Woodford County #641 Pheasants Forever

03/17/2026

Thank you all for attending and supporting our banquet. If you have a habitat project reach out for assistance with seeding equipment and seed.

03/03/2026

Just donated to our banquet is a 2 man local wild pheasant hunt. Get your tickets for March 5

03/03/2026

We have a dove hunt donated to our banquet still time to get your tickets.

02/28/2026

March 5, 2026 5 pm Benson, IL Legion We are less than a week away from our Annual banquet. Get your tickets online at

Join us at our annual Pheasants Forever chapter banquet, where you'll be surrounded by a great atmosphere filled with exciting raffles, products, and prizes! As you local chapter we're aiming to make a positive difference across the nation and especially in our own community. Purchasing a banquet ti...

01/24/2026

Fact

12/30/2025

One of the most misunderstood hunting laws in America is why you can’t legally sell wild game meat. To many people, it sounds arbitrary. Historically, it’s anything but.

In the 1800s, wildlife in the United States was treated as a commercial resource. Deer, bison, waterfowl, and passenger pigeons were harvested by professional market hunters and sold for their meat. Game was shipped by rail to cities, restaurants openly served wild meat, and wildlife populations collapsed at an industrial scale. This wasn’t subsistence, it was extraction.

By the late 19th century, the damage was undeniable. Entire species were disappearing, and state game laws meant little when animals could be killed in one state and sold in another. The turning point came in 1900 with the Lacey Act, the first federal wildlife conservation law in U.S. history.

The Lacey Act made it illegal to transport or sell wildlife meat taken in violation of state laws. More importantly, it broke the commercial incentive that drove market hunting. By removing profit from wild game meat, the law shifted hunting away from markets and back toward personal use and responsibility. Wildlife was no longer a food commodity, it became a public resource held in trust.

This distinction is important. Fur, hides, and taxidermy are often regulated differently because they don’t create the same widespread market pressure on wildlife populations that commercial meat sales once did. Meat is what drove mass exploitation, and that’s what the law targeted.

That principle became a cornerstone of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. If wild game meat can’t be sold, wildlife can’t be monopolized by wealth, land ownership, or industry.

We learned the hard way that when wild meat has a price tag, wildlife disappears.

Aaron B. Futrell
Author|Owner, Delong Lures

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas

12/11/2025

12/11/2025

Woodford county pheasants forever is having a meeting. On Thursday Dec 18 at 6:30. We are meet at Topsy's in El Paso. Your help is appreciated and volunteers like you make good things happen. Please feel free to share with others and encourage them to attend. We will have an update of Pheasant season. Need to set a banquet date. Approve any business and plan for next year. See you there.

03/16/2025

Great night of fundraising in Woodford County last night. Thank you all