How Do You Become a Better Hunter? | Scott Olmsted

Nobody is born a great hunter.

They become one by staying curious.

Scott Olmstead, Editor-in-Chief of American Hunter, joins Off the Beaten Path to discuss nearly three decades of outdoor journalism, the evolution of hunting media, and why the best hunters never stop learning.

In this episode we discuss:

• The evolution of hunting media
• Print vs. digital storytelling
• Hunting in Africa and Alaska
• Conservation and ethics
• Why mentorship matters
• How newcomers can confidently enter the outdoors

Whether you're a lifelong hunter or just getting started, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom from someone who has spent nearly 30 years telling the stories of America's hunters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Guys, we want to welcome young. And gals. Guys and gals. Yep. Cowboys and cowgirls.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Yeah, and I think maybe you're going, Welcome back, America. I was. I was gonna say we're worldwide, man.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

We are worldwide. We get a lot of downloads across the globe. But today we have a special guest. It feels like everybody on this this this season has been special, right? Um Scott Olmstead, the editor-in-chief of American Hunter, is here with us. Scott, I would do the introduction, but I want you to introduce yourself because I know that uh, well, you know, I think you can say it better than I can.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Tell our listeners about yourself, man.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Well, I'm Scott Olmsted. I'm the editor-in-chief of the NRA's American Hunter magazine. Or really, you should just say American Hunter because it's more than a magazine these days. And uh, it's the largest hunting magazine in the world. Uh, and part of that is because America has more hunters than anybody else in the world. And the NRA has millions of members. Uh, I've been there 28 years. It'll be 28 years this at the end of May. Uh I'm uh photojournalist by training.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Uh I went to the University of Missouri School of Journalism and I majored in photojournalism, and I was a news photographer. That's what I was trained to do. Come out of there, work for a Metro Daily, work for Life Magazine, work for Nat Geo, something like that, right? And I was uh languishing kind of in that because newspapers are it's a dog-eat dog world. You don't make any money there. Yeah, uh, it eats its young, like like the teaching industry does. And I was looking for a way out, and I had worked at Quantica Marine Base as a civilian because I had been a Marine, and I think they were looking for I was uh I think they were looking for somebody who knew the difference between a corporal and a colonel to be a civilian at the public affairs office at Quantica, and I befriended a couple of Marines, and um I I left Quantica, and then I was working for the paper um right up the road, and two of those Marines had gotten out of the Marine Corps and they'd gotten a job at NRA Publications.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

And I was looking for something that just this was not, even though it's what I was trained for, it was it was tough and it wasn't it wasn't getting much of a leg up. And previously, when I've been in the Marine Corps, uh I used to like walk to the seven-day store on base all the time and buy Peterson's Hunting Magazine. And at the time, Craig Bonnington was the editor of it. And I looked at that and I read it every month, and I'm like, I could do this. You know, I grew up as an outdoorsman, I'm an Eagle Scout, uh, lifelong shooter, trained journalist, former Marine. I could do, I could do like an editor of a hunting magazine. But I had tabled that, I had forgotten that. So I was looking for I don't know what in the Washington, D.C. area. And one of those Marines I had befriended called me and said, Did you see the paper this morning? No, the one ads. There's a job for assistant editor, American Hunter. It's got you written all over it. So I applied and I've been there ever since.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Let's go. Man, we just need some applause. We can't hear it. It's post-production, but there's a there's clapping going on.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

So it just worked out. It's like I hadn't even occurred to me like the NRA is right here in the northern Virginia, and they published magazines. I knew it. When I was a kid, my my dad got American Hunter, but I just totally spaced out, and I didn't want to move my family to New York or LA or so I didn't, you know, I was poking around and and this this came up, and I've held every editorial position in American Hunter in the last 28 years.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Congratulations, man.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

