Brad Dokken: UND edges NDSU in pre-football game trapshoot competition
Oct. 21—A new rivalry may have been born last weekend before the big football game between UND and North Dakota State University, which the Fighting Hawks won 49-24 — their first win over the Bison since 2003.
While tailgate parties and other pregame festivities were in full swing, students from the UND Chapter of The Wildlife Society and NDSU's Natural Resources Management Club faced off in a clay target shoot at the Dakota Sporting Clays Range west of Grand Forks.
The score may have been closer than the football game, but the UND students prevailed in the trapshooting competition, edging the NDSU squad by a mere two points.
Ryan Taylor, director of public policy at Ducks Unlimited's Great Plains Regional Office in Bismarck, organized the event, and the Grand Forks Scheels store and the Bass Pro Shops/Cabela's store in East Grand Forks helped sponsor the competition with ammo for the participating students and faculty.
Scheels also donated a $500 gift card for the winning squad, and DU sponsored a traveling trophy, Taylor said. DU also covered the sporting clay fees and sponsored a meal, prizes for competing students and some promotional gear, he said.
In addition to the clay target competition, participating students had an opportunity to learn about the value of natural resources — especially the importance of hunting and fishing in North Dakota and the role of policy in protecting that heritage.
Two North Dakota legislators — Sen. Jeff Barta, R-Grand Forks, and Rep. Jeremy Olson, R-Arnegard — attended the event and provided legislative insights. Olson serves on the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Water Topics Overview interim committee, and Barta is vice chairman of the State and Local Government Committee.
Erik Fritzell of Grand Forks provided a nod to North Dakota legislative history by sharing stories about his mother, Stella Fritzell, a renowned North Dakota legislator, hunter and conservationist. Stella, a Grand Forks community leader who served three terms in the North Dakota Senate, died in 1984.
In a Facebook post, Taylor said he wished he could have known Stella and that his mother and Stella could have known each other and had the opportunity to meet the outdoorswomen who attended the event last Saturday.
"I can't believe how much she reminded me of my own mother," Taylor wrote in his Facebook post. "Avid outdoorswomen, keen political mavericks, independent women who spoke their mind ... and knew very well how to shoot a gun and hunt for game."
Among the morning's highlights, Taylor said, was the shooting vest Erik Fritzell brought to the event. Stella wore the vest in 1969 during her state trapshooting championship win, and NDSU grad student Sophia Maruska, the top women's shooter last Saturday, donned the vest for a photo.
"More than a few of us were smiling from ear to ear at the sight of a new generation in that old vest — maybe all smiling for slightly different reasons," Taylor wrote. "Memories of Stella, or thoughts of Liz, or the new memories ahead for another generation."
Devin Forcier, an NDSU undergraduate student in Natural Resources Management, was the top male shooter.
By the sounds of it, everyone who attended last Saturday's pre-football game event was a winner. It's always great to get students across the natural resources field together, as they are the future of conservation, said Susan Felege, a UND professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management and adviser of the campus Wildlife Society chapter.
"This was a fantastic event," she said. "We are looking forward to this becoming an annual tradition."
Most hunting seasons are now in full swing, and it's time for some new photos in the
Herald's online "Trophy Room" gallery
of hunting and fishing photos, which you'll find at gfherald.com. Photos will also appear on occasion in the Northland Outdoors section of Saturday Grand Forks Herald print editions.
If you have a fishing or hunting photo you'd like to share online with readers, email it to Brad Dokken at
or by postal mail to Dokken at 3535 S. 31st St. Suite 205, Grand Forks ND 58201. Email photos are preferred, since Dokken works remotely.
Be sure to identify everyone in the photos by name, hometown and if it's a fish picture, whether the fish was kept or released. Photos in which fish or game are mishandled will not be used. Prints won't be returned.
