I'm Travis Bader
and this is the Silvercore podcast.
Silvercore has been providing
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Today, I'm joined by the renowned conservationist,
host of the massively popular Wired to Hunt podcast,
author, angler, hunter and Resident Whitetail guide at Meat Eater.
Welcome to the Silvercore podcast.
Mark Kenyon. Hey, thank you, Travis.
I appreciate it.
Glad to be here.
absolutely well took me a little bit.
to get through that intro there.
But we got there. Yes.
So you've got a reputation, a reputation of being a hard working whitetail hunter,
but you also have a reputation which precedes you that
you might be aware of or you might not be.
I was having sitting by the campfire waiting for the lamb to roast up
we’re having dinner with a friend of mine who has worked with you in the past.
And unsolicited, she brings up you
and she says that you are genuine
and that you're kind, that you're modest and you're professional.
And those are the four things
that really stuck out in my mind, completely unsolicited.
And I thought, This is really cool.
Coming from an industry where, you know, I've done chats
before with people and they talk about ego in the industry,
particularly when it comes to social media and trying to
I guess you have to promote yourself and promote a business
for you to be able to navigate that terrain
and still go through with the reputation of being modest and kind and genuine.
That was what really intrigued me, what made me want to chat with you.
I don't know if you've heard that before.
Chances are you probably have.
Well, I really I really appreciate that.
And and hearing that kind of feedback is is
maybe the best thing I could ask for as far as a reputation precedes me.
Because those things are really important to me.
Those are things that that matter to me.
And I'm glad that that's,
you know, how people are perceiving
what I bring to the world.
I guess it is a pet peeve of mine seeing so much
of that ego and bravado and
yeah, there is a lot of that in the world in general and within our community.
I think in our community there's definitely a lot of opportunities
for that.
And and so I try to avoid that kind of stuff and just
heck, I don't know.
It's hard talking about yourself, isn't it?
Yeah, Yeah, it always is.
But, but yeah, that was really kind of her to say that.
And I'm going to try to keep on living up to that reputation,
and that's maybe the best thing I could do.
Well,
when you look at a person like who's really in the public eye.
So Bear Grylls, I've read a few of his books
and he talks about there's Bear and there's B.G.,
there's the Internet persona or the TV persona, the action hero B.G,
which is built up by others, not necessarily himself.
And then there's Bear the person at home with his family doing his thing.
And I get the sense that you probably run into a similar thing
where others will will portray you in a certain way.
But the difference between the M.K and the mark
are probably a little bit more level, like what you see on TV, what you see on
social media is probably pretty akin to how you are.
Yeah, you're spot on. That actually is.
I think maybe that's different for me compared to a lot of folks
within the the public media space.
But I think what has
maybe what has separated me in some regards
from others within the outdoor media space is that
I don't have some superhero persona that I can put on.
I don't have a Superman cape I can throw on and impress people.
I'm not
you know, there's I've seen a couple of different ways
to establish a voice and credibility within the world
of, you know, outdoor media or probably any kind of media.
But there's this like the expert.
There's like the expert guy or girl who's like, amazing at everything.
They're good at everything.
They know everything
and they wow you with how great they are.
And when I came into this, I came into this
with no, you know, leg to stand on within that world.
Because 15 years ago when I started doing this kind of stuff,
I was just a kid who was in love with this lifestyle.
I loved it.
I lived it.
It was everything I thought about.
But I wasn't an expert.
I was just someone with a
with passion oozing from from every single crack and seam.
And so what I brought to the table 15 years ago and what I've realized is
all I really can bring to the table is the very real story of my experiences
chasing these passions and my unending curiosity to learn more.
So yeah, like what you see on TV is 100% the same person that my wife sees,
you know, in the evening, because I'm not I can't impress anyone.
I'm just who I am.
I'm just a goofy, lanky guy who's a nerd, who has a lot of books
behind me, who loves to read, who loves to learn, who's who,
who loves the outdoors, and who would do anything he could do to
to to keep them around for future generations and for my kids.
And I'm a goober.
And I you know, I that's just that's all I can do.
I've tried at times in my career or I've felt pressure to try to
you know, I felt like I had to be like this person
or that person. I'd see someone who was a role model of mine
or I'd see somebody who's doing well and in this thing or that thing.
And I think, Oh,
I need to be more like that if I want to succeed or achieve my goals.
And every time I've tried to do that, I fall on my face.
That doesn't
that doesn't resonate with people because I can't be something I'm not.
The only thing I've found that has led to success for me
is just leaning in to being as authentically me as I possibly can.
That's not going to appeal to everyone.
Not everyone's going to like what I bring to the table.
Not everyone's going to appreciate my message or
my mustache or my hats or my
whatever it is, Sure, But that's all I can be.
All I can be at the very best is who I am.
Really, really, truly.
And so I've I've finally gotten to a place where I'm comfortable with that. And
and I think for those people that I resonate with,
that's the best way that I can be of service to them.
Well, you're building your audience of people who
who want to see the genuine you.
How difficult would it be to live a life where you are putting on that different
persona, where you're out in one place and you come home?
You know, it brings to mind
a local telecommunications company that we have over here called Telus.
And before it was BC Tel, and there was a point in time
where if you got a phone bill and let's say
you dropped calls or pager or whatever, it was, dating myself a little bit
and you wanted to negotiate your bill down with the company,
you had to get mad at them and you had to
get a supervisor on the line and go through this whole process.
And they I remember I didn't like doing that.
I didn't want to have to go.
And I would ask, why do I have to get mad in order to get this down?
