Before we get into today's conversation, I wanna let you know about something
that's grown into an extremely powerful part of what we do at Silver Core,
our members only community, the Silver Core Club Club members not only get
access to exclusive discounts and early access to year and events,
they also get access to the outpost.
Our private podcast is where I go deeper, I share lessons learned, I
answer member questions, and bring in guests to explore topics we don't
always cover in the public show.
It's real, it's personal, and it's built to add value to your
journey outdoors and in life.
Here's a review from Silver Court Club member Ray.
Each episode of the Silver Court Outpost feels like opening a small mystery box
filled with insights, practical wisdom, and a unique perspective on life.
All framed through the lens of the outdoors.
One of the most impactful elements of the outpost is how each episode
ends with a call to action.
These weekly challenges invite you to step outside your routine,
try something new, and shift your perspective in a meaningful way.
They've helped me change how I approach my time in nature and how
I reflect on my personal growth.
Having access to Travis's mentorship through the outpost is invaluable.
His insight, knowledge, and wisdom come through in every episode, and his
ability to connect outdoor experiences to larger life lessons is very powerful.
If you're looking for a podcast that's quick, thoughtful, and
transformative, he should definitely give the Silverado Post to listen.
Thanks Ray.
Members can find their personal private link in the Silver Core Club dashboard.
If you're not already a member, you can learn more@silvercore.ca.
Now, without further ado, let's head into this conversation with Ron Speller.
I'm joined today by someone who spent a lifetime paying attention to
animals and to l landscapes, and to the quiet lessons you only hear when
you're still enough to notice 'em.
He's walked wild ground over six continents with a rifle in
hand, and a story in his mind.
For over 45 years, he's written thousands of articles, hosted shows, tested
gear, and taught generations of hunter.
But none of that explains the person behind it.
And that's who I'm looking forward to hearing from today, where
it started, what's changed, and maybe if we're lucky, a few of the
moments it still catch his breath.
Welcome to the Silver Core Podcast, Ron Smer.
Oh, Travis, that was a remarkable introduction.
I'm almost starting to like myself after that.
I love it.
Well, I mean, you've got a larger than life personality
and persona and it precedes you.
And you know, I'll be honest, you're an inspiration.
I'm sure you've heard this by from many people before, but I'll say it again.
You're an inspiration to me in the way that you can story tell so eloquently
the ethical storytelling and hunting.
Um, your constant pursuit of knowledge is inspiring.
The fact that you're never resting on your laurels, you're always looking
at ways that you can improve and, you know, maybe learn something else.
And the amount of integrity and clarity that you bring into everything you do.
Massively inspiring.
So thank you for all of that.
Well, thank you for, for, uh, recognizing that I try to do that.
Of course, uh, how well I succeed is up to folks who are listening to me, but that
kind of is my intent, you know, after all these years of being in this game that
I think I, I have something that I have learned, the information I've accumulated
and experiences that I've had that I think can help inform, maybe inspire others.
And I certainly want to pass that on because.
Anyone who has the, the passion I have always had for outdoors, for nature,
for wildlife, for the pursuit thereof.
And I, I would just like to help 'em out.
Help 'em out.
Anything I can do to help folks out.
That's kind of what's driving me these days.
Where did you first learn that you had this passion?
For, and this talent for storytelling and being able to
relate your passion to others.
Yeah.
That actually came from a high school English teacher, ah, good
old Dwayne Sra, uh, rest his soul.
He was a great guy and he was a hunter and a shooter.
And he lived just across the street from where I lived when I was in,
uh, grade school up into high school.
And he had the reputation for being a real hard teacher.
He had just made him toe the line, which was great.
Uh, most of us students really appreciated it because he saw in us
some potential and that he had insisted that we live up to our potential.
So it was really quite effective.
So when I started writing papers for his classes, he would write in the margins.
You've got away with words.
Um huh You ought to consider being a writer and stuff like that.
Of course, he would catch me in class with a. Field of Stream or sports of Field
Magazine put my textbook in the front of it to disguise it so he knew what I was
up to, and he, he just knew that I was taken with this stuff and he one day said.
He pulled me aside and said, you know, you ought to think about a career as
an outdoor writer and I, a career as an outdoor writer from a small town farm kid.
Well, what's that?
You know?
Right.
