Hear Me Here Podcast | Hear Me Here #01-Jim Shockey

Hear Me Here Podcast – Episode 01: Jim Shockey – The Ultimate Hunter & Storyteller

In this very first episode of Hear Me Here, we dive deep with legendary outdoorsman and all-around Renaissance man, Jim Shockey. From being recognized as one of the greatest hunters alive, to creating iconic TV shows, publishing books, and curating a world-class museum of artifacts — Jim’s life is as rich as it is inspiring.

But Jim’s talents don’t stop there. He’s also a passionate singer-songwriter with a deep connection to music and family. Hear heartfelt stories about his outdoors journey, and the powerful bond Jim shared with his late father, who shaped much of his life and work ethic.

In this candid conversation, Jim also opens up about the tragic loss of his wife and the challenges and controversies surrounding his new relationship. He shares how he’s navigated grief, resilience, and the courage to embrace love again.

This episode explores the true meaning of hunting — beyond the kill — focusing on camaraderie, respect for nature, tradition, and family values. Jim shares his thoughts on conservation, the misunderstandings about hunting in today’s world, and why sharing the experience can change perspectives.

Whether you’re an avid hunter or new to the outdoors, this episode offers a rare glimpse into the heart of a man who has dedicated his life to living fully, honoring his roots, and inspiring others to do the same.

What is Hear Me Here Podcast ?

🎤 Real stories. Raw life. Lasting legacy. Join us as we explore the moments that shape us, the stories that define us, and the impact we leave behind.

Well, today on the Hear Me Here podcast, it's actually episode number 01, which is kind of neat. First guest. Here we go. We're starting off with a heavy hitter. Honored to call this guy a friend.
Normally, I could. I feel like I could introduce most people just from memory, but I actually had to write some of these down because there's so many things this guy does. He's world class at all of these things, in my opinion. Greatest living hunter by nearly every metric. Creator of some of the most amazing TV shows ever made.
Published author, storyteller, historian, all American swimmer and water polo player. World's most prolific gatherer. We're going to get into that. Of artifacts that are on display at his Hand of Man museum. He's actually a singer, songwriter.
A son, father, husband, grandfather. Everybody. Welcome. Jim Shockey. Holy cow.
That's an intro right there, right? I was waiting for you to miss. I was gonna throw it. I thought for sure you're gonna miss out the. The singer songwriter part.
Oh, I wouldn't have missed that. Not. Not a chance. I would have missed that. Well, coming from you, it's a huge honor to be called that, but that might be stretching it just a.
It's not. You. You always. You. I always.
You always underplay this, but your music really is great. It really is. And I'm not just saying that because you're sitting here. I've said it to a bunch of people and shared it with a bunch of people. It is.
It's like the one thing that you did, I think that kind of got glossed over and shouldn't have because it's really solid. It's good stuff. I've gotten to play it with you a couple of times, and I love it. It's awesome. Well, let's just say that you've covered for me a lot when we play together.
That's pretty. Pretty raw. Pretty raw. Guitar playing. When I'm playing.
Do you play much at all anymore? You know, I picked up the guitar a couple days ago. I've got a fabulous guitar collection. Yeah. That all go in sometimes at the museum.
There's. There's a big room full of old Gibson guitars. You know, you show me pictures of those before. Unbelievable. Yeah, I just love picking them up.
And the history of each one of those guitars. The. The stories that they tell and the. The spirit of the people that played them over the, you know, 80 years that they've been around. It's all there.
The. The guitars they store, the spirituality of each of those songwriters and Musicians. So I, I just feel like when I pick them up, I, I'm better, a better musician because of those people that held that, that instrument before me. That's awesome. Yeah, you've got, it's funny you don't play a ton, but you have guitars that people who I know who play on a like nationally touring, professional level envy.
Like, you've got some really awesome pieces. Oh, thanks. Yeah, they're, they're my son, Brandlin. Yeah, he's, he actually is a world class musician and songwriter, singer and, and his guitars, like I, I kind of get his, his. Well, I mean, you know, I've got a couple that he would, he'd probably trade me for, but he, he's got some fabulous guitars that he performs with.
You sent me a video maybe a year or two ago. He was opening for somebody or playing somewhere and it was incredible. Brett Kissel. That's it, yeah. Brett Kissel, yeah.
Who is. He'd be like Canada's Luke Bryan. I don't know if I, you know, that's a good comparison. Oh yeah, he has like won every Juno award and country music award up in Canada. I'll tell you a real quick story about that.
I mean, I don't know where you're going on your podcast, but I'm, I'm gonna go out literally anywhere. Anywhere. It was. I was in the Toronto airport and this young man comes up to me and you know, he had a baseball cap on and he said, oh, Mr. Shock, I just wanna thank you for, you know, all you do for conservation and hunting and hunters.
And I said, oh, well, you know what, where are you from and what's your name? He said, brett Kissel. I'm from Alberta, Canada. I said, where are you living now? He says, oh, down in Nashville.
I said, oh, really? You're a musician? He said, yeah, yeah, I'm a musician. And I said, well, hey, listen, I'll tell you what, let's do a selfie here and I'll get you some new fans. Maybe I'll get your name out there a little bit.
So he did a selfie and I remember him looking at me like, oh, what a goof. And then I went to my gate to catch my airplane and I googled Brett Kissel. Just see who I was talking to. And then, yeah, I realized, holy cow. I just was like a Canadian icon, like Ann Murray, this is Brett kissel.
So I DMed him on social media. I said, look, I'm sorry, I live under a rock. What can I say? I apologize you know, in a Ding Dong. And so we started texting back and forth every once in a while.
And when Louise was not well, you know, near the end, he reached out to me and he said, you know, give me a couple songs that Louise likes. And I think he was gonna record them and send them for Louise to listen to. And I said, well, Brett, he actually listens to our son Bramlin. And he said, your son's a musician? And I said, yeah, songwriter, singer.
And he said, oh, send me a couple of his songs then. And I think he was gonna record those and send them back. Ten minutes later, I get a phone call, and he says, that's your son. And. And I said, yeah, that's Brand.
He just recorded that on his computer at home. And he said, are you kidding me? He wrote that? He's singing, playing. I said, yeah, that's him.
He said, do you think he'd open for me? And I said, I don't know. He's played in front of our family once or twice, I guess. Why wouldn't he open in front of 5,000 people? So confident in everything he does.
And I put them together, and next thing you know, Bran was opening for Brett Kissel. I mean, I was. I saw him first two concert he played with Brett. It was crazy. He got standing ovations as the opening act.
He's so good. Oh, you're allowed to brag about your children and your spouse and. Yeah, Brandon is world class. Well, it's funny because a lot of people do brag about their kids, and my dad's, like, the most guilty of that ever. He.
I feel when I put out my first record, he maybe kept 100 in his truck at the same time. And, like, he'd go into Kroger or, like, any grocery store, and somebody would be like, you like music? And they'd be like, yeah. And he's like, here, take one. Like, he was just about it, which is something really cool, I think, about, like, truly in your whole career, because, you know, obviously your connection with.
With Eva and with Braylon and, you know, just both of them, just incredible people, but with your dad. And I think when I first told dad, hey, I'm going to play the, you know, the Jim Shocky classic. Do you. Would you want to come with me? I think the first thing that he said about you was the coolest thing in the world was all the videos and all of the shows that he got to shoot with his dad.
And it's been cool because every show I've done except this weekend and one other in 20 years, my dad's played with me. Yeah. So it, it. And I, I think that's, you know, something for you that was. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, just what that meant to be able to have your dad, like, with you on so many adventures and just around the world.
I mean, just incredible. Yeah. My dad passed away in 2013, and we hunted together, white tailed deer, 43 years in a row. And I mean, we didn't see eye to eye on everything, politics particularly, but he was born in the dirty thirties, just before that. So he survived through that depression era.
And his whole life was, you get a job and you work for somebody. He did it for 40 years, never took time off for 50 years and never took time off for himself, ever. He was the most selfless, giving person that I have ever met. I mean, he sacrificed his life for his family, things he loved, like flying airplanes. He said, well, I had to make a decision.
I was either gonna buy an airplane, a little Cessna and fly all over the place and, you know, head out on that kind of a life, or I was gonna support your mother and you guys. And so he did that. And I mean, he bought his rifle before he was married. 1952, he bought his rifle and never bought himself another firearm the entire time that I was at home. And it wasn't until, I mean, Probably I was 30 years old before he bought a.
Bought another rifle for himself. He just wouldn't spend 5 cents on himself. Selfless, selfless.
I'd like to say that I could fill his shoes, but I can't. Not in that regard. I tried to make him proud of me in other ways, maybe more selfish ways, where I charted my own course and did what I wanted to do. But that's far more selfish than choosing a life where you sacrifice everything you want to do to be with your family and make that what you want to do. So when I was able to, and he was able to, meaning he retired at 66 from road construction.