I'm going to go through this whole thing.
And then they'd escalate it and they had this whole procedure in place.
And at one point
they made a switch because they realized that they were training
their audienceor basically training their customer base to get mad at them.
Like if you want to have that was the interaction that they were having.
And so all of a sudden they said, you know, you can get as mad as you want.
We're not doing anything.
However, if you're kind and respectful and we go through this
process, will bend over backwards to help you.
And I thought that was from a business perspective.
Very interesting that you train your customer, but also from a just
sustainability and growth standpoint for somebody like yourself in this sphere,
I see you as a leader in the industry
and you were essentially training the people who follow you as to
how you would like to be treated if, let's say you ran into them
when you're out hunting by your example and you do a lot of that through example,
you're not out there preaching, but there's a lot of example driven.
Are you actively thinking of it sort of as in this telecommunication case,
or is this just something that you're doing?
I think it's not necessarily something I'm
actively thinking about all the time, but it is
I feel like as my platform has grown
and I reach more people with what I say and what I do,
I do have a recognition of
the responsibility I have
because I am leading by example, whether in a good way or a bad way. And
I have realized
that's that's a responsibility and an opportunity, right?
So it's a responsibility
that that falls on my shoulders whether I want it or not,
because a lot of people see and hear what I do.
So that's inherent.
But then also you can look at it as an opportunity.
And I do, because
almost the only reason I do what I do now,
which is, you know, write about, talk about and
produce films and videos about hunting and fishing and how we can,
you know, continue doing those things in a positive way
and promote the future of these things and protect the future of things.
That's what I do.
And I do that because
A: I love it. It's the only life I could live.
But then B:
all of my
energy now is is more and more geared towards
giving back to this thing, protecting this and conserving this thing.
That's that's where my energy is really focused.
Hopefully for now, in the next
35, 40 years, however much longer I have on this earth.
And so I look at this as an opportunity because there are a lot of things
that I can see within the world where we need to make progress.
We need to as a community or
yeah, as a community, like we need to be working towards things
or we need to be acting in certain ways or we need to be speaking out and
representing ourselves in certain ways, or we need to fight this fight to
support this cause, whatever it is.
And you mentioned like I could go about this, I could try to,
you know, work towards those goals by preaching about it all the time.
And, you know, talking about these things is important.
But I don't think anything. Right.
You know, it's the old cliche actions speak louder than words.
There's nothing that speaks and nothing that can
promote something or
showcase something, nothing more than you actually doing.
It is as powerful as that.
So I do look at the fact that, hey, I have a platform.
There are some people who pay attention to
what I'm doing and I better walk the walk if I plan to ever talk the talk.
So. So yes, I think about this stuff not all the time, but I do reflect on it
and and will, you know, try to take the opportunity to think through.
Okay, What are the things that are important
to me and important to the future of these things I care about so much?
Are you living that way just as much as you're saying you do?
How do you find that balance, though?
I mean, if you come in to something that you were so passionate about
and you just you love what you do, you love
being outdoors, you love the connection with nature, you love the hunting.
And, you know, it's like that old adage of, let's say
somebody who's really good at their job.
They're the top person at the local business that's, let's say,
the top janitor, and they promote that person to a level.
We're now they're the manager
of all the other janitors, and they're like, you know,
I I've been growing in this space, but I don't enjoy managing.
I enjoyed what I was doing before.
Do you find that there's a difficult balance as you grow
to continue to do what it is that you're passionate about,
or are your passions evolving?
You know, it's a good question and it's one that,
you know, I was actually talking to someone recently that they had asked,
you know, if I if I harbored interest in, you know, getting more into
the business side of things
or the managerial side of things or the leadership side of things.
And and what I said and how I feel is that
I want to continue to have leadership,
but I want to lead with the tools that I have passions and skills around.
And that's not necessarily in business or in manager managing.
It's communications, storytelling, speaking, writing.
That's where I have some level of skill and that really nicely
matches up with my passion because, you know,
if you want to speak and tell stories or communicate,
having lived experiences about those things, sure as heck helps.
And so I'm able to continue, you know, doing the things I love outside hunting
and fishing and camping and backpacking and all those things, because it
gives me a foundation to then
speak and write and film and and tell important stories.
So I will say like, I don't want to do anything else in my life.
Like, I don't there isn't a next step.
There isn't the next job,
you know, the basic job description of being a storyteller and a writer
and a speaker about these things, a storyteller about these things.
That's what I want to do.
I just want to continue doing it and speaking to more people
and hopefully having a larger impact.
They say leadership's the art of influencing human behavior
as to accomplish a mission in the manner so desired by the leader.
And, you know, if your
you clearly seem to be driven by something
more than just hunting and fishing, then just being outside. And
I'm from an outsider looking in
family seems to play a very massive role with you.
That seems evident just from somebody looking in.
Staying grounded seems to be something that you actively work on in order to,
as you move through your career
and your social media presence,
what would you say is your guiding principle that's kind
of pushing you forward, that allows you to be outside to do what you love to do?
But is your
your North Star, I guess, yeah.
So there's there's there's two parallel, I guess, lines.
I would think there's this, this line of
of purpose
I think is a big thing and just having like a purpose
focused life I think is something that has helped me
stay true to, to things.
And then there's like
foundational principles or virtues maybe that then guide how I do that.
I think so. I have I have I'm very purpose.
I'm very goal oriented, purpose focused.
So I need to have a thing that I'm chasing or a thing
that matters a lot to me that I can keep my eye on.