But of course, I recognize names like Jack O'Connor and Elmer Keith and
all the old school guys, and he said, yeah, those people are being paid to
write those stories you're reading all the time in those magazines.
So maybe you could do that given your your gift here for communicating and writing.
So that's what planted the seed for me.
Now the rest of it was just innate in nature.
Uh, my appreciation for it, I don't know how anyone comes up with this.
I always say it's an istic urge left over from caveman days or something,
but I just think it's part of the human condition to, uh, ex to experience nature
in a personal way and to be moved by it.
I don't know if you have ever read Aldo Leopold?
He is a Yeah.
Some yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
His, um, sand County Almanac book That's right.
Really captured me in high school.
I read that and it was like he was speaking to me.
He and I had the same philosophies, the same spirit about this interconnection
between ourselves and nature.
He talked about the thrill of goose music and what it did to your soul.
Mm-hmm.
All of those wilderness experiences that I'm sure you're aware of too.
And most hunters have that at their core.
I think that's what pulls us into it.
Hunting isn't.
I wanna go kill a big animal, an animal and and thump my chest so
much as I want to be an integral part of this whole natural
experience the way all wildlife is.
We are essentially wildlife ourselves.
We are subject to the same laws of nature as every sheep and deer and
chickadee, and, and mouse out there.
And we cannot live without them.
They cannot live without us.
We're all part of that same cycle of life.
So I think that's what hunting and fishing are about, is trying to connect
closer and closer to that whole program.
Did you realize that when you first started out or is that something that
you kind of realized later in life?
You know, I think it was sort of inherent or innate in me and my education and
readings of people like loophole.
Uh, that just cemented it for me.
It confirmed it, it helped me articulate it myself, but I had this incredible
urge deep inside me that I just had to get out, you know, in high school.
Yeah, I stopped doing all sports because, well, the boys and my friends were
out in the football field practicing.
I was hunting pheasants.
Mm-hmm.
And to me that was way more important.
You know, I'm, I remember this, um, same ilk.
Uh, I didn't get into hunting until a little later on.
I was fishing, uh, family had a commercial fly fishing lodge in mm-hmm.
Uh, central British Columbia area here.
And I say commercial fly fishing lodge.
It was purchased as a lodge.
It was flying or hiking access only.
Uh, and had a commercial license that we held on it, but we
never ran it commercially.
We let scout groups use it, and that was about it.
So I would spend a fair bit of time out fishing and as a youngster I would.
I guess I'm gonna do air brackets.
I would hunt grouse because I had no idea what I was doing.
I had no idea about hunting licenses.
I had no idea about seasons or any of this other stuff.
I'm glad I figured it out later on in life.
But, um, uh, but I knew I just, I loved being out in the woods
and that connection to nature.
And it isn't if I was successful getting a fish, although they're,
when you're younger, there's always like, Hey, who's got the biggest fish?
And who's got, who's got the most?
And, uh, but I, that only lasts so long.
Once, once you get a big one or once you get a big haul or whatever,
it might be like, well, that isn't the thing that keeps me out here.
That was maybe something that originally, uh, appeared to be aspirational
based on what we see on social media, what we see written about.
But it's that deepening of our connection with our natural environment that, uh, I'm
constantly learning when I'm out there.
That really, really drives me.
Yeah.
Uh, that's exactly it.
And I think so many people listening to this will understand
that a few probably won't.
I know people who just, you know, you could show them the, uh, the world's
biggest Moose or, uh, watch that Peregrine Falcon stoop down and hit a
shorebird or something, and they go, eh, let's go to town and have a beer.
Yeah.
They just don't, they just don't have it within them.
But, um, that's okay.
We've got room for everybody, but you can't drag me out of the country and
show me into the city is not gonna work.
Yeah.
Well, I'm, I'm too close to the city right now.
I'm actively looking out, out outwards, but, um, that, that's another story.
Um, so you've spent most of your life chasing wild things.
Yeah, pretty much.
What is it that you've truly been chasing?
If you're to sit down and look back and.
Yeah, great question, Travis.
Great question.
What I've been chasing is essentially myself, my own identity, which is
so wrapped up in all of this stuff, but I've also been chasing beauty,
for lack of a better term, and that encompasses everything within
nature that is so perfect in its in its blood and gore as well as its.
Blossoming.
Mm-hmm.
Everything from wild flowers to wildlife to a storm.