He was eventually a superintendent on the road construction crew. And at 66, he retired, everybody said, because he worked 80, 90 hours a week. And everybody said he's going to die within six months because that's all he has. The day he retired, I called him and I said, dad, I want you to come and work for me. So I was also able to hire him and work in my outfitting operation.
And he refocused all those energies that he had worked on the construction crew towards the outfitting operation, helped he did dishes, maintained all the vehicles for as long as we let him. Eventually, eventually I came back one day, he was locked inside the truck. And I go, dad, it's impossible to be locked inside a truck. It's time. It's impossible.
Time to get someone else to do this. That's exactly. What else did he do? We had VHS radios and he was in charge of installing them when I came in. And my radio in my truck for the start of the season was installed backwards.
So all the knobs were against the council inside, but all the plug ins were at the back. I said, dad, what are you doing? Like he said, well, it's a lot easier to install it this way because I get the plugins and all these things. Oh, my God. You can have both.
That'd be the best case scenario. But yeah, but it's a blessing to be able to hunt with family. And people ask all the time if there's one person you could go back and hunt with. You know, anybody famous would be my dad. One more hunt with my dad.
That's so telling. That's awesome, man. Yeah, it's a gift. And anybody out there that has a parent that you can spend time with, every single day is precious. Because one day they're not going to be there, or maybe you won't be there.
Either way, every single day is precious. And never, ever give up one of those days to be negative about something and let it spoil your day. And don't go see your parent, your father, your mother. Maybe you don't have a father, mother, maybe they're gone. But you've got an uncle, aunt, or somebody that's a friend that's getting up there in years.
Go spend time with them, listen to their stories and you'll never regret it and they will never forget it for the rest of their lives. Spend that time with them. Every minute with a parent is special. I think the older obviously everybody gets, you realize more and more that it. The experiences are great, but it's who you're doing them with.
Because I've never been hunting by myself. I've always been on trips with dad or my brother Taylor or buddies and tons of traveling and all this stuff. And two or three years ago I was going to a place and the family was allowing me to come hunt, but I wasn't a spot where I felt like I could invite, you know, I wasn't gonna be like, hey, you're asking me to come? Like, can my dad tag along? Can my brother tag along?
Like, you know, it's Kind of one of those situations. And I went up by myself and hunted. Seven days in Ohio. And you would think I would have been the happiest just being out there and, like, having a break from work. And I was.
I literally found myself every night in the hotel depressed. And I don't know what, like, I think it was. I was just missing the. After the hunt, sitting there with dad or with Taylor and, like, talking about what happened or laughing about something that we did wrong or, like, getting a game plan for the next day. Like, I'm sitting there having a game plan with myself, which wasn't.
You know, it just wasn't. It's so different. And you realize that trip taught me. It taught me a lot. And how it's.
It's. The main thing is the people that are with you in those experiences. And I think I've seen that, like, through. I mean, even people who can't even barely speak English with you, you know, you can just. I can't remember what it was, what episode it was, but it was.
Maybe it was an uncharted or one of them. And you guys are on the top, of course, like, on top of this mountain, sleeping sideways, you know, in the most extreme. And they could barely speak broken English. But the camaraderie between y' all was just. It was.
It was. You could feel it through the screen. And so I couldn't imagine what it was like there, feeling it in person. People that don't hunt, you know, they think hunting is all about killing something. Yeah.
And they couldn't be further from the truth. There's. That's the tiniest part of a hunt. It's seconds in a hunt. It means nothing.
It's the camaraderie, the friendship, the adventure, the sharing of the stories, the practicing the skills you have to develop, the learning, the planning, like you say, for the next day. Hunting is. And family. It's really, truly about life, about living a good, wholesome life and honoring those virtues. Like I say, honor, respect, tradition, family.
These are what brought us to the table. That's why these are such great nations, Canada and the United States, because that's what we're about. And that's what hunting is all about. That's. You know, there isn't one of us alive today.
I don't. I don't. The most vehement anti. Hunter had antecedents that were good hunters. Yeah.
That's why they're here today. Yeah. That's why they have the luxury of being able to say, I hate hunters. Well, yeah. Your grandfather, your great grandfather or before that, was a great hunter.
That's why you're alive. You're the progeny of a hunter. That's true. It's so disrespectful to me. It's not honoring the past and the truth.
So hunting is when you talk about camaraderie, of course, of course that's a major part of it. Killing an animal, that's a tiny little bit of it. It's not even how you measure the success of a hunt. Well, in some sense, I don't want to say the hardest part is in. It's like difficult to do.
But it's the part that I find myself a lot of times the most reflective about. Like, you know, I think is crazy and is wild and out of control. I love him is, is like Ted Nugent is like, he's always about like, you know, the spirit and like this animal. And it's not just a kill and something that throws up on the wall. Like it's so, so, so much more.
You're taking a life and, and you know, I've there now hear me. Like there are, I'm sure there are a bunch of. There's probably a low percentage, but I think they get amplified because of social media in the hunting world that aren't giving us that great of a name that I think we're paying for. But the mass majority, I don't know any like or I don't hunt with any like there are none in my extended groups that are that way. They're all hyper respectful and it's like you said, it's about the whole, it's, it's, it's the entirety of the adventure.
It's not just the kill. And I think that's what's missed. I bet 75% of the people who hate hunting and are against hunting, if they would go out with, with one of us, like you, me, like any of the people who do it right and do it respect, like they would change their mind. I really think they would. And I think they just need an opportunity given a chance to get out in the woods with somebody.
Yeah. You know, I've divided it up this way. Said 10% of us are hunters and to varying degrees, good or bad at it, were hunters. 80% of us don't hunt, but we'll swing this way or that way depending on what's in the popular press these days. And 10% of us hate hunting.
And that 10%, I don't know that will ever actually reach them. Even if we took them out, they're going to be. I've got a museum up on Vancouver Island. Yeah, there's some mounted full body mount animals, some skeletons, but the vast, vast majority, 90% of it is cultural arts from around the world. But the animal rights people will come in, the anti hunters and all they see is a dead animal and they believe it was hunted.
So they hate the museum. Well, how can you hate everything because of one thing? It's just not possible. So I don't know that those people are reachable, but that 80% in the middle. Yes, if we take them out, if we explain to them, and most of them, to be fair, are interested, they want to know the truth.
Especially nowadays when our press lies. The reality is, and maybe people denigrated that whole fake news stuff at the beginning, but it's been proven to be fake many, many, many times, the mass majority of it. So at that point, now people want to know the truth. Well, how do you get the truth? You talk to a hunter.
Okay, let's hear what you have to say. Not what somebody in an ivory tower spouting rhetoric about some ideology that they believe in. No, no, no. The person in the street, the actual hunter that goes out there. And that 80%, I've never found anybody yet that doesn't go, oh, okay, I didn't know that, I didn't understand that.
Now I understand. And they may well go research it somewhere else and get someone else's point of view. But at least we're getting the right and the correctness of our side, the hunting side. And I think the 80%, the vast majority, would swing towards supporting hunting. I think the polls actually show that if they say, are you for trophy hunting, implying that you cut the head off an animal, leave it to rot.
Well, of course everybody's against that. Every hunter is against that. And then they use that as saying that's how many people are against hunting. No, they're not. They're against that villain, that evil poaching and poacher.
That's what they're against. But you're just lumping that with the identity politics. You know, if you're for guns, you're for like school shootings. It's ridiculous. Like, it's like, it couldn't be like, could not be further from the truth.
I, you know, I've had people come to my house all the time like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you kill an animal. And I'm like, what would you rather have for that deer? Like Deer lived his life six years old. Would you rather him just like lay down and die and just never, you know, never be honored, anything like that? At least, at least where he's at now, like generations of people are going to see this and, and be able to tell the story of him and all.
Like, you know, I feel like it's way more honoring to do that than just for them to just walk around the way, lay down one day and just die. And that'd be it. And that's, that's, that's the, the Cinderella, Bambi version of what happens to them when they get to the point where they're gonna die. I mean, coyotes are gonna rip their insides out and eat it while they're alive. Yep.
I mean, there's the reality. Nature is a brutal thing. It's beautiful, but it's brutal. Oh, and that's what's gonna happen to the animal. Or they're eating cow.
I mean, you're having a hamburger. And how do you think that pig or cow lived? Is that what you wanted? That chicken that you're eating? So people don't, they don't equate with that.
Which. Who had the better life? The deer that was hunted and lived to what it's supposed to be doing. A predator, prey relationship to try and get away from whatever the predators are. It lived life.
It was alive and it was free. Or the chicken that gets corn shoved down his gullet and never walks a step in its life. Who lived a better life and who is philosophically on the right side of ethics. The person that supports that, you know, the factory chicken making, or the person that supports the wild and free lifestyle of an animal being true to what it is, you know, avoiding predators, surviving. And technically, you know, if it gets killed, it's, it's hopefully beyond breeding age, but if it's, if it's young enough to still be breeding, maybe it shouldn't be.
