College welders make trailers to provide accessible hunting

West Central Tribune staff report — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 05:36:52 GMT

WILLMAR — Four custom wheelchair trailers hit the woods this year, helping hunters with disabilities enjoy one of the most successful deer hunts ever on the grounds of the Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center in rural Spicer.

The eight hunters harvested 11 deer, according to a news release from Ridgewater College.

Students in the Ridgewater welding program have now built four special trailers that are used to transport the hunters in wheelchairs to blinds in the woods of the Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center.

Volunteers have been hosting the special hunt each firearm season in the woods there for 24 years.

For most of those years, they relied on snowmobile trailers and patched-together homemade rigs to transport the hunters with disabilities.

Six years ago, the volunteers approached Cody Sarsland, Ridgewater welding instructor, about the possibility of his students building trailers for the hunt.

“Now we have four really nice trailers,” said Dave Muetzel in the news release. He has been organizing the hunt for its entire 24-year history.

The completion of the fourth and final trailer for the special hunt offered an important lesson for students beyond what they learned in the process of building it.

The students also learned that the rewards of helping others are the best.

“Our students are at that age where they understand how helping others is sometimes more rewarding than getting a paycheck at the end of a job,” said Sarsland in the news release. “If they can get that rewarding feeling, it might encourage them to do another service and help others gain the same sense of accomplishment and 'paying it forward' can continue.”

Sarsland made the original design for the trailers years ago. The second-year students have made improvements to it, thanks to their ability to listen to the needs of the hunting volunteers, the news release stated.

Each of the four trailers required about two weeks of class shop time for the cutting, gas metal arc welding and assembly required to build them. The Ridgewater Auto Body Collision Technology students helped with the painting.

Many donors and sponsors have also been involved through the years, and area businesses also donate four-wheelers that safely pull the trailers.

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PRAIRIE WOODS ENVIRONMENTAL LEARNING CENTER

College welders make trailers to provide accessible hunting