Donkey Slayer Fishing Tournament/Fundraiser

03/09/2026

2 months until our annual Fishing Contest!! Flyers are being printed, let me know if you would like a couple to help hang up!

12/17/2025

Throughout the year, the DonkeySlayer Fundraiser is blessed to give back to local organizations and families in need. This Christmas was especially meaningful. We were able to donate many gifts to children and families through the Christmas Tree Giving Program in Mondovi & Buffalo County, and sharing that experience with my girls—shopping for the presents and wrapping them together—was something I will cherish forever.
We also worked closely with the Mondovi Schools to identify one family that we could surprise with a larger donation, inspired by the incredible kindness shown to us years ago through Best Christmas Ever. We focused on gifts meant to bring comfort and togetherness—blankets, family games, treats—along with gift cards to local businesses in Mondovi and Eau Claire and a monetary check. Our hope was to ease even a small part of the stress and financial burden that so often comes with the holidays and with life in general.
I am beyond proud of our company (we are finally official!!) and of the board members who stand beside me—who answer my nonstop texts, help guide decisions, and listen to all of my ideas, no matter how scattered they may be. Everything I do is to honor Dylan, to make him proud, and to keep his name and memory alive. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who makes this possible. None of this happens without you.

05/13/2024

I didn’t get pictures of the adults who won the fishing prizes but I did get some of the kids. This part made my day and I was so happy to see everyone out there fishing. Thank you to everyone who fished!!!

We had the 1st and 2nd prize winners and the youngest fishermen to catch a fish.

Abby caught the biggest fish in our family so she gets to hold on to the family belt until next year! She didn’t catch that until after the contest was over, of course 🙂 My dad said she’s Donkey Slayer Jr.

Congratulations everyone!!!

05/13/2024

I want to send out a huge thank you to everyone who made Dylan’s Fishing Contest a huge success. It takes a village to pull off this event and we have so many wonderful friends and family who pitch in to help, whether it’s setting up the day before, working shifts the day of, donating baskets and bigger items, selling tickets, hanging flyers, answering my thousands of questions, baking bars and the list goes on. I appreciate each and every one of you! Thank you to Gary and Kathy Knuth and the Fairchild Sportsmens Club for hosting our event again and for all your hard work!! Thank you to our friends and family that come and support our event. I always love seeing everyone, even though I don’t always get to talk to everyone! This year we were able to raise over $20,000 (before expenses- we buy all the big prizes, fish prizes and food, etc). Our fundraiser committee plan is to donate a large portion to local families in need. I’ve attached a picture of where the funds have went the last two years. We’ve been able to support many good causes in our community!!

04/01/2024

Update- I had the incorrect caliber put onto the poster for the Savage Axis. It’s a .308 and not a .270

Thank you Quality Quick Print for these fantastic posters for Dylan’s event!!

04/23/2023

Yesterday was amazing. I can’t even begin to thank everybody that helped make this day so wonderful. I hate the reason that we have this fundraiser but I love that everyone comes together to make this such a wonderful event. I’m truly grateful to each and every one of you that keeps showing up and helping us, with not only this event, but in our lives since this tragedy has happened. Thank you to the friends and family that worked shifts in the kitchen or helped sell tickets. Thank you to everyone that brought food, bars or goodies- we didn’t have any of them left, especially when Ash started passing them around to everyone 🙂 Thank you to the ones who helped us set up! Thank you to everyone that donated baskets or prizes or monetary donations. We had over 80 basket raffles (I won’t call them Chinese raffles anymore) and 5 card raffles! We had fun kids door prizes and goodie bags and amazing meat raffles! This was one of the best fundraisers I’ve ever been a part of, or seen, and I’m so damn proud of it. Thank you to the Fairchild Sportsmens Club for hosting and all of the work you put into this as well. I’m so happy we were able to bring this back to my hometown and where Dylan first learned to fish. We were able to raise enough funds to also purchase a very nice dock in Dylan’s honor. I couldn’t be more proud of this and I hope he was watching down on us yesterday and is proud of everything we did too. Thank you again to everyone from the bottom of my heart!!! In typical Heather-fashion I didn’t take any pictures so if you have pictures please send them to me or post them on the event site!!