Yeah. You know, the way nature works, it's. And I don't know, maybe there will be someone out there that's refuted Darwin's theory of evolution and, you know, the survival of the fittest, but that's what nature does. So I don't know, you know, it's to each his own. And I just try and be tolerant of all points of view, regardless of whether they're antithesis of what I believe in or, you know, I also don't want to drink my own Kool Aid.
I want to hear what other people have to say. I think they. Again, dialogue, conversation. But with that 80% when you talk to them. I've never had anybody, anybody ever walk away saying, you're still an idiot for hunting.
You know, they just don't do that. They, they go, oh, okay, I didn't know that. When I forgot, I forget what I was in. Like, I wish people could see all sides, right? You know, I see this a lot.
Like I'm in the, I'm in the church world. I've worked for churches for a long time and I'll see someone take like a three minute clip out of a, you know, a pastor who's been preaching for 30 years take a two minute clip out of a sermon and just like, you know, rag him over it. But I feel like I saw a clip of you the other day that was so interesting. You were driving, you were driving somewhere, you were outfitting and you were guiding somebody and you were driving down this road and it was either a pigeon or a dove was sitting in the middle of the road and its wing was broken and it couldn't fly. And you like, don't just like go driving by or, you know, like, I feel like what the perception would be of us, like, like, you know, run it down.
Like, you stop the truck, you get out, you pick it up. Like you like, see what's wrong with it. You kind of inspect it. You're, you're checking it out. You're sitting there and you're, you know, just hanging with it for a minute and then talking about like, you know, how harsh life is and then you set it back down and you know, I could tell that it like, I'm not saying you were like about to get upset because, you know, a bird was dying, but it was like, you see the value in life, so it makes death that much more valuable when you understand, you know, what the value of life is.
And I feel like people haven't had enough opportunity to see that side of, of you and of, you know, of us and like, of others who hunt, you know, because that side's there too. Sure. We, I mean, we understand life begets death and death begets life. We understand that cycle and it's a continuum that's, it's universal. It's been since the beginning of time.
And hunters, because we met death. I mean, we kill animals and we eat them. We understand that reality. And most people try and avoid it. They try and avoid any conversation about death.
It's the weirdest thing that we're so afraid of it in our society nowadays. Other times and eras past, it wasn't you know, it was celebrated. It was just as much a part of life as breathing is. And they believe there's an afterlife. And you're a religious man, so your faith, it tells you there is.
And we're so afraid of it nowadays. I think because of the urbanization, we're removed from it. Cellophane wrapped meat is what we eat. So we don't understand that. That was a band tail pigeon, a wild band tailed pigeon that I found on the side of the road that day.
And that, you know, that's actual living organism that dies when we come food for something. And everything you're eating out there was alive at one time. I don't care if it's a plant. And also anyone that says that they're, oh, I just eat, I'm a vegan, I just, I don't touch anything. Wait a minute, you're driving your vehicle down an asphalt road across monoculture, billions of acres.
Well, I'm exaggerating, certainly. Tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres of monoculture, that there's nothing that lives in there except that one thing. There's no biodiversity there. And you think that that soybean field is. You're not killing animals by having a, however many acres of soybean it takes for you to live.
Like, of course, yeah, not on the big, not on like the large scale. Like it's not like they're mowing over deer, but it's hundreds of thousands. I bet you plow two acres, there's no telling the carnage that you're leaving. Oh, everybody is responsible. Driving a car down the road.
Yeah. How many locusts or bugs or butterflies are you killing? And birds occasionally. I mean, it's absurd to me. So hunters, we just don't ascribe to hypocrisy.
We understand life against death, against life, against death and the spirituality of it and the preciousness of that life and how easy it is for that life to be gone. We understand that as hunters, and I think it's a large part to do with urbanization. I mean, farmers, ranchers, they understand it. Yeah. You know, they understand it.
And, and ultimately if you have pets, you're faced with it. I also think that people maybe struggle with talking about death and the concept of death because especially nowadays, like our faces in our phone and in our, and it's some kind of screen the majority of the day. And I feel like our relationships with parents, with friends, with, with spouses are suffering because of that, because of that plague. And you know, my grandfather Just passed away a couple months ago. And I didn't.
I was so close to them. I felt like a lot of people thought I was just going to crumble and fall apart, but I didn't at all because I had talked to him every single day on the phone and traveled around the world and done, you know, fish in Alaska, gone. Every. Done everything with him. And I felt that at the end, there was nothing left for us to do because our relationship had gotten, you know, to that point.
And I feel like the kind of fear of death is because I feel like a lot of people are. They've left a lot on the table. Yeah. With. With.
With spouses, with. With a bunch of people, you know, they didn't. Do. They. They live with regrets later on and they're left with regrets.
Yeah, that's what I said earlier. Life is precious. Every single day is precious. Don't waste any of your days being negative. And if there's someone there that you love, tell them.
Go spend five minutes with them, get your face out of the phone and listen to their story for the day. Ask them what was the most important thing, what was the best thing of the day. Ask them what the worst thing is. Care about them. If you do that.
And like you say, you travel with your grandfather, and I did with my father. I did everything I could, and there was no regrets. Not one single regret when he passed away. That's awesome. And I don't think that he had any either.
You know, we talked and we spent time together for that 20 years after he retired. You know, we were like, yeah. Bonded. And even though there was a lot of years, he had to work a lot of hours and he was away out in the road construction crew during the week, you know. Yeah.
He wasn't there for my baseball game. So what? He was providing for my family, you know, for me to be able to be at that baseball game and to have shoes on my. On my feet like that. People say, oh, my, you know, woe is me.
That's such. Such a crock of selfishness. Yeah. That drives me insane. Yeah.
Just. Just appreciate the time that you do get with somebody and don't waste any of that time when they're there. Spend time with them. Yeah. Whining about their childhood.
And I'm like, you could just reverse it. Like, if you're acknowledging there was a problem with your relationship. Not. I'm not. Not with you, but just in general, like, okay, what about now?
Like, go pick them up and go to lunch. Go do something. Like you can fix it now. It's not. It's not done forever.
They're still. If they're still alive, keep. Fix it. I have a saying about that. I say, do not let yesterday steal today or tomorrow.
People do. They go, well, this happened to me in the past, so I'm gonna let today. I'm gonna act like an idiot today. Yeah. Or I'm gonna have a problem today.
Or I'm gonna be negative today. Or I'm gonna be depressed today. I'm not talking about clinical depression. I'm talking about people that just won't let go of something that happened in the past. Why would you let yesterday steal today?
And by the same token, looking forward, there's people listening right now. I know that are faced with what I was faced with losing my soulmate of 39 years. 113 days, 14 and a half hours. We lived a fairy tale. And I had to live through that last two years and remain living after Louise passed and be her caregiver for those two years and watch her slowly fade from life.
And we knew what was coming. But we never let tomorrow steal today either. So you can't let yesterday steal today, and you can't let tomorrow steal today. Just live for the day and remember that every single day is precious. Yeah.
And I was. I'm not lucky, but I'm glad I got to know you before, during, and after that, because they're really in the way you and the way you lived. Like, there wasn't a ton of change. Like when she. I remember when she was really sick.
I mean, the first year she was here and by here, I'm. We're. You know, the gym, Shockey Classic, raising money for Freedom Hunters. One of the. One of the first years.
She was so just unbelievably sweet. I don't know if I've ever told, like, she made it a point. We played and it was kind of weird the first year. Like, I didn't play the first night, and me and dad played the second night, and we were outside, but then no one was out there. We moved inside.
It was just kind of jumbled and, you know, a bunch of people were listening. Most people, you know, it was way after the golf tournament. Everybody had been drinking all day. You know, it was. People were doing other stuff.
And she beelined to us after we were done playing and sat there for a couple minutes and just told us how much she appreciated and how great it sound, you know, just the sweetest thing in the world. And then I remember next Year, she couldn't come because she had gotten sick. But I thought it was so cool. You. She wanted so bad to just, like, address everybody.
You FaceTimed with her and held it up to the mic, and she, like, addressed everybody and how much, you know, Freedom Hunters meant to her and, like, raising money for veterans, and it was. It was such a cool thing. And the fact that you were able to, you know, to leave her and come do that. But, I mean, But. But to you, that was kind of normal, wasn't it?
Because, I mean, y' all for when your entire career, you'd be gone for, you know, on these expeditions and these trips. But I know you, like, famously always had sat phone or some way to get a hold of her to talk, which is just, you know, it's so cool. Yeah. If I couldn't have reached out to talk to Louise, my soulmate every day, I couldn't have done what I did in my career. And satellite telephones allowed that to happen.
