Sanborn outdoor writer Bill Hilts Sr. has scored a three-peat for lifetime achievement awards from major outdoors writers groups.

Last fall, Bill Sr. accepted the Association of Great Lakes Outdoor Writers’ (AGLOW) Golden Glow Award for his many years of service. During the Outdoor Writers Association of America’s conference at Grand Rapids, Mich. in June, he was named recipient of the J. Hammond Brown Award, the highest achievement for years of service granted to OWAA officermembers,

On Oct. 3, during the New York State Outdoor Writers Association awards banquet at Lake Placid, Hilts received the M. Paul Keesler Outdoor Citizens Award for more than 40 years of work with writers association projects, programs, and managing functions.

Hilts and the late

Hans Paller founded NYSOWA with a series of statewide meetings in 1967. He has been an active member of OWAA since 1961. His son, Bill Hilts Jr., assisted in the awards presentations at Lake Placid.

In 2002 Hilts Sr. had an Archery Trades Association award named in his honor and this past spring he harvested his personal best wild turkey. “I’m running out of achievements, but at least the ATA award wasn’t a ‘memorial’,” he quipped while recounting his many and latest honors.

Open burning closed

A new regulation on open burning begins in New York State on Wednesday. The New York State Environmental Board approved an initiative to reduce pollutants and wildfire risks on Sept. 1.

“While bygone generations burned their garbage decades ago, garbage didn’t contain plastics, foils, batteries, paper bleached with chlorine, and other materials used today,” said DEC Commissioner Alexander “Pete” Grannis. Open burning sites have been the leading cause of wildfires in the state between 1986 and 2006.

Exceptions are made for outdoors cooking, burning organic, agricultural waste, lighting fueled smudge pots, ceremonial burnings, and prescribed burns according to state regulations.

For a detailed listing of restrictions and exceptions, go to dec. ny.gov/chemical/ 58519.html.

Envelope required for site list

An outdoors column last week cited Elmer Berghorn as the coordinator and contact person for a Safari Club International pheasant stocking program offering 41 approved sites where hunters can obtain permission to hunt SCI-stocked pheasants.

Berghorn reminds applicants that they must include a self-addressed business-sized envelope to receive the list of 41 addresses and phone numbers of property owners cooperating in the program. “I need their return address and these lists won’t fit into those smaller [greeting-card-sized] envelopes,” he noted. To receive a free list, write: SCI, c/o Elmer, 10024 Boston Rd., Eden, NY 14057-9720.

Don’t do as I do

State Senator R. C. Soles (D-NC), longtime anti-gun advocate, shot one of two intruders who entered his home in Tabor City, N. C. in late August. Soles, 74, has not been charged in the shooting; the county attorney’s office is still investigating the shooting, which resulted in non-life-threatening injuries to the intruder.

A Richmond Times-Dispatch report of Soles’ legislative record cites his career-long stance to deny ordinary citizens the right to use firearms for self-defense.