And so those things would basically involve at this point,
you know, one is working towards a better future for wildlife
and wild places like that's that's top of the career focus, that's top of
anything along those lines.
Everything needs to be working towards that.
And then on the personal side, it is, you know, supporting, working towards,
you know, supporting the long term future and satisfaction and,
you know, whatever obligations that I have when it comes to my family.
Right, right.
Doing right by my family, raising my children,
being the husband that my wife deserves. Hmm.
So those two parallel tracks would be and those things work together, I think.
But those are the two main purposes in my life.
And then I have, you know, virtues and principles of life that then,
you know, give me the foundation to do those kinds of things.
So those would be the things like trying to be grounded.
Those are the things like continued self-development.
That's a really important thing for me.
Never losing your curiosity.
I think that's something that has been a guiding
I don't know if says a virtue or principle or what
the heck that is, but that's that is a huge foundational part of me.
Just I am obsessed with learning and growing and and exploring new things
and reading and studying and being a student.
I think maybe that's being a student of of everything that I explore.
So that's something that then fuels those two main purposes,
I think, you know, yeah, just the basics,
the very basic things like your family teaches you growing up, right?
Integrity, being a man of your word, being true to what you say you're going to do,
treating others the way I mean, very simple things being treated
as the way you want to be treated
and simply living a good, positive life, being an example for others.
I mean, you know, this isn't new to new to the world kind of concepts here,
but I try to live in that kind of way while moving
towards those two larger, important purposes in my life.
A lot of the things you're talking about here are very stoic in nature.
And that's a new sort of I mean, everyone seems to be talking about stoicism
since I think Ryan Halliday has really popularized it and others.
Yeah, My wife says,
you know,
Mark, he displays all these stoic virtues.
I'm like, what is that? Right?
I don't know what this is.
She's like, Well, you're a stoic Travis.
I'm like, I still don't know what this is.
Right.
But I think you were actually named in by BHA.
They had attributed that to you.
Is that something that you actively seek out or is it
something just has been labeled to you just by the way that you act?
Well, I think I have developed an interest in the Stoics
and stoic philosophy by, you know, folks like Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss.
And so so I've read pretty extensively on those topics,
and I've just found so many parallels and so many things like that, though
that set of tools, that Stoic philosophy provides.
So neatly dovetails with so many of the challenges
that I faced as a hunter, as an outdoorsman,
or even as a as a writer or anyone in business.
Like it's simply like a toolset for dealing with life.
And I found it to be a very useful toolset.
And, and
yeah, so that's, that's you know, something I'm perfectly fine being,
you know, in that conversation because I think it's a useful set
of ideas and again, a pretty decent way to go through life.
And it's certainly helped me, you know, I don't have all the answers.
I'm what, 46 I think I am right now.
I got to double check that one.
But one thing that I have found, if you want to be happy in life,
it is that progressive realization of a worthy ideal, as
Earl Nightingale would put it.
But the
the fact that you're always learning and always sort of building for me,
I like to build things I like the creation of something,
not necessarily the ongoing upkeep of everything that I create
and being in there.
But if I've got
something that I'm putting together and building and watching it grow,
there is a natural byproduct of enjoyment
and happiness that seems to come from that.
And it seems like you have nailed that on the head with the constant
learning, with the progression, something that you're working towards.
Because if I've built something and it's doing well,
I will become bored with it after a while.
If I don't have something new that I can learn,
if it's not pushing me or challenging me
or building something that's going to And when I'm young,
you start out like, how can I how can I build myself?
And then after a certain point, you're like,
How can I build something that's going to make it better for others?
Yeah, yeah, 100% relate to that.
Had had those very same experiences.
I can't handle stagnation. Hmm.
So. So yes, growth,
exploring new things I have to be doing.
There's got to be another project
that's got to be the next thing to chase after, to explore, to, to, to work on.
To, to pursue.
To my wife’s chagrin
I can't just sit and be. Yeah.
You know, I have to have, you know, a cause, a purpose, a something that
I'm, that I'm working on building whatever it might be in then.
Yeah.
Like I definitely had a progression with my career where just like you
described, you know, early on it was just, you know, could I find a way?
You know, I started my career in the tech industry working Google, right?
9 to 5. Yes.
And right around that same time, I realized within weeks of starting
that job, I realized like,
oh, wow, this is not how I can spend the rest of my life.
But I started a website the summer prior about deer hunting.
And I thought, you know what?
I bet you I bet I could do something with that.
And I decided, like, that fall like, I'm going to I'm going to find a way
to take my passion for deer hunting and make that a living somehow.
I don't know how, but I'm going to do it.
And and so for four years I struggled to do that.
I worked to build that thing
on, you know, nights and weekends and all that kind of stuff.
And so early on it was just, Can I make this thing work?
Could I somehow make a living doing this thing I love?
And then, you know, I was able to do that and then it was, okay, can I do this?
Well, can I, can I you know, reach the top of this
I don't know
ladder that I'm I'm climbing up right now within that world and then okay.
I was able to do that and then some somewhere around
8-10 years into doing that is when I started having these,
you know, realizations where
it had to be about more than just me.
And and I was so head over heels
in love with
this world that I get to spend
time in the natural world, wild animals, wild places, wilderness.
I mean, I'm
head over heels is really the only way I can describe it.
And I wanted so badly, so desperately
to keep these places around
that I just I knew, you know, that that's what I need to be doing.
That's that's the only way I could feel.
I could use my talents or skills or sweat equity for something worthwhile.
That was the place.
Like there's, you know, all this different people are built differently.
