OVERTIME OUTDOORS: Local DU sponsors getting together Thursday night

Published 6:45 am Sunday, October 15, 2017

After several years, the New Iberia Ducks Unlimited Chapter’s chairman believes has the chapter about where he hoped it would be after changing the general membership fundraising event from fall to spring the past three years.

As a result, paid-up sponsors are able to go without paying another sponsors fee to the Sponsors Banquet on Thursday at The Gouguenheim in downtown New Iberia. At least 116 people will attend the final fundraiser of 2017.

“We went through a whole cycle reinventing the membership banquet and trying to get the legacy sponsors on board,” Jason Foster of New Iberia said Friday night soon after putting his boat on a trailer following a deer hunt at Cypremort Point. He didn’t get a deer Friday but did kill two deer on opening weekend, he said.

It wasn’t easy, making the changes in a storied DU chapter that formed in the early 1970s, the chapter chairman  admitted. Today everyone knows about the spring fundraiser.

Foster said he was looking forward to the Sponsors Banquet Thursday night. The event is from 6-9 p.m.

Fifty of the 58 sponsors expected to attend this week’s banquet signed on as sponsors before the spring general membership banquet and most attended the event in April at the Isle of Iberia RV Resort, formerly the Cajun RVera. And those sponsors who paid the fees in the spring don’t have to pay to attend this sponsors banquet.

“Our whole plan was to get to a year like this year. We have a spring banquet and make a big push” for general memberships and sponsorships, he said. 

No more asking sponsors to pay twice, or double-dipping, Foster said.

“It’s heading in the right direction,” he said.

However, the local chapter welcomes prospective sponsors who would like to attend Thursday’s banquet. Sponsorships are $350 and $1,250 and can be paid at the door.

Sponsors and their guests will dine on steaks, green bean casserole, salad and dessert, a meal cooked by local cooks. The veteran and revered cooking crew includes New Iberia DU chapter members Jason Broussard, Shannon Gonsoulin, Michael Lipari, Dr. Drew Clark and Greg Mullen.

There are some handsome items that some of them will bring home with them.

Two of the gifts lined up for the Sponsors Banquet will be old “throwback prints” framed in cypress wood by Keith Dugas, Foster said. Those have been very popular in the past, he said. 

Also, Filson outdoors apparel has donated gifts, he said.

With a cool snap finally about to hit the heart of the Teche Area, DU sponsors ought to be in the mood for the second social event of the year for area outdoorsmen.

“I think people will be excited about it,” Foster said.

“This banquet is a chance to raise a little money and say ‘thank you’ to our large donors,” he said.

Foster also pointed out that Cargill, a corporate underwriter for the chapter’s spring banquet, has written another check for the Sponsors Banquet.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.