That's amazing. Yeah, what a story.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Um, like first we said thank you for your service. We appreciate it. That's amazing. I've always wanted to join the core, but by the time I was old enough to join, I already had tattoos. So they were like, nah, not yet. We're like, okay, just me and my twin brother, we never got a chance to go, but we know now that they have changed that.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Um, so you're a lifelong hunter, huh?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, yeah. I grew up um my my family on my dad's side wasn't much of a hunter, but um hunters, but on my mom's side they were my granddad and my uncles. And my dad, I think, gravitated to that, always wanted to do that. He died when I was a kid. But I just grew up calling myself a hunter. Like I killed a uh a record black bear on my birthday with some family friends when I was 14, 15 years old. But I didn't kill my first deer until after I got out of the Marine Corps at age 22.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Didn't have time when I was in the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_03 4:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

And uh growing up, I didn't have as many opportunities as I might to go hunting, but I was still among that clique in school, right? Like the hayseeds, like we called ourselves hunters, right? There was enough of us, even in a suburban high school in Arlington, Virginia. And so it started to become reality, and um yeah, and then fast forward then I then I moved to Missouri, hunted one day while I was out there through a friend, came back home to to Arlington, Virginia, and and then living in Fairfax County, Virginia, looking for a way out of newspapers, and you know, and then this fell in my lap, and I'm like, and I and I knew I could apply, I felt like a good fit, and I didn't think I'd be there this long.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

I thought I was in an MBA program at the time, like looking for a way out of journalism. Yeah, and uh majored in marketing and business school and thought I'd the NRA would be like the pinnacle of my journalism career, be like a dream job. I thought I'd be there a couple of years. That was 28 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

But you know what? That's the kind of career that uh people dream of. Remember uh uh in the motor city days, like you go to GM and have a long illustrious career, you have stability and now good luck, good luck finding a job like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Well, I'd love to ask you about what you've seen, right? That's a long, long time since you've been there. Like, what have you seen from when you first got in to you know, fast forward even 10 and 20, 28 years now? How much has it evolved, you know, and what what are things that you've seen that that maybe you weren't expecting, or you know, that you were on the on the like journalism business side, uh, this has been a great era of change.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

In the early 90s, I was trained where uh everything was set in type and like a newspaper controlled its destiny by owning its own print printers. Yep. And at the daily paper I worked at before I came to the NRA, we had our own printers in the back. So that was like a cool feeling to to hear them fire up at the end of the day for the next morning. Um everything was set by the typesetters. You walk down a certain air area of the newsroom, and they had these giant like uh um lit boards, and they would build the page.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

Really?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

And then everything became desktop publishing. Yeah. And when I got to DNR, we had to get on the internet, we would go to the library and log in on that computer. To like now you have it on your phone. Now we have it on every one of our own desktops in our offices at work. Um everything is uh done on InDesign. Uh, I work now remotely with a laptop. We use Dropbox, we send big files back and forth to our to our graphic designer who lays it out and then electronically ships it to the printer. So we've cut out so many steps in the business aspect of it. Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Um shout out to the creatives. Yeah, you know, we're creatives at heart. Yeah, we do graphic design, we're in the media, you know. These are this is our small setup here, but we we have a production studio with something about half a million dollars worth of gear, like video, audio. So, guys, if you're creatives venturing into the outdoors, this is the conversation you want to listen to.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

So, um, man, one thing you said that it's how simple the process is, what kind of stories are you guys highlighting now? You as the editor-in-chief, are what kind of stories are you highlighting?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Like our long form feature story, written kind of stuff, but still mostly destination and adventure and tactics and technique.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Uh we we do plenty of gun reviews, you know, guns, ammo, optics. We have a know-how department where we have a couple of uh valuable contributors who tell you how to hunt ducks or what to do in the early part of spring turkey season or or how to spot and stalk elk or other big game, shooting techniques, shooting school pieces. Um and then anymore, it's not just a magazine, of course. We got a website. That's right. Uh, we got a very big social media presence where we'll film a reel at a at a trade show and uh about some um manufacturer's new product, and we'll we'll turn that person loose and let him or her explain it. We post that and people find that on Facebook and on Instagram. We'll get a couple hundred thousand or a million hits within a week. Nice, not on everything, you know, it's hit or miss. Yeah, it doesn't flip. But it's the the the ways and the mediums by which you can communicate with the audience is expanding, and we're trying to grow with that. It's new for us in that in the sense that we've always been like, well, we're we're print journalism is what we do. So let's print another magazine, let's print another book. But people aren't looking at a book anymore, they're not reading like that. So we're we're stepping into other realms, you know, and learning how to communicate with a broader audience. Yeah, and so that's another aspect of the business of journalism that's changed. We're we're um we might be gun writers, but how about we're just content creators in the two-A space, like all of us.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Stepping into the digital age, and I've heart, digital age.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

