2026 College Scholarship Recipient

This year's Brule River Sportsmen’s Club College Scholarship recipient is Wyatt Hiltner, a student at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Wyatt, originally from Becker, Minnesota, grew up fishing and camping on the North Shore of Lake Superior, which sparked his interests in biology and fishery ecology. Wyatt recently graduated from the University of Minnesota-Duluth with a degree in Biology, and is pursuing his Master’s degree in Water Resource Sciences starting this autumn at UMD. He will spend the next three autumn and spring seasons conducting research on the Bois Brule River, analyzing the spawning behaviors of trout and salmon. This will be a continuation and enhancement of the research on salmonid spawning site partitioning done by our 2021 College Scholarship recipient Ben Schleppenbach. Wyatt’s next 3 summers will be spent in Northern Mongolia, where he will be using aquatic camera traps and facial recognition software to improve population estimates of Siberian Taimen. After finishing graduate school, Wyatt hopes to continue a career in cold-water fishery research and management, contributing to the conservation of fragile ecosystems.

Click on Past Recipients to see information on past Brule River Sportsmen's Club College Scholarship recipients.