Lifetime Sportsman Award

T. Boone Pickens
Lifetime Sportsman Award

The award was created by Park Cities Quail in 2006 to recognize sportsmen who have distinguished themselves by living a life of adventure, love of the outdoors, respect for natural resources and most of all those who have demonstrated a spirit of giving back and making it possible for others to enjoy the sporting life.

Recipients:
2009 - Ray Sasser

Ray Sasser started in the newspaper business at The Lufkin News in 1970 while still in college. His first outdoor job was at the Port Arthur News in 1973. At that time, Ray was 25 and the youngest outdoor writer in Texas. Ray moved to Dallas in 1983 to work for the Dallas Times Herald, then moved in 1986 to the Dallas Morning News.

An accomplished author of 11 books and writer of feature stories and/or columns for nearly every outdoor publication in Texas, Sasser has also been featured in many national publications.

Sasser: “As a lifelong newspaper writer, I’ve developed a cynicism about people that prevents me from placing almost anyone on a pedestal. Along with my late mother and my wife, Emilie, Boone Pickens is one of the few people I truly admire. To receive an award created and named for Boone is a great honor. To receive it from the Park Cities Quail Unlimited chapter that redefined conservation fundraising really is a lifetime achievement.

“Bobwhite quail are the ultimate game birds and Texas is the ultimate quail hunting state. Knowing what we know about wildlife conservation, it’s an absolute crime that we’ve allowed quail to suffer such a precipitous decline. It’s time for the bobwhite population roller coaster to head back toward the top of its cycle. By adopting the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch, PCQU has exhibited its dedication to saving our finest upland game bird.”

T. Boone Pickens: “Ray Sasser and I have been friends and hunted together for almost twenty years and I am confident in saying that no one will ever be more deserving of this award. Ray has been the voice of sportsmen and people who love the Texas outdoors for over thirty years. He is a fearless advocate for the management of our outdoor resources for the benefit of all the people of Texas. On more than one occasion he has moved me and others to go to Austin and lobby for causes that he has made us aware of through his column.”

2008 - Boone Pickens

Boone Pickens - legendary oil entrepreneur, conservationist, and avid sportsman.

An accomplished environmental steward, Pickens' 68,000-acre Mesa Vista Ranch is a model for wildlife resource management. His business ventures include an alternative energy provider, the largest supplier of vehicular natural gas in North America, and plans for the world’s largest wind farm. Pickens also has stepped to the forefront of national water resource development issues with a proposal to market surplus and stranded groundwater in the Texas Panhandle to urban areas in the state facing severe water supply shortages. Prior to Pickens’ first Roberts County land purchase in 1971, the county’s rolling hills, bluffs and creek beds suffered from consistent overgrazing. The legendary entrepreneur immediately began a multi-step program to help the land recover, over time investing about $25 million in overall wildlife management strategies and facilities, installing substantial water sources, food plots and native grass replanting, and power infrastructure. Those initiatives, along with efforts to market stranded and surplus water in the region elsewhere in the state, have led to a tremendous increase in local land values. In the process, Pickens has increased the size and breadth of Mesa Vista. Today, Dallas Morning News outdoors writer Ray Sasser calls Mesa Vista “the Wild West equivalent of a southern gentleman’s hunting plantation, arguably the finest quail-hunting spot in the known universe.”

“Quail hunting is a life-long passion tracking back to my father, who always kept two bird dogs in a pen out back of our home in Holdenville, Oklahoma,” the 2006 Horatio Alger award winner explains. “That was big, open, country — pretty good quail territory. I shot my first quail when I was about 13 years old.

“Today, I am driven by a desire to conserve and reclaim over-grazed land for quail habitat, and to develop long-term wildlife management plans that can be used to improve land values through an expansion of recreational opportunities.”

2006 -Walter Kellogg

Walter was known by many in the region as the consummate gentleman sportsman. A lover of bird dogs and the traditions of the sport, Walter introduced many youth to their first hunt. He helped dog breeders get their start and was generous with his time and resources. An enthusiastic supporter of Quail Unlimited and many other worthwhile causes that improved the sporting environment, Walter encouraged the formation of Park Cities Quail Unlimited. Unfortunately Walter passed to the "prairie eternal" just few weeks before the ceremony but he left a legacy of the sporting life to his family and many others throughout the country.

To submit a nomination for the Lifetime Sportsman Award, please send a detailed email to: award@parkcitiesquail.org