10 Ways to Protect America's Hunting Heritage

from the Boone and Crockett Club:

Monday, August 22, 2011

Surveys show that three of every four Americans approve of legal hunting, and support is trending upwards. As long as the majority of citizens continue to see this sporting tradition as fair, safe and meaningful, hunting will remain a privilege of citizenship--as well as a boon to conservation.

For hunters headed afield this fall, the Boone and Crockett Club offers 10 ways to help keep the public on our side.
"Modern society has high expectations of hunters," said Ben Wallace, president of the Club. "In a changing culture with ever more scrutiny of all things related to the environment, our behavior toward animals, the land, firearms and even each other is more important today than anytime in our history."
Here’s how to do your part:

1. Hunting is allowed today because the vast majority of hunters through the ages have respectfully followed laws, regulations, safety rules and high ethical standards known as fair chase--the sporting pursuit and taking of native free-ranging game species in a manner that does not give the hunter improper advantage. Continue the tradition.
2. Remember: Any animal taken in fair chase is a trophy.
3. America's system of conservation and wildlife management is the most successful ever developed. It works only because of funding from hunters. Spread the word.
4. Respect the customs of the local area where you're hunting, including the beliefs and values of those who do not hunt.
5. This season, make every attempt to take a youngster hunting. If you already hunt with your son or daughter, invite one of their friends to come along.
6. Technology is a wonderful thing until it replaces the skills necessary to be a complete hunter. If it seems gratuitous, leave it at home.
7. Always ask permission before hunting private land. Respect landowners.
8. Tread lightly, especially on public land. ATVs have their place--on roads and trails. If you pack it in, pack it out.
9. Sportsmen have always been instrumental in managing big game herds. If antlerless harvest is encouraged in your area and you have the opportunity, take a doe or cow.
10. Remember: The reason for a hunt is intrinsically about the experience. A kill is a justifiable outcome but not the only definition of a successful hunt.

Theodore Roosevelt founded the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887 to help uphold sporting values and promote science-based conservation and wildlife management.
Surveys by research firm Responsive Management showed that 73 percent of Americans approved of hunting in 1995. Support had grown to 75 percent by 2003, and to 78 percent by 2006.
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Guest opinion: Conservationists must again battle bad, old ideas about public lands

Guest opinion: Conservationists must again battle bad, old ideas about public lands
By JIM POSEWITZ The Billings Gazette | Posted: Saturday, January 15, 2011 12:00 am


It was once said that bad ideas die with the people who hold them. If only that were true. In viewing the opening of the Montana Legislature, it is apparent that the anti-conservation, anti-environment, anti-public land and anti-wildlife philosophy of Montana's most notorious politician is vigorously alive in 2011.
By way of refresher, William A. Clark was our U.S. senator from 1901-1907. At the time, it was a position filled through vote of the state Legislature. For Clark, it was “... a position he had initially purchased with bundles of crisp $100 bills handed out to legislators in monogrammed envelopes — W.A.C. stamped on the fold, $10,000 per vote,” according to Tim Egan in “The Big Burn,” published in 2009. Clark's defense at the time was, “I never bought a man who was not for sale.”
The prize then, as it is now, was privatization and commercialization of natural resources. Clark and conservatives like Idaho's Sen. Weldon Heyburn and “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois championed privatizing all of America. Their opponents believed that in America some natural resources were best shared. Their names are less eroded by time: Gifford Pinchot, George Bird Grinnell, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Montana's public land legacy

In order to protect forests and wildlife, Roosevelt, Pinchot, and Grinnell created the Boone and Crockett Club to introduce the sporting code and conservation to a nation.
In 1891 they lobbied a bill through Congress to allow presidents to reserve unclaimed land as forest reserves. When Roosevelt got to be president he used that authority — with vigor. In response, Clark, Weldon, Cannon and other anti-conservation conservatives attached a “rider” to an appropriations bill to prohibit the president from creating any new forest reserves in six western states — including Montana. In the seven days he had to either sign or veto the bill, Roosevelt added 16 million acres of national forest reserves in the states that Clark and his allies sought to reserve for the corporate robber barons. For Montana, those seven days meant the Big Hole, the Big Belts, the Little Rockies, the Cabinets, the Lewis and Clark and the Custer national forests. A couple of years later Grinnell led the fight to add Glacier Park to the list of protected places.
The battle between exploitation and conservation has persisted through the century that followed, generally with pseudo-conservatives attacking conservation budgets, vilifying those carrying the conservation message, and purging progressive political thought from their own political ranks. We are only one year away from the 100th anniversary of Republican Party bosses denying Theodore Roosevelt the nomination as their party's presidential candidate in 1912. As the years passed we have responded to Reagan's “Sage Brush Rebellion,” Interior Secretary James Watt's effort to “bomb” the Bob Marshall Wilderness with oil exploration, and numerous other attempts to sell off our public lands or diminish their protection.
Welcome to the 2011 Montana legislative session and its promise to: privatize and commercialize our
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New President of Boone and Crockett Club – Ben B. Wallace