That's it. Yeah, and embracing both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a I'm a 90s guy, I loved magazines, right? I remember that was we were just talking about this the the content, you know, anything's at your fingertips, right? Like you said, if turkey season's coming up and you want to jump online and find whatever you want to read about it, and it's cool that there's a source like that that embraced it and has all these channels now, and you can speak directly with the people doing it. You know, there is no right that I'm sure you came from the era of remember writing in, right? You'd write into it.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, and now it's I mean I I learned to type on an IBM Selectric in high school.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Hold on. Shout out to that.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Jeez, and I'll tell you, it's been one of the most valuable skills I ever learned. It helped starting in boot camp. We marched into the chow hall for for our one week of where our platoon had to be the chow hall huskies. Yeah, they're gonna put people behind the serving line, they're gonna give some people to the cooks, they're gonna put some people in the pot shack, which is knee deep water, cleaning big old pots that are serving, you know, um, and some people in the scullery where you collect all the recruits dishes and wash them. And we're standing in line and they're handing out people and they're looking for somebody to work in the office, and they shout, who can who can type? Well, first thing I learned is keep your mouth shut. Don't volunteer for anything. Yeah, but then there's one guy up front who said he can do like 30 or 35 words a minute. That ain't gonna cut it for me. Yeah, sir. Yeah, yeah. Recruit can type 60 words a minute, sir. Yeah, get up here, Olmstead. So I had a job so that it got me out of the pocket shack. I worked in the office. So, and to this day, like you know, I can spit out and boom. I if we're talking, I'm trying to take notes from what you're saying. Yes, yeah, I can write it down a lot better than my chicken scratch on a notepad. Right. And so I'll do that sometimes on the phone if I'm taking notes from someone I'm interviewing by phone.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Uh it's a very valuable skill. Well, it's amazing. So generation, like uh we saw it, right? I remember we had Commodore 64s in middle school, right? My mom was a business teacher and she was now with the typewriter. I could that is seared into my mind because she'd be after school, she could do shorthand, just all these things that, like you said, I saw the evolution of it. I think of this because I worked in radio for 14 years. And when I first got in, I could see some of that older stuff, the real-to-reel machines, the tape, the LP, and them, the machines. And I'm like, man, I I that was the old go, you know. I I'm right in the middle of that transformation. To and now, and even when I left, it was all automated, right? I used to run the board, that was my job. I was a board up, and by the time I left, it was like set it in everything, commercials would fire off. So it's just cool to see that, especially in an industry you're in, right? That that you embrace that you learned about, and fast forward 28 years, yeah, you're and we're here, yeah, you know, digitally broadcasting in the middle of the NRA show in Houston, Texas.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

This back in the day would have been an easy right, right. So it's just a $30,000 thing just to do.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

It's cool, like you said, it's not I'm an ed I'm an editor, right? And I just happen to be in the firearm two-A space. You know, there's so many parallels that I see just from us doing this.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

So, as the editor in chief, do you ever get to write stories yourself and then public them?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

