Page 32 - SeptOct2019

Working Together for Youths State’s Controlled Hunts Program Yields Quality Outings on National Refuge Water and sky are one in the afterglow of sunset at Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge. COURTESY NATHAN WAGNER USfWS By Craig Springer, SW Region External Affairs U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Zayne Wagner has a whole lot going for him. The grade- school boy loves the outdoors, fishing and hunting. He’s often a shadow to his dad and grandfather along the waters and in the woods and fields of eastern Oklahoma. And Zayne lives not too far from Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, named in honor of the American Indian who invented the Cherokee alphabet, sits at the head of Robert S. Kerr Reservoir where the Arkansas and Canadian rivers conjoin then pour southeasterly toward the Mississippi. It’s big water. The national wildlife refuge lies on the southwestern edge of the Ozark Highlands. Rich bottomland hardwoods dominate the 32-square- mile refuge, interspersed with upland meadows and fields. It’s habitat for a litany of dabbling ducks, snow geese and wading birds that make seasonal stopovers. Bald eagles soar the spring skies on forays from their massive nests that lie in the crooks atop muscular cot- Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge Zayne Wagner harvested an impressive whitetail buck at Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge after he was selected for one of 25 youth deer hunts on the area through the Wildlife Department's Controlled Hunts program. 30 OUTDOOR OKLAHOMA