Last Tuesday’s election results are not yet completely finalized but the outcome is crystal clear. Antigun Democrats rode a blue tsunami wave and have knocked out Republicans in races not even on the radar of professional election prognosticators.

The U.S. House of Representatives flipped to Democrat control with the largest Democrat majority since 2009. The U.S. Senate flipped control to a comfortable Democrat margin and that’s not even counting a Mississippi outcome that currently has incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith trailing or Alaska, where former Democrat U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola is narrowly leading Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan in a still-to-be-called race. Democrats won governors’ mansions in Georgia, Kansas, Texas, Ohio and elsewhere and the wave will send Democrat majorities — and some supermajorities — in state capitals across the country.

The consequences for the firearm industry could very well be far-reaching. The one silver lining, at least on the federal level, is that President Donald Trump already vowed even before Election Day to “veto insane Democrat bills” that may come his way in the next two years.

House of Representatives

Most election predictions and talking heads thought Democrats would take back the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Almost no one, however, thought it would be by such a large margin. As it stands, Democrats currently have a 228-139 majority, with 68 races yet to be called, according to the CNBC race tracker. As a reminder, only 218 is needed for a U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries Speakership and the settled number now is greater than the current Republican majority. Some predictions think the final Democrat majority will be closer to 235-250 seats.

Top-level views portend that the new Democrat majority will include several anti-Second Amendment, anti-police Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members with a sizeable voting bloc to impact how an anticipated Speaker Jeffries manages the Democrat majority.

An additional immediate impact in the House will be new committee chairs who will lead the agenda for the various committees. That includes antigun antagonist Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is in line to lead the House Judiciary Committee. It also suggests U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) will take over as chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Rep. Garcia released a two-word statement last night when it became clear he would now have subpoena power and lead the powerful Oversight Committee: “LAWYER UP.”

It is clear that House Democrats intend to use their power and large majority to go after political opponents and drag them in front of Congress for likely confrontational committee hearings.

The Senate

While flipping the House was widely expected, election prognosticators were generally unsure how the U.S. Senate would shake out, with some predicting Republicans could hold on and provide a backstop against Democrat-controlled House legislation.

That didn’t happen.

The blue wave washed over the Senate in a big way, leading to shocking election victories (and seat flips) for Democrats in Texas with James Talarico, Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Adam Hamilton in Kansas — the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in The Sunflower State in nearly 100 years. Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson lost her race for the Iowa Senate seat to Democrat state Rep. Josh Turek. In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins lost to Democrat Troy Jackson, while South Carolina’s Republican Sen. Darline Graham fell to Democrat challenger Annie Andrews.

The race in Alaska is too close to call at this time, with incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan trailing by three-tenths of a percent, with 74 percent of the vote in. Mississippi U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is currently trailing by 48 votes. And DSA star Abdul El-Sayed — who proclaimed the Second Amendment right to bear arms should be replaced with a right to universal health care — topped Republican challenger former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers.

It will be “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer” again; it’s just a matter of how many senators he has in the caucus. Currently, Democrats hold 54 Senate seats.

On the federal level, the only real silver lining for Second Amendment advocates to cheer about is President Trump’s proclamation that he will utilize the veto pen early and often, to put an immediate stop to Democrats’ “insane bills.” Given his strong track record on Second Amendment issues, those vetoes will certainly include any antigun legislation over the next two years.

In the States

The wave, of course, soaked down to the states and had a huge impact on governors’ mansions and state legislatures. But the very top-level takeaway is that multiple governorships flipped from Republican to Democrat. Some were earthquakes.

Democrat Gina Hinojosa handily beat incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas with a margin currently sitting at seven points. Georgia’s governor’s mansion is flipping parties as well as former Atlanta Democrat Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms trounced Republican businessman Rick Jackson, also by seven points. Democrat Rob Sand won the Iowa governor’s race by 11 points, a flip from Republican, and Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo was defeated by Democrat Aaron Ford, also by seven points. There are now 28 Democrat governors, compared to just 20 Republican governors, with two races still to be called.

