Growing a beard for hunting season is a time-honored tradition. Spurred on by the likes of the Duck Commanders and major league baseball pitchers, facial hair is as popular as it is functional.
The folks at Ducks Unlimited have added an extra incentive to take your face camo down the all-natural sidepath. This Times-Picayune post looks at this fun and beneficial project.
For many hunters, growing a beard during duck season is as important as buying shotgun shells. A beard not only is a fashion statement for the hunting blind, it also is functional, serving to keep a hunter warm and reduce the glare of the sun on his face.
To unite hunters in the facial-hair brotherhood, Ducks Unlimited has again organized the Beards for Conservation program that allows hunters to track their beard growth for a good cause, and hopefully win some valuable prizes along the way.
The first step is to download the free Beards for Conservation app, which is available for both iPhone and Android devices. Then participants select one of DU’s top five conservation-priority areas to help raise awareness about on-going work in that area. The Gulf Coast is one of those priority areas.
After that, the next step is to drop your razor in a bathroom drawer and forget about it until February.
Each day, hunters may use the mobile app to take a photo of the progress. The photo will appear in that hunter’s public profile page on the DU website.
As part of the process, beard-growers may ask friends and relatives on Facebook to make a donation to DU through their personal fundraising pages. The top-five fundraisers win valuable, hunting-related prizes, including seven cases of Federal ammunition.
Throughout the program, DU will also award prizes like waterfowling gear, coolers and DU merchandise to random participants. To sign up, click here.
Photo (top): Todd Masson, The Times-Picayune
