boy Scouts are dying at a phenomenal rate. This article was found on the BYU News site. They've come to the same basic conclusions that we have -- this is an LDS Leadership problem. One statistic they report here, however, is that the average tenure for an LDS Scouter is 7-9 months whereas tenure for a non-LDS Scouter is 5-12 years. Mormons are meticulous record-keepers and they own BYU so I assume this is probably based on fact. Scary, that... --------------------------- Scouting accidents rarer than they may seem By Rachel

I was following up another report of a Scouting related death in Grand Canyon on 7/2/2005 when I ran across the following article from the Salt Lake Tribune. It is referring to a boy that is already on the list of dead LDS Scouts but has far more information. If you care about this topic you will want to read this. -------------------------------------------------------------- The bet was worth $5. To win, Kristoffer Jones needed to crawl onto a steep ledge - 800 feet from the base of Zion Canyon - and scratch his name onto the side of a cliff. The guest of a Provo Bo

Deseret News published the following summary of Scouting accidents in Utah a couple of years ago: Lost Scouts, rescues pop up often in news W.V. Scout is found in the Uintas" Aug. 1, 2004. "Four Scouts are found happy and prepared" July 18, 2003. "Missing Boy Scouts did the right thing, rescuer says" June 30, 2003. "Angel on lost Scout's shoulder? 'Indiana Jones' found Scout, flew him out of the woods" July 15, 2001. "Rescue teams locate 4 lost, unharmed Scouts" May 9, 2001. "Rescuers find 2 Scouts after 12-hour search" June 29, 2000. "Orem troop heeded S

Yesterday, I received a personal email regarding this thread from johndaigler -- someone who sees things more clearly than I do and to whom I am indebted. He's agreed to let me share this part with everyone. > > I think you might be leaving the thread too early. The crowd > has tried to help you think your way through the "identifying > the problem" stage. Mostly guesswork, educated, > but guesswork. Now, you are going to move on to the "do > something about it" stage. This is where the campfire crowd > really might be helpful. There are good way

FrankJ is right, this topic has been worked over pretty well. It's time to take action and fix somethin'. It may be hard to accept but I think, as an aggregate, we LDS leaders are the reason that our boys are dying at a greater rate. It could be luck or terrain but I can't find a single case of a lost/dead non-LDS Scout in the Rocky Mountain states while we lose them left and right. Now I just have to prove this to BSA and the church by clear and convincing evidence -- and not get myself excommunicated in the process. I'll start with National for a list of names/dates/units/CO's a

BadenP: Welcome fellow Washingtonian! In my experience, most of the LDS Scout leaders serve about 2 years. My father, brothers, and I have served much longer by choice. Unfortunately, many LDS Scouters never complete training while others jump ahead and complete Woodbadge even before being trained for their actual positions. I know, I know... One correction. We do sort of blend religion & Scouting as you mention but LDS boys are called to serve a mission at 19 -- not 18. We don't use Scouting to train the missionaries either as they are trained in a completely different

Here is more about the boy that was knocked into the Yellowstone River this weekend. http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/06/27/montana/a01062705_01.txt I've seen another site that has less detail but says the search is being scaled back.

I would like to believe that BSA won't take any action to pressure the LDS Church but stranger things have happened. On other stances over the past 15 years, however, BSA has lost far more than 12% of it's membership and certainly more than 12% of it's private funding. I just hope that it doesn't take a national scandal on the news about this problem to make us in the church do something about it.

Bob, Yes, that's what I see in this list too: inappropriate activities, poor safety precautions, poor leadership judgement. Even if it does not represent the entire population, these are serious lapses. Voyageur, Agree on 1 and 2 but would sure hate to see 3. We've worked real hard to get away from the "cult" label and a big part of that has been our involvement/support with/for BSA. We're very proud of the number of LDS Eagle Scouts and throw those statistics around all the time. When was the last time you heard about a Royal Ranger award?

Scouters, let's please keep this civil. I brought up this topic because our fellow Scouts are dying here. There is lots of good input on the table but no clear answers. Let's keep the input coming... Are there any other LDS Scouters out there? In your experiences, are there things about the way we implement the program that may be causing this? I'm not sure that I'm willing to accept that difficult terrain is the reason that our boys are not using safety gear, are wandering around the wilderness without buddies, supplies, or even basic knowledge about how to be found, or get kn

I agree that we need more data about Scout deaths before we can infer that this is an LDS problem. I've been worrying about this situation now for a long time but just started researching it after the $14 million fire thing happened in 2002. I guess having 2 LDS Scouts die in very different circumstances on the same weekend just sort of pushed me over the edge. Does anybody know of any non-LDS Scouts that have died under preventable circumstances? I don't mean lightning strikes, tree falls, cannon explosions, etc. These were obviously accidents.

In regards the LDS program (the question above from SR540Beaver), there are some big differences for LDS Scouts: - LDS boys start Cubs on their 8th birthday as Wolves. They become Boy Scouts on their 11th birthday. That means they spend 1 year as a Wolf, 1 year as a Bear, and 1 year as a Webelos. At 11 they become what used to be called "Blazers" but is now known as "11 year old Scouts". - LDS boys are usually broken into smaller groups that meet separately and have their own leadership structures. The 11YO, 12-13YO, 14-15YO, and 16-17YO Scouts are often different units (Scouts,

Just in case people haven't been following the news, I was able to find the following list in just a couple of hours on the Internet. There were several others but I wasn't able to verify absolutely that they were LDS units. If you know about any other LDS boys that have died while on Scouting trips, please forward them along. 1. Luke Sanburg, 13, LDS. From Montana. Fell into Yellowstone River in June 2005 during troop outing while attempting to "push logs" into the river with the rest of the boys. Search is on-going at this time. 2. Jeffrey Kenneth Lloyd, 17, LDS. From Idaho

Dear Carol, That could definitely be a factor but I'm not sure it could explain everything. Literally dozens of LDS Scouts have been killed in UT, WY, and MT but the Scouts that die in CA, PA, TX, and other places seem to be predominantly LDS as well. It sure would be nice to have a complete survey of Scouting deaths to see if there was any commonality by region or other factor. Thanks, Rick

I am an LDS Scout leader in Washington State. I was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout as a youth. I've been active as a Scouter now for about 20 years. Over the past few decades I've noticed that a large percentage of the deaths that occur on Scout outings are associated with LDS units. There have been 2 deaths in the past 2 days: 1 LDS Scout fell from a zip-line, 1 LDS Scout fell into the Yellowstone River. I know that LDS youth make up about 12% of all Scouts but it appears that we make up more like 70% of the accidents. Is this your impression as well? I believe this is a training