Those blue wave riptides hit state attorneys general (AGs), Kansas AG Kris Kobach lost for instance, and have swept significant flips or widening margins in majorities and supermajorities within state legislative chambers as well. With no president to singularly veto anti-firearm industry legislation within the states, serious challenges are ahead in combating antigun, anti-Second Amendment industry attacks at the state level.

Reporting suggested that gun rights restrictions weren’t necessary top-of-mind for voters as a particular and specific priority issue leading up to Election Day. Firearm sales did surge prior to Nov. 3, but the blue wave was more than a gun control wave. NSSF is still combing through outstanding races and election results. The firearm industry will monitor developments and keep our members updated on additional developments. We will be ready for the fights ahead in 2027.

– Larry Keane

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

In case you were too distracted by Rumplestiltskin videos or watching the latest episode of the “Diversity is Our Strength” reality show from France, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, announced the “FORTRESS” (Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability) readiness program during a speech last week.

The upshot is that SecWar has ordered US Military bases to follow guidance that will enable each base to remain self-sufficient and secure, minus any aid or assistance from outside, i.e., the surrounding community, for 90 days. This preparation plan would include the ability to have enough food, water, essential supplies and power to sustain operations without the need for external support. 

Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell posted on X. “I created FORTRESS America because we can no longer rely on two oceans to protect us. That outdated assumption no longer reflects the threats we face.” 

Most of us can probably get on board with the idea that our military bases, areas critical to our national security, should indeed be self-sufficient enough that they won’t collapse or become paralyzed by either cyber or kinetic attacks on the power grid, etc. In fact, we might ask, why is this even a question? Why aren’t all military bases already up to this standard?

Why Now? 

You can answer those two previous questions for yourself. However, the primary question we should all be asking is this; if the government/military is taking active steps to protect its people and places from cyber attacks, terrorism, etc. should we be concerned?

The supreme socialist nanny-state that is Great Britain started pushing its own “Be Ready” campaign just last week.

Don’t get too excited. This is more of the same 72-hour preparedness advice the United States government trots out after every major hurricane or natural disaster. What we might be asking is, “Why now?” And, is it a coincidence that Sec. Hegseth is pushing FORTRESS at the same time the UK is warning its subjects to be prepared in case of “food shortages and widespread disruption from cyber attacks and emergencies.” 

Preparation vs. Panic

As someone who spent ten years living in a prime hurricane zone, I can tell you that trying to purchase a portable power generator after the hurricane has hit isn’t going to go well for you. While that should seem patently obvious, in the aftermath of every hurricane, you would find people scrambling to buy generators and then cursing their cost, and accusing the stores of “price gouging.” 

Preparation, or the act of simply being prepared to deal with emergencies is all about mindset. Your mindset should be, “We’re going to be prepared now, so we don’t have to panic later.”

Leave the panic-buying for other people. While your short-sighted neighbors are running around, packing the stores in a buying frenzy, you can stay comfortably at home, far away from the lunacy. You can choose not to become a victim of circumstance. 

72 Hours?

If you ask people who have lived through the aftermath of a major disaster, it’s a safe bet that they would tell you that a 72-hour plan is better than nothing. For those who have been paying attention to the world and preparing for years — decades even — 72 hours is baby-town frolics. It’s sophomoric at best. This type of thinking is similar to the idea that I’d rather have a .22LR pistol than a sharp stick in an emergency. Sure, but there’s really no reason not to have something more. 

I must admit that, as a person who grew up with a mother and grandmothers who grew gardens and canned food every fall, the idea of not having three days worth of food in the house at any given time seems ridiculous. My mother habitually kept gallon milk jugs filled with water in the chest freezer to both act as an ice/cooling system if the power went out or as emergency water if needed. 

Step one; if your habit is to have less than three days of food in your house at any given time, you need to re-think your priorities. No, food isn’t cheap, but it doesn’t get any cheaper when it’s stored on grocery store shelves. You can refer to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs if you are confused about need vs want priorities. 

Keep in mind, the idea is to prepare, not panic. Therefore when time is on your side, take advantage of what’s available when it is available.

My wife is the epitome of the frugal shopper. She’s always on the hunt for a sale, a closeout, or some other special. When the price of chicken drops, she grabs it and it goes in the freezer. Ditto with pork.