They've got different skill sets, they've got different things
they could do in the world.
I'm I can't solve world poverty.
I can't cure cancer.
But I.
But I know this is where I'm supposed to do my thing.
And and so that was, I don't know, five, five, six years ago, something like that,
when I kind of realized that this was the path that I need to pursue.
It's not trying to be the best deer hunter in the world.
It's not trying to be the most famous, you know, TV show host in the world.
It's none of those things.
It has to be focused on that greater good that I could work on.
And so that's been guiding my decisions since that point.
And that's where I'm continuously even now, trying to figure out,
am I doing that well enough, what I need to be doing differently?
How do I
how do I matter?
How do I make a difference?
Yeah, that conversation with you with yourself often,
relatively. Yeah.
I mean, I really do.
Especially each year, you know, come New Years, that's a great time to reflect.
So we're just coming off of that this year.
And I, you know, sat and spent a lot of time thinking about, All right,
have your actions, you know, have the choices
you've made in your career or the content you're producing or whether the projects
you're pursuing, are you are you working enough towards that goal?
Are you doing enough or do we need to start tweaking things?
Do we need to change some things? Do we need to reconsider some things?
Do we need to tackle new projects?
But yeah, I think that is
something I think about fairly often, especially if you
and gosh, I got to be careful not to get preachy.
but if if you pay, if you pay attention to anything
when it comes to the environment or public lands, conservation, anything like that,
if you pay attention to what's going on in the world around us, it's really easy.
It's really hard not to see
areas of danger, areas of worry,
areas for concern, threats from every different angle to our
public lands, to our clean waters to
so many different things.
We can go.
There's a million different angles. You could go there, right?
There's so many different things that threaten the future
of these these places and these animals and these opportunities
that mean a lot to me and I think to a lot of other people.
So I'm constantly reminded because of that.
So I'll constantly get this.
I'll be reading something in the morning, drinking my coffee and like,
Oh my gosh, this place has got this this thing happening to it.
And I can't imagine a future in which we don't have this,
whatever it is.
Yeah.
And you can, you can find yourself get depressed pretty quickly if you let that
that consumes you.
Let this. Yeah. Consumes you.
And I’m constantly reminded of something that Yvonne Shanard says has said,
which is the greatest cure for depression is action.
I constantly, whenever I find myself reading an article
or seeing some new study about, you know, how this wildlife population
is going down the tube or how this animal's
just about to go extinct, or this new
mining project is going to, you know, devastate the headwaters of
a salmon run or something. Right.
I just constantly remind myself, well, the only way to deal
with this, you know, negative feeling right now is is action.
So what can you what can you do?
Do you find do you find that battle with that that negativity?
Is that something that manifests itself you seem like a thinker.
Yeah, I'm a thinker and so I have the you know, I can I can dwell on things.
Sure.
I'm I'm generally a positive, happy person.
So I don't have, like depression issues. I don't have that.
But I do have the ability to sometimes just be like really bummed out
about stuff and maybe upset about things.
And so then the question is just what do you do with that feeling?
What do you do with this?
Do you just read this stuff?
Do I just become like this guy who reads about everything
that's wrong with the environment, everything that's wrong
with wildlife reads, And I know everything there is to be said
about the million threats to our wild places in the environment.
Right?
But what good is that unless you act on it?
And so that's what I constantly
try to remind myself of, is is it's no good to just dwell in bad news
unless you're going to take that information and do something about it.
So when I was young, I was diagnosed with ADHD,
and there are people who get energy
from being around other people call them extroverts, right?
And in a large group and they're just more and more energized.
I've always found myself under that definition
to be more of an introvert when I am around other people, I enjoy it.
But at the end of the day, I'm feeling drained.
Like if I have to go to a shot show in Vegas or one of these man by day
one and a half, I'm done, You know.
But I found just being in nature is something that creates a bit of a
maybe forces me into a meditative state,
allows me to be recentered.
And I think there's huge value
to everyone having a better connection with their natural environment.
I'm curious what it is for you where you say you absolutely love it,
you just love it.
Is it something that you need that fuels
use in a similar way that I need to get out into the wild?
Yeah, 100%.
It's it's, it, it does all of those things and
all of my
my greatest memories, my greatest,
most powerful experiences, the things that, you know, outside of my family.
The only thing that you know, would get me up in the morning.
Incredibly jazzed
The only thing that I'm incredibly excited about doing, the thing that
does refuel me, that recenters, me,
that gives me excitement and momentum moving into the future.
I mean, all of those things revolve around
the outside world and those things you can do out there.
And that's been the case since I was a little kid.
You know, the the things I loved as a child were animals, right?
I mean, that's a pretty natural thing. Sure. For a lot of kids, right.
We have an innate connection to nature.
They call it Biophilia.
Is this theory that we were you know,
because we evolved surrounded by these other life forms,
We are predisposition as humans to have an innate connection to them.
And some of us stray from that.
Some of us eventually become divorced from that through, you know,
you know, choices to live farther apart from nature.
But it is an inherent human thing
to to feel what you feel when you go outside.
And for me to feel those same things.
And I think oftentimes you get someone who's lived in the city and been an office
worker and never had that opportunity to get outside and see these places.
Do these things have up close experiences
with wild animals if they never had that opportunity,
But then they're invited to go on a trip and they go to a national park
and they see a buffalo up close and they come around a corner
and there's a grizzly bear standing in the river
and they spend three nights out there and see the stars
at night and hear the wind rustling through the trees and all those things.
