“Fished All Fifty.” – the trek is over. A couple young men from the East Coast had quite the pre-college adventure. They’re two people who can say they’ve done something no one else has.
A couple of Virginia men coming through the Midwest recently had a lofty goal of “Fishing All Fifty.” Luke Konson and Daniel Balserak wanted to catch the state fish of every state in the U.S. They recently caught Brook Trout in their home state of Virginia, the 50th and final fish on their list.
Luke Konson (left) and Daniel Balserak recently finished up their goal of catching the state fish of all 50 states. The two men are freshmen at Clemson University this fall. (Contributed photo)
Luke Konson talked about the accomplishment during a phone call from Clemson University in South Carolina. The two Virginia men are both freshmen at the school after completing their fishing plans in less than a calendar year.
“It’s unreal,’ he said with a laugh. “We still can’t believe how quickly we Fished All Fifty. Dan and I had great luck in the last 20 states we had to fish in. While we had to deal with runoff in a couple of places, the trip was mostly full of great weather and helpful people in each location. We weren’t sure we could make quick work of the western states, but we did.”
Being residents of the east coast, they’d never caught any state fish out west, so there was a knowledge gap to overcome in order to Fish All Fifty. Some of the fish they had no experience with included Cutthroat Trout, Golden Trout, Steelhead, and King Salmon.
“In the Dakotas, we were a little more familiar with the Northern Pike and Walleye,” he said. “It’s a little more difficult because many of the fish out there are at least somewhat endangered. But the hardest thing is you have to travel to some very remote locations to catch these fish, which means a lot of driving and hiking to get where you need to go.”
At one point on their trip, they fished in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California in five days. Needless to say, that’s a lot of driving all night and fishing all day. After coming so far in their Fish All Fifty attempt, they didn’t want to fall short.
Southern border farmers are afraid of being overwhelmed. The wide-open southern border of the United States has been a political hot potato for some time. Ag reporters found out how serious the problem is during a press conference called by the American Farm Bureau. Zippy Duvall, the organization’s president, took a tour of farms along the southern border and was appalled at what he saw there.
American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall toured the southern border of the U.S., where farmers fear for their safety. (Photo from fb.org)
The tour came about because the American Farm Bureau got alerted by some of their state Farm Bureau organizations that sit on the border, including Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, about the challenges farmers are facing. They wrote to the national headquarters asking for help because the situation is quickly getting out of control.
“A couple of months ago, the state Farm Bureaus reached out to me expressing the need for some help with the issues they’re facing along the border,” Duvall said during a recent press conference. “Because of that, we put together a letter to President Biden about our concerns.”
It shows how seriously Farm Bureau is taking the problem when all 50 state Farm Bureaus and the Puerto Rican Farm Bureau quickly signed on to the letter. The letter resulted in a phone call between the Farm Bureau state presidents and representatives from the administration to talk about the problems.
Once that phone call ended, Duvall decided the next step was to get a look at what was happening there. He’s always enjoyed getting out at the grassroots level and hear what’s happening on the nation’s farms. Duvall says emphatically that he’s “seen how serious the situation is for American farmers” along the border, calling it heartbreaking.
“Of course, they’ve experienced people coming across our border for decades,” he said. “But it’s never been at the level we see today. Our farmers and ranchers are worried about their safety, as well as the safety of their families and employees. They’re worried about the security of their property, including their farm machinery and equipment.”
Several farmers along the border have had their homes looted, their fences torn down numerous times, which costs a lot of money to fix, and their water sources have been tampered with and compromised. He says it’s a humanitarian crisis that needs attention immediately.
“The serious problem isn’t just affecting the lives of our farmers and ranchers: it’s also hurting many people coming across the border,” Duvall said. “We’ve heard discussions about farmers and ranchers who found dead bodies on their operations. Not everyone who comes over the border survives the journey.
“It’s been heartbreaking to see and experience everything over the last couple of days,” Duvall added.
Duvall went through Texas with Russell Boening, the Texas State President. As a farmer living in a state along the southern border, Boening said they’ve never seen an influx of people like they’re seeing in 2021.
Russell Boening, Texas Farm Bureau President, says officials along the southern border fear being overwhelmed by the influx of immigrants. (Photo from flickr.com)
“We went through McAllen, which is down in the Valley of Texas, and then we went upriver to Del Rio,” Boening said. “Those are two different areas facing different issues because of the same problem.
“The vast majority of people coming into McAllen include family units, unaccompanied minors, all of whom are turning themselves in to Border Patrol Agents and other authorities,” he said. “The number is overwhelming the capability of the Border Patrol to process and keep track of them to service their basic needs. And what do you do when these folks come in with COVID?”
Boening said the local NGOs are trying to set up places for people who have COVID to stay. The problem is they don’t have to stay at those places. They are “encouraged” to stay, but they aren’t required to. Multiple people are carrying COVID into the country unabated.
