Among 30 volunteers helping out at Saturday's 4-H Radio Auction are, 4-Hers manning the phones: left to right, Rayanna Mitchell, Kelly Hadden and Chelcee Noland; "runner" Shelby Tienharra is in the background. Photo by Elane Dickenson

The Wallowa County 4-H program surpassed its old radio auction fund-raising record by far Saturday, bringing in bids of $15,374 for 427 donated items, plus another $201.50 in cash contributions.

The high-ticket item by far was the Zumwalt Preserve elk hunting trip, donated by The Nature Conservancy and purchased for a whopping $6,035 by John Gilliland, a Pennsylvania resident who heard about the trip and the auction from a local friend.

Marsha Svendsen, Wallowa County Extension Office secretary, notes that even without the elk trip the bids and donations brought in $9,540, which already broke the old record of $9,360 set in 2000.

Svendsen said that the value of the donated items and services auctioned off Saturday was estimated at $12,823, not counting the elk hunt, which no one was sure how to value.

The money brought in by the auction, which is always 4-H’s largest fund raiser of the year, will go into the 4-H Leaders Association coffers for many projects and expenses ranging from 4-H judging team registration fees and travel expenses to summer camp scholarships, national 4-H trips and leadership training.

Doris Noland of Enterprise is planning to retire as radio auction chairman after 10 years in that role. “It’s a good note to end on,” she said of the record proceeds. “We had a lot of support this year, a lot of new bidders.”

Noland said every year, because of the poor economy here, she expects the 4-H auction to hit a slump, but said it just hasn’t happened yet. “It’s almost tripled what we used to do,” she said.

The auction this year enlisted about 30 4-Hi volunteers, including a smattering of parents, and involved close to 300 bidders. Noland said that her successor or successors as 2003 chairman hasn yet to be finalized.