They all of a sudden realize like
something has been tapped.
They've tapped into something that was there all along that was lying
latent deep down inside their chest, that now they're all of a sudden experiencing
and realizing that a part of them all of a sudden is being able to
to to live that never did before.
And I think that's what I was just very fortunate to encounter and experience it.
Two, three, four years old and never left it.
And I just continue to try to experience that as much as I possibly can ever since,
you know, a lot of people tell me that it's fear that prevents them
from wanting to go out and explore wild places, whether that's fear
in the ocean of sharks,
even if they're in an area where there are no sharks
or fear of the unknown is usually what it is.
Fear of bears. I hear that one a lot.
Yeah, I understand you used to take Tylenol
PM in order to get through the night in Bear country.
Yeah. You still do that? No, I don't.
But yeah, the first
when I started backpacking
in Grizzly country is when.
When I started taking that because, yeah, I grew up,
as I alluded, like doing outdoorsy things in Michigan
and Michigan's kind of like a I love Michigan.
We have some great outside opportunities,
but it's a slightly domesticated version of the wild world, right?
We're not in British Columbia.
There's not grizzlies around every corner mountain lions and wolves
and really wild, wild stuff.
So I had I had a great beginner's
it was like a beginner's guide to the outside world.
This my my outdoor experiences at that point.
And it wasn't until after college that I set off and started going west
and having some of these different experiences. And so I started backpacking.
I started going into really wild places, really off the beaten path.
And so at that point, yeah, that's when I, you know, had those first encounters
with, with critters that could eat ya for dinner if they really wanted to.
So for that first couple of years really, you know going to sleep I mean it's
you know being in grizzly country when you're not at the top of the food
chain, it's different. It is isn’t it?
It is different.
And so early on, especially when you don't know much about
it and it's so brand new,
I was
even, you know, skittish around black bears early on.
But, you know, with time
and experience and exposure, you start to understand how to operate
in those types of places, not living in a world of fear.
But I think with respect, I think I think that's how I approach
bear country or grizzly country or really any kind of risk in the natural world
is not fear focused, but with a with a healthy level of respect
for the real risk, the realistic risks, understanding it,
preparing for it, operating within, you know, operating
within a knowledgeable sense of, okay, how do we how do we deal with this?
How do we do this stuff in the right, safe way?
So, yeah, it's funny, you know, like my dad
has never spent like that kind of time
in grizzly country and doing these kinds of things.
So this is different, right? Yeah.
And so now we go up to northern Michigan and like,
he wants to go for a walk in the woods and he wants to carry his pistol.
And I'm like, there's like a couple of black bears somewhere around here.
But there's nothing that's going to,
you know, nothing to bother worry about at all.
Yeah, but you know, he just hasn't had the exposure and time in these places
where there are some things that are a little bit more
dicey.
Yeah. So it's just what you're used to. It's what you're used to.
It's where you spend time.
It's what you develop a comfort level with.
I mean, there's certainly still things that scare me out there,
but late at night you hear a bump,
buffaloes rubbing up against your tent in the middle of the night.
Yeah.
Yes, that happened to you and your wife.
And there you go. Yes it did.
So. So yeah, I think
the wild world is such a great place to confront that kind of stuff, though.
I mean, I don't think there's.
I don't think there's any better way to learn to deal with discomfort or fear
than putting yourself out there against the original elements
and other critters that, you know, again, back to that thing
mentioned a second ago, like those were the
that was the iron that we sharpened ourselves against to become humans, right?
We evolved.
We became what we are now by going out into the wild and surviving,
finding food, finding shelter, dealing with the elements,
dealing with other wildlife out there, like that's what made us who we are.
So what better way to,
you know, continue to confront what it means to be a human
and to go back into that original, you know, landscape that we started.
I find it really interesting as we evolve as humans, how disconnected
we started to become from our food and from the process
and from the natural environment to where we are.
I feel like the pendulum is swinging back when people are talking about
the 20 mile diet or 50 mile away for don't even know what the proximity is,
but locally harvested or foraged, foraged food,
getting back into the basic virtues
that are our forefathers would talk about and stoicism being one of them.
I find it I find it rather interesting that it's swung so far.
And everyone
a lot of
people would look at that and say, Oh man, you know, the future's looking terrible.
But nature's got an interesting way.
Of course correcting and
yeah, I just I think it's when you talk about people
good at getting out to nature and connecting with those primal fears,
I see like through COVID, people were afraid.
They didn't know what was going on.
They watch the media and they listen to the news. They
they figure the world's fallen apart, everything’s getting shut down.
And there was a huge uptick in people wanting to get hunting license.
I found wanting to get outdoors because they're getting all cooped up.
Do you do you see that pendulum shifting
or was that do you think was a momentary kind of blip because of COVID?
And it's going to start going back to where it was?
I mean, I think there's there's two things.
I think, one,
it was definitely like a unique set of circumstances that
kind of disproportionately encouraged getting back outside, right,
because there was all these inside
activities that people just couldn't do anymore for for some months.
And so it pushed some number of people, millions of people, turns out,
as far as the numbers
tell us to go and try this stuff again or try it for the first time
maybe they saw hunting on TV or they heard about a friend who did it.
And this was finally that time where I got nothing else.
I can't I can't go to the movies, can't go to the mall.
Let's try it.
Finally, let's try kayaking or let's try hiking.
So there definitely was that COVID wave.
And I think what we've seen,
what the numbers seem to tell us now, is that a certain percentage of that I'm
not exactly sure what that percentage
might average out to be across, you know, different activities,
but a certain percentage of have stuck with it.
