People

   Mike Beagle, Co-Chair

Biographical Sketches

Mike Beagle - Eagle Point, Oregon  (back to top)

Mike is a co-founder of BHA and is the first Chairman of the Board.  Mike grew up hunting, fishing and backpacking around rural Eagle Point and the south Cascades and then attended Southern Oregon State College, where he lettered in football all four years and was a three-time all-conference defensive back.  He received his BS in History in 1985. After college, he graduated from the US Army Officer Candidate School (OCS) and the Airborne Course at Fort Benning, Georgia.  Mike served as a field artillery officer in the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington from 1987-89.  After leaving military service, he began his teaching career at Tigard HS in 1990.  He received his MA in History and Government from the University of Portland in 1993. 

Mike has taught high school social studies in Oregon for 15 years, along with 17 years of coaching football and baseball.  He founded and led one of the only high school fly fishing and conservation clubs in the west (1996-98) while teaching at Silverton HS in the Willamette Valley. He has been active in a variety of wilderness, wildlife and habitat protection issues.  He's also volunteered for the Forest Service on cultural and historical restoration projects in the Rogue River National Forest and helped to build a series of switchbacks at Hat Pass in Wyoming's Bridger Wilderness with the Continental Divide Trail Alliance. His biggest achievement of late was climbing California's Mt. Shasta (14,162) one year after ACL surgery (he avoids basketball now!).

Holly Endersby - Pollock, Idaho (back to top)

Holly Endersby was born in the Midwest but always yearned for the outdoor life. After college, she moved to Oregon for graduate school and has been a resident of Oregon, Washington and Idaho in the years since. After a fifteen year stint as a school principal, Holly left education to become a fulltime freelance outdoor writer. She's written for newspapers, magazines, websites and television and has won several national writing awards. Holly was the first recipient of the Weatherby Writers Outreach Award for promoting hunting in a non-hunting magazine.

An avid hiker, angler, hunter, skier and equestrian, Holly and her husband, Scott Stouder, hunt and travel with their pack string exclusively in roadless and wilderness areas. She is active at the grassroots level as an advocate for roadless and wilderness protection and works locally to influence decisions by the USFS, Fish and Wildlife Service and BLM to support healthy habitat and wildlife populations.

Tony Heckard - Molalla, Oregon (back to top)

Tony was born and raised in Pennsylvania, hunting whitetail in the Appalachia hill country and small game in the lower farmlands during the fall.  He also ran a 100-trap line during the winter.  He fly fished local streams and enjoyed nighttime casting on the mighty Susquhanna River.  He then spent eight years in the US Navy traveling the world on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson, visiting over 17 countries where he learned to appreciate the global diversity of people, places and wildlife.

Tony's long tenure with hunting and conservation organizations and his willing nature have qualified him for the responsibility of serving as BHA's first Secretary.  He was previously a chapter President and state Secretary for the Oregon Hunters Association. He also supports the Izaak Walton League of America, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Trout Unlimited, Hells Canyon Preservation Council and Portland Audubon Society.  He hosted the first-ever hunter-conservationist website wildernesshunter.org to help promote this philosophy of conservation responsibility and ethics, to profile the work of prominent outdoor writers like Scott Stouder, and to advocate for habitat protection measures such as those recently proposed for the Tongass National Forest.

David Lien - Colorado Springs, CO (back to top)

David grew up in the small northern Minnesota town of Grand Rapids and started hunting ruffed grouse when he was eleven years old. "Having first successfully hunted grouse, they remain my favorite today," he says. This early pursuit of small game eventually led to hunting woodcock, ducks, geese and deer, and trapping mink, muskrat, beaver and raccoon, which in turn led to a recognition of the need for habitat conservation and the preservation of wild places and wide open spaces.

After completing high school, David was offered an Air Force ROTC scholarship at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and went on to graduate with a BA in political science and second lieutenant bars. He completed four years of military service as an Air Force missile launch officer prior to earning two additional degrees: a Masters of Science in Administration and Bachelor of Accounting. After completing his service commitment and schooling, David accepted another federal job and moved to Colorado.

