The NAGA Hunting Club Conference is a chance for the upland gamebird hunting community to organize, coordinate and speak with one voice....
Photo by Ralf Hahn - iStock
Each week, we’ve been sending emails promoting the upcoming conference created exclusively for the hunting preserve industry. The NAGA Hunting Club Conference is July 15-17, 2024, at the Best Western Ramkota in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
We’ve already highlighted our sponsors and sponsorship opportunities. We’ve announced the opening of vendor booth registration. And as the agenda is finalized for the event, we’ll be spotlighting various speakers and topics that are sure to spark interest in making the trip to Sioux Falls.
Underneath all of this is a larger and equally important reason to attend:
It’s a chance for the upland gamebird hunting community to organize, coordinate and speak with one voice. The format of the Hunting Club Conference encourages the development of relationships between hunting clubs to come together to tackle the challenges facing the gamebird industry.
Nearly 10 years ago, an issue of NAGA News highlighted how the strength of the herd protects the individual and how the strength of NAGA protects the individual gamebird business. This applies directly to bird hunting preserves which face threats from all sides.
“I can’t think of a time in which our industry has faced greater challenges than we do right now,” said Peg Ballou, who founded the NAGA Hunting Club Conference just before becoming president of the association in 2022. “We need a unified voice that can be heard in every state, and a strong network of hunting preserves can do just that. This is where the real grassroots strength of our industry lies.”
The challenges are significant:
Bird Supply: Outbreaks of avian influenza have exposed vulnerabilities in the supply chain of gamebirds.
Animal Rights Threats: These groups hate the gamebird industry because of its farming practices and because of hunting.
Access to Firearms: Gun control groups are working in every corner of the U.S. to make access to firearms harder and more expensive.
Ammunition Availability: Access to ammunition was quite recently an issue to the hunting preserve industry.
“Each of these issues represent a genuine threat to the future of the gamebird hunting industry, explained NAGA President Mike Martz, who operates a hunting preserve in Pennsylvania. “The NAGA works diligently to address each one by its direct work and its partnerships. But our strength is in our membership, and that’s why we need to continuously be building a stronger network of hunting clubs that belong to the NAGA.”
Attending the NAGA Hunting Club Conference protects your businesses by becoming part of an alliance that’s an increasingly strong voice protecting our interests.