A lot of them have gone back to their, you know, whatever they're doing prior,
But a lot of folks have stuck with it.
So I think we had like a special blip in the radar that bumped it up.
But then I do think, like there is just there's always going to be
some portion of the population out there
that recognizes that inner longing that I talked about.
Mm hmm.
And and so I think maybe
20 years ago, there might not have been
as many opportunities for people to follow that. Hmm.
And by that, I mean, like, there might, you know,
with the technology we have today in the media we have today,
there's there's an opportunity
to be exposed to a lot of new things that you maybe wouldn't
have and to learn about them and to go really deep into that process
unless you had a mentor or family member who was into it.
So I think there's a little bit
of a unique opportunity now to capture that maybe 20% or whatever
the numbers of people who who feel that inside.
I'm like, man, I kind of feel like when I watch
Planet Earth, I feel something there, right?
But my family doesn't go to national parks,
my family doesn't hunt, my family doesn't fish.
We live in Chicago or whatever, and I feel very far removed from that.
Those people 20 years maybe never would have been able
to, you know, explore that anymore.
But now we do have so many opportunities for people to, you know, go down
that wormhole, you know, of YouTube videos or Instagram accounts
or podcasts or whatever it might be, and at least explore it a little bit.
You know, it's there's still a tough gap to bridge
to get people actually out there still.
But I think we're seeing that resurgence of interest in these kinds of things.
And we finally have,
you know, the media to to
to to fulfill that desire, at least that curiosity that people have.
And so I think that's something we're we're seeing.
There's always going to be this backlash to like the onward, quote
unquote, progress and, you know,
of folks moving farther and farther away from nature like that's
that's where things are going.
But I think there's going to be
some percentage of people that are going to say, hey,
what we're leaving behind here really, really matters.
And so it'll be interesting to see, you know, where the,
you know, where the numbers and the demographics continue to go.
But it certainly seems like outdoor pursuits,
whether it be hunting, fishing or just more non consumptive
things, biking, backpacking, camping, all that kind of stuff.
You know, there continues to be increased interest there.
And, you know, generally I think that's a good thing.
So your podcast and because he brought up different modes and media,
whether it be social media or TV shows,
podcasting, your podcast is very popular.
It ranks quite well on an ongoing basis
when you look at charitable or these different different places.
How did you find that podcasting and getting your voice out there
changed the direction of where you're going or amplified the direction?
Yeah, it was
surprising a little bit in that I
it ended up being more impactful than I realized it would be.
I was fortunate that I was relatively early
to the podcast wave.
You know, I started the podcast, you know, I started working on it in 2013
and launched it in the spring of 14.
So, you know, just before it really spiked up, you know,
I was like one of the only deer hunting podcasts out there at the time.
And, you know, I came to that simply because I was
I was writing about this stuff.
I was doing videos about this stuff,
and I saw a natural hole in the market.
Basically, I was a podcast consumer already, mostly,
you know, about business and marketing and different things like that.
And I saw, Oh man,
these people are producing something that's really, really useful.
And I don't see I can't get this kind of information,
at least at the level that I wanted it in the space
that I was creating stuff on and consuming stuff with it.
And so I saw an opportunity there and I knew that was a
it would be a natural way to continue
teaching and talking about the stuff that I was doing at the time.
And so and so, yes, I started it and it was
a wave
of of growth and a different level connection
with my audience that I didn't quite expect.
So yeah, it grew like gangbusters and really it allowed me to connect
with my audience in a different way in
I think a lot of podcasters and even consumers of podcasters
have now recognized that that's it's a different format than, you know,
reading an article or watching a YouTube video or whatever.
It's in many ways feels like you're sitting down
and having a conversation with someone right there in your earbuds.
And, you know, sometimes for weeks and weeks on end, months on end.
So I developed a somewhat one sided intimate relationship
with tens of thousands of people, right.
In that, you know, that was a lot different
than what I was doing when I was just writing a daily blog.
Well, some of the attributes of someone who's living a stoic lifestyle would be
having grit, not complaining, being able to push through in difficult times.
A side effect to that, I would think, is if people don't see your difficulties
or your struggles and the Jesus nothing, you're complaining
about, you must have had it all served you on a silver platter.
Man, it must be easy for Mark to get where he is.
It was the right time, right place.
He's lucky right.
Background, whatever it might be.
What are some of the
difficulties that you had to overcome in order to be where you are now?
Yeah, it's a great point.
And there's there's kind of two sides of it.
Like I would say that the
when it comes to the activity that I talk
about the most on my podcast, for example, hunting,
I actually found that by sharing
the nitty gritty failures along the way that happened to me all the time.
I failed all the time.
That's actually what resonated the most with my audience,
and that stood out compared to a lot of the other stuff, because there's a lot of
heroes out there who do it all right, and who are amazing what they do.
I kind of talked about this earlier and that that wasn't me.
I was this guy who loved it but was still figuring it out.
And and so by, you know, I can either try to cover up all the mistakes I was making
in all the failures I was making, or I could embrace them and and share them.
So I've struggled with all sorts of things when it comes to,
you know, the hunting side of of what I do.
Right. I've made every mistake you can make.
I've screwed up.
I've approached things the wrong way.
I've done it all. Sure.
And and I, I decided at times, I
the times I did not talk about it because I was so embarrassed or so upset.
Right.
But the times when I did talk about it, I would get so much feedback from people
appreciating that I talked about this and how it helped them,
you know, deal with a similar thing they dealt with or or gave them
something to think about as they worked on their own journey.
