See You In San Antonio

By W. Laird Hamberlin, CEO of SCI and SCIF

Originally published in the June 2024 edition of Safari Times.

I look forward to meeting all members who will be able to attend the Grand Opening of SCI’s San Antonio offices on Saturday, June 29.

We’re set to have a great time as SCI turns the page to a new chapter in its storied history. As we announced earlier, SCI has moved its business operations from Tucson, Ariz., to San Antonio, Texas.

As SCI’s chief of staff, it has been a study in details as operations move to a spot more centrally located in the country and in one of the most hunter-friendly states in the USA.

Many staff members have moved from Tucson to San Antonio, while others continue to work either from SCI’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., or remotely from locations across North America and Europe.

SCI is global, and so are our operations. SCI has expanded more around the world in the past few years than it did in all the years before. SCI is THE most effective organization of hunters anywhere.

Nowhere could that have been more apparent than during Lobby Day in Washington, D.C., last month. SCI members and staff met with more than 100 Congressional offices on Lobby Day, telling the legislators what measures SCI supports and which ones we oppose.

We also had many successes, both among legislative bodies and in courts.

All of this emanates from SCI’s Hunters’ Embassy on Capitol Hill. Speaking of that, we also salute Armand and Mary Brachman, Dr. Gerald L. Warnock, Lee and Penny Anderson, the Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Outdoor Fund, and a number of SCI Chapters in making substantial donations to help retire the debt on this critical building.

Advocacy is one of the six pillars upon which the future of hunting rests. The other five are Chapters, Event Services (Convention), Hunting, Membership and Conservation.

During the Board of Directors meeting last month in Washington, D.C., SCI signed a landmark memorandum of understanding with Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa that heralds even closer ties between the two groups as we forge forward together into the future.

This was on the heels of a joint venture SCI entered into earlier with Cinegética, the largest hunting show in Spain. And there will be more to talk about during the coming weeks and months as SCI continues to expand, both in size and influence.

Texas Trophy Hunters Association, now part of the SCI family, will hold three Extravaganza hunting shows in Houston, Fort Worth and San Antonio in August. There will be an all-new and even bigger Extravaganza in Dallas in January.

Meanwhile, I encourages everyone to vote this coming November. The future of hunting depends on right-thinking officials to be elected at all levels of government.

And make sure to plan now to attend the SCI Convention in Nashville Jan. 22-25, 2025. See you there.