We didn’t need coffee, but the other day she found large bags of name brand coffee priced at nearly 60 percent off the norm. We’ll drink it eventually, so she grabbed three bags. Now we won’t need to buy coffee for a month or longer.

Redundancy

In the dead of winter, you don’t need an iPhone or wifi to stay alive, but you need heat. I was just a kid when my parents purchased their first portable kerosene heater. Our house had baseboard heating, but it required electricity. No power, no heat.

When we lived on the farm we had two wood burning stoves and kerosene heaters as back-ups to warm up the garage/workshop. No electricity needed. 

With the rush to install “smart” thermostats which can be operated remotely, via an app, has no one ever considered that a cyberattack could include targeting those?

Think I’m paranoid? Think that could never happen? Two weeks ago a cyberattack in France targeted about 700 grocery stores. The hackers remotely turned up the thermostats on freezers to 50º Celsius (122º F) causing rapid food spoilage and some fires. Tens of millions of Euros worth of food was lost.

Tell me that a cyberattack against your power company couldn’t potentially disable tens of thousands of “smart” thermostats. And it’s not just France. The Pentagon is investigating a potential cyberattack against military bases where the thermostats in the freezers of six commissaries (military grocery stores) were hacked into.

Even if we just stick with a good old winter ice storms where power poles and lines snap like twigs, if you’re 100 percent reliant on electricity to warm your house, what do you do when the power is out? Are you going to rush to the local home store and fight a hundred other guys, all trying to buy the last two portable generators or kerosene heaters? 

Normal Living

When we cut through the social media hype or mainstream news garbage, what we’re truly considering is just getting back to what our parents and grandparents (depending on your age) used to call “daily living.” Grandma knew that everyone in the house was going to want to eat every day, so she took that into consideration.

Houses used to be built with dedicated small rooms off of the kitchens called “pantries.” Why? Because it was assumed that you would be storing more than a few days worth of food in your house. Grandpa knew the wood he was splitting today would be put up for the next winter. He was always one season ahead.

What happened to that mindset? The spread of supermarkets and big box stores had something to do with it. Some say it was also the advent of the drive-thru pick-up window. The microwave oven and frozen TV dinners, too. Modern folks point to services like Door Dash and the desire for instant gratification.

Regardless, the first step in recovery is to admit that you have a problem. If your refrigerator contains only half a jar of pickles, some spoiled Chinese takeout, and a baggie full of Taco Bell sauce packets, you have a problem. 

Naturally, one article can’t answer all these questions. If you are looking for specific help in how to address a short or long-term crisis, we suggest a book from our friend, Nicholas Orr, A Pipe Hitters Guide to Crushing the Coming Societal Breakdown.

Action and being prepared are choices we make. So is inaction. If you choose not to decide, you’ve still made a choice.

– Paul Markel, Shooting News Weekly

You sort of have to wonder if Ernest Hemingway could win a “Write Like Hemingway” writing contest today in the age of A.I. 

One of the bastions of literary writing about fishing, the Traver Award, has just announced it was duped this year by a Romanian participant who submitted a story that was largely penned by artificial intelligence.

While just about everybody is using some form of A.I. today in their daily lives—even if they don’t even know it—using it in a word-smithing contest is definitely foul play. The winner was disqualified, and the runner up was named this year’s winner.

The guy who used A.I. was able to fool a panel of judges made up of past winners of the award as well as several English professors.

(Full disclosure, as a past winner I was one of the judges, but the bogus story was not among those that I judged, so there .)

Here’s what David Van Wie, a lecturer at Dartmouth and avid fly angler who volunteers a whole lot of his time each year to manage the contest, wrote to us explaining the deception:

“I wish I could put a more positive spin on this news, but sadly we have learned a difficult lesson in how AI demons can haunt an honest and earnest writing contest like ours.   

“The best news that we have a new winner:  Steve Duda and his story “The Goddess of Compassion, Holding Open the Door” has been chosen our new and rightful 2026 winner.  This decision came after we discovered (ourselves) that our previous winner was- in the judgement of Pangram, Claude Opus 5.5, Gemini Argon 4.0 and various humans, including a native Romanian speaker- likely 100% AI-generated.  

