Editor's note: This speakout was written by Essy Klingbile of Brookings, who was sponsored by the Brookings Wildlife Federation to attend the South Dakota Wildlife Federation youth camp.

Hello, my name is Essy Klingbile, and I’m very grateful for this opportunity to attend the SDWF Youth Conservation Camp from June 5 to June 11, 2022, in the Black Hills. 

I love talking about it because I definitely had a lot of fun there. It is one of my favorite camps I’ve ever been to and I really enjoyed all the classes I picked. 

I can’t wait to try new ones next year. The first thing everyone did was go on a hike and ended up going on the Little Devils Tower and I absolutely loved it. 

You could see the back of Mount Rushmore once you got to the top. It was the most difficult one I could pick but I had a really good time and I like making things difficult for myself. 

My new friend also wanted to go on that hike but ended up getting a different one, so she had me take lots of photos. 

The next day was our first day of classes and I had meat treats and bow making that day. Meat treats was a really fun class, you got to learn how to make jerky and eat it. 

The teacher had also brought some other kinds of jerky for us to try. I had both of my new friends in that class and we all had a lot of fun with that class and we enjoyed being in the class together. 

After lunch I had bow making class which I enjoyed a lot since I’ve always wanted my own bow. It’s an interesting process to make a bow – the wood you have to use and the tools. The next day the activities I had were bow hunting and dutch-oven cooking. 

Bow hunting was so much fun and I’ve been wanting to learn how for a while. We learned all about the different types of bows, how to take care of them and then we got to target shoot. 

We shot at targets and I got very close to the bullseye which I was very proud of. 

Next, we got to go up in a tree stand and shoot at 3D figures of animals and I shot a 3D deer. 

I really enjoyed that and had a lot of fun with the boys in my group. 

After classes I met up with my friend again for lunch and we had dutch-oven cooking class. We both love cooking so we had a lot of fun with that class. 

We made dinner rolls, pizza and a cookie brownie. All of the food was really good. I had so much fun with the camp and so did my friends. We all hope to go back next year and bring more friends with us. 

I can’t wait to see them again next year and everyone else as well. I also can’t wait to try new classes that I haven’t already.