Ottertail woman mentors disabled veterans at Camp Ripley turkey hunt

OTTERTAIL - Shelly Braaten spent three spring days at Camp Ripley helping disabled veterans step into mobile blinds, shoulder their gear and settle into a hunt that has become one of Minnesota’s most durable outdoor support programs.

Braaten, from Ottertail, served as a mentor during the Minnesota Veterans Outdoors turkey hunt held April 21-23 in Little Falls. The annual event was open to Minnesota veterans with disabilities, and organizers paired each hunter with a volunteer mentor and placed them in mobile blinds across Camp Ripley. Meals and lodging were provided free of charge, while participants had to supply their own Minnesota DNR hunting license and attend mandatory training at 11 a.m. April 21 at Camp Ripley.

The hunt carried weight far beyond the harvest count. Minnesota Veterans Outdoors says its mission is to salute and honor disabled veterans and service members by providing hunting and fishing opportunities, and the Camp Ripley turkey hunt has been running for about two decades. Outdoor News has reported that more than 3,800 veterans have taken part since the program began. This year’s event reached its largest scale yet, with 50 veterans matched with 50 volunteer mentors and 30 birds harvested over the three-day hunt.

That one-to-one mentor structure matters in a county where veterans often live far from large support networks. The setup creates an immediate social connection, something public health workers regularly identify as critical for recovery, especially for people living with disability, isolation or the lingering effects of military service. At Camp Ripley, the hunt built that connection through a shared task, shared time outdoors and a setting where veterans were not left to navigate it alone.

The Camp Ripley hunt is not the only outdoor option tied to veteran support in Minnesota. The Minnesota NWTF State Chapter and Minnesota Veterans Outdoors also host a disabled veterans deer hunt each October, extending the same mentor-based model into another season. For Otter Tail County residents like Braaten, those events turn a local volunteer effort into a statewide network of care, one blind and one veteran at a time.