 “Because no AI detection can be 100% certain, we followed a judicious protocol of asking the entrant to provide further background information on the story and evidence of earlier drafts or other materials to corroborate the story as human-generated. Incredibly, the response was AI-generated and the material provided was AI-fabricated. We decided to disqualify the entry and choose a new winner.

 “This experience has shown us first-hand that we now live in a Brave New World of international scammers who crawl the web looking for paid awards and contests, and submit what are called “prompt-entries” that may contain true personal stories or clever plot outlines with lots of intriguing details and cultural references, but the writing is done by AI, or heavily assisted by AI, as in “read my story outline/draft and the details provided, and write me a story in a style similar to Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemingway that addresses the criteria of the Robert Traver award…. Etc.”

“The winning story, now DQ’d story got high praise by our Traver judges in all three levels of judging. A few of us who spotted some story glitches or technical inaccuracies generally forgave them because the overall story was so compelling and different.  That is exactly what our perpetrator intended.  

The AI detectors spotted a number of other classic AI errors, hallucinations or “botshit” that we might have spotted had we more experience, or were we not mesmerized by the “stunning” writing (thanks to likely copyright infringement in AI training). This isn’t easy.  And, truthfully, it was a very good story… just not written entirely by a human doing the hard work of wordsmithing and editing.

 “So – we will learn from this.  

“We will re-evaluate our AI policy for 2027. . . . hopefully we can keep pace in the AI arms race of cheaters and detectors.”

 The whole thing gives a sinking feeling for writers and editors that creative writing as a profession is over. I’d guess outdoor writing is headed for the same cliff. Maybe journalism in general. 

Talking heads on TV news? A.I. can do it almost perfectly now, and in a year or two they will be better than humans. 

Likely the same for movies. A Tom Cruise that never ages. A Sydney Sweeney whose figure never changes. An Arnold Swarzenegger whose muscles never sag.

Anyway, you can see the new winner of the Traver Award—actually written by an actual human and very nicely done--here: https://amff.org/the-goddess-of-compassion-holding-open-the-door/

(One more note—ALL of the artwork that you see with this story? It came from ChatGPT, of course.)

– Frank Sargeant, Editor, The Water Wire

And why hunters everywhere should pay attention

Somewhere between proposing a constitutional right to hunt and fish and watching it go down in Colorado, sportsmen found themselves arguing about whether somebody’s Labrador might step in a steel-jawed trap.

Wayne Pacelle could hardly have asked for a better turn of events. As the leading anti-hunting architect in America, Tuesday’s results in Colorado gave him even more reason to raise money for ballot efforts.

Unofficial returns showed roughly 55 percent of voters opposed Amendment 83, which needed 55 percent approval to pass. That is a substantial defeat for a campaign whose supporters held a considerable fundraising advantage. Anyone who cares about hunting ought to spend some time figuring out how it happened.

I know how much work people put into this effort. Sportsmen opened their wallets, volunteered their time and took the argument into their communities. They deserve our thanks. They also deserve an honest assessment of why their investment failed. After nearly 40 years making television, films and writing about wildlife, I have learned to be wary of a message everyone in our business loves. Sometimes that means we have explained ourselves well. Often, however, it means we are talking only to ourselves.

Amendment 83 grew out of understandable frustration. Having beaten back the 2024 Proposition 127 campaign to ban mountain lion and bobcat hunting, supporters wanted protection against having to fight another expensive ballot battle every few years. The amendment would have established a constitutional right to hunt and fish, protected “traditional methods,” and made hunting and fishing preferred wildlife management tools, while retaining state regulatory authority.

Most hunters could see the point. Someone walking a dog in suburban Denver needed more convincing.

Pacelle and his allies went straight to that person. Their campaign website asked, “Fox or family pet?” and warned that steel-jaw traps could not tell the difference. Trapping billboards carried the argument into Denver. The phrase “traditional methods” gave opponents room to suggest that practices Colorado voters had already outlawed might return. They also used 83 campaign champions’ trapping affiliations to keep the subject front and center.

We could explain why existing prohibitions would remain. We could discuss constitutional interpretation and the authority of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. But by then, we were answering a question the opposition had chosen for us, with a frightened pet owner doing the listening.

That is a miserable position from which to sell a constitutional amendment.

