Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for our community connection right here on Gay one, the one you trust, and today it's all about wild brow Bob bomp. Well you can hear the music in my head anyway. Anyway, from the Sutton Center, we have Chad Ellis and Coyleer McCown. How are we doing today, folks, pretty bestive? Huh yeah, yeah. First of all, Chat tell us a little bit about the suttn Avian
Research Center. What do we do there? We leave it to the birds.
Well, that's a great, great question, Mike. The Sutton Center has a forty year history, more than forty years all here, and we started out conserving and breeding and placing the bald eagle, and that of course took a while, a decade or so, and we were successful and so since and we've moved on to other conservation programs, both around endangered species as well as sort of some community surveys
and wildlife surveys and field work. So we you know, try to make an impact on the on the birds that we focus on with that, which have to do you know, with wildlife in the prairie.
So we've got we've got that we're working on right now that are really is starting to make some big comebacks thanks to the work that's right.
We uh, we're working on the mass Bob White, which you know is a related to the Northern Bob White when it goes to a wildlife refuge operated by the Fish and Wildlife Service out in Arizona. And then we're also working on Atwater's Prairie Chicken, which is related to the Greater Prairie Chicken and Lesser Prairie Chicken that a lot of people here know of, and it goes down to Atwater's Prairie Chicken Refuge outside of Houston, also with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
And now we bring in Kyler because we're going to do something to help raise money in order to make all this work. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Kyler and what you do there with the Sutton.
Well, I'm the office and Communications administrator and I do a lot of the wild Bruce stuff.
It's kind of a year round job.
Wild brew of course, this is down in Tulsa. And what's the date on that.
It is August twenty third, It's a Saturday, and it is at the our Best Convention Center formerly the Cox Business Convention Center, and it will be from five pm to eight pm, and you can get in an hour early with the VIP patron tickets at four pm to get an extra hour of the drinking and food.
Yeah. Well we're doing samples.
Right, just samples, limited samples.
Yeah. By the way, so how many how many different vendors do you have that come in here and provide samples to all the great people wanting to help do things to help out the center.
We have about forty a little over forty restaurants and breweries, so forty of each, Chad, have you.
Ever made it the full forty?
Never made it. I've been to the event. It is a ton of fun and I can tell you that it is a huge operation. There's a committee that we work with down in Tulsa that helps set this up and Kyler really does a fantastic job of kind of spearheading the effort.
So I understand that we have a couple of special brews are the kind of lined up with the two projects we're doing with the birds we just mentioned.
Yes, so we have a new Story Brewing is a new brewery in Tulsa that will be doing the brewery this year for the Wild Brew the beer, So we're going to have the Light Prairie, which is an American logger and.
That's for the Atwater's Prairie Chicken.
And then we have the Dark which is for the mass Bob White and that's a dark Mexican lagger. Cool.
This is getting more interesting about at the moment. How we get tickets for.
This wildbrew dot Org?
That easy?
Yes, chat, I'll tell you what.
You guys got it all figured out, don't.
You, well ironed machine?
My goodness. Well, it's always a fun time and I want to thank you for dropping by some tickets. We're gonna have some contests, so folks that actually win them hopefully bring friends along. So you go to the you go to the wild brew dot org website and you put in a couple extra orders so that everybody can come and it's it's always going to be a good time. Now, the research center itself, where are we located here in Washington Gap?
Yeah, so we have two locations actually there we do know. Yeah, there's the headquarters which has been there the longest. That's out there on Gap Road, and that's where we have our mass Bob wide operation. And we also have an education facility there with some sort of bird ambassadors. These are raptors and we've got a kestrel and an owl and things like that and take those out to the classrooms around the region. We went all the way down to Stringtown, Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago, but we
mainly focus locally. Yeah, sure, and so that's one facility that we have, and then across seventy five we have another sort of larger facility that's more focused on conservation of the of the prairie chicken. And so there's some of the enclosures there for the birds and then there's some acclamation pins where we try to get them out into the field but still sheltered because you know, these
these birds, they're not like raising livestock. You know, they need to know that when they get placed in the wild, they need to run away from snakes and they need to chase bugs. And this isn't something that just comes, you know, straight naturally from them to them. They need to sort of learn that before we place them so they so they survive.
Oh indeed, you got you gotta know where you're going, what you're doing. And how to get there. Now, Kayla, I've seen the education mobile and everything else that goes with it out at the County Pair and also at sun Best and a few others, people doing their own wingspan to see if they got one the size of a condor. Not quiet, but anyway, that's been a pretty good little marketing tool.
It definitely has, and that will be at wild as well.
We'll have the education band and we'll have the wingspan where you can stretch your arms out and see how big you are compared to a bird. And then we'll also have our ambassador birds, a couple of them so you can take selfies with them as well.
Couple them are pretty good size, very well behaved, but it's almost like they're part of the show. They know what's going on and they can kind of read people a little bit too. I don't want to give the bird too much credit, but by golly, they sure behave that way.
If they do.
We have a couple of trainers that spend a lot of time getting to know the birds and yeah, getting used to working with them and having them in different environments with people.
Wow, oh man, this is gonna be a lot of fun. So You've got forty different varieties of food and Bruce hipples coming up here at wild Brew again. It's August twenty third, it's going to be the Harvest Center in Tulsa, and you go to Wildbrew dot org and you can order as many tickets as you want. Remember that the money is going to the Sutton Avian Research Center in order to keep the lights on and the great work flowing. I know that these days sometimes grant money a little
hard to come by. I've never known when it's ever been easy, but it's always been tough since COVID here for nonprofits to really get up and going back to where they were. But this is a fun way to ensure that you're around for a good time to come.
Yeah, just to kind of highlight the impact that we make. You know, we're the only facility outside of the refuge working on the mass Bob Way, the only one, only one and for the very chicken, there's four to six other facilities in support of that refuge.
So it's.
We really are, you know, playing a huge role in keeping these species alive.
Yeah, it does go back to the eagle, the bald eagle and another form of an eagle, Don Henley. I guess wrote a couple of ice checks in order to keep that research going too. That didn't hurt.
That's right. He was an original supporter and I think back in like the two thousands he sent us an autographed CD collection for our Silent auction. We don't have that in this year's Silent auction, but we'll have some other good items.
Do you have some of the items from the Silent Auction.
With you today, Cake, Well, we do have our travel auction, which we'll have some pretty elaborate trips that's supported through am fund fundraising that kind of helps us with that. So that will be online and in person, and then as far as Silent Auction items, in person, we will have tons of photography, framed photography, paintings, different kinds of beer, fridges full of beer, kind of a variety.
For the collector.
Huh yes, because a beer you can't get here, so beer you can't get I like that. People travel, you know who are on the committee, and when they go somewhere and see a unique six pack, they'll grab in the back.
Wildbrew dot org that's where you get your ticket. That's wildbrew dot Org. August twenty third and that is going to be at the our best center in Tulsa, and it's all for a great cost. I want to thank you both for coming in today and sharing with us today, and hope to see you sometime soon before we actually open the doors and get things going and get those last couple of tickets sold. Usually this sells out pretty quickly,
gets pretty darn close to it. So let's see if we can't, maybe we expand this year.
Our ticket Our ticket sales are going well, and I would say if you're a restaurant or a brewery and interested in coming as a vendor, go to that same website and you can find where you can register.
We have information there too. Oh sweet, you never stop surprising me. Thanks for being with us today, folks. You have been watching and listening to our community connection. It's been brought to you in part by Arnold Moore and niecamp Budle Home, also Wesley and Giddy College and Tall Grad