Close to 100 people attended the tenth annual National Wild Turkey Federation Hunting Heritage Event hosted by the Greene County Gobblers on Saturday.

There were over 40 donors and over 50 silent and live auction items at the local organization’s largest fundraiser event for the year.  Committee member Kevin Devilbliss says the Greene County Gobblers raise money every year to purchase land to preserve wild game and public hunting areas.

The auction items alone brought in $6,525.  The item that raised the most was $350 for a Big Green Egg grill.  Devilbliss comments that they usually give the money to the NWTF in South Carolina, then a percentage is returned to the state.  A board designates the areas in Iowa to receive the allocated funds from the national organization.  He points out that most of the time, Greene County doesn’t see the benefit of those funds until this year.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources and Greene County are working together to purchase 300-400 acres of land for the preservation of wild turkeys.  Devilbliss is excited to see national funds at work locally and he thanks everyone who attended their fundraiser in support of their efforts.

“We really want to thank the people that come.  This is our tenth year and we’ve had a lot of the same people for ten years (and) new people every year.  And we just want to thank them for coming and supporting us (and) spending their dollars.  This year, we finally get to see a benefit from some of that.  Some years, we don’t, but this year we do.  The state sees the benefit but actually this year Greene County sees a major benefit for that.”

The majority of land that will be acquired is south of Rippey and west of Jefferson.