Those of us who work around wildlife agencies can forget how little most people know about them. We say “CPW” as though everyone has a biologist’s number saved in their phone. We assume voters understand regulated hunting because they approve of somebody hunting deer. Then we ask them to sort through a legal dispute over wildlife management on their way through a long ballot.

Consider the fight over Proposition 127. Mountain lion attack survivors, emergency calls and accounts of killed or injured pets gave people who had never hunted a reason to pay attention. They could imagine their own family in those circumstances.

Showing the aftermath of wildlife-vehicle collisions offered a similar opening in the Amendment 83 campaign, so long as we explained how hunting could minimize crashes. We produced such a spot for the 83 effort but, unlike ads for the 127 campaign which appeared in Denver Bronco games (the most watched TV event in the state), the collision spot didn’t receive the same distribution—whether it was a function of budget or strategy I do not know. And, realistically, there is no way to understand from the returns that the argument could have overcome the antis’ trapping campaign—but it would tapped into the powerful emotion of fear.

We also need to look hard at where our messages traveled. Plenty of sportsmen worked their platforms tirelessly. Yet a hunting video can collect thousands of approving comments without persuading many people who are undecided about hunting. Enthusiasm inside our own circle can give us a dangerously generous impression of how the campaign is going.

The money deserves scrutiny, too. Available committee reports and separately disclosed opposition advertising suggested an overall sportsmen’s advantage of roughly three to one. Final totals may change that comparison. And the state reported that supporters spent $1.65 million gathering signatures, a large expense incurred before the measure even reached voters. Counting that money as though it all bought advertising exaggerates the advantage. Still, the defeat should end any comforting assumption that we can outspend our way past a message problem.

Opponents also assembled a coalition whose names were familiar outside hunting. Sierra Club Colorado, Denver Audubon and the League of Women Voters joined educators and community organizations. Sitting Governor Jared Polis, Marlon Reis (Polis’ First Gentleman) and Governor-elect Phil Weiser opposed the amendment. A voter did not have to share Pacelle’s views on hunting to find someone on that list whose judgment they trusted.

Our organizations should examine whether they have enough advocacy capacity, including affiliated 501(c)(4)s. But blaming tax status would let us off too easily. Public charities can participate in ballot campaigns within lobbying limits, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation already has an associated c4, Hunt 2 Conserve. Better organization will help only if we give people a reason to listen—especially the 95 percent of Americans who do not hunt.

That work must happen well before petitions circulate. Americans who never hunt still benefit from habitat conservation and the wildlife management hunters help finance. We have spent decades expecting the public to appreciate that arrangement with remarkably little explanation of what they get from it. We have a great product to sell with little to no marketing campaign to grow public acceptance. Should we then wonder why we’re vulnerable at the ballot box?

Pacelle will study this election before coming back and is likely already working the donor phones to double down on ballot box biology. We had better examine the existential threat the referendum process poses. If we don’t, another fundraising appeal and another round of congratulations for working hard will leave us explaining traps again.

– Chris Dorsey

Chris Dorsey is a Coloradan, 30-year media veteran, biologist, outdoor television producer and natural history filmmaker whose writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes and dozens more national titles. 

Pittman-Robertson funds the conservation of a southwestern game bird

It might be the quail that you never heard of, and perhaps for good reasons, not the least of which is its limited range in three southwestern states: Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. That near anonymity is confounded by the fact that the bird has a host of common names or nicknames that apply depending on where they occur. 

Here are a few labels: Fool’s Quail, Harlequin Quail, Montezuma Quail, Moctezuma Perdiz, Codorniz, and Mearns’ Quail.

These names came about based on the bird’s behavior, appearance, locale, and a chance encounter with a physician in the service of the U.S. Army, Edgar Mearns, M.D.

Fool’s Quail: It’s an undeserved nickname based on the bird’s tendency to freeze when approached by hunters or predators. It does not run. It flies—reluctantly. It’s a clever tactic for survival in the wild. The bird’s camouflage works exceedingly well hiding stock still in tall bunch grasses amid sparse stands of evergreen oaks and junipers—fooling hunters that might walk within inches of a bird that could go undetected. For that reason, a good pointing dog is a necessity to flush a bird for the gun.

