In My Sundays, founded by Mallory Ervin, announced a limited-edition collaboration with Realtree featuring the brand's iconic APX and Legacy camouflage patterns. The collection includes women's pajama sets and sleep dress alongside men's loungewear, launching August 9, 2026 exclusively at InMySundays.com.

ScentLok has upgraded its Wind Brace Pro Jacket and Pant with a fully waterproof, breathable DryLok membrane and taped seams while maintaining the platform's lightweight warmth and scent-control technology. The new gear features Carbon Alloy and Silver Alloy technologies, 80g Thinsulate insulation, and is available in Realtree XT-3 pattern at $239.99 each.

ScentLok has launched its new Realtree XT-3 collection, combining the brand's scent-control technologies with Realtree's latest camouflage pattern. The versatile lineup spans flagship systems including Savanna Fuse, Ridge, and BE:1 collections, available at Academy, Sportsman's Warehouse, and Scentlok.com.

Bear Archery and Deer Meat For Dinner® founder Robert Arrington announced the launch of the Deer Meat For Dinner® Compound Bow, reaching speeds up to 339 feet per second. The bow comes ready to hunt with a premium Trophy Ridge package valued at over $470 and is proudly made in the USA.

Team Mathews earned three IBO World Championship titles at Canaan Valley Resort State Park in West Virginia, with Brady Myers winning Pro Men's, Sharon Wallace claiming Pro Women's, and Jack Wallace securing Pro Senior's first victory in 24 years for the team.

Rage Broadheads unveils the Tyrant 3-Blade mechanical broadhead, featuring a massive 2.0+ inch cutting diameter with offset blade design, titanium chisel tip, and .035" stainless steel blades. Available August 12, 2026 at retailers nationwide and authorized distributors.

SLG2, Inc. brings its Shoot Like A Girl experience to Bass Pro Shops in Rapid City on August 15-16 during the 86th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. The free event features a mobile range with firearm simulators, archery activities, and demonstrations from outdoor industry brands including Black Rifle Coffee.

Whitetails Unlimited granted $533,741.97 to shooting sports organizations including NASP, USA Clay Target, and S3DA in partnership with the National Shooting Sports Foundation for National Shooting Sports Month in August.

Darton Archery, Black Eagle Arrows and Conquest Archery are hiring a Southeast Sales Representative to lead growth across the region. The ideal candidate will build dealer relationships, expand market presence, and represent all three brands with professionalism and expertise in the archery industry.

The Murray Road Agency, a marketing firm serving the outdoor industry, is hiring a senior communications specialist in Charleston, S.C. The role requires 3-5 years of PR and marketing experience, with responsibilities including client relations, campaign strategy, and media outreach. Knowledge of fishing, hunting, camping, shooting, and boating is preferred.

African Trophy Pursuit has renewed its national sponsorship with Whitetails Unlimited, announced by WTU President Jeff Schinkten. Located in South Africa's Limpopo Province, African Trophy Pursuit offers diverse safari experiences for bowhunters and firearm hunters seeking unforgettable African hunting adventures.

Realtree and Aflac, two Columbus, Georgia institutions, announced a partnership to raise awareness about financial protection for outdoor enthusiasts. The collaboration extends Aflac's supplemental health insurance access to the outdoor community, addressing risks like hunting-related injuries while supporting conservation and children's health causes.

Working Class Bowhunter podcast has renewed its partnership with Victory Archery, continuing their collaboration since 2022. Victory Archery, known for producing advanced carbon arrows with proprietary aerospace engineering, provides the podcast crew with high-performance equipment designed for maximum penetration and consistency in demanding hunting conditions.

Browning Trail Cameras announces its 2026 lineup of trail cameras designed to help hunters scout early and plan strategically. The company offers both cellular and SD card camera options to provide valuable insights on game movement and hunting spot patterns before season opens.

TUO Gear introduced TUO Ryse, a new camouflage pattern designed for whitetail hunters using macro-scale linear shapes and micro-texture detailing to break up the human silhouette at both close and long range. The pattern features a gray-based midtone with adaptive green and amber accents for early leaf drop through late season, field-tested in hardwood timber.

ScentLok introduced the OZ Radial IQ & Gear Chamber Combo, an ozone-powered storage system designed to eliminate odor, bacteria, and mildew from hunting gear. The system uses ozone technology to actively refresh equipment between hunts and is now available in Olive and Black colorways with an MSRP of $499.99.

