40 years and counting: RMEF still going strong

After 40 years, Charlie Decker seems pretty sure the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is here to stay.

Decker, a Libby native, is one of the founding fathers of the hunter-based conservation group that was born in south Lincoln County in 1984. The group has worked to protect elk habitat and expand elk herds to areas where they were once extirpated.

“I think we’re here to stay,” Decker said in an interview with The Western News earlier this month.

Decker and one of the co-founders, Bob Munson, were honored Aug. 22, with life-size bronze sculptures that stand outside RMEF headquarters in Missoula. They, along with Bill Munson and Dan Bull, were the architects of the group.

In a RMEF news release, Decker said he was humbled.

“It’s a very humbling event for me. I’m frequently asked, ‘Did you ever think it would get this big?’ I reflect on that and it’s been the people. It’s been the right people at the right time throughout our history that believed in something. It’s been our staff, our board and all the volunteers who work their hearts out for the organization. And then there’s the big guy upstairs. The good Lord has really blessed this organization. In hindsight, I have no business being up here. I’m just a regular guy. There’s a reason it happened this way and I just thank the Lord for that. I thank each one of you for coming out today and thank you.’”

Decker shared his recollections of RMEF’s origins.

“Dan Bull was somewhere and saw a brochure for the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep. We talked about the fact that no one was doing anything specifically for elk,” Decker said. “Our seed money was $24,000 and we (he and his wife Yvonne) raided $8,000 from our oldest son’s college fund.”

According to a Bugle staff report detailing the early days, Bob and Bill Munson each got $8,000 from their mother.

The seed money and a $25,000 line of credit was just enough to publish the magazine.

“We printed brochures, sent 42,000 to hunting license buyers from Montana and Colorado and went to Spokane to set up our non-profit,” Decker said.

The brochures offered a membership, a magazine about elk and elk hunting and an annual convention. Out of those tens of thousands of mailers, 233 became RMEF members.

Foundation headquarters were in a trailer located on Lake Creek Road, just outside of Troy.

The next step was developing a publication and the foundation was fortunate to have Lance Schelvan living in their midst. Schelvan was a communication specialist with the U.S. Forest Service.

In the basement of his Libby home, Schelvan put together the first edition of Bugle magazine.

“He made from scratch the Elk Foundation’s flagship, Bugle magazine. It was pure luck for Bob and me to find a talent of this caliber,” Decker said in a 2009 interview with The Western News when Schelvan was honored with a foundation award. “It’s really weird that he was living in Libby, Montana, because he’s as good as there is in the world.”

The initial response in attracting new members may not have been great, but after borrowing more money, 35,000 copies of Bugle magazine were printed.

Some were mailed and many others were hand-delivered to grocery stores and gas stations across the west. That spurred membership to nearly 2,500.

“We dropped them off at grocery stores in Missoula and got them to outfitters,” Decker said. “We then hosted our first convention in 1985 in Spokane to spread the word, but the biggest thing was getting stories and columns from people such as Jim Zumbo, Jack Ward Thomas, Larry Jones, Dwight Schuh, Pat McManus.

“That gave us the credibility with hunters and people who appreciated what we were trying to do,” Decker added.

The Spokane convention, a serious undertaking for the fledgling organization, had the immense draw of the top four typical Boone & Crockett bull elk, trucked in from Alberta, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming.

According to a RMEF staff report, it was the first time in one place that the trophy elk mounts were displayed together.

As the group quickly grew, others who lived in the region believed in its work and got on board.

“Wayne Haines was a president at First National Bank who believed in us, Aaron Jones was a sawmill owner in Oregon and our first chairman, Wallace Pate, had married a Vanderbilt. They really helped us over some rough patches,” Decker said.

After a $1,000 profit at the Spokane convention in April 1985, the group went to Denver the following year and made more than $200,000.

“There are always tough times and good times, but after Denver, we thought we might make it,” Decker said.