The situation is a little different in Del Rio, Texas. Some people are coming in seeking asylum. However, many of them are trying not to get caught. Those folks are sneaking through people’s property, including many farms and ranches.
“It’s a different demographic of people coming through the Del Rio area,” Boening said. “They’re in larger numbers and much more aggressive, often carrying backpacks and wearing camouflage.
“There’s the humanitarian issue of some folks who don’t make it where they’re trying to go,” he added. “They often run out of water, or the energy needed to finish the journey. Sometimes they’re found alive, but many times they aren’t.”
The Sheriff in Hidalgo County, where McAllen is located, put it simply: “This is not sustainable.”
Boening says there’s a sense of fear, desperation, and helplessness among the officials trying to deal with the situation along the border.
Craig Ogden, President of the New Mexico Farm Bureau, also says there’s a sense of desperation in New Mexico. Law enforcement officials, including the Border Patrol, are in desperate need of resources.
New Mexico Farm Bureau President Craig Ogden says Border Patrol officials are overwhelmed and afraid of being overwhelmed by immigration. (photo usnews.com)
“Technology is available to put out sensors along the border, but they need funds to make those purchases,” Ogden said. “They need a lot of resources, and you can feel the frustration of these people just trying to do their jobs.
“This is an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed and can’t be kicked down the road anymore,” he added. “Don’t forget this is also a biosecurity concern, including diseases carried by people entering the country and that can go back and forth among humans and livestock.”
So, what is Farm Bureau’s message? Duvall said it’s time for Washington, D.C., to start securing the nation’s border.
“That’s what my message is to Congress and the administration,” Duvall said. “It’s time to uphold the laws of the land. It’s close to getting out of hand.”
Running and track are helping Nebraska rancher Kevan Hueftle of Eustice to live the kind of story that few people get to tell. He rose from the depths of a 2005 hunting accident that cost him his foot, as well as the resulting depression and subsequent battle with alcohol to become a champion Paralympic runner after recently competing.
“I was shot in the left foot during a hunting accident,” he recalled. “Six months later, I decided to amputate it right above the ankle. I was only 20 years old at the time. I was a successful track athlete and actually tried to go and run again at the University of Nebraska-Kearney. However, I hadn’t finished healing yet.”
Track and running helped Nebraska rancher Kevan Hueftle recover from the trauma of losing a foot and the results battle with depression and alcohol. (Contributed Photo)
In his words, Hueftle said he was “taking pills to get through the day” and “drinking more and more” at that time. He transferred out of UNK and went to Southeast Community College in Beatrice to get his Ag Degree in 2009. Between 2007 and 2015, Hueftle called himself a “full-blown alcoholic.” On August 7, 2015, he took control of his life and gave up alcohol. “I hit my four-year sobriety mark on August 7 of this year,” he said proudly.
In January of 2017, he started looking back at his track
career, remembering how fast he could run in his prime. “I started taking a
look at some of the Paralympic times,” he recalled. “I went to a prosthetic
maker in Kearney and switched the old prosthetic leg over to a new one. Then, I
started running again.
“My times were pretty crappy back then,” Hueftle said. “They
were good when you remember I had just started running for the first time in
fifteen years. As I got further into training, I went to a prosthetist in
Washington that put me on a brand-new leg. I was training every single day and
my times kept getting faster. Two-and-a-half years of training led to me
getting a bid to the Para Pan-American Games in Peru, which were held only a
month ago.”
He said it was a very emotional experience when he finally received his Team USA gear and became a part of the organization. While traveling to Peru he didn’t carry a lot of expectations with him. After all, Hueftle had never traveled internationally before. He was also running while being a full-time rancher with a couple of “side-businesses.” Plus, Hueftle was a 34-year-old runner competing against kids in their 20s.
“I think the cards were stacked against me,” he recalled.
“However, I ended up placing second in the 200-Meter Dash and won the 100-Meter
Dash. That was a great feeling. I was actually pretty mad at myself after the
200 because I thought I should have won it. I just didn’t quite run my best 200
of the year though.
“I wasn’t a 100 or 200 runner in college during my track
days,” Hueftle said. “I was more of a 400 and 800M runner, which is a
completely different style of running than the sprints. I had to learn some new
running techniques and (starting) blockwork.”
Hueftle has a running coach who lives in Florida. His coach
came to watch him run in Peru and it was actually the first time the two had
been face-to-face. “I had five days on the track with him, which was amazing,”
he said. “And having the national anthem played because you won a race was even
more amazing. It was all Team USA members on the podium in first, second, and
third, in both events.”
Hueftle met his coach during a trip to Arizona for competition. He does his training through videos and workouts that are sent from Florida. “My coach also works with Team USA,” he said. “He sought me out after the meet in Arizona and told me I had the skills and the mindset to do well in the competitions. I just didn’t quite have the running technique yet.”
