Man, I love the NWTF banquets but last night just about did me in, At one of the neighboring chapters banquets I feel there was somethings going on that was not right, The Regional Director was the same guy that is over our own chapter and a very nice and likeable fellow, he had a guy with him last night, he introduced him as being some kind of regional manager or something to that extent, anyway he went on to say that this guy would do some banquets for him when he himself could'nt make it, but now as far as saying that this guy was on the NWTF payroll I don't know, but he was in full NWFT attire. What stinks about this deal is that he won 3 of the 6 guns that was offered, He won the gun of the year, which was a beautiful Browning BPS, all engraved and everything, he also won the jakes gun of the year which was a fully camoed pump 20, he won them by the drawings of the tickets from a bucket, After it was over I went up kind of discretely and went thru the buckets of tickets, this guy had 5 or 6 tickets in each bucket and had them fan-folded so they would stick out among the others, knowing that there would be a little kid from the audience do the ticket drawing and that when they feel something like this in the bucket that it would be the one they would draw. It was just a couple of years ago that we had a commitee person in our own chapter that did this on the sportsman package drawings and he won about 75% of the things offered, at our next meeting the Regional director {the same guy that directed this banquet} instructed that he should not do that, now he has his buddy doing the same thing on the guns of the year, Myself I don't see why even someone with the NWTF should even be able to participate in the drawings, I did'nt spend that much money in trying to win these guns but some of the others did, Oh I almost forgot, this guy won the Bennelli that was offered on the "keyring game" also, It was probably run in a fair manner so that don't bother me any.

My point is we have a bunch of people working their butts off to make these thing a great success then something like this comes along and really hurts, After it was over I had a discussion with the regional director and he kind of stood behind his buddy, I had to remind him about the mishap at our banquet a couple years back and some of the comments he made toward that little mishap, the only difference is ours was on a bunch of minor little prizes and not on thousand dollar guns. Makes the whole thing look shabby. I serve on the committee for our own chapter but after this if my feelings don't change I may never attend another NWTF banquet. Sorry for the rant , but this deal just really rubbed me the wrong way.