If you read, uh, Muir, uh, writing about the glories of being up
in a tree in a big wind storm
mm-hmm.
Yosemite and how he was rejoicing at the pelting of the rain and the howling
of the wind, and celebrating what most of us would hide from, didn't get
away from the discomfort, but he felt that even deeper than I probably do,
because he was out in that nasty stuff.
Just thinking this is all a part of this incredible glory then, and that probably
extends beyond ourselves, beyond our own nature here on earth and into the cosmos.
I think it's that the vibration of the cosmos, if you look into
string theory and all the latest scientific things about what.
Adams truly are, and what keeps things going, and it's all vibrations of energy.
Mm-hmm.
And we are parts of that, manifestations of that sort of thing.
It's a, it's the, the great cosmic mystery.
It's, it's discovering God and, and the, the goodness of it.
Um, and it's, as you said earlier, it's a constant search.
You don't just get there and say, okay, figured it out.
Now there's new things revealed all the time.
A couple, three years ago or so here on the ranch, my wife and I bought a small
ranch property closer to the grandkids so that we can show, give them the
opportunity of getting out of the city and having freedom roam around like I did
on the farms and stuff when I was a kid.
So, of course, I'm interested in this environment that we're.
Sort of husbanding and trying to improve some of the old farm
ground and the overgrazed pastures.
We're trying to improve those, but I would go out and look for things.
What is growing out here?
What is a native plant versus an introduced invasive
species in a weed and such?
And one march with cabin fever raging, I just had to get out and find something
showing me that spring was coming, we're getting renewed life and all the
wonderful things we want about spring, uh, waiting for ice out so I could go
fishing and all that sort of thing.
Uh, and I went up in the hills to look for the earliest wildflower I could find.
I knew that the, some of these glacier lilies or fawn lilies were pretty
early and would come out in the snow, but I'm up where there's just nothing.
It looked pretty desolate, and I spotted a little white thing on
the ground and I got down close and looked, and I found a tiniest
wildflower I have ever seen in my life.
And that was commonly called a Turkey pea.
It has a bit of a little rootlet bulb that apparently turkeys and
other birds will dig up and eat, or, or something is the, uh, genus.
But it was just an obscure, wholly obscure little plant.
And I am speaking of a series of blossoms in a ray seam that probably no more
than an eighth to a quarter of an inch in size and the entire plant might be
lucky to hit two inches and it blooms.
When there's nothing else going on and then dies within a couple of
weeks, does its thing, you know?
Mm-hmm.
It's fire pressure and then it just stores the energy in that little bulb
until the next go around and you, you look at a little thing like that,
inconsequential little nothing but to that plant and whatever insects.
Need that plant to feed on.
It's all part of that whole system, that circle of life.
Mm-hmm.
And
discover something like that to me is that is as exciting as discovering
that giant ram on the mountain side with the big dramatic horns curling up.
They're equally fascinating and interesting just in different dimensions.
You know, it's kind of interesting how you talk about the vibration of things.
A friend of mine, he's heavy into, uh, radios and he rebuilds antique Collins,
uh, HF radios and he's like, look at this.
I take this one crystal out and it oscillates at a circle FA
certain frequency, and I put this other crystal inside it and now
I can transmit on this frequency.
Over here he says, Trav.
You know, everything in life is vibrations.
We see things on a wavelength.
We listen on a wavelength.
Everything happening on some sort of a wavelength.
I'm willing to bet there's some wavelengths out there that we don't
even really understand that are affecting us, and people talk about it.
John Sinani, he's a futurist.
He's been on the podcast and he talks about operating at a higher frequency.
Um, Sean Taylor, x jtf two friend of mine, who's, uh, uh, heavily believes
in the, the energy and frequency that we kind of give off, and he would use that
as a tier one Special Forces operator.
He says, that's gonna sound crazy, but I'd feel the energy in the room next to me.
And then, uh, Nikki Vandel, she's, um, was on the TV show alone where they,
uh, have to survive in the Arctic.
And I was chatting with her and she says, you know, when I go out
into the woods, I will say, hello, forest, it's me, Nikki, I'm here.
She says, it sounds so corny.
She says, but.
It changes the frequency and all of a sudden those little brown birds that
would chirp at ya and the squirrels that chirp at ya, they start, you start to
get on the same wavelength or frequency that these things are operating on, and
you'll connect with nature and see the critters that you otherwise wouldn't.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
No, you're absolutely right.
