California BHA comments on the California Coastal Conservancy revised Coastal Access Project Guidelines. View the comment letter: Dear California Coastal Conservancy Board Members, I write on behalf of the California Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for our wild public lands, waters, and wildlife. We thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment regarding the revised Coastal Access Project Guidelines. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers is a 501c3 non-profit dedicated ...

The word elk is believed to have come from the Greek, alke, meaning strength. This makes sense because the elk is one of the largest members of the deer family. Males are powerful and—fully grown—weigh up to 1,000 pounds.[1] However, few southwest Colorado public lands elk hunters will ever encounter such a behemoth, for multiple reasons. First, southwest Colorado’s San Juan Mountains may be one of the most rugged places to hunt elk in the country. The San Juans claim the title of ...

The Colorado chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers recently appointed Kris Hess to serve as a Habitat Watch Volunteer (HWV) for the Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest. Kris was born and raised in Alpena, Michigan. “I grew up in a hunting and fishing family in northern Michigan and started fishing and hunting whitetails at a young age,” he said. “I stepped back from hunting for many years but was reinvigorated in 2015 after my first Colorado elk hunt with my father.”  “I’ve since had a ...

Alaska AFI is excited to announce the South Central Installation Club, the first of three officially-sanctioned Installation Clubs in our state. The State of Alaska and our Armed Forces have shared a symbiotic relationship for many years and our AFI leaders in Alaska hope to continue and strengthen that relationship. The AFI program in Alaska aims to build upon the three pillars of the AFI program, active duty, veteran engagement and legislation. This is the first step towards meeting that ...

I have been struggling to write this story for two months. I’m having a hard time with it because it's the best example I've seen of why the Armed Forces Initiative exists and I am not confident I have the right words to do these events justice - to capture the emotion and consequences of it all. It's been 60 days since this event, and at this point it is more important that this story gets told than to tell it perfectly.   I wanted to write a simple article about our north-woods musky ...