SOG Knives announces the release of its 40th Anniversary Fat Guard Bowie knife, a limited run of 500 individually serialized knives inspired by the original S1 Bowie from 1986. The knife features a 6.1-inch AUS 8 steel blade and comes with a commemorative Zippo lighter, leather sheath, and handcrafted pine display case.

Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's Fall Hunting Classic Sale runs through Aug. 26, featuring major savings on hunting gear, trade-in programs offering up to $200 in savings, and free family-friendly activities. The event includes expert tips, educational workshops, and opportunities to support conservation through gear donations to local organizations.

Hawke Sport Optics has renewed its national sponsorship with Whitetails Unlimited. The UK-founded optics company, which established its U.S. headquarters in Indiana in 2007, provides high-quality sporting optics for rifles, crossbows, and airguns. WTU President Jeff Schinkten praised Hawke's exceptional products and competitive pricing.

The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources launched IHEA PathPerks, becoming the second state agency to offer newly certified hunters pro-level gear pricing from over 200 outdoor brands including Hornady, Swarovski Optik, Weatherby, and Vortex Optics. Co-developed by the International Hunter Education Association and Guidefitter, the no-cost program reaches Alabama's approximately 500,000 hunters at no expense to the state or students.

Outdoor Sportsman Group launches Ultimate Season, a multi-platform hunting resource running August through December 2026, partnering with Old Trapper, Browning, SPYPOINT, Dryshod, Can-Am, and Rocky Boots. The initiative features expert content, gear reviews, and a sweepstakes with Luke Bryan concert experience across TV, print, and digital channels.

Outdoor Sportsman Group announced GAME & FISH TV's addition to Truth+, a FAST streaming platform powered by Trump Media and Technology Group. The channel, drawing from Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel, World Fishing Network, and MyOutdoorTV libraries, offers live Major League Fishing competitions, hunting, fishing, adventure, and cooking programming to over 430 million monthly active users.

MyOutdoorTV announces new episodes from seven popular hunting and fishing programs including Realtree Outdoors, Crush with Lee & Tiffany, The Western Hunter, Drury's THIRTEEN, Fatal Impact, Descendants of the North, and The Fishmonger, featuring hosts like Bill Jordan, Lee and Tiffany Lakosky, and Tommy Gomes.

GAME & FISH TV launches the "Buck Zone" block featuring six premier deer-hunting programs including Buck Commander with Willie Robertson, HeadHunters TV, BuckVentures, Buckmasters, Drury's THIRTEEN, and Whitetail Freaks hosted by Don & Kandi Kisky, airing Thursdays in August on the free streaming platform.

If someone asked me which conservation organization I would want standing beside hunters when the next political assault arrives, my answer would be immediate: Safari Club International.

That isn't because SCI is the largest hunting organization or because it hosts world-class conventions, celebrates hunting achievements, or promotes international adventure. I support Safari Club International because it understands something many sportsmen still underestimate: every conservation victory won on the landscape can be erased if no one is willing to defend it in courtrooms, legislatures, regulatory agencies, and the court of public opinion. 

Habitat alone cannot protect hunting. Science alone cannot protect wildlife management. Someone has to defend the institutions, policies, and legal framework that make conservation possible in the first place.

For well over a century, North American hunters have built what many consider the most successful wildlife restoration model ever devised. Billions of dollars have flowed into conservation through hunting licenses, Pittman-Robertson excise taxes, wildlife stamp programs, private land stewardship, conservation easements, and hunter-funded organizations that have restored millions of acres of habitat. 

While hunters may pursue elk, ducks, sheep, deer, or quail, the forests, wetlands, prairies, rivers, and grasslands they finance support hundreds of nongame species that benefit from the same investments. Wild turkey populations have rebounded dramatically. Rocky Mountain elk thrive across much of the West. Whitetail deer are more abundant today than at any time in modern history. Waterfowl populations have recovered because wetlands were protected. Bighorn sheep, pronghorn, wood ducks, black bears, and countless other species owe much of their success to a conservation system largely funded by hunters themselves. 

None of this happened by accident. It happened because generations of sportsmen invested their own money, donated their time, and embraced science-based wildlife management decades before conservation became fashionable.

Ironically, despite this extraordinary success, the greatest threat facing conservation today is not biological—it is ideological. Animal-rights organizations have become fundraising giants, raising enormous sums through emotionally charged campaigns that portray hunting as cruel while readily ignoring the very funding model responsible for restoring wildlife across North America and much of the world. Increasingly, their objective goes beyond opposing individual hunting methods. Many seek to dismantle hunting itself and, with it, the conservation system that has financed wildlife management for generations.

