Q: What is your fondest hunting or angling memory?

When my oldest daughter Aubrey was about 10 years old we went on her first duck hunt. It was early in the season, and the ducks were few, fast and far. Aubrey kept asking if she could shoot one of the coots that frequently presented an easy shot. After refusing several times I relented, half hoping she’d miss. She didn’t, and I learned that grilled coot, wrapped in plenty of bacon, is, well, edible. When my younger daughter Lauren was 14, we went on her first deer hunt. While she didn’t kill one that year, we had the excitement of close encounters with deer. The time we spent sitting, watching, eating apples and talking that fall is still a vivid heart-treasure to me all these years later.

Q: What led you to your career in conservation?

My parents and grandparents made sure I had ready access to hunting and fishing. Dad was a wildlife professional, and Granddad was a rancher and farmer. My childhood was spent in the deserts and mountains of Arizona and on my granddad’s land in Kansas. I had abundant access to wild places, and the Daisy Red Ryder my mom and dad gave me for my ninth Christmas let me collect and study countless song birds, lizards and frogs. These experiences remain among the most powerful influences on my life.

Q: How did you get involved with the TRCP?

I first learned of the TRCP when I was a field representative for the Wildlife Management Institute. The TRCP seemed like the perfect complement to the science and policy work that WMI, TNC and other long-standing conservation organizations and agencies were doing. The TRCP’s grassroots advocacy for sportsmen and sound wildlife conservation policy attracted my interest in the organization.

Q: What do you think are the most important conservation issues facing sportsmen today?

Declining awareness of, experiences in and passion for the natural world among young people threaten wildlife and hunting more than any other factor – except perhaps global population growth. More immediate threats such as unbridled energy and transmission development and diminished access to hunting lands must be addressed as well.

Q: What are your hopes for the future of the TRCP, and how can the Nature Conservancy work with us to accomplish these goals?

We need to have the TRCP and its partners function effectively in arenas of policy and economics. Sportsmen’s organizations continue to be powerful and credible forces, and their influence needs to be focused on major long-term challenges without losing focus on the day-to-day importance of restoring habitats and access to wild lands. Sportsmen and -women with a passion for the wild outdoors must share their experiences with young people.

Joe La Tourrette, TRCP’s Oregon-Washington field representative, shows off his catch in Alaska. Send us your photos and win a TRCP hat. You also can post your photos on our Facebook fan page.

White-tail deer are very canny, and know perfectly well what threatens danger and what does not. … We were reluctant to molest them, but one day, having performed our usual weekly or fortnightly feat of eating up about everything there was in the house, it was determined that two deer (for it was late in autumn and they were then well grown) should be sacrificed. Accordingly one of us sallied out, but found that the sacrifice was not to be consummated so easily, for the should-be victims appeared to distinguish perfectly well between a mere passer-by, whom they regarded with absolute indifference, and anyone who harbored sinister designs. They kept such a sharp look-out, and made off so rapidly if any one tried to approach them, that on two evenings the appointed hunter returned empty-handed, and by the third someone else had brought in a couple of black-tail. After that no necessity arose for molesting the two “tame deer,” for whose sound common-sense we had all acquired a greatly increased respect.

– Excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt on Hunting

Q: What is your fondest hunting or angling memory?

When I was 12 years old I would go hunting with my parents in Superior National Forest outside of Duluth, Minn. We didn’t own a tent or a car, so in early fall we would have someone drop us off in the middle of nowhere where we would build a lean-to and grouse hunt. After a week they’d come back to pick us up. Memories of crisp, clear mornings, breaking ice on the creek to get water and long days of hunting endless tote-roads with my mutt of a dog stick in my mind to this day.

Q: What led you to your career in conservation?

In 1987 I came to Pheasants Forever as its first director of finance. At that time I felt I would be here for several years and then move on. Everyone at PF – from the employees to the volunteers – had such a passion for wildlife, conservation and our hunting heritage that I started to believe in their mission. My vision shifted, and my work stopped being work and became my passion.

Q: The USDA recently opened up the Conservation Reserve Program for more acreage. What does this mean for sportsmen?

Like baseball and hotdogs, the Conservation Reserve Program and wildlife habitat go hand-in-hand. The CRP has been the nation’s most important program for hunters and habitat since its creation in 1985. The CRP produced record bird numbers earlier this decade, but the last few years have been tough. We’ve lost millions of CRP acres through expiring contracts, and the bird numbers have declined as a result. Thankfully, we just had our first CRP general signup since 2006, and the USDA has verbally committed to keeping the program at its 32-million-acre cap. That’s great news for hunters, pheasants, quail, deer, trout, turkeys, ducks, walleyes, prairie grouse and most non-game wildlife. Beyond habitat conservation, CRP is the country’s single-best program for cleaning our waters, protecting our soils and mitigating the impact of floods.

Q: What do you think are the most important conservation issues facing sportsmen today?

As our society continues to urbanize, new hunters and anglers lose access to land and the opportunity to enjoy a day afield. Each generation becomes more disconnected from the land. Without this connection, our society increasingly loses the value for wild places, wildlife and our hunting heritage.

Q: Why are sportsmen important players in the future of conservation?

Four decades ago, Aldo Leopold wrote about society’s disconnection from the land. Hunters and anglers understand the value of our land, and we as sportsmen have been, and always will be, the leaders in America’s conservation world.