Pheasants Forever holds their annual convention during the winter bringing organization management, members, vendors and those with an interest in all things pheasant into one place for 3 days to share knowledge, information and great camaraderie. This year’s event was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Center February 14 – 16 and was attended by convention management estimates of 20,000 attendees.
The PGCA was again, invited to be present with a booth to show off the "best American made shotgun." Bruce Day took the lead and put together a team of quality folks who brought many years of knowledge and an enthusiasm for all things Parker and shotguns in general.
Along with Bruce, were the Morgan brothers, Ed and Dick who bring a simple quiet style of salesmanship to selling chances at the 2014 Raffle gun. This year’s raffle gun is an 1884 Hammer gun restored by Brian Dudley and truly a beautiful firearm that all, the shotgun savvy and those who had little understanding of firearms, could quickly see this is a fine gun and one that any and all passersby would love to own. The Morgan’s quiet style was perfect for getting folks with no interest in shotguns to stop for a couple of minutes to admire this gun and reach in their pocket and pull out a $5 bill in the hope that they might be the new caretaker of this gun. Photos of this gun can be found at
http://parkerguns.org/forums/showthr...ht=2014+raffle By the end of the weekend they had sold over 300 tickets and added several new members and an additional few renewals. And subliminally we showed countless others that Parker shotguns are truly fine firearms and the folks who own and shoot them are special group as well.
The PGCA had a nicely located double booth displaying over 20 high condition and quality Parker Bros. shotguns in varying grades from Trojan to C grades, hammered and hammerless, many steel barrel compositions including some breathtaking Bernard barrel guns, in all gauges and configurations. Said another way, there was something for everyone who came into our booth to see their “dream gun” or to tell us about their latest purchase or their grandfather’s gun or their hope to someday own a Parker!
As well as the Parkers described above we had several Parker Reproductions, a very nice Damascus barreled Lefever, a 1929 Parker “G” grade with some interesting folk art carved into the butt stock. And I would be remiss in not giving a special mention to a very rare Model 97 with a beautiful set of Damascus barrels owned by Gary Cripps.
Our favorite comment of the weekend was a father son who came into the booth and the father looked at his son and said, “well, you might as well get started shopping now as it is inevitable.” To my puzzled look he turned and said, “sir, let me introduce you to my son, Parker.” The young, mid-teen man gave a quizzical smirk and I reached out my hand and said, “congratulations, you are going to have a lifetime of shooting wonderful shotguns.”
The surprise of the weekend occurred as we entered the convention center on Friday morning, after getting set up and checking into our hotel rooms. We turned the corner and were coming down the escalator when …. well I will let the pictures be the explanation of what we saw.
The lower floor of the center was hosting an Anime convention where several thousand young folks were all dressed up in the costumes of their favorite Anime cartoon characters. They were there to attend workshops and chat sessions directed toward everything related to Anime, Anime costuming and Anime equipment. While at first we were taken aback, we quickly recalled times of our youth where fantasy played an important role in some event we had participated. The kids were exceptionally well behaved and respectful of Pheasant Fest attendees and looking back it was an interesting juxtaposition of the “redneck” stereotype and the “nerdy kids” stereotype and from that experience the stereotypes were both wrong. We were all folks getting together to have some fun and learn something new.
To round out the crew manning the booth were Gary Cripps and Russ Lindsay. Gary and Russ handled the easy questions from our attendees. When a hard question arose or when someone needed a quote from The Parker Story we would go find Brice to get the correct information to the questioners. Meanwhile Bruce was our ambassador, always stopping some TV personality or executive to have a few words regarding the day’s activities and hunts past and future. Convention management as well as senior executives from Pheasant Forever all took a few minutes to come by and thank us for participating and commented on the fine quality firearms. As usual, Bruce new each by name and made a point of spreading the joy of owning high quality firearms bon home to all who entered.
And while Bruce schmoozed one and all, he seemed to take special interest in one attendee. She is Miss Kansas, Teresa Vail a wonderful young lady who is an avid hunter and gun enthusiast. She was exceptionally engaging in conversations regarding firearms, education, her career plans and her future speaking engagement schedule. She is a quality young person and left you feeling that our future may not be quite as dim as some might make us think.
She specifically asked for this photo.
And, as might guess, Bruce asked specifically for this photo!
With that we closed out booth and returned to our various activities. I trust you have enjoyed a brief “ride along” in the weekend’s event. I believe Bruce and his team did a great job of spreading the PGCA word. Thanks for coming along.
02-18-2014, 02:10 PM
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