My wife is, has this extraordinary ability to feel the vibrations
in the room and read the room.
And she will sometimes say to me, you're so clueless.
Didn't, you know, things go over there was, you know, feeling blue because her
boyfriend just left her, whatever it is.
And I'm going, duh, I don't know, but put me out in the woods and it's reversed.
Mm. I'm seeing and sensing things.
And I said, what did you think of that pheasant over there?
Where, what pheasant?
She didn't see it.
We just drove by this beautiful, gorgeous pheasant all puffed out, showing off to
his girlfriends and she doesn't notice it.
So we're, we're each tuned into the vibrations and the frequencies
that are different frequencies.
You know, I've.
In preparing for this, I was looking at a bunch of your different podcasts and
past interviews, and I see a lot of the same sort of things coming up and the
same themes, and it got me thinking.
What's something about you that people don't tend to ask
that they should be asking?
Oh gosh, Travis.
I don't know.
You know, people are welcome to ask anything.
Um, but I, I, I'm not so full of myself that I think I can tell
people what they should ask about me.
I, I'm a pretty typical middle of the road American, I would guess.
Country boy probably puts me in a category.
Um, I don't like categorizing anyone because we all have the,
the ability and the right to become what we want to become.
Mm-hmm.
But I, I am pretty heavily into, um.
A hunt on a shoot straight, which is our motto.
Um, I think that kind of sums up, even though it's grammatically
incorrect for an English teacher to do that, most people get it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's, it's the integrity of whatever it is in life that
you're heavily involved in.
I think you need to do it with integrity and honesty and try to do it right
while understanding that none of us is perfect and we probably can't get it
right, but get it right, not just for yourself so that you can win, but get
it right for the entire enterprise.
And everyone else who may be affected by or influenced by your actions.
So in the realm of hunting, I, I want to do it right to
honor the tradition of hunting.
We all know that there are plenty of what we used to call slob
hunters and probably still should.
You know, people who don't quite get it yet, they're not tuned in and not hearing
the vibrations and all the rest of it.
Um, but you get that in all aspects of life.
You know, it's the same basic thing, but I think it's critically important
for hunters to try to strive.
For a higher level of interaction, uh, and respect for the
wildlife as well as ourselves.
And then the hunting traditions.
If we want to maintain this deep into the future, I think we have to do that.
Uh, it used to be when we were fewer and the wildlife were more, we could
get away with some fairly bullish behavior and over harvest and whatnot.
All it's just like St. Louis and Clark coming across the continent with
their voyage of discovery in 1805.
They were able to shoot a bison, eat what they wanted, and then walk away.
Mm. 'cause there were plenty of bison.
Mm. 30, 40 million of them.
And they knew when they walked away from that, they had taken what they needed for
their nourishment, and then the wolves and the coyotes and everything else
would clean it up and be thankful for it.
And the whole system worked, be because it wasn't abused.
Mm-hmm.
Now that we have thousands and.
Probably millions of miles of paved highways and channelized rivers and
drained swamps and wetlands and cities spreading across the landscape, and we're
digging up minerals from the soils to make the world into our image so we're
more comfortable, et cetera, et cetera.
That makes it harder and harder on the surviving wildlife and wild
places, and I think too many hunters always go with the, oh gosh, what's
happening with the deer population?
We need to kill more cougars so we can get more deer when the real
issue is what are we doing to shrink the habitat available for the deer
population or the elk or anything else?
A real crux situation.
But then that that involves some reflection and we have to say, wait
a minute, what is my role in this?
Maybe I am at fault.
We've met the enemy and he is us.
Mm-hmm.
That's.
So I, I think we do need to do it.
Each of us needs to consider that because what is the impact we are having?
If I wanna enjoy pheasant hunting, I have to, can do what I can to contribute
to maintaining enough open lands with suitable habitat for pheasants, that
we can maintain populations of those.
And that just goes for everything.
Mm-hmm.
And
to me it's, it's fairly simple, but it's also, I think, extremely frustrating
because I constantly see an increase in developments, human development and
such, and people become complacent.
It goes back to an old pop song in the sixties.
You don't know what you got till it's gone.
Right?
Yeah.
And each generation is born into a world that is what it is at that
time, and they base it from there.
That's their foundation.
So when I was a kid, you know, the foundation was.