With his win at the Para Pan-American Games in Peru, Hueftle is off to Dubai and running in the World Championship Meet at the end of the month. He leaves on October 31 for 17 days in Dubai. He has a lot of training to do between now and then, but Hueftle’s workouts can be difficult to fit into his hectic personal and professional schedule.
“I usually try to work out at 5 am,” he said, “but if that doesn’t work out, I usually head up to the high school in the evenings with my kids to do my running. I can also leave Eustice to drive to Cozad and use their track but that takes 1.5 hours or longer. If that doesn’t work out, I’ve trained in cornfields or ran on highways. With the caliber of athletes I’m trying to compete against, I can’t skip workouts. The ones that have faster times than I do are sponsored athletes, so training is their full-time job.”
He’s looking forward to being able to reflect on his
accomplishments when his athletic career comes to a close. “Peru was nothing
but a business trip for me,” he said. “The best thing about it was Peru is on
central time, so I got to keep myself on a routine. When I’m done running, I
think I’ll have more time to enjoy it.”
Here’s the best way to describe just what Bullfighters Only is:
It’s the kind of thing most people will only see in a nightmare. It’s the center of a rodeo ring and there’s just you and an angry 1,500-pound animal running directly at you with malicious intent. The only job you have then is to stay out of its way for a predetermined length of time. That’s the kind of thing that Mabel, Minnesota native Justin Ward does for a living. The 23-year-old has gotten quite good at it and was named the Bullfighter’s Only Rookie of the Year Award Winner.
Bullfighters Only Rookie of the Year Justin Ward, a Mabel, Minnesota native, shown here in action. (Photo from BCNG.com)
NFL of Bull Fighting
Ward describes Bullfighters Only as the “NFL of freestyle bullfighting.” The contestant has to “fight” a Mexican fighting bull for a minute. And by fight, Ward says that means don’t let him kill you. As a bullfighter, Ward says he’s running around the ring “trying to do cool stuff for 40 seconds” and then really tries to up the score with one final trick in the last 20 seconds. The goal is to get the highest possible score between 0-100.
“While this animal is trying to kill you, some guys will do front flips, some do backflips, and some even get on their knees and try to juke out the animal,” Ward said. “The first 40 seconds is basically to prove that the animal can’t catch you. My big trick is leaping over the top of the charging bull from a flat-footed position, all the way from his nose to his tail.”
Ward said being off on a trick like that, even by a millisecond, gets painful in a hurry. He said a trick like that in Las Vegas “didn’t end up so well.” It’s tough to practice something like that leap every day. Ward says he just goes out and does it. But that’s not the only kind of bullfighting he does.
This is what Justin Ward looks like in action. Could you be brave enough to do this?
“I also do the rodeo protection bullfighting,” Ward said. “I
had actually done that for quite a while. One of the guys that trained me to do
that said I was pretty athletic and should go try out a Bullfighters Only competition.
I went to California for a developmental camp, which is similar to an NFL
Combine. I got an opportunity in my first Bullfighters Only event and placed in
the top five.”
It didn’t stop there. At his very next event, Ward took home a $10,000 paycheck. It’s a giant step up from where he was the first time he stepped into a ring one-on-one with an angry bull.
The First Try
“The first time I stepped into the ring by myself, it was terrible,” he recalled. “I literally got knocked around for 30 of the required 40 seconds. I climbed out of that ring and never wanted to do that again. Then, they announced that I’d won my round and had to do it again after all. My first thought at the time was ‘are you kidding me?’”
Bullfighters Only Rookie of the Year Justin Ward, in action, taking on a 1,500-pound Mexican Fighting Bull. Ward was a $10,000 dollar winner in the second competition he ever entered. (Photo from BCNG.com)
Ward’s experience with bullfighting, as well as rodeo in
general, goes back a long way. He and a partner were competing in a team-roping
competition, as well as steer wrestling, at a rodeo in southern Wisconsin. One
of the bullfighters didn’t show up so a rodeo committee member offered 50
dollars to anyone who would fill in.
With a laugh, Ward said, “I was 17 years old and dumb enough
to take him up on it. My first bullfight that day was terrifying. I got wrecked
up pretty good. However, it didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it would, I lived
through it, and they paid me. I thought to myself ‘I can do this!’”
It’s important to remind people that he’s not out there completely unprotected. A collision with an angry bull is quite similar to getting hit by a car, but the bullfighters still have a full-sized plastic chest plate. So, they absorb the full force of the collision, but a lot of pain is kept at bay. Ward said it knocked the wind out of him, but it did the job of “keeping me alive.”
Practicing
Ward and his fellow bullfighters have come up with an
unusual way to hone their skills. They take the front wheel of a bicycle and
weld some handles to it. Then, they’ll attach a fake bull head to the machine.