I could be anywhere around the world, and I could talk to Louise. We called it sharing the moon. You know, she would look at the moon, and I would look at the moon from wherever I was around the world, and we'd share the moon together and just talk, you know, it was expensive. Yeah. A lot of dollars per minute in those days.
But, yeah, that communication and just to reaffirm our love for each other and respect and also to hear her out if the kids were acting up. Eva, my daughter, there's a pretty fair chance on any given day that that had happened. So, you know, I'd be there for it. At least in a conversation, her and I could talk about it. And if, you know, something actually was bad going on, I was able to get back home if necessary.
So, yeah, it was a. I was blessed, I think, at one time, you know, for a lot of years in a row, I was gone for over an average of 306 days a year from home. 300. That puts a touring musician to shame. You know, the shame.
That is a. That's a brutal schedule. Yeah. I mean, sometimes Louisa could come with me, and sometimes the kids. Yeah.
But. But it's. You know, it's what I did. And people that are on ships, they're gone for months at a time, and they can't talk every single day. Or maybe they can nowadays, but.
But Louise was a special, special lady who had.
You know, she was independent. She didn't. You know, I didn't define who she was, and our relationship didn't define who she was. She Knew who she was and knew that when she got involved with me, right off the bat, it was. That's what it was going to be.
She. I actually met her at a dance class and we went on her first date. It was June 1, 1984. And I asked her to be my girlfriend on June 6. But I said, we always went out since June 1.
She always said, no, it wasn't until. It wasn't June 6 until you made it official. But five months later, I asked her to marry me. And it was. I remember it was October 31st, and I asked her to marry me.
And she said, well, we'll set a date for next year. And I said, no, no, there's no way. I'd been going out with her five months. I knew I was head over heels in love with her and I was going to let her be free for that much longer. And I didn't want her to get to know me any better either.
You gotta find that nice sweet spot in between. Yeah, that's right. So I said, well, do you love me? Yes. Well, why would we wait then?
Let's just get married. So we set a date for November 30th. So one month away, and I went hunting November 1st, I went out to the prairies. I came back November 28th. So four weeks later, Louisa had organized the entire ceremony.
Marriage and all the stuff and whatever you got to do to do that. Got her dress all made up and whatever they do. What do they call the ladies that embroider this stuff? Seamstress. Yeah.
So she did all that. She did all that. And I came two days before the wedding. And again, part of it was I didn't want her to get to know me any better, just in case she changed her mind. But.
But so she knew what she was getting into with me. I'm a peregrinator. I'm a hunter. I travel. I want to see what's over that next mountain and beyond those mountains, what's on the other side of everything, I want to know.
So she knew, and it worked for us. It's not for everybody, that relationship, but something like the Freedom Hunters, this golf classic to raise money for veterans of the armed forces to take them out on all expense paid hunting trips and fishing trips. Louisi truly believed in that. Her dad was a veteran. He was one of the first Canadians wounded in the Korean War.
And she always had a very soft spot in her. I mean, her heart was soft. I mean, it was the biggest, this room. And soft as. I mean, it's just Mushy and with love for everybody and everything.
But for the veterans, she really cared a lot. And when she was really sick, she said, you still have to go and be there, represent us and make sure you tell the veterans. Show our appreciation. You tell them for me. So, Yeah, I remember FaceTiming her when she was the last year of her life and holding it up for the audience.
It was so sweet. So she went up to the speaker so she could tell everybody how much she cared about the veterans and this event that we put on every year. Yeah, she was an elegant, graceful, dignified, beautiful human being. The world was a better place for her. I honestly think she was an angel that came down and for whatever reason, picked a scruffer to live her life with.
And like I say, 39 years, 113 days, 14 and a half hours, she went back to heaven and is back where she belongs today. Today on the golf course with Eva and my two grandchildren, Lenny, Bo and Boone and Tim, my son in law. I went out to hit a drive and I had just birdied two holes in a row, the first two holes, and a butterfly came and landed on my shoulder. And Eva had her camera going and video and said, yeah, look, Danna Weezy is always here with us. She's always sending us signs and in this case the butterfly, you know, on my shoulder and just fluttered around and landed again.
It's Louisa. She's not just like pretty like, you know, like kind of flashy moments like that. Like a butterfly lands and you know, beautiful golf course. Like I saw a video of you, you were, you were somewhere and it was pouring rain. I remember you sitting out there and I, I think you just kept repeating like, she's here.
Yeah. And I think that was on that, the new documentary that, that your son did. Yeah, the documentary was called Gone. That's it. Yep.
Yeah, Gone. And it's fabulous. It's incredible. Yeah, it's state of the art for storytelling and videos or movies. It's a movie short, basically 38 minutes long.
How much of that? Because that's always been. I've shown a lot of people uncharted because people are used to. Not that there's anything wrong with them because I love them, but just like normal hunting shows. Right.
And uncharted for to me was like. I don't know how else to describe it. Like you have all these different movies and you have like the Lord of the Rings, like, you know, you have these like unbelievably produced, like perfect front to back, you know, things and that, to me was uncharted. And how much of that was. Was you and your vision.
And like, I wanted to. I want to tell the story exactly like this. And how much of it was your son's, because I know he's. He's beyond talented. Yeah, he's doing with that.
Yeah. I said earlier, you're allowed to brag about your children and your spouse and. Yeah. Brandon is by far the most brilliant human being that I've ever met. And I met a lot of human beings in this world.
And, you know, there's some of them sitting out there right now with IQs through the stratosphere. They're going, wait a minute, I'm brilliant. Oh, yeah. Brand's also there with iq, but different. Just gifted.
Gifted. We call him Amadeus Mozart behind his back because he's just a different level of understanding, compassion, empathy.
His sense of feeling for a topic, for a subject, for a human being, for a thing, an object even, is just beyond anything I'm capable of doing. Obviously, Louisa, like I said, was an angel and passed a lot of that on to Branland. And the Uncharted was really his vision. I know how to tell a story, and I can tell you in a maybe articulate way and maybe in a way that's emotional that'll get you. That'll reach in and sort of squeeze your heart.
I can do that. But that's one on one. Brandlin takes that and turns it into something that everybody gets to feel and see through a screen, which is, I mean, not only one screen, I mean, through the lens of the camera and then through all the technology and then out into the world where it's distributed to everybody's television set. Yeah. And.
And Brandon was. He's able to. To do that. So that is all Brandon. His videography is amazing.
Translating emotion into that is one of the most difficult things in art. Because I remember I sat. I was at Sony. It was Sony Records, and I was in the office of the. I guess whoever, the head of a.
Whatever it was, some, you know, big shot at Sony. And I played a song I have called Letters, which is about my dad's best friend. Wrote letters to all of his kids for, like, birthday, wedding day, before he died, because he knew he was dying. He just wrote piles of letters for them for the rest of their life. And I wrote a song about it.
And I remember sitting there and she was like, bawling, crying. And this is someone who's heard, you know, 100,000 songs, you know, whatever. And. But. But I Went and recorded it and sent it to her, and she's like, yeah, didn't do it.
We didn't do. We did. We did. You know, I feel like I wrote the song well, and like, I, me and you, I could sit here right now and play it and I can convey it. I can make you feel it.
But when we recorded it, it got lost. And I feel like that happens a lot in film and a lot in music and whatever. His intuition, however he's able to do that, it is the best I've ever seen. But by a long shot. It's incredible.
Yeah. I mean, Hollywood is nuts for not grabbing onto him and giving him whatever budget, hundreds of millions. They will. He will produce stories that there just isn't out there nowadays. I mean, you get the odd one, they'll come through.
That is really genius. But there lies a big problem with the artist disseminating the art to the rest of the world, because there's a middleman. And who is the middleman? Is it David Foster producing your song? Or is it a producer at Sony in the back room trying to make a name for himself?
Yeah, you know it. And maybe that person is the next David Foster. Maybe. But they also may be just mediocrity. So you take something that's.
That's genius. They. Mediocrity is incapable of recognizing anything greater than itself. And they will turn it into mediocrity. Yep.
You know, you need. You need talent on the production side to recognize genius, and then the talent will defer to genius on the production side. But mediocrity never does. They'll destroy that work of art because of the middleman. Now you can paint, oil painting for your wall.
Michelangelo can do it. And there it is. And there's no middleman. It just is the Sistine Chapel. Here's, here's my, you know, this is my background for my art.
And there's no middleman on that. So art reaches the public that way directly. Music, when you're one on one, you're reaching the public directly, but you're reaching one person, 10 people, 100 people, maybe a thousand in an audience, if you're lucky enough, maybe a couple 3,000, then you can control the audience and the messaging and your art is your art. It's like my. Michelangelo's painting, but when you digitize it and put it out there for the masses to listen to, suddenly you've introduced the possibility of mediocrity 100%.
And that's. That's what's happened to your song. It just is. And that's why. Back to uncharted.
