Celebrating 20 years of Quail Forever
The early morning crowd packed the Kansas City Convention Center Saturday morning as day two of National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic got underway. Seminar stages kicked off bright and early with lectures on quail habitat, public land hunting tips, developing your bird dog and much more.
The morning started on a high note as the Quail Classic Stage helped celebrate Quail Forever’s 20th anniversary. Speakers laid out the future of the organization, provided public land quail hunting tips and announced the Arizona Quail Initiative — a brand new habitat program that will impact over 100,000 acres in the next four years.
More big news was on the docket as the morning wore on. At 11 AM, speakers at the Public Lands Pavilion announced Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever’s already successful Public Access to Habitat (PATH) program would be going national. The initiative has already created over 60,000 acres of brand new public access across South Dakota and Nebraska, and looks to grow exponentially in the years to come.
“This is exciting stuff, seeing this program expand to the national level is going to interest a lot of people,” said John Laux, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever’s permanent habitat protection programs manager. “We want to focus on enrolling high quality habitat on private land, and PATH is our main mechanism for accomplishing that goal.”
Saturday also brought the first full day of the Women on the Wing Lounge, which returns to Pheasant Fest for the second year. Located near booth 1902, the WOTW Lounge is the perfect place to meet noteworthy women throughout the weekend — including industry professionals, biologists, artists and more. Saturday’s featured guests included gun dog pro Tina Dokken, wild game chef Danielle Prewett and senior Purina veterinarian Dr. RuthAnn Lobos.
Tonight we’ll head to the Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever national banquet. Over 1,000 outdoorsmen and women will gather at the sold out event to celebrate the year in conservation and listen to keynote speaker — MeatEater’s Clay Newcomb.
We’ll be back on the show floor tomorrow when the doors open at 9 am.