I write plenty. Like if uh if I did I I wrote a book on uh shooting skills, it's called Make Every Shot Count. And it's sort of like a triatise on precision rifle and patrol rifle. I teach you how to conduct yourself on a hunt, how to carry the gun on sling arms, how to get it off sling arms. There's a couple of techniques the way you might carry the gun, how to use the sling to help you make a better shot, how to use rest, um, how to choose a scope, mount a scope, why, why you might want to pick a bolt action, what kind of rifle you want to pick, what kind of caliber, and then and then how to shoot long. Come-ups, doping the wind, shooting moving targets. It's all in there. So it's geared for hunters. It's just a book I knew I had in me. I could do it. I got I gotta find I gotta find a wherewithal to do a couple more. Everybody's got one book in them, and I need I need to come up with some more, but I haven't yet. I did it because it was fun and it and it was uh I just knew I could do it. I could offer something. It's not it's not a unique there, there are no new ideas, they're only new ways of presenting them. That's it. But I knew I had that book in me and I could offer something to market.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

I reckon you could write a book about the the transition from analog to publishing. Um, so what are some of the cool store hunt stories you've done? Because, you know, I know before you sat down and you said something about South Africa. Do you go to Africa often to hunt?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

I've been to Africa nine times. Let's go. Not that many, but compared to the guy who hadn't been there once, it's a lot. Yeah, it's a hunt bomb. Yeah, yeah. It it's fun. I really South Africa is my second favorite country outside the United States, right? So the Afrikaners are like us. They like their beer, they like their football, in this case, rugby. Rugby. They like their barbecues, they like hunting. Yeah, it's not much different than us. Yeah, that's it. And they're good people, yeah. It's awesome. And uh every boy over there grows up killing an impala in a kudu before he's age ten.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

That's man, see, that's yeah, and that, but that's just like that's culture to them. Yeah, that's life. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Yeah, tell us what tell us one of those stories. What's one of your most memorable Africa trips?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Shoot. I'm on the spot. I got too many, but I'm trying to think of like maybe uh what's a good one? I'm trying to think. Well, my favorite thing to hunt, it's in Africa, Cape Buffalo. And it's because it's it's dangerous game, so there's an element of danger to it. Uh, it's more exclusive, it's expensive, right? But a Cape Buffalo is doable even for the common man. Like a guy over here, an electrician or somebody, he'll save for years to do like a uh a dream elk hunt, right? Yeah, you can do the same thing for Cape Buffalo. Now, us normal people, we can't afford a lion hunt for 100 grand. We can't afford an elephant hunt, same kind of price, and they're getting hard to come by. A leopard hunt may be affordable, but the way you do it, you might not see a leopard. And if you just drop 18 grand for a 10-day hunt and you sat every night in that blind and no leopard ever came in, you feel like, why did I spend my money? Right, but that's the nature of the hunt. Yeah, Cape Buffalo is spot and stalked. You'll drive the trails, you're you're you're looking for a play, a fresh place where bulls cross the road, and the trackers get out and they check it out and they're looking at the tracks. How many are here? That one looks older, that looks pretty good, and they look like they're an hour old. We're gonna walk. Yeah, and then you walk them down. It might be five minutes, it might be five hours. But you walk, but then when you get out, and then it's on, and now you're face to face with them. And so it's doable, and it's not as expensive as uh those other species, but it's every bit as dangerous. There's a lot of adrenaline, it's very rewarding. So I've done that three times.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

You can throw it in the fridge, right? That's good meat.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah, but I've in Africa, our USDA won't let us bring home anything from uh overseas, right? So nothing. So everything, everything you kill on a safari in Africa serves the next group of hunters. Yes, you're eating stuff that was killed last week or last month. Yeah, so nothing goes to waste. All the guys who are helping with a hunt who aren't part of your outfit that may be hired. They all go on with meat to feed their families. I I've been on farms, uh, what we'd call a ranch. Everything over there is a farm. Yeah, uh, the farm will support the outfitter and his extended family and all of the other families that live on that farm, who otherwise would be destitute. But here they got a purpose, they got a job, yeah, they got some fresh meat on a regular basis. Everybody lives pretty well.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Do you know uh Nick Chan over there at Taurus?