Brandlund's a genius. Yeah. You know, so I may be talented, you know, but Brandon's a genius. And that's. That was just a nice, lucky break for me that my own son.
Yes. You know, was. Happened to be a producer that could take what I. You know, the skills that I had in that artistry or the ability to tell a story and run it through the. Whatever digital dashes and dots and turn it into.
Into what he turned it into. You can feel it. It's so weird. I don't know if it's the score he chose or the. The Lindsay.
I don't know what it is. You can. Like, when you're watching those, I can feel the pain that you're feeling when you're, you know, in the Arctic, miserable in that. Whatever that 4x4 little cave. You were like, the box you were in in the middle.
I could feel it. Like, I. I was cold watching it, like. And I've never had that in. In a show.
Yeah. Yeah. That's Bramlin. That's Brandlin doing it. I'm feeling it.
Yeah. But Brandon's able to take that message and. And share it with everybody that's sitting in 80 degrees in their house. Yep. You know, sweltering, eating a Popsicle.
You know, he can translate that. I don't know how you do that. That's. Again, that takes genius. That's Bramblen.
And that's too bad about your song because. Just back to Brandon a little bit about that. He. He sent me last year 37 songs that he'd recorded. I don't know, I might have played one or two.
He sent me a couple of them. They were awesome, fabulous songs. Yeah. Really. He sent me 37 and said, dad, I'd like to, you know, pick the top, you know, seven songs, because I'm going to do an extended play or whatever they called it, album.
And I listened to them over and over and over again. Serena and I did on the driving. And, you know, we could pick our top 30, but they were all equal. We'd rate them, rate them and rate them. They're all.
You're 12 out of 10. 12 out of 10. Like, one being the best and, you know, in order. I just couldn't get him. And.
And so now he's picked seven himself and he's taken them to a producer. He took him to one producer who's supposed to be. And Brent said, no, he butchered it and took it to Another producer, and he produced them, said, no, he missed the point. Now he's taken to a third producer that apparently this time the guy is at that level where he could. He understands Brandon's messaging.
And he said the exact same thing. He said, dad, I can make the audience stand up and have tears in their eyes and be waving candles or whatever they wave nowadays, or cell phones. He said, I could do that live. But he said, the album doesn't do it, not when they produced it that way or that way. So they've tried to turn it into something they think is commercial.
They've missed the entire beauty of the art that I've created. I'm glad he's pursuing every possible avenue to make it right. And he won't. He's not gonna release it. And he won't even let me listen to them.
He won't let me listen to the ones that were. That he Were. Didn't make his standard. So. So that.
I hear you and I understand it on your. I'm no musician like you guys are, but. But I get. I get that that can happen. Yeah.
And that's the reason it happens. It's not because the song isn't the greatest song. It's because the people between that messaging from you to the audience, they've. They're just not as good as you guys. When Tom Dowd's my favorite producer of all time and I watch a documentary of his, and it was so cool before he did Skinner and Allman Brothers and Ray Charles.
I mean, everybody. And he would just tell him, just play, y' all. Just get in a room and play. And he would walk around for maybe an hour and put his head up next to stuff and, like, listen and really understand what they were conveying live. And they.
Look, what are you doing? And he'd be like, just trust me. I'm trying. I'm trying to reproduce this. I'm trying to make.
I'm not trying to take it and alter it and make it sound like I think it should sound. I'm trying to make you guys sound like you. And I love that. Stuck with me forever. I loved that.
And it shows in all their music because it's. You can feel it when you put it on in the car. It's different. Than what? Than some of the stuff you're hearing today.
It's just. He did Leonard Skinner, so all of it. Amazing. Yeah. It's.
I mean, it's perfect. Yeah. And. But that's genius. That's genius.
Working with talent. Yep. Or genius. Either one. But still, you have to have that level.
You can't have mediocrity mixed in there somewhere. I agree. We got a, in about an hour, a little over an hour, hour and a half. We got our big charity night tonight. Big auction.
It's going to be a lot of fun. I look forward to this every year, all year. Before I let you go, I did want to get you. I, I wanted to ask you a question. It's, it's a, it's not out of left field.
It's a little off topic, but I, I know, I know you well enough and I know just from. We had, we had a pretty long interaction last year, me and you talking about this and I, I feel like you have been served unfairly recently and, and not just the hunting industry, but just in general. I, I've it. I went on Google the other day just because I was looking up a story and I, I had heard about you and who you sold all your antiques to back in the day and I was like, did that really happen? But another story for another day.
But I started Google. Jim Shockey and the six suggested things that came up. Four of the six had nothing to do with hunting. Nothing about any of the, the mile long list that I, that I. All these amazing things you've done.
The, you know, the amazing person that you are, it was about your, your current relationship. And I was, I was half disgusted and half just like bewildered. That that's, you know, I know there's been like articles written about it and you know, people have got a lot of opinions online, which I know you do better than anyone. Defend yourself online. Well, respectfully and just, you know, I wanted you, if you could, to explain in as little or as much detail as you want the, the grieving process with losing your wife and how that grieving process was different than normal because you had, you know, you thought you had a little bit of time, you had a lot more time and how that, you know, then how after that you transitioned into your relationship with Serena, which I got to hang out with her last year at the shock event 1.
One of the sweetest people on the planet. So encouraging. And it was funny. She came up to me and she beelined after we got done playing and came up was like, oh my God, we got to get you guys in Nashville. Like, it just was the sweetest.
You know, it was so swee us and I, I feel like you have been unjustly smacked by social media keyboard warriors in the hunting industry for, for dating, you know, not maybe not as soon. Whatever they're mad at and just want. I just wanted to hear where your thoughts are with it because you deserve to. You deserve to defend yourself when you're getting just trash for nothing. Yeah.
You know, every. There's a saying the guys tell me all the time. Everyone has one, you know, like an opinion and everyone has the other thing. It's not a. People are people and they, they believe certain things and that those constructs that they believe in that defines who they are.
And there's things that they don't like to see outside of that. And, and one of them is, here's a love story. Louisa and I, I never cheated on her. She was my soulmate. We were inseparable.
I mean, we might be miles apart, but our hearts are tied together. I lived a fairy tale with this lady. Her and I, we never fought. We raised two amazing children together. We lived a life of joy and happiness for 39 years, 113 days, 14 and a half hours.
And, and Louisa was part of our show. She was always. Yeah, she's the one that announces. Still to this day, if you watch hunting Adventures, you'll hear Louisa on the Voice. She's the one that says, you know, and coming soon and don't go away, we'll be right back.
And you know, this show is. I feel like subconsciously I knew that, but I've never called that out. That's. Yeah, that's Louisi. That's her voice.
She. And she was on the show a lot. She had her own segment for a long time called she Safari. That's right. And Louise was the host of that little.
And she was a non hunter. She was vegetarian when we met and didn't want to raise our children as vegetarians. She didn't feel that was right. They had to have the choice if they want to be great, be vegetarians. But it's not going to be because I'm that and you're going to try and be that same thing.
You're going to have all the options. So with Louise, and she was so gracious, so beautiful physically. I mean, she really, truly was a classic beauty. I mean, she was a dancer, you know, for 30 years. Ballet, jazz.
I mean, she was, she was gorgeous. She lit up every room. Every room she ever walked in that I was in. She just wanted the center of attention. Didn't matter.
500 people in a room. She walked in that room. You just feel the ripples of silence coming across everybody turn their heads and she would, she would. She didn't even walk. It was like she floated through the room and was so gracious and elegant and caring about everybody.
That was not. That was who she was. She cared about every living organism in that place. A mouse. She would.
I've never seen her kill anything. Not a fly. She just. Louise was a one of a kind person that I've never met anybody like or never seen anybody since. Like I say, she came from heaven and picked a scruffer.
Why, I don't know. But. But people knew this and, and she resonated with every single person that came within her sphere of influence. Didn't matter, even if it's through the screen on television. So they knew of this relationship and this love we had.
And, and, you know, I, She. She was not well. We didn't know what was wrong. I sent her to the Mayo Clinic, actually. And you know, no offense to those guys, but they misdiagnosed it, you know, in my opinion.
You know, they. They called it fibromyalgia. Yeah. And. But, you know, you know, that's something in your head.
It's not a. It means. Well, they can't. They never took a chest X ray, which, which this day, you know, I don't know that would have made a difference. Maybe it would just made us sadder for a longer period of time.
But. But then a couple, three years later, I was. I came back from a hunt, and Louisa, just a little, you know, once in a while, you know, every, I don't know, 15 minutes or something. So. You sick?
And she said, no. I said, you got a cold? No. Well, why that little cough? She said, I don't know.
My throat's dry. And I said, that doesn't make sense. And I insisted that she. And she was tired at them, you know, that point at the shows. Anybody that used to remember Louise, she would be there like a trooper all day long on the show floor with me, meeting people and greeting people and, and being gracious.
But then she lost energy where she couldn't do that anymore maybe a couple hours, and then down to where she couldn't do it at all. And, you know, so I finally said, look, you got to go in, go to the doctor and insist that she gives a chest X ray. She had a lady doctor. And again, fibromyalgia was everybody's opinion of it. I didn't think so.
But I'm not a doctor, Louise. It's not in her head, Louise. She's too pure for that to. Too honest with herself. Yeah.
And she went in and next Day the doctor called back and she insisted on a check. Sorry. And the doctor called her and said, is Jim there? And she said, no, he's at the museum. And she said, call him and bring him over to the house.
I'm coming over. So Louisa called me, and when I got that phone call. Right then this is. Doctors just don't do that up in Canada. Yeah, they.
I wouldn't say all of them, but there's very few do that. She had a great doctor. And so I came home and then you sat there and waited for the doctor to show up. And when she came in, the doctor was crying and it was like. I don't know how you describe it.
The worst moment, that moment was when the grieving started. Louise was still alive, but that moment, the grieving started, she was consoling the doctor. It's okay. You know this. I'm happy.
I've lived a wonderful life. And you don't. It was. It was crazy. I mean, it's like being punched, but deep inside you that you.
You can't even describe. It's impossible to describe. You can't put it in words. And that. That horror is.
Is something nobody can imagine that hasn't experienced it. And what I say is that that level, that blackness of sorrow, that the depths of that sorrow, it lives in a place that imagination can't exist. Imagination can't reach to that point and imagine what it's like, because if it did, we would never fall in love. We would never love anything or anybody because we would never let ourselves, because the sorrow is so great, so dark and so hopeless. It's like the fear of that sorrow would keep you from.
You would never. I don't know how anybody could exist like that. If you knew. That's. You know, as soon as you get involved with this person, that's a possibility.
You wouldn't do it. And that's the moment you start to grieve. And this is the social media. What you're talking about is about six months after Louise passed, I met a lady. Her name is Serena, and she's younger than I am.
I mean, they say she should always be with somebody who's your own energy level. So she's younger, but that's not the thing that. I mean, it bothers some people. But what bothered most of the people at the start, when I started seeing her. And I live a life and, you know, it's on social media.
I. Yeah, I post about my life. I don't post about hunting. If I'm hunting, I Hunt. That's not something new for you.
You've always. You've. Yeah. Your entire life is pretty. From just whatever age is on film.
Yeah, it doesn't matter. Whatever I'm doing. Today, I saw a butterfly. You know, look at the beautiful sunset. I love it.
Here's a sunrise. Hey, I caught a fish today. I made a hamburger today at a Moose meat and look how wonderful it is. It's sizzling. I just post what I.
It's my social media site. I share with people positive messaging all the time. And Louisiana and I did that together all the time. It's positive. And I will take people to task once in a while.
I'll put one on there. This will be a long one. I'll start it off like that and then, you know, you're gonna get a diatribe. I always love it when I read that. I'm like, here we go.
I'm gonna take something or somebody to task. Something somebody said. Usually an ideology that I hate. I don't hate. I don't hate anything.
But I dislike when people are so absolutely sure that they're correct. And yet I know that with all the travels I've done around the world, all these decades of travel, that right and wrong is often a cultural perspective. It's wrong to eat worms, but another culture, it's perfectly acceptable to eat worms. So who's right? Who's wrong?
That's wrong. Well, you're wrong. Well, no, nobody's wrong. It's just. It's a cultural perspective.
So when I started seeing Serena, then that's when the keyboard warriors come out. And everybody loves when there's a hero, but they also. A lot of people, not a lot. There's some people that wait for the hero to stumble and that makes them feel better about themselves. So they felt that, you know, the Louisi was gone and that was way too quick in their minds.
And, you know, I could have run away from that and just kept everything hush, hush and lived. But it's not. It's my life. This is my life. And how I explain it is.
Louisa and I started grieving the day we got that phone call from the doctor. And then the news, the diagnosis and the prognosis. You have three months to live, maybe six months if you're lucky, and that's it. And there is no magical cure and there's no miracle going to happen. This is reality now.
You know, people out there say there's a miracle this, miracle that. And everybody. We shared all that online. It's like we're not the first persons of people that have gone through this. It is what it is.
This is life. Like, I've always shared everything about my life that I've lived and family and the things I believe and I share and I try and make it positive. And Louisa and I. Well, Louise just was always positive from that day on. I mean, you know, she had rough days where she was in a lot of pain, especially later on, but.
But it was always positive. She'd always be looking at the bright side. I'm very fortunate to have, you know, whatever of today. Look how beautiful the sunset is. So we shared all that.
That process of Louise slowly fading, fading away, leaving this life. And it took. It was a year and 11 months that we had together. And that's where I learned. You asked about the grieving process.
When you get a prognosis like that, you start grieving the instant you hear it. It's not like you lose somebody in a car accident, then you start grieving this. You start grieving when you get it together. And if it's a soulmate, you share that. Grieving together, you support each other.
We would sit and hold hands for 10 hours a day, every day, and watch over our land. She'd walk when she could walk, and later on she couldn't. She could sit. Then later on, I got a little chair that I could bring her outside on, and we'd sit there and hold hands and talk. And we talked about everything.
And we talked about my future and her future. Hers was pretty bleak. Mine was. I was gonna have to live on through this. And she, you know, bless her, she.
She understood that I was gonna have to live. And we were soulmates. I was gonna lose half of me. But it's not half of me. Because you're still alive.
You're a whole person. Yeah. You're losing your soulmate. And she. She prepared me for it.
I know she stayed alive for months longer than what she really felt like living because she was hurting so badly. And she prepared me for. For what was to come. And she wanted me to move on. She.
She said, you have to, you know, never forget her. Which. Not going to happen ever. Yeah. She lives with me every second.
Yep. But you have to live life. You cannot become a depressed, lonely, suicidal. Sit at home in the darkness waiting to die. That's not living.
She said, no, you're gonna have to find somebody else. And she knows me. She knows that I love love. I loved her. And we worked all through that.
We talked about it. We grieved about it. And this is what I was talking about earlier. Every single day is precious. You realize at that point, every single day is precious.
And that's where I learned, don't let tomorrow steal today. Yes, it's gonna happen. You know, it's happening. You can see it physically in front of you. What's gonna happen.
You're literally watching it happen. You can't be naive about it. Stick your head in the stand. No, you can't. You're there, and I'm holding her.
She's frail, you know, bones now. And it's gonna happen. So you can't let that. That eventuality steal the preciousness of today, the joy of today. She's alive right now.
Let's talk. Let's. Let's enjoy this. This. This day.
And as we got closer, you know, then she came to me and said, you know, it's time. And I said, yeah, I know. And that was. That was so sad.
And that's when I started living hour to hour, because now you don't have day to day. It's hour to hour. And then the next day, it came down to minute to minute. You live every minute to minute. Every minute is precious.
And then in the final moments, it's. You're living second to second. Second to second. Every second is precious. And then she's gone.
And in that moment, and I don't know how to describe this to anybody, I felt a warm wind come over me. Just. I don't know how else to describe this is real. I'm not a heebie jeebie kind of guy, and I'm not a. You know, I'm not subject to histrionics.
It was like a warm wind, like her soul. And I was holding her at that point, and it was like a weight. That wind just took a weight off my shoulders. And I realized, and she prepared me for that, that every. I had to live second to second.
Now. Now it's not about her. It's about me. Second to second, survive. This second is precious.
Don't you know? This next second, you got to live to the next and then the next one, and then minute to minute, and eventually hour to hour. And that took for me to know that I was gonna survive into the next. I'm still breathing, but am I living? Am I.
You know, the thoughts that come in your head. I have to live this hour. And it's a precious hour. And then I made it to day to day and, you know, reversed the process, but about me now surviving it. And.
And then Week to week where I could get. Where I could. Okay, I can. And, you know, then I had my novel came out. Call me Hunter.
So I had to do the book tour. Yeah. And that was a savior for me because I could keep myself busy and live, you know, hour, hour, day to day, and then week to week and finally month to month where I could start to make plans. Okay. A month from now, I can still.
Okay. I'm strong enough. I foxwells, you can see a little bit further, every further. And I'm not. And I'm not gonna let yesterday.
Louisa would be horrified if I did that. Let yesterday, you know, steal today. It's a precious day today. And family's still here. I get to see them and people that were.
And I would. I lived all through this on social media. So this is back to your point that people saw this and saw the grieving and, and the people that come up to me on the book tour and there's hundreds of people lined up often at these, at the book events, the signing events, and the ones that have been through it. We understood each other. That's the only people that understand.
You don't understand it. You can lose a father, mother, sister, brother. You can use a child. And I'm sure that's. They're all horrible.
I know that losing a soulmate is a different deal. And you said it earlier, it was. It's not physically, but it's half of you. It's, it, it's, it's, it's who you were, who you are together. You're together when it's a soulmate.
And those people came up to me and would talk to me and say, thank you for helping us see this, because I talked about this process. And part of that process is, okay, now I'm 66 years old and I'm, you know, who wants to be with a 66 year old? And what do I. I've been with the same woman for four decades. Yeah.
Yeah. I never wasn't a philanderer, didn't cheat on her. Didn't anybody, you know, there's. Nobody can come up and say I did because I didn't. So now, okay, you're back in this dating world and what do you do?
So I made some, you know, again, humor is. I talked about, you know, going on Tinder. I don't know anything about the day. What's a Tinder? I don't know.
I have no idea. You know, I actually. And I was used to Louise. Louise was gorgeous. She was gorgeous till the Day she died.
Stunning, beautiful. I mean, I was used to that. Maybe it's fossil. I don't know. But.
But I thought, okay, I had a Tinder. So I looked through. You know, I had a buddy that was on Tinder, and he said, look, you. You gotta. You find somebody within 20 miles, because further than that, it's just not worth it.
It's too much travel. You can't. And I thought, but I'm looking. I'm looking for one in a hundred million. You know, this is 20 miles.
What are the odds of 20 miles? It's not going to happen. So I. So on the Tinder profile, whatever you can set it to whatever. So I set it for the world.
And I just started going through, you know, swiping or whatever. I mean, this is ridiculous to even talk about at this point in my life. And I just, you know, went through. Until I found the most beautiful woman on Tinder that just, you know, I. You know, I could tell.
And I. And that's who I. The only person ever that I. On Tinder. And I reached out to her and we went on a date.
And she was stunning. I mean, she was absolutely gorgeous, amazing, like crazy beautiful, but not my next soulmate. So that was the end of all my Tinder and online, all that stuff. You know, I said, no, okay, that's not gonna work. And then at our sci, sorry, Club International, we had.
I had four booths. I'll tell you this whole story. Everybody out there is probably going, oh, yeah, I don't want to hear this, but maybe there's women out there listening. That'll. That'll.
It'll resonate with. But I told the guys, I said, look, you guys can have one of my booths at SCI and do it for the golf tournament to raise money for veterans. I'll just give it. I'll pay for it, but you guys use the booth for your, you know, set up your little stuff there. And I said, but if I were you, I'd get somebody that's articulate, intelligent, that can, you know, somebody a little bit older.
Not a booth babe, but try. You should probably get a female. Yeah. And she can talk about our golf tournament to people and sell raffle tickets to her, whatever they allow us to do there. And just talk about the hosting or the event we host every year to raise money for veterans, a good cause.
And that was Freedom Hunters, Anthony and the guys. And they. I walked in the first day at sci, and there was Serena. They'd picked her out of, I don't know, Whoever. You know, she.
Yeah, the pool. You know, ex lawyer. You know, she used to work for the. I know she was an ex lawyer. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah. No, she's. Oh, believe me, she's. She's hyper intelligent. Yeah.
Two. Two. Two undergraduate degrees. A ba, A bsc or BS of Bachelor of science and a doctorate in law. And.
And worked for the prosecutor. Hated that. Went to the defense and hated that and said, okay, I might have. Not doing law. So she was working as a mortgage broker and would moonlight at any conservation banquets.
And one of them was this. They picked her. I don't know how they even found her, how. And I walked in there and said, whoa, attractive lady. And I didn't.
But professional. I just signed my books for the three days, and the fourth day, the guys were all there. My big, rough mountain guys that are my guides, they're all selling the hunts or so. And they all had chocolate all over their faces, eating cookies like crazy. And I go, what are you guys doing?
Where do these cookies come from? And, oh, you gotta try them. You know, Serena baked them. I said, serena? You mean the girl that's been working over at the.
In our booth here for the golf tournament? They said, yeah. So I said, oh, you know, okay, you know. So I walked over to her and I said, you make these cookies for my guys. And it was the last day of the convention.
She said, yeah, I love bacon. And I said, oh. And then I. That was the first time I actually saw her that she cared enough about these ugly guys to bring them a bunch of homemade cookies. And that's why I said, are you married?
No. Never been married? Nope. Never married. Children?
No, no children. And that's why I said, so you're single? And she said, yeah. And I said, oh. And I said, I want to talk to you, but I had to go sign books.
Anyway, I came back a few hours later, she wasn't there. She was gone. She had another event to go to and I was so upset. I literally.
She was here for three days. Nobody got her number. And no, you didn't either, idiot. So I. But I finally managed to track her down and I asked her out.
And this is a true story. She said, look, I know you live here. I'm here for an extra day. The show's over today, but tomorrow you want to go for. For lunch or the next day?
I'm still here the day after that too, while we're shutting the booth down. And she said, well, sure, but only if you're going to be in Phoenix. Arizona, because that's where I'm flying tomorrow morning for the Waste Management Golf tournament. She does the 16th hole. She hosts a VIP booth.
Oh, that's so cool. I want to go so bad. I wanted to go. Yeah, I know. Here's the funny part of the story.
That day, that morning actually, the guys had me flying to Dallas and then to Tucson for the Gem and Fossil show. And I said, I called that morning before any of this conversation with Serena took place. I actually said to the guys, I don't want to go to Dallas. I want to go to the Gemma Fossil show. So just book me to the Gem and Fossil show in Tucson, Arizona.
And they screwed up. They booked me to Phoenix. And I was so mad, I said, what? I'm going to Tucson. Jim and Fossil show.
You fly me to Phoenix. And I said, never mind, I'll just rent a car. So when Serena said, well, only if you're going to be in Phoenix, I said, well, ding, ding. I said, I'm going to actually be there tomorrow too, so let's go. So we had our first date in Phoenix.
And she said to me, you know, or I said to her, actually, that first date, we just went out for dinner and talked for like six hours. And. And she's got. She's done a lot. You know, she was in the.
The Route 91. You know, she was right there in front of the stage when the people started falling around her. And her. And her friend. Her friend Kelly actually said, those are gunshots, and pulled her down to the ground and people were falling on them.
And so she's, you know, and she's 100% vegetarian lifetime since she was 8 years old. Wow. I think it's a health. She just doesn't. Yeah, she can't eat meat.
So. So. And then she's also had health. You know, she understands mortality. I won't get into it.
But, but so she's not. She's beautiful, she's younger than me, but she's wise beyond why she's older than me, even though I'm age. Wise older. And anyway, she. On the.
After that date that night, you know, I walked her to where she was staying. I said, look, I gotta see you again. You know that. She said, yeah. And she said, but I don't know when.
When are you gonna be back in Nashville? And I said, well, I'm not. And she said, well, you know, I'm flying from here to Raleigh, North Carolina. And I said, raleigh, North Carolina? She said, yeah, Ducks Unlimited banquet.
I'm gonna be Working there. And I said, raleigh. I'm flying to Raleigh, North Carolina, the day after tomorrow, and I've got a house in Pinehurst, North Carolina. And I mean, it was just pure, absolute serendipity and the universe. And you know what?
It was Louis saying, yes, you know, I approve of this. And this is. Otherwise, it's just too coincidental, all this. So anyway, back to your original question. I'm sure everyone's asleep by now, but.
No, not a bit, man. But, you know, so I started posting that Louisiana or that Serena and I are, you know, I was seeing this lady and the people went ballistic. I mean, not everybody. Some people were happy for you, but they. And Serena is younger, so the pictures, you know, she's.
She's younger than me. And you know what's socially acceptable? What they say half your age plus seven. Or, you know, there's all these stupid little formulas, equations. Yeah.
It's nothing to do with that. It's, you know, she's never gonna have children. Never wanted children. You know, can't. Doesn't want, you know, like, this is just not her thing in life.
I've already got my children. I've had them and I, you know, they have. They're raising their own children now. She loved to travel and traveled a lot. That's what she did, you know, go for a month at a time on motorcycle tour in crazy places.
And I traveled. Obviously there's. It's. It's a joy of life that balances for us and that. I mean, I know it.
I knew it with Louise the first date I knew I was going to marry. I phoned every single guy that, you know, water pole buddies and my phone, my family said, I found the lady I'm going to marry. After our first walk on a Beach on June 1, 1984, I found my sister and said, I found the lady I'm going to marry. Which is really all that matters. It doesn't.
I mean, nothing else matters. Yeah. Nothing. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. Yep.
And so, But. But people think. They think, you know, they think they have a right to opine on other people's lives and, and that's fair enough. That's. That's what our society does.
Yeah. You know, and why we stray on a straight narrow in society, you know, following some kind of rules, because if we did, it would be anarchy. Everybody would just be doing whatever they wanted. It would be collegial all over again. So it's.