Decker also had a staunch ally in his wife Yvonne, a Life Member of the group. She drew the elk on the first brochure and has been a dedicated member of the Lincoln County Committee, serving as chair of the chapter, finance and merchandise departments.

She may have been reluctant to part with $8,000 to start the group, but it’s been full speed ahead since then.

In story on RMEF’s Elk Network, Yvonne said, “For a long time there at the beginning I didn’t think RMEF had a chance, so I did all I could to help.”

Her son, Steve, the Elk Foundation’s Chief Revenue Officer, described his mother as the hardest working person he’s ever met.

“She’s a great example of volunteering for the right reasons,” Steve told Elk Network. “She takes pride in serving a purpose and giving to a cause without expecting anything in return.” 

The foundation’s fund raising work went to its first habitat project - a prescribed burn in the Elk Creek drainage south of Heron. 

Decker said the foundation’s work in the Yellowstone Corridor - the purchase of the 16,440-acre Robb Creek property in Montana - was a major milestone.

“It put us on the map and we proved the money we raised went back into our mission of protecting key habitat corridors,” Decker said.

In August 1985, the foundation held its first Big Game Banquet in Flagstaff, Arizona. Less than a year later, in June 1986, membership reached 10,390. At the end of the year, the group was celebrating the first $100,000 generated to be used for field projects.

By 1988, the old trailer on Lake Creek Road wasn’t nearly big enough for the group’s operations and Missoula was chosen for the new headquarters, mainly because it had to be near an international airport.

The Elk Foundation has boasted that, unlike many non-profits, the vast majority, 90%, of its fundraising goes back into on-the-ground projects. 

That financial diligence has helped it complete more than 14,000 conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects that protected or enhanced more than 8.9 million acres of wildlife habitat and opened or improved public access to more than 1.59 million acres, much of which was completely off-limits to the public.

Decker mentioned a project in 2023 on the 39th anniversary of the foundation that created the Big Snowy Mountains Wildlife Management Area south of Lewistown, opening access to 100,000 acres of public land.

According to a RMEF press release, the family of Forrest Allen ranched on the land and his estate gifted the 5,677-acre property to Shodair Children’s Hospital.

Shodair CEO Craig Aasved knew the hospital wasn’t going into the ranching business and decided to sell it to pay for hospital projects and programs.

RMEF and other partners wrote the check, bought the land and conveyed it to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, which created the new WMA.

Decker also touted the work of the foundation and FWP that created the 142,000-acre Thompson-Fisher Conservation Easement in northwest Montana.

In a 2022 letter to The Western News, Decker wrote, “Today, people still hunt, fish and camp in the Thompson-Fisher. Timber harvest still takes place. The land looks pretty good. It looks a lot better than it would if you had homes and ranchettes lining up the Thompson Valley.”

Decker spoke about the importance of bringing elk back to states east of the Mississippi River.

“The reclaimed strip mine lands and varied topography were made for elk and bringing them back there has been so important to their economy of some of the depressed mining communities,” Decker said.

A history in Kentucky’s Elk Management Plan reported the last wild elk was killed just before the beginning of the Civil War in 1861.

Restoration work since the 1990s by the state and RMEF, which has contributed more than $1 million, have helped create the largest herd of elk east of the Mississippi, more than 10,000 animals.

According to a 2023 story in the Lexington Herald-Leader, the effort to restore Kentucky’s elk population began in 1997 and continued into 2002, when 1,541 elk were released in the restoration zone. Elk came from Utah, Kansas, Oregon, North Dakota, Arizona and New Mexico.

Today, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation now has nearly 225,000 members whose support helped RMEF boasts more than 12,000 volunteers working through more than 500 chapters. 

    The Decker family, including sons Russ, Steve and Ken, and their parents Yvonne and Charlie, gathered at Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation headquarters for a portrait during the Aug. 22, 2024, unveiling of the bronze statue of co-founder Charlie. (Photo courtesy Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation)