Helping restore quail habitat in southern Illinois
This year, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever will once again recognize a national “Volunteer of the Year.”
The award celebrates the very best the organization has to offer — the members and volunteers who optimize the Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever mission, who seek to protect and grow our wildlife habitat, and who help ensure our heritage continues for generations to come.
We have chosen six finalists (three Pheasants Forever and three Quail Forever) for the award. The winner will be announced at the upcoming National Pheasant Fest and Quail Classic, which runs March 7-9 in Kansas City, Missouri.
“Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever are dynamic conservation organizations, fueled by the dedication of volunteers,” said Tom Fuller, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever’s vice president of chapter and volunteer services. “The Volunteer of the Year award seeks to honor individuals who have made a profound impact on our mission. Our volunteer network is a vibrant community of passion and talent. This annual award is a celebration of the remarkable accomplishments of these volunteers, and is intended to inspire others to join the movement for upland conservation.”
Over the course of the next three weeks we’ll get to know each finalist, and celebrate their accomplishments in the world of habitat conservation. The next volunteer we’ll highlight this year is Maverick Fisher.
Let's start by just telling us a little more about yourself. Your history with bird hunting and conservation, how long you’ve been a member of Pheasants Forever, etc.
I am from southern Illinois (too far south for pheasants), and teach welding at Olney Central College. I’ve been chapter president of County Line Quail Forever since it started in 2020 and have been a life member since 2022. I love pointers and 28gas, but have had setters and GSPs in the past as well.
I grew up hunting quail with my grandpa Lowell. We started going when I could barely walk, so there are a lot of quail hunting “firsts” I don’t remember — like the first time I ever saw a point, first covey rise, or my first quail. I do remember being completely and totally starstruck by my grandpa and his friends. I also remember my first bird dog that was all my own, and the make shift dog box I put on the back of my four wheeler to take him hunting. Since then bird hunting has influenced most things in my life in some way.
It’s definitely what brought me to conservation, and helped me navigate the road from “all take and no give” to a more balanced view on the sport and the ecosystem. Bobwhites facilitate that journey so well. I can’t think of many other species that could give a 12-year-old blood thirsty kid the insights necessary to go from killer, to sportsman, to land ethics, to active land ethics. The fragility of the bird and its habitat combined with the gentleman undertones of quail culture just got me.
What initially spurred you to get involved with your local chapter?
I had hit a rough patch when it came to bird hunting, and a felt even worse after reading several studies about the health of bobwhite populations. After months of listening to me complain, my mother and my wife pitched me the idea of starting a Quail Forever chapter. With the help of three close friends and my wife we started a chapter in 2020. Our small crew tried to do habitat work, even though recruitment was not looking great at first. But our habitat work caught on with our local community, and soon we were doing fescue conversions on small acreages and old horse pastures, then farmers with CRP, then municipalities. Now we’ve impacted 1,240 acres in Clay and Wayne County. After we had community support on the habitat side, it didn’t take long before the chapter recruitment picked up and we were able to fill all of our chair positions. We also had tons of community buy in from our hometowns that have let us host successful banquets and grow to over a hundred members.
Talk about the work you and your chapter have been doing over the course of the last year.
Over the last year we have had a good mix of habitat, youth outreach and recruitment. To be a chair in our chapter you have to host an event every year or write an article for the local paper. Taylor Collins lead us through another successful youth event called the Ray Winka Memorial Youth Day, where kids and teens get to experience several different outdoor activities that include fishing, archery, 22 and BB gun shoots, clay shooting, and the crowd favorite the working dog station where members from the community bring out Labs, Bloodhounds, and Bird Dogs to show off their skills and learn a little more about working dogs.
Recruitment chair Samantha Tanner is always impressing us with her drive and social craft hosting events like Coffee for Quail. She’s also written some great articles and made a chapter scrap book, all these things have really helped us balance our work hard for habitat mentality with the fun a community centered side of Quail Forever.
The chapter as whole knocked habitat work out of the park last year, logging over 40 burn days that resulted in 400 acres of habitat impact. Nearly triple that same amount of days seeding, spraying, or doing TSI. I’m so grateful to have had such tremendous support through all of this work from people like my wife Rebeccah, Logan Stone, Brock and Maddie Mitchell, Greg Parrott, CJ McInnis, Scott Paxton, Jordan Luttrell, Rase Collins and plenty of landowners and other chapter members. There are so many people who pitch in for this. I’m sure I’m forgetting some names, but it is truly unbelievable the way the community has supported us.
There are over 150,000 Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever members, and just six total finalists for Volunteer of the Year. What does it mean to be nominated for this award?
Of course, I’m honored and still in disbelief. It feels great to get acknowledgement for all the long days and nights, but honestly I still see this as a chapter award. I couldn’t have done it without the folks that show up to meetings every month, the people that sacrifice a whole Saturday and sometimes entire weekends to pull off burns and the supporters who are always good to buy a banquet or raffle ticket. The local landowners have also been so supportive of all our work and trust us to help them.
Lastly I want to thank all of the friends I’ve made through Quail Forever — who are always good for a phone call to let me vent about equipment failure, or hash out some new ideas.