Harlequin Quail: They do look clownish, cute, even. The name stems from its striking plumage resembling a character in an Italian comedy wearing a hodgepodge patchwork of clothing and a fanciful mask.

Montezuma Quail: This, and the Spanish-language variants speak to the bird’s extensive natural range south of the border. The bird occurs in uplands through Mexico, with the southern-most populations found near Mexico City. It is essentially a Mexican species. Its range in the United States is rather limited, persisting in the arid grassy rolling savanna studded with a sparse overstory of low-growing trees in West and Central Texas, southeast Arizona, and central and southwest New Mexico.

Mearns’ Quail: Dr. Mearns was an army surgeon and naturalist stationed from 1883 to 1888 at Ft. Verde, Arizona. In 1891 Mearns was assigned as the medical officer for the United States-Mexican International Boundary Survey, the crew that laid the international line from El Paso, Texas to San Clemente Island, California. Mearns collected an enormous number of plants and animals for science in his long military career, among them his namesake bird.

Dr. Mearns wrote in his field notes about encountering the quail: “As I clambered up this difficult slope [in southern Arizona], one after another they flew up before me, always from right in front of me, uttering their singular notes, and generally taking me when badly balanced and unprepared.”

Anyone who has hunted the softball-shaped bird knows there is no substitute for a lack of preparedness.

Since Edgar Mearns’ time, his namesake bird has declined in number, its range in the United States diminished. Still, both Arizona and New Mexico have liberal seasons open for the bird, and they have their following of ardent bird hunters. 

The Texas population is closed to hunting. It will likely remain so in the immediate future. But that could turn around. Using Pittman-Robertson funds derived from federal excise taxes paid by firearms, ammunition, and archery manufacturers, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologists have collected tissues from isolated quail populations to map their genetics, an endeavor that includes researchers at Purdue University and Universidad Estatal de Sonora (Sonora State University).

Licensed hunters were at the fore, providing tissues, crops, and feathers from birds harvested in Arizona and New Mexico. Texas birds were also harvested using bird dogs and shotguns under a scientific collecting permit. It was the most effective and cost-efficient manner to collect the needed specimens for research purposes. Nearly 200 hunter-harvested birds from Arizona and New Mexico, and another 200 birds collected in Texas and Mexico were the basis of the genetic research.

Some findings of that research have been reported in a scientific paper published by quail researchers from Purdue University and Universidad Estatal de Sonora, joined by biologists from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. A second research paper from Purdue is coming soon which will highlight how populations have evolved over time, the development of unique regional adaptions, and how expected changes in habitat will affect the species over the next century.

Population expansion in Texas may require the transplanting of birds from an outside source and genetic mapping could inform scientists where best to derive those birds. Interestingly, populations in central Mexico may be better suited, genetically, for the task than populations north of the border. Texas biologists are hopeful that increased awareness and investment in habitat restoration, working with landowners, will lead to huntable populations.

Pittman-Robertson dollars fund habitat management and the collection of general hunter-harvest data that inform hunting regulations set by the New Mexico Department of Wildlife. The Department has also used these funds to support university-level research in habitat selection and responses to tree canopy thinning, using telemetry transmitters to track bird movements. Land management agencies use recommendations from this research to selectively  thin juniper stands to encourage the growth of grasses that provide essential habitat for quail.

Similarly, the Arizona Game and Fish Department over the last five years has restored grasslands in southern Arizona and is presently engaged with the U.S. Forest Service to thin encroaching mesquite and juniper from 3,000 acres of oak savanna. Pittman-Robertson dollars pay for ongoing extensive hunter-harvest surveys conducted via mail and email. Hunters are encouraged to place wings of harvested birds in collection barrels so that biologists can gather biological data such as sex and age of the harvested bird. In addition, state biologists  contact hunters afield and occasionally at check stations to gather more data. It’s labor-intensive but the resulting data are rich and important to conservation.  

No matter what you call the ornately dressed bird, it is an inherent part of the Southwest and a delight to hear and see. Watching one burst into flight across the tawny grasslands of a rolling savanna, with a bird dog holding steady on point, is the culmination of conservation that starts with Pittman-Robertson.

– Craig Springer, for the USFWS, Office of Conservation Investment