Conners Combines Love For Outdoors With a Passion for Writing
Bill Conners remembers a simpler time growing up in Poughkeepsie as a 12-year-old.
He would stick out his right thumb and hitchhike rides from Main Street to Sprout Creek by the Taconic State Parkway and the Salt Point Turnpike to fish and hunt.
“The only looks I would get was when I came back with a couple of trout or a few rabbits,” Conners said. “It was a different time back then, but it was a lot of fun.”
Coming from an immediate family of 12 that didn’t show much interest in hunting and the outdoors, Conners got into the outdoors through an uncle and a devoted group of friends. While times are different today, and anyone who tries to hitchhike through Poughkeepsie would probably not come back, Conners’ passion for hunting remains.
Since those days as a youngster, Conners went on to have a 30-year career at IBM in Poughkeepsie. He thoroughly enjoyed his time in that industry, but while much of his time was spent indoors working with computers, he never lost his connection with the outdoors.
“It was always important for me to get whenever I could,” Conners said. “We all have our ways to unwind and relax, and it could get pretty stressful at times so getting out and hunting and fishing was always my outlet.”
A few years before he retired from IBM in 1997, he found a new passion: writing.
As Conners puts it, “happenstance” brought him into a job at the Poughkeepsie Journal in 1994 and he’s been writing for Gannett ever since.
“It happened because they had an outdoor columnist leave and somehow my name came up,” Conners said. “The sporting community was afraid that maybe that slot wouldn’t get filled and we wanted to get our hands on it just so we could deliver the message to people in the sporting community and beyond.”
Conners thought he’d be part of a larger outdoors and recreation section, but he soon realized that wasn’t the case.
“All of a sudden, ‘we’ meant me,” he said. “I ended up being the guy that would put together all the information about what was happening in the community. It started small but then it kind of mushroomed from there.”
Conners found more of a platform than he ever thought he would. For him, it is important that his column isn’t just about recreation or the outdoors. He tries to look for deeper meanings, foster dialogue, and create awareness about important issues in the community.
“If I write about a gun issue, I don’t write it about it in the context of the Second Amendment,” Conners said. “That’s not the issue for us. The issue is, how do we use firearms how do we keep them safe? How do these new laws affect us?”
While Conners has a devoted audience of members of the Dutchess County outdoors and recreation community, he prefers to angle his columns toward people who don’t hunt or fish.
“I don’t do it in the context of trying to recruit new hunters or anglers,” he said. “I just want people to understand what we do even if they don’t participate themselves. There are people out there who will never hunt or fish, but if I can make them understand why we do it and what the value is, that’s the compelling thing for me.”
Indeed, it’s the discussions he engages in with people outside the community that keep Conners interested in what he does.
“Sometimes it feels like I’m preaching to the choir,” he said. “It’s nice to know you have people who agree with you, but the real satisfaction I get is when I get a note or a phone call from someone who does not hunt or fish, but because of something they read in my column, they feel compelled to let me know what they’re thinking or ask me a question.
“I’ll always be around to take the time for anyone who does the same to write me a letter or give me a call. I owe it to them.”