Boone and Crockett Club

MISSOULA, Mont.--(Ammoland.com)- A hunter, attorney, banker and businessman from Corpus Christi, Texas, Ben B. Wallace has been elected to serve as president of America’s oldest conservation organization, the Boone and Crockett Club.
Theodore Roosevelt founded Boone and Crockett Club in 1887. Its mission includes promoting conservation and management of wildlife and their habitats, upholding the highest standards of fair-chase sportsmanship and maintaining records of native North American big game species.
Wallace becomes the Club’s 29th president, following the tenure of Lowell E. Baier.
Wallace has served as a club officer and as a member of various committees. He also is active in Pope and Young Club, Lone Star Bow Hunter’s Association, American Hunting Club, International Game and Fish Association, Texas Wildlife Association, National Rifle Association and Ducks Unlimited.
The following is a statement issued by Wallace regarding his vision and direction for Boone and Crockett Club:
“As the 29th president of the nation’s first national conservation organization, it is my responsibility to ensure efforts to address the major conservation and hunting heritage challenges the Boone and Crockett Club and our partners have been working on are carried through to completion and to set the course for the future.
These challenges are clearly delineated in “Wildlife for the 21st Century: III,” the recommendations submitted to the Obama Administration as a result of the 2008 Whitehouse Conference on North American Wildlife Policy.
read more:

Roosevelt Challenges Boone and Crockett Record Holders

From the Outdoor Wire, note the text highlighted by me...

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Roosevelt Challenges Boone and Crockett Record Holders

MISSOULA, Mont.-The Boone and Crockett Club is now receiving four times more trophy entries than 30 years ago, and Theodore Roosevelt's great, great grandson says hunters who reach this apex are notable beneficiaries of historic conservation successes.

Further, the TR descendant says trophy record holders are perfectly positioned to help keep hunters at the forefront of America's resurging conservation movement.

Simon Roosevelt, whose great, great grandfather was the 26th President of the United States, legendary sportsman, consummate conservationist and founder of the Boone and Crockett Club, delivered the remarks as part of his keynote address at the Club's recent 27th Big Game Awards in Reno, Nev.

Roosevelt said all hunters share a legacy with early Club members who developed the hunter-funded, science-based system that helped to recover that era's devastated wildlife and habitat. That system remains the lifeblood of conservation still today. But those who achieve special status within the hunting community have a chance to join TR and his contemporaries in accomplishing "something even more important-more crucial for the long-term success of conservation-that is, fundamentally changing the way Americans think," he said.

Although 80 percent of U.S. citizens now live in cities, they understand the importance of natural resources and sustainable use, says Roosevelt, but, "What they don't understand is how we as hunters fit, or maybe better said, that we fit, and why we're important. If we fail to get this message across, we will continue to lose hunters and hunting access, and 'hunting' may well come to mean nothing more than high-fence farms and park culling."

Boone and Crockett record holders openly communicating who they are, what they do and their love of doing it-even when they don't take an animal-will lead to greater public support of hunting, says Roosevelt. And that, in turn, will spur more resources for today's conservation challenges: climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation, and diseases.

Roosevelt's speech was a highlight of the triennial Boone and Crockett Club event held June 24-26 at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort.


"Almost 125 years after TR organized Boone and Crockett Club, and more than 100 years after we launched a records program to capture details on species once considered bound for extinction, our triennial awards event remains relevant to the future of conservation," said Tony Schoonen, chief of staff for the Club. "This is our way of doing exactly what Simon Roosevelt urged all of us to do-share with the public our love of hunting and connections to conservation."