One bullfighter will operate the machinery as if it’s an actual bull while the
other one works on his skills.
“I tell those guys that if I slip up, they need to whack me
with it,” Ward said. “I need to learn that if I fall right here, it’s going to
suck.”
Ward said he hits the gym regularly, doing HIT (High Intensity) workouts three days a week and works on cardio five days a week. He’s in the gym at least twice a day. It’s all about avoiding collisions like the one he referenced in Vegas and still remembers to this day.
Injuries Happen
“I did my big move and tried to jump over the top of the
bull,” he said. “He hit me on the way by and when I fell to the ground, he just
smoked me up against a panel three or four times and dislocated my shoulder. He
actually hit me in the stomach hard enough that the doctor thought I might be
bleeding internally. It was rough.
“I didn’t have long to recover,” he recalled. “I had another
bullfight the following week, so I had to tough it out and compete injured.”
Not all bullfights are equally as challenging. A lot of the difficulty
actually depends on the animal’s temperament. It all depends on what each
bullfighter draws for a matchup.
“You can tell ahead of time if they’re going to be easy to
perform with,” Ward said. “Then it’s a lot of fun knowing that you can pick on
them a little and they can’t catch you. However, there have been other bulls
that there was almost no getting away from. We’re talking pure adrenaline and
pure fear with bulls like that.”
Most of the Mexican fighting bulls weigh between 1,200-1,500
pounds. You won’t see the giant 2,000-pound monster bulls because Ward said, “they’re
not very quick.” However, the smaller Mexican fighting bulls are lightning
quick.
A lot of miles
It’s a busy life of travel as a bullfighter. The first show Ward ever did was in Ada, Oklahoma, and his next show the following week in Washington state. He had a show earlier this year in Scottsdale, Arizona, followed by another one in Atlanta, Georgia. If someone from his area is competing at the same show, Ward said they’ll team up and drive there. If he’s traveling solo to a show, Ward said it’s easier to fly. He estimates putting on 50-60,000 miles in the last year alone. Ward said finding out he won the Rookie of the Year Award made it all worth the effort.
“I didn’t even know it had happened,” Ward recalled. “I was
doing an interview just like we’re doing now, and someone asked me how it felt
to be the Rookie of the Year. My first response was ‘I’m rookie of the year?’
He was a little surprised no one had told me yet.”
So, is this something that Ward is planning on doing for a
while? “This is a long-term occupation for me,” Ward said with a smile that was
almost visible in spite of talking on the phone.
Trump Announces Temporary End to Partial Government Shutdown
President Trump announced Friday that he had reached an agreement with Congressional Democrats to temporarily reopen the Federal Government, ending the 35-day partial government shutdown. Nine departments had gone without funding, including the USDA. Senate lawmakers from both parties had asked the president to temporarily reopen the government while they work on a broad-scale immigration agreement. (Photo from timesofisrael.com)
President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has reached an agreement to reopen the federal government for three weeks. That three-week continuing resolution will allow furloughed federal employees to return to work. Trump also promised to get them their back-pay, “As soon as possible. It will be quick.” The remarks come on the 35th day of the shutdown. Members of the Senate from both parties have recently pushed Trump to temporarily reopen the government and restart serious negotiations on a wider-reaching immigration deal. Trump did mention the importance of allowing immigrants to legally enter the country to work, something very important to agriculture. The three-week resolution will allow the government to reopen nine unfunded departments, which includes the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Two bills to reopen the government were shot down in the Senate on Thursday. That got serious negotiations going for the first time in weeks. Trump had asked for a “down payment” on funding for a border wall in exchange for reopening the government, but it’s still unclear if he got what he asked for. Trump said he has other options that would allow him to build the southern border wall. Right now, It’s unclear if he’ll take any steps if lawmakers temporarily fund the government but don’t reach a solution on immigration.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today issued the following statement in response to President Donald J. Trump’s announcement of reopening the federal government:
Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue is pleased that the partial government shutdown ended on Friday. He said they’ll be working to reestablish all USDA functions as soon as possible. Photo from foodsafetynews.com)
“President Trump’s announcement of the reopening of the federal government is welcome news, as it will bring thousands of our employees back to work and return us to our mission of providing our customers with the services they rely upon. I extend my sincere thanks to the thousands of USDA workers who stayed on the job during the shutdown to offer as many of our normal activities as we could. The President has already signed legislation that guarantees backpay for all employees, and we will move forward on that as soon as possible. Meanwhile, we will prepare for a smooth reestablishment of USDA functions.
“There will now be sufficient time for Congress to come to an agreement with the President on his pledge to protect our national security by securing our southern border with a reliable, effective barrier.”
Here’s the announcement from Fox 10 in Phoenix, Arizona:
