By Nathan Straus
nstraus@jacksonvilleprogress.com
The National Wild Turkey Federation delivered 20 turkeys to the HOPE Center on Wednesday morning.
HOPE’s gift was part of the 60 turkeys passed out to area organizations.
John Gipson, the president of the Cherokee County chapter of NWTF, said 20 turkeys were given to the Rotary Club in Rusk and 20 were given to the Fellowship Church at Alto.
“We raffled off a gun to finance the turkeys we give away,” Gipson said. “With the proceeds we gave away 60 turkeys. Last year it was 50. We’re moving up.”
Craig Dickey, a Troup resident, was the lucky recipient of the Marlin XL7 25-06 deer rifle raffled off by the foundation.
Fran Daniel, the executive director of HOPE, said the turkeys came at just the right time.
“It saved Christmas,” she stated. “We have not had any turkeys donated for Christmas yet.”
Daniel said the meat will be used in the Kitchen of HOPE both for the organization’s Christmas Day meal at 11:30 a.m. on Christmas and for future meals.
“It’s a tremendous savings,” Daniel said.
The NWTF is a national nonprofit conservation organization founded in 1973. It has worked with wildlife agencies to restore wild turkey populations from 1.3 million wild turkeys to nearly 7 million. Now the volunteers raise funds and work daily to improve critical wilfelife habitat, increase access to public hunting land and introduce new people to the outdoors and hunting. With the group’s partners, sponsors and members, they have raised and spent over $286 million preserving hunting heritage and conserving almost 14 million acres of wildlife habitat.