It. People voiced their opinions vociferously on. On Social media and, and I, you know, I knew that was gonna, the storm was gonna happen because how could you, you know, you're, you're denigrating your Louise. You probably saw that. You were probably seeing this girl before Louise.
I mean, it was just so sad and pathetic. But that's small. People with small lives. Yep. Thinking that they have a right to, to try and sully somebody else's life on something that's beautiful for someone.
The hardest part of surviving grief at that level and that sorrow, such deep loss, is letting yourself find joy again. And this comes back to don't let yesterday steal today. It takes more strength to say, I'm going to come out of this blue funk, this darkness, the depression and the loneliness, sitting at home watching TV and eating TV dinners and drinking or whatever people do. It takes far more strength to say, okay, that's gone. Louise is never coming back to me, never going to be here again for me other than the signs that she'll send me.
Like the butterfly on my shoulder today, the sunset yesterday. But she's not going to be here physically anymore. And she wanted me to be healthy and happy again and find joy again in my life. And that's what I did. And that takes more strength.
So I would occasionally post things and there's people that are just mean spirited people. You just block and delete them. It's really simple, like social media. It's a great way to cleanse your followers. You dang right.
And actually it increased. You know, it's crazy. I'm not ever following you again. You know, you, it's a painting place or whatever. The soap opera, your life and your, you know, it's not why I follow you.
Although you follow me my whole life about my life. Yeah, that's all I ever posted. And yeah, there was more hunting in the past, but there's still lots of hunting, you know, moose, caribou, grizzly bear, sheep, whitetail deer, red stag, fallow deer. That's in the last six months. Yeah.
Like how much did you hunt? You know, I still hunt a lot, just not as much as it used to. Or they don't think so. So, so yeah, they, they voice that and you know, you can say it wasn't fair. It's fair because I'm a social, you know, I'm out there in social media, I'm in the public.
That's true. So once you do that, you have to accept the good with the bad. The good is I can help people and I get them all the time. The Direct messages saying, thank you. Thank you for what you're doing.
Because I lost my soul mate and my family doesn't want me to find someone else now. And I found somebody, and they hate her and they hate me and they're. You know, my family's getting torn apart because I just want to be happy. And you're doing it and showing that it can be done and it's okay to do that. This, this whole Hollywood thing where you've got to grieve for 50 years and that's fine.
If someone wants to do that. Absolutely. 100% have at it. And there is people, they come up to me all the time. Still.
All the time. And they'll say, well, I've not found anybody and I'm still hurting, and I've just. And it's been seven or eight or 20 years, whatever it is. Great. That's how you want to grieve, and that's how you want to spend the rest of your life.
I am thrilled for you and I support you in that decision. And other people say, my father, I was so against it. And he found this woman. She's 20 years younger than him, and he married her within four months. And you know what?
Now it's 10 years later. And I've never seen him so happy. And I was wrong. I hear that just as often as the people that say online, well, you shouldn't do that. You should be grieving for how much time?
How much time are you supposed to. Yeah, there's never a right time. Yeah. If they were mad at that, they'd have been mad at six months. They'd been mad at a year.
They were mad at two years. It's never, give me the date. Yeah, that's why I say to be okay. Tell me what date am I allowed to be happy? You tell me what date am I allowed to be happy and feel joy again in my life.
And until then, I'll be sad and depressed if we want. I mean, I obviously facetiously saying that and no, but it was a choice. It was a choice. You could have still been depressed and like you said, TV dinners and just laying at home. You could be doing that right now, patting my dog.
Yep. It's not going to happen. Not with me. Life is too precious again. It comes back to day to day.
Every single day is precious. And I agreed with Louise together for that two years now. If she had passed in a car accident, I don't know that I could be here where I am here today, because I don't know how long it would take because there's no closure. You could never have said the things you wanted to say for those months and months and year and 11 months we had together to say those things and really show your love. They're gone.
And I feel for everybody that goes through it that way, because it does happen too. And I don't understand it. I understand losing a soulmate, but I don't understand what they're going through. So I can't say it wouldn't take me two years or five years, and I wouldn't be depressed and sitting at home eating TV dinners. But I know that I'm doing what Louisi wanted and living true to myself, and.
And Serena and I are happy. I mean, we've been together a year now, and. Yeah. Like, she was here last year at the golf tournament. Yep.
That this was her first thing together. I know. I remember public. I remember. I remember being nervous for you.
I was. I was. Because I knew. I think you had told me she was coming, you know, whatever. I.
I knew. And I was. I remember driving up here, and I was like, hope this goes well for. Yeah, Like, I hope it does. Everybody's nice.
Yeah, I'm. You know what? I'm fine. It can't hurt me. What are you gonna do, send me home?
I mean. Yeah. Yeah, I walk the walk. I don't need to. It doesn't matter to me what people think.
It honestly doesn't. But if I can use. Which is the other side. I was gonna talk about the social media, the good side. I can help people.
I can help people. I can give them hope. I can show them that there is light at the end of that tunnel. There's a rainbow out there. You just have to actually look for it and make an effort.
Don't sit inside the darkness. Go outside and look for it. It's out there. And I can use social media for that way. So that's the balance with the.
The negative trolling. And I don't care. Those people aren't happy. And, yeah, it's like, well, they're throwing fire, but they're not seeing their house on fire behind them. No, most of the time.
Yeah, Exactly. There's all kinds of little cliches about it. You know, keep the shadows behind you. You know, if you wanted to pray, blah, blah, blah. But.
But. But that's fine. They. They use it for. To vent in their way.
It makes them feel good. Maybe that's a positive and a sort of a reverse. Backwards.
Take a cheap shot at you're blowing steam off it, you know, whatever. Do it on me. Yeah. So. So I, I, you know, I, I just.
I just go with it and, And. And block and delete. If they're really vicious, and there are some vicious ones, you know, the really, really, truly ugly people are just ugly. It doesn't matter. And I don't mean physically.
I'm talking about just inside or ugly people. The world's not a better place for them being here. A lot of evil. But. But.
So you just block and delete and off they go. And nowadays there's this AI and the robots are not even real people. No. But they see engagement when they see those opposed. Like, I'll do a long one.
And they're not even real. They're not even real. They're just trying to generate. And I think it's. I know I don't want to.
Mark Zuckerberg, if you're listening out there, you know, tell me I'm wrong. But I think the engagement, they do it purposely. Oh, 100%. Just to create more engagement, make their company worth more. So people are on there longer and they get more advertising dollars, which is feeding the addiction.
That's what. Yeah, they're finding. They're just finding unbelievable ways to do it. Yeah. But.
But, you know, for all their negativity and all, you know, I'm happy. And Serena and I are doing great. I'm glad. Traveling now together, we're heading to Africa in five days, to Turkey first and to Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mauritius, and then back and spend all summer on the island, Vancouver island, at my museum, and then we'll head off to the Middle east, actually, or to the Yukon for moose and caribou season. And then to the Middle East.
They've started a new SCI chapter in Doha, in Qatar. Really? Yeah. They named their big award the Jim Shockey International Hunter of the Year Award. So we've been invited to go there.
The sheiks, or I don't know what they are, Amirs want to show us the Middle East. The Middle east, the hunting Middle east and the hunters, and that there's good people there too. So we're going to Qatar and Kuwait and Arab Emirates, and hopefully we get down to Saudi Arabia and to Egypt. That's so cool. Then over to Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
This, you know, in October. So, yeah, we're. I've got a. I've got a new soulmate, and that's. I'm.
I'm really, really lucky to find two soulmates in one lifetime. That's true love. I mean, I'm lucky. People say you can only love once. That's.
That's not true. Yep. I assure you it's not true. And that's. Hollywood might want you to believe that because they, you know, they make lots of money on movies that make you cry, but it's not true.
If you're open to life and living. And as far as the age difference, which we didn't get into, Serena says I keep her young because I'm passionate about life I live. And her friends say that actually that I keep her young. She's wise beyond her years, far beyond her years. And what she's seen in her life, what she's gone through, there's many things that.
That aren't normal for the average person living out there. And she's brilliant, smart, you know, nice, sweet, gentle, kind, 100% vegetarian, living with arguably one of the better hunters in the world. So, I mean, it's really funny, but it. It just is. And that's you.
Embrace it. Embrace life. Live life. And every day is precious. I love it.
Well, thank you for opening up. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for everything you've done for life, the hunting industry, everything. We are, I know I can speak for, I guess all of us, we are very appreciative of you. And thanks for taking the time to do this and looking forward to tonight and tomorrow, my friend.
You, but me too. And thanks for having me on. Absolutely. Telling the story. I'm happy to do it for anyone to listen.
Love it. Well, thanks, Jim Shockey, for being here and looking forward to all. All that is in the future for you, man. We're all happy for you and can't wait to see following on Instagram and Facebook and seeing what all the next couple months unfolds. It'll be on there, so you'll get it.
Be careful what you wish for. Love it. Awesome. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate you being Here.