SPEAKER_00 17:32

No.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

So what's really cool about him, because because we before we sat down, we told you how we're our goal is to funnel people into the industry and grow the space. So Chan is actually from South Florida where we're from. He's more in the Miami district, but we're from Palm Beach. He's been in the space now, I want to say for eight, nine years, almost a decade, but he's now he's an avid hunter. And he actually took us out. Me from my first hog hunt. He's he grew up hunting with his paw, but you know, it's he went to Africa last year. And so hearing his story, it's like here you are sitting in front of us with a lifetime of experience and hearing the uh the zeal he has for just like he's uh he told us what was it this week. Yeah, he does this week. I'm going back to Africa next year.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

It gets in your blood real quick.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

That's exactly what he said.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, I mean, over here we're used to hunting like looking for a big white tail, an alkamulder, whatever it is, one animal. And so you're just hoping to find a couple so you have a choice, make you feel like you had a little bit, but sometimes you're grateful just to see one, it'll do, and you shoot it. But when you find game over there, it's an entire herd.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

And you do have a choice, and you do find the biggest impala in the group, yeah, the biggest kudu. And not and the pH won't let you settle for just ah, that one will do. No, no, no, we can do better. Yeah, and so it's very gratifying that you know your money's going towards an honest chance and and a and a prolific chance. Like you're gonna find game and you're gonna find enough to make you realize, wow, this I kind of had some control over the situation.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Yeah, yeah. That's cool. I love that you said that control over the situation. Because I I said in a previous episode, one of the gentlemen I like uh in in the who's been in the space and grew up hunting and all that is Steven Ronello. I love how he approaches the ethics of hunting, right? Because he describes it as a very intimate experience. And I've now gone on two hunts with my best friend, uh, and we we've both you know killed an animal, and it is an intimate experience. I like I like the feeling of so the the conversation, I I love my daughter. I'm I don't want to put her on blast or anything like that, but we're on two different sides of the aisle, right? And um I I've told her, and uh and it's really cool because she's now realizing that there is more to it than just a trophy just a trophy, right? It's more for us, it's about conservation. And I know these were little hogs that we were killing and taking off the land, but really you helped save an animal, right? Because the the folks who own the property, it's actually here in Dallas, South Dallas.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah, yeah, Mansfield.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Mansfield was telling us that man, if a cow steps in one of the like the part of the the sand where the or the dirt where the hogs were um what what it what was it?

SPEAKER_00 20:21

What they root in there, they tear up the ground, yeah, and uh they will cause agricultural equipment damage. Yep. Yeah, prairie dogs feel why do you shoot prairie dogs? They'll eat 30% of a hay crop. Yeah, that's money.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

They their burrows, a cowboy and his horse step in that. Yeah, cowboy's throne maybe breaks a shoulder or worse. Yeah. Cow the the horse breaks a leg. Yeah, that's money. Yeah, and that's pain.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

And so And that's what they told us that, like, for instance, they're uh they have cows a little further south. That yeah, sometimes it just makes more sense to put the cow down because it might be older or might be too expensive, and you know, you're gonna use the meat, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Back to his point, money, right? It all yeah, it affects the ecosystem and the business of things that they're running.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah, pigs just represent a year-round opportunity for some fun, yeah, some uh some some adventure. Very little total. They're prolific breeders to uh uh Sal can have two or three litters in a year. Yeah, I it's like we're and they're spreading. They're in like 49 states now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I don't know if they got them in Alaska. That's about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh so you can find them everywhere now in a forest near you. I like Florida pig hunting. Yeah, I've hunted quite a bit on the uh around the space coast. It's like a jungle around there. Yeah, yeah. When you're in there, it feels a little spooky. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

And oddly enough, we've come to Texas for both our hog hunts. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Yeah, you know, it's but it's cool. I love it. Speaking of which, have you ever hunted in Alaska?

