Hunting & Heritage  |  10/16/2020

Creating Habitat One Shot at a Time with Federal Ammunition


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By Bob St.Pierre, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever

No company has had a longer relationship with Pheasants Forever than Federal Ammunition.  It’s pretty intuitive when you simply look at the geography.  Federal Ammunition’s production factory is a mere 24 miles from Pheasants Forever’s headquarters office in suburban Saint Paul, Minnesota.   It’s that proximity that fostered a business relationship, and ultimately friendships, between employees of both companies.  

Two of the key players in the growth of the relationship was Federal’s Bill Stevens and PF’s Joe Duggan.  In 1997, Joe brought an idea to Bill that focused on adding the Pheasants Forever logo to Federal’s pheasant loads.  Joe even lined up another then-based Minnesota company, Gander Mountain, to commit to carrying the special loads on their store’s shelves the following hunting season.  And in 1998, Federal brought to market the first Pheasants Forever-labeled Wing-Shok shotgun shells.  To say the collaboration was a hit would be a gross understatement.  Bird hunters cleaned out the shells and generated a donation from Federal to PF’s habitat mission with each box sold that season.  

The program evolved in 2009 when Duggan and Federal’s Kyle Tengwall, Ryan Bronson, Jason Nash, Rick Stoeckel, and Tim Brandt brought a group of Pheasants Forever volunteers together for a series of focus groups.  If memory serves, there were three focus groups each comprised of about a dozen chapter volunteers who were kept in the dark about the company hosting the conversations.  The moderator led the group through a series of questions about Pheasants Forever, hunting, buying habitats, and ultimately ammunition.  The conversations reached their climax when the moderator unveiled a series of “test” names and packaging around a new pheasant load.  I remember the name “Ringneck Rocket” was a leading candidate before the PF volunteers had their say.  The overwhelming winner of that focus group process was the creation of the most popular pheasant load on the market still today, Prairie Storm.  

This season, Federal has three new products on the market for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever members.  First and second on that list are the brand new 16- and 28-gauge loads featuring the updated FLITECONTROL FLEX wad and a mixed payload of standard pellets and FLITESTOPPER lead to produce full, consistent patterns.













And third, we’re thrilled to introduce Quail Forever logoed Federal loads to the market this season as well. And just like their predecessors, all three of these new Federal Ammunition products boast the PF or QF logos and every logoed box generates a donation directly to the organization’s wildlife habitat mission.

And to top it off, Federal Ammunition is incentivizing PF supporters this season with their “It Pays to be a Pheasant Fan” promotion.  Consumers who buy at least one case (10 boxes) of Federal Premium Upland High Velocity Lead or Upland Magnum Lead, Prairie Storm or Wing-Shok shotshell ammunition will earn a rebate of $5.00 per box, or elect to send a donation of $6.00 per box to Pheasants Forever.  In appreciation, a donation of $60 or more earns you a promotion code for a COMPLIMENTARY Pheasants Forever Rooster Booster level annual membership or an extension of your existing membership, a $75 value from Pheasants Forever.  Check out Federal’s website for more details about this rebate program

Add all those factors together and it’s easy to see why every shot ever taken on the Rooster Road Trip since the event’s creation in 2010 has been with Federal Ammunition.  Federal ammo is the only shell that goes into any of my guns, and I hope every bird hunter with a conservation ethos makes Federal Ammunition their go-to shell this season and beyond.