Since then, the Missoula-based organization has grown to 150,000 members in 550 chapters across the United States.
In 23 years, the Elk Foundation has protected or enhanced nearly 5 million acres of habitat, an area twice the size of Yellowstone National Park.
All it really needed to take off, however, was for one man to hear about it: Buntz Watkins.
Watkins, the former owner and operator of Zip Beverage and an elk hunter himself, got behind the organization early.
On Wednesday night, his efforts were recognized at an event at the Elk Foundation's headquarters.
What the organization needed more than anything in its first years was an early success and some serious financial backing.
Watkins had an idea: maybe Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser's parent company, could help the organization.
Ray Goff, a retired Elk Foundation board member, was working for Anheuser-Busch as a senior administration vice president when he first found out about about the organization.
Goff said the future of elk hunting in the West was looking bleak when the foundation started up.
“The way development was going in the West, all the prime territory was being gobbled up,” he said. “I was already feeling cramped trying to find hunting space.”
Liking what he heard about the foundation, Goff arranged to have August Busch III, president and CEO of the company at the time, meet with Watkins and Bob Munson, the president of the organization.
At first, the Elk Foundation asked for a $2 million loan from the company. Busch instead gave the organization $500,000 in cold, hard cash.
“Without the support of Zip and Buntz, we'd never have gotten to the corporate level,” Goff said.
With that money, the organization made its first land purchase, 16,440 acres of prime elk habitat in southwestern Montana.
Walker “Buddy” Smith, the interim CEO of the Elk Foundation, said that first purchase was crucial.
“It's hard to gain recognition when you're that small,” Smith said. “It really got the ball rolling for us. Under Zip's leadership, (Watkins) put us on the map.”
And Zip didn't back out after the first success.
According to Watkins' son, Bill, who now runs Zip, the distributor started a donation program to benefit the foundation in the mid-1990s.
During hunting season, the company donated a few cents from every case sold to the Elk Foundation.
The first year of the program netted $3,000, Bill Watkins said.
The idea started catching on, he said, and after a few years, other Budweiser distributors in Montana jumped on.
Eventually the program went national, and now Anheuser-Busch donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservation organizations across the country by skimming off a few cents from sales of beer cases.
“It started out with us,” Bill Watkins said.
Because of the connection to Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser, a team of 2,000-pound clydesdales was at the Wednesday night's event and paraded down North Reserve Street. Buntz Watkins also was presented with a painting of a pair of bull elk butting heads.
Bill Watkins said the organization can count on the continued support of Zip.
“(The Elk Foundation's) work is important to the country and to the elk,” he said. “The elk are very lucky to have someone working so hard for them.”
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