So I've now gotten to the point where I've realized, like
I can do the most good by sharing my bad.
thats a good point, you know, we all.
we are all human, right?
Yeah, totally.
And I think, I think that we can learn most from our most human moments.
So that's what I've kind of found with, with my platform.
So I try to share all that now in a way that, you know,
we can make some kind of positive out of these mistakes.
So that's a long winded way of saying my hunting failures are well documented,
I'm sure, and I'm criticized for it sometimes because how does he
possibly screw up Again, this guy sucks I hear that
still goes.
But on the flip side, I think there are some people who might look at, you know,
where I am today with my platform or the work
I produce in my career and and say some of those things you said,
you know, “oh this guy had a silver platter”
Why is this guy up there who, you know, whatever it might be, this guys overnight
success, whatever it is and I have been absolutely fortunate.
I mean there's there's definitely things like I've had privileged opportunities.
I've had some lucky breaks of it, all those things.
But I think the thing that probably is
the stand out
in my mind, I guess, is not that
there was any one right thing that I did or that there was any horrible catastrophe
that I somehow overcame it was rather,
you know, a million tiny incremental steps
that have slowly accrued over many, many, many years.
I you know, for four years I worked,
you know, a, you know, 60, 70 hour a day job, whatever it was at Google
while building wired hunt behind the scenes all night,
you know, staying up till three in the morning,
waking up at four or whatever it was to get in any kind of time I could
every single day, grinding away at that thing, never making a dime.
I get lots and lots of messages from people saying, How do you do what you do?
I want to make a thing like this.
I want a podcast, I want to be a YouTuber.
I want whatever. I want to write a book.
Mm hmm.
And they're like, I've been working on for two weeks.
I've been doing it for the last six months,
and it's not coming together yet and whatever it might be.
And I think it's really important to,
to remember that in most cases there aren't overnight successes.
Usually it's it's a lot of grinding away, slogging away, trying to get a little bit
better today and a little bit better tomorrow and do a little bit more.
And that's been my story.
It hasn't been that I've had, you know,
some horrible thing that I had to work through it was just simply sticking
through the many, many, many, many, many years of,
you know, not feeling like I was going anywhere with it
or not feeling like I was making a difference
or not feeling like anyone listening was listening to what I had to say.
But, you know, just believe in that purpose enough
that I would just keep doing it, keep doing it and trying to keep get to
keep getting better.
And that, I think, has been my story
for the last 15 years or so that I've been doing that.
So essentially been.
Yeah, So essentially what you're saying is you're an overnight success.
It only took 15 years. Yes, exactly.
It's exactly.
And friend of mine, he would make millions.
He'd lose millions, make millions, he'd lose millions.
New endeavor doing something one place and then sell it.
And he's doing good. Easy come, easy go.
And at one point he looked at me and I'm like,
I'm plugging away at my business and I have no business background.
I'm School of hard knocks.
Lucky to have gotten through school as it is, and I'm looking at him.
I'm like, Wow, man, you're doing really good.
Like when he's on his upswing and he's like, Trav, don't do what I do.
Keep doing what you're doing.
The people who I know who are most successful in life
with their businesses are the ones
who will plug through and continue to work when the times are tough,
when there's no money coming in, when everyone is against them,
and they just keep plugging forward.
And I've always had a
that in
the back of my head as something and I've and found that to be true.
As I continue, I'm going to make not necessarily mistakes.
Even as you go through life, you can take different branches.
I once looked, but another person pointed out and says, Well, maybe that's
just part of your path as you go through life in those branches, as you call it,
which didn't turn to be the success that you thought there would be
are the learning experience that you needed in order to get to where you are.
So your success story as you're going through.
And I guess it comes down to what a person
defines as success for themselves.
But from an outward experience,
external appearance of success from maybe a traditional standpoint
has been that of plugging away on an ongoing basis.
I find that I find that really interesting.
And and I guess I would lead to a question as well.
And you're about to say something.
What is success to you?
Yeah, So it's been a changing definition for me, right?
Right.
So, so early on, success was
trying to make
a living doing this thing I love.
And then it was trying to like establish myself
as a credible, you know,
it was just trying to stake out my place within that community.
So first I was able to make it work and then it was okay.
Now I wanted to be a credible, you know, I remember.
I do.
I'm just I'm this cheesy kind of guy who does like five year goals.
All right, So thats easy.
It's good.
You need a goal. You need a destination.
So I ran across an old notebook of mine
from like ten years ago where I had my five year plans.
Like what I where I wanted to be from a business perspective,
where I wanted to be from a personal perspective,
from a financial perspective, all that kind of stuff
And so one of them was like, I want to be I can't remember the exact wording,
but something like one of the most respected and,
you know, impactful
personalities within the deer hunting world or something like that.
So stuff like that.
Like I wanted to have staked out a place at the top of this deer
hunting community at the time.
It was those kinds of things and success now has shifted.
You know, we talked about this a little bit,
but success now is working towards that larger purpose, which is
I want to make a serious long term
positive impact on the future of wildlife in wild places like that's that success.
Now you could
I don't care anymore about if I'm some big,
fancy, successful, well-liked hunter or something
that that has lost its shine for me in.
Now I just want to make sure that my kids and their kids
have wildlife to see and experience and hunt or fish.
I want to make sure they're still wild places you can go and get lost in.
I want to make sure there's clean rivers and still have fish in them.
That's that's. That's it now.
Well, how old are your kids now?
