Boone and Crockett Club Annual Reports

Message from the President for Fiscal Year 2022

As I sit and start to write my final address as the President of the Boone and Crockett Club, I want to say thanks to all of you. Thanks for your confidence in putting me in this position and thanks even more for your support. As I started this road so many years ago, I had no idea how much it would mean to me personally. I knew I had a love for the outdoors and the wild, but this experience has taught me so much about the responsibility we all have in making sure it has a future. Today I think our Club continues to tell our story better and is effective at fighting for our wildlife—after all, if we don’t do something, who will?

Coming out of the slowdown of 2020 and 2021, our Club has run on all cylinders in 2022. Here are just a few of the highlights for me, all of which we tell you more about in this Annual Report.

At our Annual Meeting in New Orleans last November, we signed an agreement to expand our efforts with the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF), both for work on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures. This relationship helps make our policy efforts more effective. Throughout the year, we participate in several events with CSF including their annual banquet, the Wine, Wheels and Wildlife event at Club member Richard Childress’ vineyard in North Carolina, the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses meeting, and the Congressional Shoot Out. Each of these events provide an opportunity for Club members to interact with members of Congress, state legislators, governors, and our conservation and industry partners. These relationships are also benefited through the work of the American Wildlife Conservation Partners, and I am proud that our own CEO Tony Schoonen has served as Chair of that coalition since last fall. It is through these connections that our policy team can fight the good fight on our wildlife conservation priorities including chronic wasting disease, the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, the Great American Outdoors Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, forest policy, and much more.

This summer also brought our 31st Big Game Awards program and if you missed it you messed up. The Club’s team of staff and members put on a great program, and it was so rewarding for all to see. From the final awards dinner to the Generation Next banquet, it was a prize for the Club. We can’t thank the team at Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife National Museum & Aquarium and Bass Pro Shops enough for hosting our event and we hope to do it again at the next Triennial Awards.

Our work at the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch is ever going and post-COVID, Luke and his team have worked hard to present both in person as well as virtual education opportunities. Hard to believe that COVID did something good for us, but this program under Luke’s leadership has really flourished. In this past year we have worked with thousands of kids in person as well as nearly 20,000 through the virtual education platform. While our past leaders may not have ever considered our digital world, this work is sharing wildlife and the history of conservation that they visualized so many years ago. Mike Briggs and his family and team are also producing quality results with the new plan on the ranch. The goal here was always to work to show how quality ranching and wildlife can work together and be profitable. We have a great team out there and we all need to be proud of their efforts.

This summer was the launch of the rebranding of what was known as our Associates program. Yes, it is a huge undertaking but one that we needed to make. This effort will give us the boost to impact more folks in so many ways and our new infrastructure program is the perfect platform to get this going. More to come here in the months ahead, but we’ve had a great start.

Speaking of that, I sure hope you have visited the new website. All that is going on in the Club is at your fingertips, from what our groups and committees are doing, to policy issues and news releases, to live cams and pictures from the ranch of all the critters making their way through the woods. Yes sir, it is all good stuff. Our communications team continues to raise the bar on getting the word out about the good work our Club is doing now—and the history of conservation led by those who came before us.

Our university programs are all hitting high gear and with more support and structure from us, we feel we are on the verge of something great. There are way too many things to put in this letter, so be sure to attend the university programs meeting in December in Austin and see how you might support conservation by cultivating our future wildlife management professionals.

Last but not least, we have started the project to restore our historic headquarters building in Missoula. Built in 1910, the Milwaukee Depot sits on the 6th largest piece of property in downtown and has served as the Club’s headquarters since 1992. While the project comes with a healthy price tag at $2.7 million, it is money well spent to maintain the integrity of the building and reflect the gold standard of our organization. The scheduled completion date is July 2023.

In closing, I want to thank you all for the honor to represent this Club—not just over the past two years of my presidency, but for all my years of learning up to that point. This Club has had some great leaders with great vision, and I am just proud to follow them. I hope in some small way I have made an impact on the future of conservation and the wildlife we all love. Special thanks to all the past Presidents that I have been privileged to work with and for the teaching I received from you, and last but not least the privilege of working with the great staff we have at the Boone and Crockett Club.

Sincerely,

James F. Arnold
President
Boone and Crockett Club