David is currently the volunteer Front Range director of BHA's Colorado chapter. He's also a Lifetime Member of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association (MDHA) and a regular contributor to MDHA's Whitetales magazine. In addition, he has climbed all 54 of Colorado's fourteeners (peaks over 14,000 ft.), the 50 state highpoints, six of the Seven Summits (the highest peaks on each continent), and has set foot in twenty-two countries and on all seven continents.

During the spring of 2006, David tackled the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, and climbed to over 25,000 ft. on the north/Tibet side of this cloud-piercing peak. David currently resides in Colorado Springs and works as an Examiner for the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), an independent financial regulatory agency of the federal government responsible for chartering, supervising, examining, and insuring federal credit unions.

Ben Long - Kalispell, Montana (back to top)

Ben Long grew up hunting, fishing and hiking in Idaho's Clearwater and St. Joe country. He spent his 16th birthday packing out a six-point bull elk he and his father shot deep in the backcountry. It was the best birthday of his life.

Following in the footsteps of his early hero, outdoor writer Ted Trueblood, Long pursued a degree in journalism from University of Idaho. After graduation, he spent a decade as a newspaper reporter, covering government, politics, outdoors and natural resource issues for newspapers in Idaho and Montana. He has also worked as a biological technician for the US Forest Service.

David Lyon - Homer, Alaska (back to top)

Brian Parker - Lander, Wyoming (back to top)

John Pollard - Park City, Utah (back to top)

Kelly Smith - Bend, Oregon (back to top)

Kelly is a native Oregonian and has lived in Central Oregon for nearly 30 years.  He was fortunate to grow up with a hunting tradition, accompanying his father and brother on deer and elk hunts in Oregon and occasional moose hunts in Alaska.  He continues this tradition with his wife/hunting partner Karen and son Sean.

After graduating from Stanford with degrees in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Kelly embarked on a research career aimed primarily at developing new technologies for making pharmaceuticals safer and more effective.  He published numerous scientific articles and served as an officer of the international Controlled Release Society before retiring in 1998 after 20 years as a research director, technical editor, and principal at Bend Research. 

Kelly has strong interests in conservation, wilderness, ethical hunting, and land-use issues.  He served for many years as an officer and director of the Oregon Hunters Association, as well as a short stint as Chairman of the national Mule Deer Foundation.  He was an original member of the Oregon Access & Habitat Board, which allocated hunter dollars to improving access to and habitat on private lands.  He recently was just appointed to the Deschutes County Planning Commission, where he hopes to slow and/or control Central Oregon's rampant and habitat-destroying growth.

An avid big-game hunter, Kelly also dabbles in hunting upland birds and considers himself an interested, but relatively incompetent flyfisher.  He and Karen spend considerable time volunteering on habitat projects or youth hunting efforts each year.  Although Kelly hunts with firearms, his goal is to get within bow-hunting range, at which he occasionally succeeds.  With three hunters (as well as mushroom and berry gatherers) in the family occasionally succeeding, it is understandable why there are four freezers in the Smith household.

Joel Webster - Missoula, Montana (back to top)

Joel joined the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA) board in the spring of 2008 after spending two years contributing to the mission of BHA through issues involvement and organizational development. A born and raised westerner and lifelong sportsman, Joel has been committed to hunter/angler issues since he was first old enough to carry a rifle.

After completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Idaho in 2000, Joel moved to his current home of Missoula, MT where he earned a master’s degree in Environmental Science at the University of Montana. Joel works professionally as a Policy Initiative Manager for the Theodore Roosevelt Partnership where he engages sportsmen to conserve roadless areas and ensures that energy development is balanced with the needs of fish and wildlife.

A strong believer in the old saying, “those who show up make the rules,” Joel is heavily involved as a volunteer working to protect our hunting and fishing heritage. Joel has served on both the Executive Board of the Montana Wildlife Federation and Hellgate Hunters and Anglers, a local rod and gun club near his home.

When not building relationships and empowering sportsmen on behalf of our hunting and fishing heritage, Joel spends his time fishing clear mountain streams for native trout in the summer and pursuing deer, elk, and game birds in the fall. Spending more than 40 days afield each year, there is nothing Joel likes better than stalking buck mule deer in the rugged high country of the Northern Rockies.