CEO Notes – November/December 2024
As the November-December issue of Turkey Call magazine hits our members’ mailboxes, hunting seasons are wide open across the country. Like you, we will be making memories in the woods, on the water, and spending the holidays with our loved ones. And whether you’re chasing fall turkeys, big game or casting lines with family and friends, we hope you can recognize the life-changing power of the outdoors during this cherished time of year.
As this year closes and we look to 2025, we are excited to share our successes from 2024 and forecast the coming year. 2024 kicked off with a bang when 72,243 people descended upon Nashville, Tennessee, to join us for our National Convention and Sport Show. This was a record attendance for our annual get-together, and we look forward to another great turnout in 2025! While folks enjoyed the sport show floor, attended turkey hunting seminars and celebrated the work of the NWTF, volunteers initiated something unprecedented in the realm of wild turkey management.
During the convention, NWTF state chapter presidents, the National Board of Directors and conservation leadership set the stage for the first-ever endowed wild turkey professorship at the University of Georgia.
Fast forward six months, and the UGA Board of Regents formally selected esteemed wild turkey researcher Dr. Mike Chamberlain to chair the NWTF Distinguished Professorship. What’s more, our state chapter leaders and major donors nationwide have rallied behind this position, fueling the endowment further, which will ultimately lead to a self-funded wild turkey research position at UGA that will last into perpetuity. We are working with other universities to create similar, endowed positions across the country, ensuring wild turkey ecology is at the forefront of wildlife management, during both times of decline and stability.
Further cementing the NWTF as the foremost wild turkey research organization was our largest single investment in wild turkey research, made this year when we allocated $655,447 to nine wild turkey research projects. Between our funding and partner support, roughly $6 million will support wild turkey research this year alone, bringing the collaborative total investment to over $18 million in just three years!
In a dynamic and everchanging world, with land-use practices changing, hunter participation fluctuating and many unknown variables at play, wild turkey research allows us to make science-based decisions at the right place at the right time to ensure abundant gobbles on the landscape for today and for future generations.
Additionally, at our National Board of Directors meeting in August, we officially launched our new Forests and Flocks Initiative, a 13-state, landscape-scale effort based in the Northeast. The new NWTF-led initiative will work to prevent future turkey declines and will also bolster the NWTF’s hunting heritage and policy efforts within the region. Lagging public support for hunting and proposed state laws in opposition with the NWTF mission are prevalent within the initiative’s area.
Be it ensuring hens come out of the cold Northeastern winters healthy and ready for nesting season, increasing public support of hunting or working to combat policies and state bills that are in opposition with our mission, Forests and Flocks represents the heartbeat of the NWTF.
With the launching of our Forest and Flocks Initiative, combined with all other landscape-scale initiatives and work across the country, the NWTF has continued to elevate its contributions to projects on the ground and has been able to make more meaningful investments in habitat and natural resource enhancement, making our donors’ and partners’ dollar go even further. Thanks to the teamwork of the entire NWTF flock, we were able to impact 894,747 acres in fiscal year 2024.
However, what is hard to put a number on in this recap are the thousands of people’s stories about how the NWTF mission has impacted them, from the JAKES member who harvested his or her first turkey this spring to the communities made more resilient to catastrophic wildfire. So many people have experienced the life-changing power of the NWTF’s mission, and it is all thanks to our volunteers, partners and staff that eat, sleep and breathe the conservation of the wild turkey and the preservation of our hunting heritage.
As we look forward to 2025, we are excited about another barn-raising, record-breaking National Convention and Sport Show; new landscape-scale initiatives; more exciting news for wild turkey research, new efforts to bolster our hunting heritage across the nation — the wheels are in motion to make 2025 another monumental year.