Joseph Presley serves as vice president of Southern Outdoors Unlimited. The nonprofit serves as a way to get children with disabilities to experience the outdoors through hunting and fishing excursions across the state. The Madison native recently spoke with Sun reporter Nikki Rowell about the mission of the organization and events they host throughout the year.
What is Southern Outdoors Unlimited?
“Southern Outdoors Unlimited is a new nonprofit. What we’ve done is an organization called the Super Hunt. The Super Hunt is for kids with disabilities to get into the outdoors. The Super Hunt has been going on for 15 years. So, instead of being a part of another nonprofit umbrella, we decided to start our own nonprofit. We are growing rapidly, and we are excited about what we can do to get children with disabilities into the outdoors.”
What all does Southern Outdoors Unlimited offer as far as the different hunting trips?
“Throughout the year, we will have a spring turkey hunt with some kids. June 28 and 29, we have a fishing rodeo in south Mississippi outside of Hattiesburg. It’s on a 500-acre piece of property. We will have fishing, four-wheeler riding, jet skiing, horseback riding, cookout and some music. Then, later on August 22, we will have our Southern Outdoors Unlimited banquet. That will be held at the South. October 25, 26 and 17 are our Super Hunt dates, which is our big event that we always do. So, those are the four events that we have this year coming up. We are excited to add more events.”
Tell me more about the Super Hunt.
“For the Super Hunt we have about 80 kids from across the state come and spend the weekend with us. We have about 35 to 40 landowners every year that donate their property, time and their resources to take these kids to hunt. On Friday, we will meet out at Turcotte. These kids will come out with their families and register at around 8 a.m.
“They will get a backpack from Santa Claus that has all the camouflage that they need, deer calls, bags of candy, hunter orange. Anything that they might need for the weekend. So, they get their backpacks and go down to the shooting range and shoot with some wildlife officers to make sure they can handle the gun safely and shoot the gun safely. We feed them lunch and then about 11 or 12 they dismiss and go with their landowners to their properties, which are all over the state. “
They will hunt Friday afternoon, spend the night, get up Saturday morning and hunt all day Saturday. Then, just do whatever the landowners have for them to do that day, whether it is fishing on a lake, riding horses, throwing the football, having a bonfire. Just for these kids to have the camp experience for the weekend.”
Why do you feel like this is an important experience for these children?
“Well, a lot of these kids are in and out of hospitals or rehabilitation centers. They really don’t have a weekend where they just get to go out and do what they want to do. That also goes for their parents, who are caring for them. Us, as an organization, kids are dear to our heart, and we wanted to work with the kids that didn’t have the opportunity to go out and experience that. We focus on children with disabilities. We can accommodate children in wheelchairs. It’s a very humbling experience for us. I always get way more out of it than the kids do. I think our landowners and volunteers do as well. They’re pretty special kids.”
How many children go on these trips each year?
“For the turkey hunt, we will probably have 15 to 20. The fishing rodeo, we could have 100 to 150 kids come out and enjoy that. Our Super Hunt, on average we have around 80 kids every year. We have a new outreach coordinator this year that has done a fantastic job on getting us into school districts and in front of other organizations for kids with disabilities to get our name out there and reach more kids. Our goal right now is to have about 100 kids for the Super Hunt.”
Where do you guys go for these hunting and fishing trips? Who are the landowners? Where are they located?
“We have a lot of landowners from around here, but we also have landowners in Oxford, Natchez, Meridian and on the Mississippi River in Vicksburg. These kids are from all over the state, so we wanted to try to put them as close to some properties as possible. We cover pretty much all over the state with landowners.”
How does one go about volunteering their land for these trips? What are the regulations?
“You can contact me or anyone on our board to talk to us about how to become a volunteer landowner. Me or Mike Jarvis are head of the landowners, so we reach out and answer any questions. If we have a new landowner, we will ask them questions about how many children they can accommodate, do they have a place to stay, are their camps wheelchair accessible. Then, we take a trip out there to look at their property, visit with them, ride around and just make sure that it’s safe for kids and their parents.”
How many volunteers work with Southern Outdoors Unlimited?
“We have a lot of volunteers. We have some really great sponsors that sponsor the Super Hunt. First South Farm Credit has been our title sponsor for that hunt for about six years. They have a huge driving force helping us. All in all, I think we have close to 30 to 40 volunteers on the Super Hunt weekend help us throughout the weekend in different capacities.”
What are the requirements for a volunteer to be qualified to take the children out for a hunt?
“Our landowners have friends who also know the property to help guide the children. We have a couple of landowners who take five kids, because they can accommodate five kids. They have friends help out who know the property and know where the food plots are and know where the road systems are. We put a lot of effort into making sure our landowners and guides are very safe. We provide a very good environment for all of our kids and our families. The requirement is anybody can volunteer, donate land or be a guide, but we have some in-house regulations and steps that we take to make sure everybody is safe. It’s a really good organization. We have it down so everyone is comfortable, and everything goes smoothly.”
What are some of the safety precautions are in place?
“We meet at Turcotte. So, every kid has to go down to the shooting range with a Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks officer. We have officers that make sure all of our kids have eye protection, ear protection, making sure they are keeping the rifle pointed down range. Every kid shoots and each wildlife officer fills out a sheet of paper that says this child can shoot up to 100 yards and doesn’t need any assistance or this child can shoot up to 50 yards and needs help holding the gun. So, we give those sheets to our landowners so that they know what is to be expected out of them and how to help the kids, whether it is holding the gun or providing them with a cushion to sit in or something like that. We have tons of different avenues to accommodate any kid in any situation.”
How is Southern Outdoor Unlimited funded?
“It is 100 percent funded by the public. It is strictly based on donations. We are 100 percent 501c3. Anybody who works with SOU is 100 percent a volunteer. We don’t have anybody on staff, so it’s fully funded by the generosity by our sponsors and the public that wants to donate.”
If someone would like to donate, what is the best way to do that?
“We have a website, southernoutdoorsunlimited.org. At the top right, there is a donate button. If you want to be a sponsor, you can call me. My number is 601-540-7240. You can reach out to anybody on our board. If you want more information, we would be happy to sit down with you and provide any information and tell you more about SOU.”
How can people sign up to participate?
“You can go to our website. We keep a database of people who have attended before and send emails out throughout the year with updates on events coming up and when to sign up for the Super Hunt. If someone who has not been involved and wants to get involved, we have a spot on our website, and they can click on receive more information. They can plug in their phone number, name, email address, and we can reach out to them, whether they want to be a landowner, volunteer or if they have a participant.”
