Western Outdoor Times - Times Spent Outdoors: Priceless!

Thank you to all who came to the summer Hunting & Angling Heritage Workgroup (HAHWG) meeting. We had 45-50 attendees at the meeting, representing 22 unique organizations.

Included in that count were 19 new faces to HAHWG, bringing seven (7) new organizations under the tent. Way to recruit, everyone! You all are a bunch of dedicated outdoor heritage leaders.

I also want to thank Commissioner Pat Madden, of Flagstaff, for attending Sunday’s meeting. For those who didn’t make it, I am loading all the presentation materials to our Web page at http://www.azgfd.gov/hahwg for your reference and review.

You asked me to get some of the quick action items out to the group so you can take the momentum from the meeting and keep developing contacts and doing the great work that you do. Here they are —

• Blackdog Promotions – Connect all groups with Lauren Fach, Lauren@blackdogpromotions.com, to get write up on their organization posted at http://www.fishcamphunthike.com.

o Here is the link to the article they did about the summer HAHWG meeting. Thank you for the information on social media. It’s an area that we will continue to learn and grow.

• Attendees contact info – Share contact information with attendees so they can reach out and develop relationships and coordinate on activities (see attached)

• Yarnell Firefighter Fundraiser – Aug. 29 benefit banquet for the families of the Granite Mountain Hotshots at Tim’s Toyota Center in Prescott Valley. Questions, Steve Sams 928-848-4549, beadguy@cableone.net.

• NWTF Mentor article – This will be digitized soon and distributed.

• LSG grant information

• Meeting minutes and actions: I have about six pages of my notes and four pages of actions. These are now consolidated and distributed.

Thank you to everyone who provided comments on the evaluation forms. We received 35 responses; the majority of them responded “agree” or “strongly agree” to the questions provided (maybe my questions are too favorable).

Some of the additional comments we received: great keynote speaker, made good contacts, liked breakout sessions, and the summer site location is a good one.

There were a handful of undecided, and we will look at addressing those too further improve the meeting. It’s your meeting and we want it to be worthwhile.

Last, thank you to our keynote speaker, Matt Dunfee of Wildlife Management Institute who presented on the national view on recruitment and retention efforts, and techniques and approaches for improving R & R programs. He brought a great wealth of information and dynamic to our meeting.

Our next full HAHWG meeting is tentatively scheduled for Jan.18-19, and our location target is Yuma.

Arizona Boating & Watersports March 2013 Issue Cover

Respectfully,

Douglas Burt

dburt@azgfd.gov

(623) 236-7487 Desk

(602) 531-7578 Cell/Text

Visit http://www.azgfd.gov/outdoorskills for a list of mentored events.

Visit http://www.azgfd.gov/hahwg to learn more about the Hunting and Angling Heritage Workgroup

"...The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others." -- President Theodore Roosevelt, 1907