Probably one farmstead on every square mile of ground in Eastern
South Dakota where I grew up.
And I just assumed that's the way the world was everywhere,
pretty much, you know?
And it gave us a lot of room to roam around and find rabbits and pheasants
and, and dive into the creek and saint it fer meadows and mud puppies and whatever,
and then start to discover nature.
But now I can go back to those places and, and there are fewer
farms there, but the ground has been turned into a monoculture, right?
They've got huge equipment to crop these fields that you no longer have,
the little side weed patches and brush piles and things that provided that.
Wildlife that we enjoyed back then.
So now it becomes like ohoh, what's happened to all the wildlife?
I think there's a, uh, a disconnect that'll happen from people in their
natural environment, particularly if they're growing up in an urban
environment and they're just not exposed to it in the same way.
Now your writing exposes people to a different aspect, and you started
that, if I'm not mistaken, and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but I
think you put five articles out and they were all five were picked up
right when you first started, and you just kind of hit the ground running.
And, uh, but now, now people aren't going into the long form content, uh,
reading it in the way that they used to.
They're not picking up field and stream and, uh, reading
it in the way they used to.
They're getting all of their information and tiny little bites through social
media and as long as it can, can kick that dopamine on and, and, um, attack their
attention for a fraction of a second.
How, how are you finding that transition?
Because you're into this digital world now and, and how do you help
people connect with their natural environment and make, make it meaningful?
The fact that they, they really should be considering how we all are interplaying
within the wild creatures and animals.
Yeah.
Great points, great points, Travis.
And you know, I'm not so sure I'm all that successful at it, but what I have
discovered in doing what I do now, which is the YouTube channels and a podcast and
some blogs on our website, I'd be write a few articles for the magazines anymore.
But as you noted, there's just nobody's reading them at
the rates that they used to.
So how do you reach these people with anything other than a 32nd soundbite?
Well, that's part of the challenge, and what I try to do with my
soundbites is make them meaty enough.
I found that I pretty much have to cater to the.
Uh, interest in cartridges and ballistics and all the tools that just such a
part of being human is, is tool use.
Mm. We're enamored of the latest and greatest tools and high technology.
Look what we're doing right now, talking to one another a
thousand miles apart and Yep.
Like in the same room.
Yes.
I think what we have to do is figure out how we can use these new medium,
uh, these new media to reach people.
And then as you said, with the shorter attention spans we've got these days.
How do you get the message across?
I think by tweaking it a little bit.
We can do that.
So what I try to do is if I can slip a little bit of a conservation
message in with the fun stuff about the bullets and favorite rifles and
cartridge and scopes and such, Hmm.
Just
try and at least each one of my broadcasts to have a one or two points
about some conservation issue, whether it's wildlife in Africa or in the us.
Um, overpopulation issues, overuse, whatever it is, just to get people to
say, okay, I learned all about the, uh, six millimeter creed more cartridge
and how fast it goes and how flat it shoots and all that great stuff.
And oh man, I better get thinking about all the highway deaths of mule deer
that are reducing those populations.
They can't bounce back because there's so much traffic now and they're
migrating and they have to cross these highways and they're taking
out more deer that way than the.
Cougars and the wolves ever took out.
Right.
Maybe I should start thinking about that stuff, or I won't be able
to use my six millimeter creed.
More on that glorious hunt I was hoping to take.
No kidding.
Uh, have you noticed a shift in the, uh, the types of people that are
becoming interested in, in hunting and learning about their environment?
Yeah, I have it.
It is always a younger crowd kind of coming up, not as money as they used to,
because hunters are no longer heroes like they were back in the mid 20th century.
Mm.
But still, there are enough family connections.
My grandpa hunted.
I, I hear this a lot.
In fact, we just had an elk camp, an elk bootcamp last week, and several folks
there were in their, Hmm, thirties to forties hunting for the first time.
They had first.
Purchased a rifle and gotten interested in it.
So they're starting to come around.
Even though, as you said earlier, there's urban, suburban environments
and growing up that way, you don't get exposed to grandpa walking out
the back door and coming back with a brace of pheasants or rabbits.
Mm. So you have to find out about it somewhere along the line.
And I suspect that they're picking up a few shorts on the, uh, social
media where they see someone hunt and it looks exciting to them, and then
they start digging into it and they will discover websites or YouTube
channels similar to mine, where we're discussing those sorts of things.
