Need Votes for my son, Junior Ranger Contest

Posting this here hoping some of you will be able to help vote for my son.

It looks like there’s one free vote available and they want donations for any more than that. Definitely not looking for more than the one free vote to be clear. Per rules I can’t “buy” votes so this is something I am just sharing on my personal pages for now.

They asked for a reply about why we entered and my full reply was too long feel free if you’re interested to read that below. There’s also more information on his profile.

Thanks all :heart:


Like many here we love animals and nature.

In the big picture it’s one of the reasons we chose to homeschool our special needs child.

As a child I spent as much time as I could outside everyday, no shoes and usually a bug net or critter keeper in hand. I enjoyed fishing and camping to get more out in nature as well.

Pretty much every night I had nature and animal shows I looked forward to watching until the programs went off for the day. As a learned to read I also had plenty of books with either animal facts or stories as well. I was the weird animal knowledge savant kid as long as I can remember.

While well meaning, I was always told to focus on improving skills I struggled with instead. Never really getting to fully love school and learning because of it. Also I felt too held back and bored being in the special educational program. I wish someone had realized I was actually gifted.

Knowing I didn’t want that for my son, we’ve embraced a path he can influence. As his interest form or change sometimes even daily. Our week isn’t a strict schedule with no down time to recharge. We’ve filled our personal library with plenty of books for him to learn everything there is to know about our amazing planet and beyond. He also has at his finger tips the ability to learn anything he could want.

We didn’t realize that getting pets would influence so much of his learning as well. When we got out first family pet, a Leopard gecko he fully immersed in watching videos about them. Picked up all the new vocabulary as far diet and care. He was fairly non-verbal, definitely never conversational speech. But he loved talking to her!

Since we’ve added cats, fish and a dog to our home zoo. He’s made leaps and bounds that we honestly never thought possible. Speaking without prompts and not completely relying on scripting. He’s incredibly smart and also has the most creative imagination.

We know this contest would be an experience of a life time for a kid like him. He’s likely to never get another opportunity like this.


Also if anyone else entered their kids for this contest I don’t mind if you also post your kids profiles below.

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Bumped him from 8th to 6th, best of luck!! We need more passion for nature out here!

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4th now!

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Up to 3rd!

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I have a question or two about the opportunity.

Voting by itself can only help lock your child in to one of the top 20 finishers correct?

And from those top 20 finishers, then they will pick one basically raffle style?

So your child could possibly gets 250 more votes than the nearest finalist, but he would still be in a group of 20 that would then get narrowed down to one winner?

Just curious

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I think that randomization/lottery style at the end is a way to deter dishonest participation. There are probably ways that you can buy Facebook profiles that are fake and spam the voting so that your kid gets 5000 votes.

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I had to look through the rules again. This first round of voting gets each group to the top 20.

Further rounds of voting with groups to get them down to top 15, 10 and 5 and group finals.

Then it’s like 4 more rounds before it gets down to finals.

Votes and profile views can make a difference in determining who moves on.

So kinda ridiculous how long it goes on for before the final voting. But I am sure they’re getting lots of donations for the National Wildlife Federation by doing all this which is really the main focus.

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@pyrotechnic and I just figured out yesterday that one free vote a day is allowed. So those who have verified and all that can vote again using the free vote woot! Hoping he keeps a top 20 spot at least.

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Posts like this are why I told my son not to get his hopes up on winning this contest. At this point, it’s a popularity contest and nothing more. You could have a child that wants nothing to do with the outdoors but if their parent can post to enough forums and social media apps begging for votes from strangers, they can win. All the while, a child that hunts, camps, hikes, is all about animals/insects… may not even make it through the first round. It’s a joke.

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It is an unfortunate way to run the “contest” , I agree

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I’ve been part of the online yoyo/skill toy community since 2001 and help run a small hobby business. Plus part of the Boomer Club here. Other than my own FB and here I haven’t posted it anywhere else yet, just seeing how it goes.

It’s kind of weird that two accounts so far were only created here for the purpose of this contest/commenting on it.

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Just as an update for anyone still following. There’s for a limited time x2 votes right now so the free vote counts for 2!!!

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Less than 2 hours left in the first round and so far looks like he’ll get to move on. Definitely seems like the top 5 in his group have bought votes to get there. But who knows how long that’ll last for the next rounds.

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The top 15 ends tomorrow and they have 2X votes again right now.

I would really hate to see the journey end here but he’s been stuck at 19th since last week.