The Colorado Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Chapter Leadership Team has approved the chapter’s first official Group (i.e., sub-chapter). TheSoutheast Colorado Group will be led by Regional Director Tyrell Woodward and Assistant Regional Director Ben Montgomery.
Ty was born and raised in Lamar, Colorado. He grew up hunting small game and upland birds (pheasant, quail and doves), along with fishing the lakes (for walleye, crappie, catfish, small and largemouth bass), in southeast Colorado. Ty moved to Colorado Springs for college and started hunting elk, mule deer, and Arkansas River Valley whitetails, in addition to working as a seasonal employee for Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) and in the hunting department at Sportsmans Warehouse.
He heard about BHA through the MeatEater podcasts with Steven Rinella. “After listening to the podcasts and discussions with guests,” Ty said, “I decided that an organization with the caliber of hunters/conservationists represented in his podcast was worth my involvement and money.”
Ty has a BS in Biology from Colorado College and a MS in Wildlife Biology from CSU-Pueblo. He was a CPW seasonal technician for nine years and currently lives in Florissant, working as a Private Lands Wildlife Biologist, with a focus on Forested Habitat, for CPW, NRCS and the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. “I currently hunt elk, whitetail, mule deer, and small game (still chase pheasants too), as well as turkeys,” Ty says. He hunts with both a rifle and compound bow.
“I would also like to note that I am excited to be able to pass along the traditions of hunting and fishing to my children as they grow older like my dad did for me. I have the support of a wonderful wife which allows me to spend time in the woods each year and increases the gratification of filling the freezer with game meat,” Ty adds. “I am excited for the future of BHA and my personal involvement. The more I invest in the organization the more I get out of it. I am continually finding that there are more and more like-minded hunters and anglers who also call BHA home.”
Ben was born and raised in rural central Missouri, near the Missouri River. “I began fishing as a young child (too young to remember),” he says. “I started with rod and reel, fishing for bluegill and crappie in the Missouri River bottoms.” He learned to fly-fish at eight, catching rainbows in the spring-fed streams of the Ozarks, and was hunting at age nine, primarily for small game, mentored by his father and brothers. Ben killed his first deer at 11, and today primarily hunts the high wilderness areas of the American Rocky Mountains. “My passions are elk and waterfowl,” Ben says, “though I hunt everything from rabbit to turkey to black bear.”
Although Ben mostly goes after trout these days, given the opportunity he will gladly spend a weekend fishing for crappie. He hunts with both rifle and compound bow, but also shoots a recurve. Ben graduated from Baylor University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and currently works as a Systems Engineer with the Defense Contract Management Agency in Colorado Springs. He lives in Peyton, and says: “As a prior resident of Texas, where publically available land is rare, the threat of the loss of public lands and access to those lands is an issue that greatly concerns me.”
Colorado BHA Chairman, David Lien, said: “An innate passion for, and commitment to, public lands hunting and angling are driving forces in the lives of both Ty and Ben. And they’ve opted to take the initiative—by forming Colorado BHA’s first official sub-chapter Group—to help ensure that our nation’s unequaled public lands hunting and angling heritage is not turned over to private interests or otherwise squandered. We need many more leaders like them.”
For additional information on the Southeast Colorado BHA Group contact Ty Woodward ([email protected]) or Ben Montgomery ([email protected]). A Colorado BHA Denver metro Group is also in the planning stages. Contact Jeff Finn for additional information ([email protected]).
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) is built on a foundation laid down by hunter-conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold, men who understood that America’s outdoor heritage depends upon healthy habitat, and we take the advice of Roosevelt, who said: “Preserve large tracts of wilderness … for the exercise of the skill of the hunter, whether or not he is a man of means.”
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