And then they'll start to get interested.
And when they start seeing more and more footage of wildlife, or especially if
they get out, literally get out into nature and have a close encounter with
something that really rings a bell for 'em, then they're all excited about it.
And just down that camp we had here in the mountains, several
people were from the flat land back East Ohio, that kind of country.
And they thought they knew what country was like, but they get here and the
mountains are going up this angle.
Yeah.
And they're looking across a big canyon at something four or 500
yards away and just the whole place feels like another planet almost.
It's so vast.
Mm-hmm.
And that just exposes them to, oh my gosh, I've been living
in a cocoon all these years.
They're like butterflies finally emerging from the chrysalis.
And it just inspiring to, to listen to them and see the joy
on their faces when they just.
It seems crazy, but it's just that simple discovery of how big the world is.
Mm-hmm.
And they can be a part of it.
You know, I, I think that you kinda nailed it on the head there.
'cause I, I look at when COVID hit and the, uh, concept of
self-reliance, really kind of Yeah.
Stuck home with people, people like, I'm gonna start making sourdough bread,
I'm gonna start gardening, I'm gonna start hunting because that's easy.
I hear, I can get all my food hunting.
Right.
Yeah.
Um, and, uh, that was a, a bit of a, I saw a big boost in the, uh, in the firearms
and hunting industry and interests there.
But more and more I'm looking at how people are associating with their natural
world and vehicles to that are, uh, food.
Like, where's your food coming from?
And they're learning more about, uh, like we had Malcolm Wood on, he did a
documentary on microplastics and how that he kind of brought that term to light.
Uh, we've, we've talked about, like you say, uh, mono crops and
monocultures and, and the impact that has on our environment.
And I think people can start relating how they connect with their food.
I think that, uh, people you brought up, oh, grandpa going out, coming back
with a, a, a brace, that connection to their history I think is a big
part that people are looking for.
But more than anything, I think they're looking for a connection because in
this ever connected world where you and I can talk thousands of miles
apart and, um, we're right, right here as if we're in the same room.
W there's also a massive degree of disconnection that, that we have.
Social media isn't a social aspect.
People aren't going out to the local, um, pubs or local social gatherings
in the way that they used to.
Kids nowadays are being raised and they have anxiety to go in public because all
of this stuff, they don't even want, they have anxiety to pick up the phone and
talk because everything's a, a text and get back, and it's especially formulated.
So I think what most people are really looking for is a way
to connect to themselves, to other people and, and to nature.
And I, I think you writing and your way of storytelling is intriguing
for people because they feel that connection to history and, and to others.
Well, good.
I'm glad to hear that.
Um, I sometimes think when I read some really good storytellers, I just
think I'm pretty much a piker if some folks are enjoying it and it helps
inspire them to get out and discover the things you just talked about.
'cause I think you, you hit it right there.
They're just as they're afraid to have real social interactions with people,
they would rather do it on the phone.
I think they're doing the gaming and watching videos on the phone and think
like, I'm out there hunting an elk because they're watching someone else see an elk.
Mm-hmm.
When they really get there and they feel the vibrations up
close and it's the real world.
It's com not completely different, but it, it brings it all home and they, they
understand I have to become involved in.
Getting these things for myself.
Ke self-sufficiency.
Mm-hmm.
We are big on that because I obviously out on the ranch here, we, we can grow.
We've got an orchard, we've got a garden, we cut our own firewood.
We're completely off the grid, so we're connected, but we're also old people.
You know, we kind of grew up that way.
And I can remember as a kid when the telephone came into the house.
Oh yeah,
yeah.
At first, I must have been probably seven years old or something.
And bingo.
This telephone thing up here.
Wow.
Can't imagine a kid today listening to this.
Going, what?
Yeah, the telephone.
I remember we used to have to rent our telephone and Exactly
rent it from the phone company.
And if you're lucky, you had a really long cord on it and you can
kind of sneak into the other room to have a private conversation.
But if not, you're having your private conversation in front of.
Everybody who's walking through the kitchen.
Yeah.
Not only that, when I was a kid, your private conversation wasn't worrying about
just your family, it was worried about everyone else who was on that same line.
That's right.
Yeah.
The lines where you would have certain number of rings was yours and
then one shorter ring would be the neighbor or somebody else on the line.
Everybody would know those rings and say, oh, let's listen to what's
going on with Ron and his girlfriend.
