Hello and happy Spring from the (New) Brown County Pheasants Forever President!  For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Steve Eckstein and I have recently taken over President duties from Tim Kraskey.   I’ve been active on our chapter board for the past 9 years as Treasurer.  However, I’ve been a part of Brown County Pheasants Forever since I was allowed to follow my dad to the banquet about 30 years ago.  I have fond memories of the banquets held at the Orchid Inn growing up and being invited to walk along on hunts with many of the past board members before I could even carry a gun.  It was those early hunting trips which likely grew my love for the outdoors and awareness of the importance of conservation.

Over the past few years, I’ve attended both the State and National conventions where I witnessed first hand the passion that other Pheasants Forever employees and volunteers had for the organization.  This really rubbed off on me and got me fired up to do my part for our local chapter to keep the mission of the organization strong.   

Keeping the tradition and mission of Pheasants Forever takes a solid core group of people on our local board.  We’ve been lucky to have a dedicated group of 6 to 10 people involved with the Brown County board over the past few years.  However, we are always looking for more help and new volunteers, which is no easy task.  In fact, getting more local people involved with volunteering with our local events is going to be one of my main goals going forward.   I think I can speak for all the current and past board members and volunteers when I say that being a part of a group like this has led to new friendships and business partnerships that I would have missed out on if I was not involved.  So please, if you have any interest at all in helping out in any way possible, please reach out as we’d love to have you!

Every 10 years or so we tend to have a ‘turn-over’ on the board as some members have put in their time and want to step away a bit while others have been recruited to fill their roles.  I’d like to give a shout out to Tim Kraskey, Dave Huhn, Danny Braulick, and Jeremy Berg who have helped keep the chapter running for the past 10 years.  That said, I’d like to thank our current board members for stepping up and accepting new roles on our board as follows:  

• President: Steve Eckstein
• Vice President: Tim Kraskey
• Treasurer: Rachel Cunningham
• Banquet Chair: Tim Kraskey
• Secretary: Bryan Peterson
• Sponsorships: All Board Members, led by Danny Braulick
• Marketing Chair: Tim Kraskey
• E3 (Expand, Educate and Engage) Chair: Ben Cunningham
• Habitat Chair: Brandon Kral
  
• Farm Bill Biologist: Reva Ecker

Our up coming Habitat Day is being held Saturday May 10th. Come get your hands dirty and help work on our public lands. More details on this event are below.