The IHEA-USA is excited to announce record attendance combined with new training tools at the 2021 Virtual Conference on May 19th and 20th.

Coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the IHEA-USA, this action-packed 2021 virtual conference opened the doors to allow all volunteer Hunter Education Instructors the opportunity to attend the conference for FREE when in the past, travel and the cost of missed time away from jobs were prohibitive to attending. This year, registrants from 50 states, two territories, and six countries with ten times more volunteer instructors attended the conference than in the history of any IHEA-USA conference.

“Normally, it’s very difficult for a volunteer instructor to attend the conference. Most Hunter Educators are volunteers (largest volunteer corps outside of volunteer firemen), so many of them have other responsibilities during the days of the conference,” Alex Baer, Executive Director for the IHEA stated. “We were extremely fortunate to have an amazing group of sponsors step up this year making free registration possible, and the response from volunteer instructors was overwhelmingly positive. We’ve had so much feedback that we’ve not only uploaded the conference feed to our website for other instructors to view when they are able, but we are also planning to do live feeds in future conferences to continue serving this critical segment of hunter educators.”

The IHEA-USA was also able to pilot a new education platform with its first-ever online Field First Aid Course sponsored by My Medic for instructors, which effectually trains the trainers at the conference. It is the first of many forthcoming digital training opportunities the IHEA-USA will deliver to their instructor membership.

Many thanks go out to conference sponsors for making this virtual event accessible and successful.

For more information on this release or sponsorship, contact Leaha Thomas leaha@boltstrategy.com or Mike Thomas mike@boltstrategy.com .

About the IHEA-USA: The International Hunter Education Association – USA (IHEA-USA) is the professional hunter education association affiliated with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service hunter education programs. These programs employ 55,000 instructors, many of whom are volunteers, teaching hunting and shooting safety and responsibilities throughout the United States.