Their strategy has grown progressively advanced. Rather than debating wildlife science, they attempt to reframe it. Rather than persuading professional wildlife managers, they seek political appointments that allow them to influence wildlife commissions and regulatory agencies. Rather than trusting peer-reviewed management, they promote emotionally appealing plots often built upon chosen data or questionable research. In too many cases, university professors and researchers have been willing to lend academic credibility to advocacy dressed up as science, particularly when outside funding aligns with predetermined political outcomes. 

At the same time, ballot initiatives and social media campaigns have reduced complex wildlife management decisions to simplistic, emotional slogans. "Ballot-box biology" has become one of the most effective weapons in the animal-rights movement's arsenal, allowing complex biological questions to be decided by advertising campaigns rather than by professional wildlife managers.

This is precisely why Safari Club International has become indispensable. While many organizations do extraordinary work restoring habitat, increasing public access, and funding wildlife research, SCI has willingly accepted the far less glamorous responsibility of defending the entire conservation system. The organization understands that restoring habitat means little if lawmakers eliminate the hunting opportunities that finance it. It understands that wildlife agencies cannot efficiently manage wildlife if they become political battlegrounds rather than science-based institutions. Above all, SCI recognizes that conservation ultimately fails whenever ideology replaces biology.

That mission becomes even more important on the international stage. Across Africa and elsewhere, foreign governments and well-funded advocacy groups continue to push trophy import bans, driven largely by emotion rather than measurable conservation outcomes. Those policies may generate favorable headlines in wealthy nations, but their consequences are borne by rural communities that live alongside elephants, lions, leopards, buffalo, and other dangerous wildlife every day. In those communities, wildlife must provide tangible value if it is to survive. 

Revenue generated through regulated hunting funds anti-poaching efforts, habitat conservation, schools, medical clinics, meat distribution, local employment, and incentives that encourage people to tolerate wildlife instead of eliminating it. Remove that value through politically motivated trophy import bans, and wildlife quickly becomes an expensive liability competing with crops, livestock, and human safety. The people who suffer most are not the activists celebrating the bans from thousands of miles away. They are the families who share their farms and villages with dangerous animals.

For decades, Safari Club International has given those communities something they rarely receive in international policy debates: a voice. SCI has consistently reminded policymakers that successful conservation depends upon local people benefiting from wildlife rather than simply being asked to coexist with it for someone else's moral satisfaction. That message is not always politically convenient, yet decades of conservation experience across southern Africa continue to demonstrate its validity.

Closer to home, SCI remains equally vigilant. Its attorneys monitor legislation, its policy experts analyze regulations, its advocates engage federal agencies, its communications professionals respond when misinformation gains traction, and its lobbyists work the halls of Capitol Hill protecting hunting rights that many sportsmen mistakenly assume will always exist. Increasingly, those rights cannot be taken for granted. 

Ballot initiatives seek to prohibit lawful hunting methods. States consider restrictions on trophy imports despite having no wildlife populations affected by those decisions. Activist organizations target predator hunting, bear hunting, mountain lion hunting, trapping, and other longstanding wildlife management tools one campaign at a time. None of these efforts exist in isolation. Together, they represent a deliberate, long-term strategy to gradually weaken public acceptance of hunting until political elimination becomes achievable.

That reality requires far more than excellent habitat work. It demands organizations willing to play defense (and offense) every single day. Safari Club International serves as the global insurance policy for hunters and for conservation itself. It monitors legislative strategies, evaluates international treaties, challenges unlawful government actions, educates policymakers, funds litigation when necessary, and continually reminds the public that hunters remain the world's single greatest private investors in wildlife conservation. 

Much of that work happens quietly. Most sportsmen never hear about the lawsuit that prevented a harmful regulation, the agency decision that changed behind closed doors, or the legislation that was defeated before it ever became a headline. Like any good insurance policy, its greatest value becomes apparent only when disaster has been avoided.

For those of us who believe hunting and conservation are inseparable, supporting Safari Club International is about far more than protecting hunting opportunities. It is about defending the conservation model that has restored wildlife across North America and sustained biodiversity around the globe. If hunters fail to defend that model politically, legally, and culturally, no amount of habitat restoration will preserve it for future generations. The future of conservation will certainly continue to be shaped in forests, wetlands, mountains, and African savannas, but it will be decided just as often in legislative chambers, courtrooms, regulatory agencies, and the marketplace of public opinion. 

Fortunately for hunters—and for wildlife—Safari Club International has chosen to stand watch wherever those battles are fought.

– Chris Dorsey