That's funny.
So if younger you was looking at you now, what would surprise him The most?
That I still alive.
I should have been dead several times over.
Amen.
I have been blessed.
I mean, God has just really been looking out for me 'cause I did
some of the dumbest things, you know, guns going off where they
shouldn't have even been loaded.
Uhhuh and, uh, driving.
Oh, in snowstorms.
Where you shouldn't have even been on the road and going across rivers where you got
sucked over the falls and churned around a few times before you managed to pop up.
Yeah, I thought I wasn't gonna get out of that one.
Tell me about that one.
That would've surprised me.
I tell you one thing though, that I'm really grateful for when I was in
college dreaming about all this stuff.
You know, what do you want to be when you grow up kind of a thing.
And planning for it.
I just, I planned like, I think I'm gonna try that outdoor writing
thing that my English teacher said.
I think I can maybe make that work, so I'll try that.
But if that doesn't work, what am I going to do?
So I picked up a teaching certificate so I could go into
the school systems and teach.
And that way I would at least get the fishing season off.
Mm-hmm.
30 months
off in the summer.
Not ideal, but it's better than nothing.
Yep.
Um, so that's what I was planning to do.
And while I was doing that, I was discovering all sorts of other
things about, and I thought, I wanna live close to nature.
Ideally I would like to have a 10,000 acre ranch with a river running through
it, butting up against the mountains in Montana or someplace like that.
And then all that national forest land beyond.
So I've got pretty much the whole world, uh, to roam and hunt and fish and not
have to ask permission or pay somebody a trespass fee and all this kind of stuff.
So obviously it was this big pie in the sky dream.
But now if I'd have been then looking at now, I would've said.
My golly old man.
You came pretty close.
Yeah,
because I, I got through my writing in this career.
I got to visit those places pretty regularly and hunt in Alaska
and Asia and Australia and New Zealand and Argentina and all over.
And it's as if I had this giant property.
But now here I am on this small property, you know, it's not exactly my 10,000
acres, but I've got land and it, it's mine on which to hunt, run my dogs,
uh, improve the habitat, grow the gardens, whatever I want to do with it.
So I really feel blessed and fulfilled at the same time and feel
a responsibility to leave it better than I found it, improve the land.
And I think that's what a lot of hunters are doing these days.
You know, you, the big deal with whitetail hunters especially is to get a piece
of property and manage it for deer.
Right.
Hers or pheasants or something.
Right.
Managing for wildlife, that was unheard of 50 years ago when I was a kid.
It was all out, how can this land put money in my pocket?
Mm. That's prior to that, my, like my grandfather probably,
or the, at least his father.
Before him, it would've been, how can I use the land just to survive?
Mm.
Folks were essentially living off the land.
They were farmers.
What are they farming for?
So they can feed themselves.
Sure.
And then if there's a little leftover, they can sell that and get a washing
machine from, or something like that.
But they were, they had the chickens, they had the cow for milk.
They great.
Raised a pig for bacon on down the line.
It's just good old fashioned homesteading sort of things.
But you know, what it's turned into now, of course, is that you can
specialize with all the big equipment and you can produce enough food for 40
people, a hundred people, 200 people.
I don't know what farmers claim these days, but one farmer feeds incredible
number of people and that's what enables, of course, cities to be there
and people to live in those cities and have no connection to the land.
Mm. Going into a store and purchasing the food product ready to eat.
Mm-hmm.
So, I, I, I just think that, as you said earlier, folks are
discovering there's something missing within them when they do this.
Um, I don't mind spending a week or two on a, a vacation in a town
where everything is done for me.
And it's just like, this is kinda easy.
Sure.
Everything's right there.
All they have to do is pay for it and heat it up.
Uh, but after a bit of that, it's like, I wanna make my own.
I don't know.
I wanna get my fingernails in the dirt.
And, uh, I was just pulling carrots yesterday, I of the garden.
There's just something so satisfying about it.
Yeah.
You know, nothing worthwhile in my life has ever come easy, and I've
heard others say the same thing.
And when things do come too easy.
I don't find they're that worthwhile.
And I look back at all the things that really matter.
And you know, we've heard people talk about type one fun.
Hey K, we're on a rollercoaster.
Lots of fun.
You look back and you say, it wasn't a memorable time in my life.
Uh, some people talk about type two fun.
