Brookings County Pheasants Forever 3/18/25

W

Weimdogman

Well-known member
Celebrating our 40th annual event. This is one of the biggest PF banquets in the country. We expect close to 700.Raffling away many guns and some very nice live and silent auction items. If anyone shows up ask almost anyone where that dang Mike is and I will be happy to meet you.
 
Today went and bought another 8 guns for our banquet. 9 sponsors buying 1200.00 worth of rooster bucks which are used like cash at the raffles.

We may hit our ambitious goal of 250 sponsors. I have been telling the committee 250 for 2 years and they have been laughing at me like I am crazy. Well I am crazy but 250 is attainable.

If we had 1 more committee member with some drive to pursue sponsors 250 would be a snap. The important thing to remember is you have to keep going for new sponsors as you always lose some. Life , and death happen.

National has us listed as 8th largest chapter by membership last year. They show 170 memberships but we we had 231 .memberships at our last banquet. That would make us # 2. And the really strange thing is a couple years ago we asked national for our membership roster and there was over 400 on it?
 
Mike, I hope you have a record turn-out, great work you are doing. Cherokee, IA had they had their banquet last night, looked like a big turn-out. They use the biggest venue in the county and fill it. They showed up as number 6 in 2024 with 185 memberships, which doesn't seem like a ton, when they have 125 sponsors, as of the printing of their program this year.
If Brookings has over 200 sponsors, I would think that they would have twice that many members. It will be interesting see the membership number for 2025. Near to me, Plymouth county showed as #3 in membership. I am assuming all the banquet memberships are sent in one batch to the national. Those should closely match the national number I would think.
I had 2 couples come to the banquet last night (first time attendees) one was a sponsor, neither pheasant hunt. I used to think it was pheasant hunters that mainly support PF, it really seems it is not, but it is the hunters that benefit from their efforts. If I were in-charge of banquet attendance and sponsorships, I would concentrate on landowners and businesses.
 
Glad your area supports pf. We do encourage businesses from contractors to boutiques, retail stores, bars restaurants, and service providers to be sponsors and attend the event. I tell everyone come once and you will be back. Many first timers do return with friends.

We have a seperate area for the 50+kids with plenty of activities. There is also a clutch which is a raffles area of about 20 items geared to the ladies.

Brookings is under 30,000 and we do fill the event center which is our only available space. They have had to go buy additional plates and silverware just for our event as they previously only had settings for 650.
 
I think Cherokee's population is under 6K, the entire county is under 15K in population. Woodbury county next to me has Sioux City (85K) and their banquets are not near the attendance. Not sure about Woodbury but Cherokee and Plymouth both cater to the ladies and kids. Sounds like successful chapters are run similarly. Maybe someone that attended the Woodbury banquet can comment on it...maybe Kevin? It sounds like they have a lot of give away guns.
 
Well we had another great banquet. Every year it grows bigger and last night was our biggest. I ask friends who wouldn't normally attend to volunteer and to a person they all say that was fun I will gladly do it again for you.
 
I just talked with one of our PF directors, he told me the Cherokee attendance was 519, off a bit. He did not have a figure for banquet memberships.
 
Last edited:
So i ask everyone i see that has been to the banquet and the only complaint I here is "They need more bartenders".

Those new to the event especially women comment they are pleasantly surprised how many women are in attendance.

We had 50 paid sponsors no show which is probably common to get about 80% to attend. Honestly we would have been in trouble if another 100 showed up. I would have been out the door for more guns.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top