Johns Is Elected as President of the Tennessee Valley Sportsmen’s Club

Bill Johns

Knoxville, TN – July 22, 2018: Bill Johns, MBA, MPA (also known locally and globally as The Hawaiian Shirt Guy™) has been recently elected as President of the Tennessee Valley Sportsmen’s Club, the oldest conservation and hunting and fishing club in Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Sportsmen’s Club (TVSC) was founded in East Tennessee with its roots going back to the 1940s and even before. It has been the premier Club over the decades for being a leading advocate for conservation, wildlife resources, sportsmen, land management, and seasoned, beginning, or student professionals of the wildlife and conservation industries.

“Johns is the perfect leader of our Club with his passion, expertise, and knowledge and his local and national networks are outstanding” stated Carter Davis, a former pastPresident of the Club and retired Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) officer.

Both Davis and Rocky Hall, one of the most senior members and current Vice President recruited Johns to lead their Club after seeing him active in the community and what he has done with the Farragut Gun Club, the leading Second Amendment and adventure, outdoors, and preparedness organization in the region which he founded. Hall states that “Johns is a charismatic and very polished communicator with knowledge both wide and deep and as such, he has already positively impacted the Club”. Hall further

explains they invited Johns and his family to the Club’s Annual Wild Game Dinner several years ago where he was an instant hit among the membership and already had relationships with the TWRA as he and his daughter and father were recently profiled in the TWRA magazine.

On being elected Club President, Johns states that “it is a great honor to be elected to lead such a historic organization in the conservation movement within our State and especially with the rich history found here in East Tennessee and its membership”. Johns further commented that “it is like walking into a room of the old Field & Stream and Outdoor Life stories; these members were there or new the members, people, and founders who were there in the very beginning and because of this, I am just a very lucky person to be associated with such a finer group of conservationists, hunters, fishermen, and wildlife professionals”.

Johns was introduced to the outdoors as an early child roaming the backwoods of Dayton, Ohio collecting fossils and dinosaur bones, interacting with nature and wildlife, and even living in a neighborhood developed by a farmer who had exotic species from all over the world just a bike ride away. Johns was also inspired by local fishing trips as part of summer vacations with his father and grandfather to a family lake in Mississippi. It was when he moved to West Tennessee (City of Germantown) with his parents that he at the age of 13 took his TWRA Hunter Safety Class and later went duck hunting on opening day in 1983 and bagged the first duck of his father’s duck hunting club in Arkansas. His father, Bob Johns, a retired USAF officer and pilot, shared his incredible passion of ducks with him and the outdoors too. 

After high school graduation, Johns was a park leader for the City of Germantown and received training from park rangers/officer on conservation and wildlife. Many years later, Johns also did a brief

stint at the headquarters of Ducks Unlimited, Inc. working in membership marketing, brand management, and support of its first ever “DU Festival”. Johns is an avid backwoodsman and maker/tinkerer who has been to many outdoor-centric industry shows, writes outdoor stories occasionally, and holds memberships with the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) and the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA). Johns is also an entrepreneur in many outdoor related ventures and initiatives.

The Tennessee Valley Sportsmen’s Club (TVSC) meets regularly at the University of Tennessee Agriculture Campus, holds an annual spring Wild Game Dinner and several fellowship outdoor events throughout the year including the sponsorship of the TWRA’s free fishing day at Concord Park held in the early summer of each year. For more information about the TVSC, please contact Rocky Hall, Vice President at 865.579.6389.