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yeah, I've hunted, I've been in Alaska five times. I've hunted for moose, uh, sick of black tails on Kodiak. I've had a low when on the Moose Hun, I had a grizzly tag in my pocket, didn't see a grizzly. I hunted coastal brown bears in the Aleutian Islands. Um what else did I do? Seems to meet there's another one in there. So a caribou hunt. I did a caribou hunt where I didn't get a caribou.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Those are massive. So. Out of all the animals you've hunted, what's your favorite to eat?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

In North America, moose tops the list, bar none. Really? Moose is stinking awesome. Moose elk. And then Western game, whether it's mule deer or pronghorn, it depends. To me, white tail's bottom of the bottom of the heap. Okay. Bottom. It's their diet. Yeah, yeah. And so like a lot of non-hunters go, I don't like game. It tastes gamey. I don't like, I don't like venison. They've probably eaten the whitetail that wasn't well cared for and wasn't well cooked. There are techniques to all of this. And it starts with the fact that game doesn't have any fat on it. Yeah. You can't do any such thing as well done. It's got to be medium rare or rare. California blacktail. I just shot my second one last year. Shot them in a vineyard in Pasaroblus.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Those deer live and die their whole lives underneath those grapevines. They're eating carbohydrates their whole life. And when you skin that buck in August, it's covered in fat. It's delicious. It's the sweetest deer meat I've ever had. Wow. It's delicious. Yeah, yeah. And so that's that's my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

At the Bob Jackson preserve. That's where I was going. What are you gonna say? Oh, the black bears, too. Yeah, the black bears, too.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

What were you gonna go with?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

No, that was it. Yeah, I was thinking as soon as he said black bear, and and apparently I I could be wrong on this. Uh it's specific regions, they don't hibernate there. Is that so they are very fat? Right, right. Yes, they're eaten year-round. Man, bro, they was oh amazing. He said black bear. I said, Oh, I gotta try this, and it was not what I expected at all. It was it was A plus.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

So a funny smooth story. He goes to Maine every summer uh for family vacation, and him and his son, his son is uh now is a pro golfer, like he's earning his stripes. Yeah, he sends me a picture and he goes, Look what's coming across the golf course up here.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

This moose was massive. I mean, you know, I knew I didn't think a moose was small, right? Florida guy. But when you see it and it's yes, not right up on us yet, yes, and it's still massive. Yep, yeah, I'm like, dude, that is crazy. He just so majestic and and massive and animal.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

I can, and I do all the time. But uh if I'm on a guided hunt, I like the guide earning stripes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm the bullet guy. Yeah, I took it guy. I took it. I give him the news, he takes care of it.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Yeah, I can imagine that's like a a m a pretty like a moose or not, though.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

That's when the work really begins. Yeah, like you're not just gonna take that and flip it over to the other side. Yeah, a few hours, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, and if you're in grizzly country, you're nervous, right? And so sometimes one guy will work while the other guy stands guard. You you'll be knee deep and then you look up and a bear standing there going, What are you doing with my that's my dinner? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So um, I haven't had that happen, but I have plenty of friends who have. Wow. And so that that's a real thing like in the Yellowstone area or in Alaska, dinner bell grizzlies. Yeah, you don't realize dinner.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Realize how massive polar bears are.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a thousand-pound bear.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Yeah, I didn't realize that because again, shout out to the Palm Beach Zoo. I know that because they have it like standing on like is that that is yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I heard a lot, I I heard you say you've been out to Alaska. My buddy goes out there. He said it's not I know you said South Africa.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

I don't think he has that to compare it to, but as far as us here, yeah, stateside, like he said, Alaska is fishing hunting, it's really just majestic on it, but I'll be honest, I don't love Alaska because you're fighting Mother Nature every day of the week. Oh, yeah. It's always 36 degrees and raining, and you're walking, you're humping, so you're sweating, and you got rain gear on, and you're wet inside now, and you're a bit miserable. You just got to decide first step of the day, here we go.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah. And I would imagine it's a trek to get to even where you're gonna go with it.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

