Fly Rod Crosby Outdoor Lifetime Achievement Award

The Fly Rod Crosby Lifetime Outdoor Achievement Award is presented annually by Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to individual who is dedicated to the stewardship and wise use of Maine's natural resources and who has been active in the Maine outdoors for a lifetime.

The Fly Rod Crosby Lifetime Outdoor Achievement Award honors not only the annual recipient, but also recognizes Cornelia "Fly Rod" Crosby, and her work in promoting and showcasing Maine's outdoors.

Crosby is well known as Maine's first registered guide, a program that she worked hard to establish, but she was also an outdoor mentor, and an ambassador for the state. For 15 years, she wrote an outdoors column in the local newspaper, the Phillips Phonograph, in which she detailed her outdoor adventures, passing on tips and tales that helped others enjoy the outdoors. She organized Maine sporting exhibits at national sportsman's shows in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, showcasing the wonders of Maine's rich outdoor resources, and of course, she guided, sometimes introducing people to their first taste of the Maine outdoors, and for those more experienced, helped fine tune their skills.

Nomination Information

To be eligible, nominees must have hunted, trapped, and fished in Maine for a combined total of 40 years. For example, to meet that requirement an individual may have fished for 20 years, trapped for 10 years, and hunted for 10 years; or could have fished for 30 years and hunted for 10 years. Ideal candidates would also be active in mentoring, teaching, or instructing outdoor activities.

Nominations should include the nominees name, address, phone number, photograph and a few paragraphs about the individual, their experience in the Maine outdoors, and an explanation of why they are a deserving candidate. The nominators contact information should also be included.

Nominations must be submitted between January 1 and July 1 of the calendar year and can be sent by email to Emily MacCabe at Emily.MacCabe@maine.gov or by mail to 353 Water St, SHS 41, Augusta, Maine 04333.

Download nomination form (PDF) or submit a nomination online

2024 Fly Rod Crosby Lifetime Outdoor Achievement Award Recipient – Alexandra Conover Bennett

Alexandra is well known in the North Maine Woods. She has embodied the spirit of the quintessential Maine guide for over 45 years. Alexandra has mentored many in a variety of outdoor skills, and to this day continues an apprentice program that teaches her students the art of carving a wooden paddle. Always a champion of conservation, she has fought to keep the Maine woods accessible and available for all.

She cofounded North Woods Way, a northern woods wilderness and guiding center with her partner Garrett Conover in 1980, and since then she has guided thousands of people from all over the world by canoe, snowshoe, and toboggan and through all seasons in the Northern Maine Forests and beyond.

Alexandra is also a canoe paddle carver, with her own design of a classic North Woods Guiding paddle, of which since 1980, she has signed and numbered. Her expertise is so well known, Alexandra's patterns are now one of the models offered by Shaw and Tenney Paddles and Oars in Orono, Maine.

She is a dedicated teacher of the outdoors and was recognized in 2018 with the Piscataquis County Outstanding Conservation Educator of the Year Award for her exceptional work over the years in natural resource ecology and education. She was an instructor in the Life Jacket program in Piscataquis County, a program developed for troubled youth that provided outdoor experiences and skills, that was soon opened to all and became very popular due to the teaching of Alexandra.

With the outdoors as her classroom, she has been a teacher or demonstrator of Folk Arts at the Maine Festival and Common Ground Fair, a presenter at the Thoreau Wabanaki Festival in Greenville, and a Traditional Outdoor Skills instructor at the College of the Atlantic.

An accomplished author, she and Garrett co-wrote of Snow Walker's Companion: Winter Living and Traveling Skills in the North, which has become the quintessential guide to winter trekking and camping.

Along with her passion for teaching others, Alexandra made it a point to work to conserve, protect and enhance a Maine way of life by working with or serving on numerous boards and commissions over the years including being a Maine Wilderness Guides Founding Member, serving with the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Foundation, and the Friends of Baxter State Park.

2024 Fly Rod Crosby Lifetime Outdoor Achievement Award Recipient – Tenley Skolfield

Tenley has dedicated her life to the outdoors, running her guide business where she has introduced hundreds of people to the outdoors, mentoring children, teens, women and others in Maine's woods and waters, and volunteering her time to countless boards, committees and commissions, as well as organizations to get people outside.

Tenley was first introduced to the Maine outdoors at the age of 9 when she first stepped foot in a duck bind on the New Meadows River. Mentored by her father and grandfather, she was wing shooting at age 10, and by age 12, saving the babysitting money she earned for taxidermy. At 14, she became a presence at deer camp, where she was the only female hunter in the group. While living in Harpswell, she fished for flounder of her grandfather's wharf, caught stripers and blues in the New Meadows, and casted flies for brook trout when on Maine's inland waters.

With her passion for the outdoors cemented as a child, she dreamed of becoming a guide, which she accomplished in 1999 when she became a master Maine Guide and established "as the Crow Flies Guide Service." She later bought and turned around a faltering sporting guide business, Fish River Lodge on Eagle Lake, providing a wonderful atmosphere for families, friends and others to hunt and fish, sharing her extensive knowledge to anyone who came there or went on a guided trip with her.

Tenley recognized that she was extremely fortunate to be exposed to so many outdoor experiences growing up, and she made it a point to pass along her skills. She is tireless when it comes to mentoring, always quick to teach and share her vast experience and knowledge. She has been a teacher and role model in the BOW program, mentored woman upland bird hunters in an annual hunt, and mentored countless children and first-timers in her guide service and sporting lodge.

She also worked tirelessly on a variety of boards to promote conservation, provide opportunities, protect the outdoors. She Served on MDIFW Commissioner's Advisory Council, MDIFW salmon working group, MDIFW nonresident hunter task force, Aroostook County tourism board, Sportsmen's forest landowners Alliance, Maine Professional Guides Association, Maine Conservation Council, National Wild Turkey Federation chapter, Merrymeeting Bay Ducks Unlimited, Eagle Lake Winter Riders and many more.

In 2004, she became an unflappable spokesperson in the first bear hunting referendum. She was eloquent, passionate, and sincere. She spoke publicly at numerous events, appeared in debates, commercials, interviews and just about everywhere. Her efforts, along with many others, were instrumental in preserving Maine's bear management system.

And now as director of operations for Main Street Skowhegan, where she is the director of operations, and working tirelessly to transform Skowhegan to a thriving economic, cultural and recreational destination, she continues to pass along her love and expertise of the Maine outdoors. 

Past Recipients

Over the years, we have honored many deserving individuals whose impact on friends and family could fill books.

  • 2015 Harland Hitchings and Joseph Boudreau
  • 2016 Gary Cobb, Jim Martin, and Oscar Cronk
  • 2017 Carole Dyer and Gabriel Giguere
  • 2018 Dana Johnson and Roger Milligan
  • 2019 Charlie Mann and George Smith
  • 2020 (awarded in 2021) Dan and Sally McAllister
  • 2022 Galen Ruhlin
  • 2023 Jack Gibson
  • 2024 Alexandra Conover Bennett and Tenley Skolfield