I my boys just both had birthdays over the past week,
so I now I now have a five year old and a three year old. Holy crow.
Yeah.
And are they coming out on any of your adventures yet?
Yeah, a lot.
They're it's, it's a lot of fun. It's.
It's changing the game for me. That's.
That's for sure.
But they both love the outdoor life.
And, you know, we're fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time out there
and just take them, you know, with with us for as much as I possibly can.
So we spend a lot of time camping and hiking and we've got a boat.
We float down a lot of rivers and
throw a lot of rocks, catch a lot of frogs, catch minnows.
I take the boys.
I've taken the boys on some hunting trips now with me, a lot of fishing.
So. So yes, as much as I possibly can.
They are they're out there and seem to be loving it.
I was asked to put it a few years ago.
I was asked put together a video of sighting in a rifle
and it's up there on YouTube and try my hand at doing some video work.
And I brought a fishing rod with me because I was down
by an area where I knew there'd likely be some fish in.
So when I wasn't filming, I was out there
catching some fish and carbon fiber rod and I lifted on up in
there is the area that I was doing it in, had these power lines going overhead.
And then my first indicator
should have been what I'm pressing like record on the camera.
It was making a kind of a snapping sound and I'm getting this feedback
coming through the ears as I'm listening to the audio.
And it was I'm lifting up the fishing rod and my rods are
vibrating in my hand as I do it each time.
And I think I'm going to cast a little bit lower here, right? Huh.
But it brings to mind you've been struck by lightning, haven't you?
Well, I don’t want to say it go so far as say, I was struck
by lightning, but I felt like I can't even remember what it was called.
It's.
It's like the beginning shock of a lightning bolt.
So I was I was. I was walk. I was fishing.
I was walking to a river and I was holding my fishing rod up upright.
And there was a storm coming in and I was, you know, pushing my luck
and wanted to try to fish before the storm got really gnarly.
And I was I felt like this vibrating feeling in my arm and me.
Yeah. And at first not realize what it was.
And I, I just like, put my hand down, turn around
looking around and looked up and I'm like, thinking, not realizing.
And when I did that, it stopped.
I was kind of looking out, that is what is that?
And I just noticed this weird thing.
And then I kept walking, put the rod back over my shoulder and kept walking.
And then it happened again.
And that's when I realized,
Oh, this is electricity coming down through the sky into my fishing pole.
So I didn't have like a I didn't have a real bolt.
Okay?
Just just that there's a word for it.
I can't get free light right now.
Something like that's the beginning of those electrons
starting to connect with you.
And so I was very lucky that didn't become anything worse.
No kidding.
What was your do you,
I think you've documented a few of these things.
Do you have big plans for next hunting season coming up?
Are you able to talk about any big plans that you have?
Yeah, I mean,
I wouldn't call them.
I mean, it was called big plans, but but yeah, I'm filming
a filming a series of six different hunts
this coming season across the country.
Some of those locations are TBD,
but these will be kind of like short films for the Meat Eater YouTube channel,
every place from stuff locally here to Michigan to hopefully,
maybe Montana, some Western states,
a little bit of the Great Plains in there too
documenting kind of a wide array of hunting opportunities
and some conservation stories within those.
So that's that's on the hunting side and then
you know hopefully starting to work on some bigger writing projects again,
tackling some of these things we've talked about that I'm excited about.
And so that's that's kind of the big stuff staring me in the high hairy,
all eyeballing.
Now, I did a podcast with a fellow
four time bestselling author, nine boxes written,
and he was working on his 10th book and he says, I'm not going to finish
writing this book now that A.I.’s out here and they've commoditized
text and all the rest.
So he's making he's going to put together a documentary.
I guess speaking about what he's, his plans there but I wonder how much
A.I. and the
the the changing landscape of how people are consuming literature
is going to impact the future of book writing.
I wonder. Yeah, I don't know.
It's something I've something I've wondered about a lot too.
Just especially with some of his more recent,
you know, chat bots and stuff over the last three or four or five months
that are really pretty remarkable.
It will be interesting to see how that changes things.
I think it will commoditize, you know, your basic
copywriting and things like that, you know, basic elements of writing.
I think it'll become a tool for larger writing projects,
but I don't see A.I., at least
not in the short term, replacing
the human experience.
That's something that artificial intelligence can't yet have.
And so
at least for the next for the foreseeable future,
I think I'll still have a job there if I continue living life and,
you know, pursuing things of interest and having something to say.
I think there isn't a Mark Kenyon robot
yet that can tell it any realer than I can at least.
You know, it's funny, I actually typed into it.
I said, What questions would you ask?
Mark Kenyon, It comes out.
I'm like, I don't like any of these things, and I don't think he would either.
So I think we're safe for a little bit.
Yes, we'll enjoy it, enjoy
our paychecks and our our well-being for the moment at least.
Is there anything that we haven't covered that we should touch on?
I don't know.
I mean, I've enjoyed chatting about all this stuff.
And I just would encourage folks to, you know,
if you've got an interest in the outdoor
and the outdoor life, keep keep pursuing it, keep chasing it, get outside.
You know, all good things come to those outside.
I'd say if you're looking for something, you can usually find it out there.
And it's always done me right.
Well, I'm told that I'm supposed to put it, bookend it, front end, back end.
So if you are at this point,
make sure to check out the Wired to Hunt podcast with Mark Kenyon.
Like, comment, subscribe.
It helps a lot. Gets word out there.
Share it with your friends.
Mark, thank you so much for being on the Silvercore podcast.
Really appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you.
Travis. This was a lot of fun.