A lot of times you're walking on a tundra and it's like walking on mattresses that are hiding bowling balls, or you step in a so you never get saps the life right out of your thing. Well, it's not that far. An hour later, you're just like, My gosh, when is this gonna end? Yeah, kicks your butt. Okay, kicks your butt. Yeah, and you step in a sucker hole.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

I know, I know, I know we could get into so many conversations.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Like we said, it's public facing. We we like to bring people into the space. Yeah, and in an effort doing so, we like to talk about stuff that's also outside of the realm of hunting. When Scott is going on a hunt, what's in your airpod? What's on your playlist? What are the top five artists you're listening to in preparation for the hunt?

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Well, I I grew up in an era of classic rock, and I'm in a in a garage band, and and we play classic rock. So that would be the that's the soundtrack in my life, right? A lot of Southern Rock. Almond Brothers are my favorite band. I like I like Little Feet. Um, new stuff these days. I really like the Band of Heathens. They're an Austin, Texas band, and they're Americana. And I like uh Charles Wesley Godwin, he's from West Virginia, he's an Americana singer, he's got a really unique voice. And a couple of well, three little girls I noticed a couple years ago in the country music realm are the Castellos. Have you heard of them?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

No, yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

The Castellos, yeah, they're fabulous. They sing in three-part harmony.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Someone came to the studio and told us about them.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

They're girls, they're adorable. Two of them are triplets. So their brother, the other triplet, he's not in the band. So two of them you're like doing adult. I know these are, and then the third one, she's she's a sister too, but she's not one. They you can tell they're all sisters as soon as you look at them. Yeah, and they're just these cute, young, they're from South Georgia, like right on the Florida Alabama line.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Do they got a good Southern draw on them?

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. So they moved to Nashville a couple years ago and they popped up on my Instagram feed, and I've been following them ever since. They're a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

That's cool. So do you are you a like a rankings guy? Do you have like a Mount Rushmore of Southern uh rock bands?

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Well, everybody, everybody thinks um, you know, Leonard Skinner's stopping a heap, and it's hard to argue with that. I cut my teeth on Leonard Skinner. I was in, I think it was the seventh or the eighth grade walking home from school when I learned their plane had crashed.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I never saw them live.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

I saw the Rosington Collins band later, which was their two guitarists. I saw them live. I saw the Almond Brothers quite a few times when they toured. So I put the Almond Brothers top, but to me, they're not Southern Rock, they're a jam band. A lot of people don't understand the difference, but they're a jam band. Okay. Um, and I I saw them several times. Uh, so they're my favorite band of all time. And now they're completely done because Greg's not with us anymore. But you can still find them like through Government Mule with Warren Haynes, his band, and with uh Tadeshi Trucks band, because Derek Trucks is an awesome guitarist in his own right.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Oh, that's good. Because we're that's our road trip. We'll lock in on a road trip and get into the the classic rock. Yeah, yeah, wheelhouse, and and I love it.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

So I'm gonna say, I'm gonna whisper it in your ear.

unknown 29:15

Guitar.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah, I think.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

What instrument do you play? The drums.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Oh I said the guitar.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

I was you said guitar? Really?

SPEAKER_02 29:25

So you're you're the anchor of the group.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah, yeah. I played a drum. That's another reason I have an earring problem. I played the drum since I was seven. Oh playing a drum since I was seven, been riding a Harley Davidson my whole life. Let's go. Former Marine infantryman, lifelong shooter.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Man's man. We call it the ARA salute. Yeah. So hold on. That's good. We need some out of plans. That was good. All right. So um, I mean, I want to say where can people find you, but I know where people can find you, right? NRA website, uh, magazines for the news, for the people moving into the space, people who are just getting engaged and don't necessarily know. Because you know, there's hunter, there's tactical, there's self-defense, there's home defense, there's sports shooting. Uh you can go compete, be a competitive shooter. What are some tips that you would give somebody who's just now getting their feet wet in this?