02/28/2023

This was also a story I shared at the banquet. Tony let me know one day that Brady was donating a #69 bahktiari jersey for the raffle benefit. He said remember dyl was #69 when he played Y football and I said actually do you remember that he was able to meet David backtiari when he attended the packer pro camp in 2013? It was going to be David’s rookie year so we had no clue if he would be any good or stay with the team but it was still cool to meet some of these new rookie players. He threw some balls to the boys and did some drills with them. Well after that phone call I remembered that he had taken group pictures with the boys as well so I started looking for my copy of the picture and wasn’t having any luck. I looked in my emails and had found the original email with the link to the pictures but the link no longer worked so I thought “oh shoot now what?”. I decided to email this packer email address and ask if they would have a copy. I briefly explained that Dylan had attended this camp in 2013 and that he had met David and had a picture taken with him and wondered if they still had a copy. I told them Dylan had passed away in September and we were holding a benefit in April for him in Green Bay and somebody had donated a Bahktiari jersey so I was hoping they would have a picture so I could tell this story at the benefit. I received an email back from Haylee the next day saying how sorry they were to hear about Dylan and here were a few pictures and could I let her know which one was Dylan. So I found the two pictures and thanked her for replying etc. she then asked for my address so they could send me a card. I didn’t think anything of it and a few days later I received this card in the mail from the Green Bay packers with a nice note saying how sorry they were to hear about Dylan’s death and they wanted to send this gift to use for the benefit. It was a $200 packer pro shop gift card. I cried and emailed haylee right away to thank her for the thoughtful gift. A few weeks later I received another email from Haylee saying she was sending me a gift in the mail and this was for me to keep as a keepsake. It was a signed Bahktiari jersey. I thought this was all so amazing that the Packers had done all of this.

To finish the story we had the jersey that was a raffle prize and one of Dylan’s best friends won the jersey. I was so happy it went to him and then him and his family also made a display case to keep it in.

02/28/2023

I wanted to post more info on last years event for the ones who couldn’t make it. Plus I’m having a rough Dyl day. One of our favorite tv shows we watched together was The Office and he loved Michael Scott and all the pranks and jokes that happened on the show. Michael Scott loved to host the Dundee’s and present awards to his employees with very odd award titles so we decided to give a few Dundees based on things Dyl would do while he was fishing.

Best Dyl Moment- whether it was catching a hook on something, tripping, breaking a pole, playing in the minnow bucket, always wanting to help and showing a true love for fishing. This award went to Colby- she casted really high and the line veered off over another boat. They had to hand line the bait back to her.

Just One More- Dylan always wanted one more cast because he always had to try one more time to get the big one. This award went to Austin and Ben because they wanted to stay out late and not come back in.

The Ron Swanson- this award went to the person who was the most entertaining, goofy, corny jokes and the what ifs. He was always asking Tony what if this, what if that and other hypothetical questions. This isn’t an Office character but we also watched Parks n Rec and Ron was his favorite character. This award went to dyls friends- Clay, Josh and Jake. while fishing they were listening to some crazy music, they told good Dyl stories and also created the Slingin Dick video of Dyl.

Hi Hungry I’m Mom- this award went to the person who made sure to pack snacks. As we all know, Dyl loved to eat and he especially loved to snack. He would always say I’m Hungry and I would say Hi Hungry I’m Mom and he’d get so mad. This award went to Abby and Anna because they had snacks and needed to eat them during the 1 hour we were out fishing.

Watch Your Hole- this award went to the best hole robber- if you haven’t been catching anything but your boat mates have so you decide to sneak into their spot. Dylan was very well known for this. He hated not catching fish if others were. This award went to Colby for sneaking into Tony’s spot.

04/15/2022

If you missed the deadline for the original shirt order or you saw how awesome they turned out last weekend and just need another one….we are having another preorder open until 5/15. Please order on this website and you can choose direct ship or I can pick them up when they are available.

We added more colors for the tshirts and sweatshirts. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Preorder will go until 5/15/2022 Donkey Slayer; the name Dylan gave himself after a couple of big walleye catches one night on the Fox River! All items purchased will have $5.00 donated to Cause. The fundraising is in honor of Dylan who passed from COVID in September 2021 at only 17 years old. Dylan...

04/13/2022

A huge thank you to Devin for making this Dylan urn for Tonys boat. It’s absolutely perfect and better then we could have imagined. Now Dylan is always fishing with his Uncle Tony.

04/12/2022

The biggest catch of the day! Justin Wathke won the tournament with this 28” walleye! Congrats Justin!!

04/12/2022

I’m so happy that so many people were able to catch fish!!! Awesome job everyone!!!