Photo by Jake Przytarski James Burzynski chats with a family near his darts game on Saturday at the Lyon County Pheasants Forever Banquet

MARSHALL — The 38th annual Lyon County Pheasants Forever banquet took on a new look this past Saturday on the Lyon County Fairgrounds.

Unlike in year’s past, the event was held outside with a picnic style dinner offered for attendees along with fair-style games, a silent auction and bucket raffle opportunities for big prizes.

All of the proceeds collected from the event will be utilized locally for a variety of programs to help build the sport.

“It’ll be used for youth activities, youth shooting events, habitat projects, public land and different things like that,” said LCPF Treasurer Tanner Bruse. “We also support three or four clay target leagues through high schools, so we financially support them to lower the registration fee so more kids can get into it. We also do a youth hunt every year, and historically we’ve done other scattered youth events as well.”

Land access is a necessity for hunting, making property purchases essential with the funds raised at the banquet. Mark Radke, president of LCPF, said these properties are also well-taken care of though their cleanup projects.

“Acquisition of land is big for Pheasants Forever you know for public hunting and so on to get people out,” said Radke. “We have cleanup projects on those properties where we might be removing fence (and) just a bunch of junk. I mean a lot of old tires and stuff like that.”

While supporting a great cause, attendees were able to enjoy the fair-style games outside in the hoop barn like bean bag toss and darts. Next door in the Ralco Enrichment Center, numerous items were available to bid on through the silent auction. Tables and chairs were set up inside as well for attendees to enjoy food provided by Deutz Brothers along with drinks.

After having multiple events canceled due to the pandemic, including the September fall banquet this past year, Radke said it was important for the event to be open-air in order to safeguard against the spread of COVID.

“We didn’t know what it was going to be like at this time when we were going to have our banquet, so what we thought would be best to do is to have it at kind of an open venue where people could get outside versus being inside,” said Radke. “So that was kind of the most important part of it.”

“We picked the fairgrounds because of the hoop barn. All of our games are in there so it’s all open-air and then the building of course in here both ends are open so we just thought it would be safer,” he added.

The outdoor format allowed for activities that weren’t previously feasible to be included, creating a unique and fun environment at the new venue.

“I think it’s exciting and allows people to spread out. It allows us to use games like bean bag toss and different games that normally indoors we wouldn’t be able to utilize,” said Bruse. “So, I think it’s going to be an extremely fun banquet and kind of more of a fair style, if you will.”