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Uh read, consume as much as you can. There are plenty of great shows out there like yours and others on YouTube. Some are like more destination-oriented. Yep. You can learn from all of this, right? Yeah. Uh join the NRA. We we need every gun owner to be a member anyway. And when you do, you'll pick a magazine, American Hunter or American Rifleman. If you get our app, the NRA app, and you're a member, you can consume both magazines in digital form. So you might be a hunter and you want to get my magazine, but you can slide over to Rifleman and you can read all kinds of modern gun reviews. Yep. We we do plenty of gun reviews. I get both people. Right. Yeah. But over there, you'll see some guns reviewed that we're not gonna do because it's not a hunting gun. Yeah, sure. We're gun guys. Yeah, and so anybody who joins the NRA is gonna be a gun guy. Yep. And so if you're getting those two magazines and you're consuming them, you're learning a lot right there. I in the 80s, I used to buy Peterson's hunting, right? And I used to like tear sheets. I used to tear out articles and I want this gun later. I want a 375 H Magnum later. So I would save that, right? Like a fanboy. Yeah. And so you should, even if you haven't hunted, but you're trying to find a way to do it. Unfortunately, really what you need is some people in your life to show you the ropes. If that's not evident, if that's not you can't find that, join a deer lease somewhere. Get in and tell the tell the people, listen, I've never actually killed a deer, but I'm out here. Don't get upset with me. I want to clown onto you guys.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

That's been the that was the first season that was the theme. Tell somebody doing in this case, especially everybody like it's like blankets.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Yeah, you can I tell you another good thing that's really popular now. You can go on a field-to-table hunt. They're getting popular. A lot of couples do it because they can vacation together. Uh, maybe they both hunt, maybe just the husband hunts. In camp, you will have a chef also. Depends on the species. So, like I did a pronghorn hunt a couple years ago with my buddy Greg Ray. He runs a company called Outdoor Solutions, Incorporated, and his field-to-table hunts are getting huge. So I go on a pronghorn hunt uh on Little Bighorn, right there in South on the Crow Reservation, right near Little Bighorn. And on day one, I kill a pronghorn. We bring it back to camp. Chef Albert Wush is in camp. He shows you how to hang it on a tripod, how to skin it, cut off the head, cut it up into big pieces. You don't want to cut it up into meal-sized portions yet. You want the animal to go through rigor mortise and come out of it. So you quarter it, you rip out the back straps, all the and you put it all in a cooler on ice. 24 hours later, you cut it up, you shrink grab it, you label it to take it home. And on third day, Chef Albert teaches everybody how to plate a meal. So you learn how to do your course. I learned how to do a merge sausage gumbo. So we made sausage, we learned cooking skills, we learned cutting and field dressing. It's a fabulous. Sure, it's not free, but it's it's a fabulous way to like you don't need to know anything. You will show up and Greg will hand you a Benelli rifle with a zyce scope on it and show you how to shoot and show you what the gun does and how to it you learn it all. Yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Awesome. That that's yeah, that I think that's that pretty much buttons it's a good thing. Yeah, that was good.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

I would that was that was basically what I was gonna ask him, just advice to anyone out there. Like the information is out there, right? Yeah, yeah, you see it.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

You gotta you gotta be a little bit of a pest. Yeah, it's a fact that a lot of us don't have a friend or family member showing, and that's the best way. But there are other ways, and you just gotta be persistent and and ask questions. The only stupid question is the one you don't ask. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

That's good. Well, to our listeners, people who might be watching this, make sure you like, share, subscribe. Scott, thank you so much for coming in and pouring so much to us. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

And to our listeners, I'm sure we could have this conversation for another hour.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

We might have to double back for it.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Could be a part two for sure.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Before then, at least.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Join the NRA, um, reach one, teach one, empower yourself and get out there, get into the outdoors. Yeah. Next time, America and the world and around the world, world, world. That's it. All right.