Uh, during the time it's got a pack on my back, all this meat,
it's pouring rain, it's freezing.
I can't get a fire going.
But you look back on that and that sticks in your memory.
And that's, then of course, I had one friend tell me about type three fun.
I said, I've never heard of that.
What is that?
And he said, well, that's when you go out.
And it's just terrible.
It's like your situation.
You talk about I can't get the fire going.
And then you think about it later years and it's still just as bad.
It's Oh, okay.
Fair enough.
Full circle.
Right.
Fair enough.
I would add this though, Travis.
Uh, there have been many things given to me that I didn't have to work for and, but
it's all pretty much the beauty of nature.
The, the feeling that you get at certain times, it's just so intense.
You get almost, almost cry.
Mm-hmm.
When you see this incredible scenery, a mountain and a a, a
rainbow, you get the picture.
Yeah.
There's just certain scenes in places in life, even wood smoke in the woods.
When you smell it at a certain time, it just moves you internally so
much you can't quite figure out why.
Um, you does it remind you of home and, and grandmother back in a
day once when you were a kid and you really didn't even register.
But that, that scent of wood smoke means home, hearth, family safety, all
of the things that stirs within you that you don't necessarily articulate.
And that's like that.
With nature.
Mm-hmm.
You're out
doing your best hunting to see the, the legal buck that you can
take with your tag or, or a big one that you've been looking for.
And then you happen to see something completely different.
Uh, I remember one time I was mule deer hunting and at the crack of
dawn with the red sky up on the ridge above me here came a line of elk.
There must have been 40, 50 of them all in single file Wow.
Silhouette against that red sky and just going about their business.
And it was the, the, the daily walk to back to bed or whatever they were doing.
And it was just the magic of that moment is what I remember about that.
I don't even remember if I shot a deer on that hunt or even
saw one, but I remember that.
Yeah.
And that'll stick with you
and he'll stick with you for the rest of your life.
Yeah.
And that was free.
That was a given.
That was just all I had to do was be there.
Well, that's some of the benefits of the lifestyle that you've chosen.
Those are some of the benefits of you putting yourself out there.
Taking that step and being bold and seeing how far you can take your passion.
What are some of the costs?
You know, my particular lifestyle is.
It has a pretty heavy cost for relationships sometimes, and I
have many friends in the same boat.
When we were really active rider, outdoor rider, gun rider type,
uh, it involves being away a lot.
You've gotta go on a doll, sheep hunt to Alaska, you're gonna be gone for a week
or two and the family's at home and, you know, truck drivers, anyone who does a lot
of work away from home, you've gotta have, you gotta work at it pretty hard to keep
things going so things can fall apart.
And then there's a little bit of a an ego, potential ego issue if you start
to think you're somebody important because there's your story and picture
on a magazine cover or something.
Uh, and, and you could start to act like a jerk.
And I certainly went through a more than a short phase of that.
Thinking you're really somebody important.
But when you, you get a little older and you come to the realization that
you're really no better than anyone else.
You just try your best.
They try their best and you give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
You turn the other cheek and you just try to do your best and
help others to do their best.
So now you're working as a team, or at least as you know, not
antagonistic, you know, it's not a contest on who did the best, who shot
the biggest and all the rest of it.
Um, once you realize that, it just becomes a lot more pleasant.
Mm-hmm.
And, and then success is measured in many ways.
Of course, I can look in the wall and say, boy, am I ever a great sheep hunter?
Look at the size of that doll ram up there on the wall.
Every time I look at that baby, I remember the glacier, we hiked up
and I remember sleeping on the ice.
And I remember, uh, waiting across that river and all the rest of the adventure.
But, hey, wait a minute.
I had a guide.
And I had a packer and they helped me and they were an
integral part of the operation.
The only real difference was I had the rifle, they didn't, but otherwise
it's as much their ram as it is mine.
Mm-hmm.
So
that's sort of a humbling, eh, not really humbling, but just appreciation
for what others have done for you rather than, well, look what I did.
Yeah.
You know, I was in, um, uh, Nuremberg and we were, uh, what is it, AWA
over there at the, uh mm-hmm.
At the AWA show.
And, um, friend says, uh, Trav, uh, I want to hook you up with
a friend of mine over there.
He's head of, uh, hunter training and firearms education for the
Bavarian region and mm-hmm.
Excellent.
Had a good chat with him and, um, excellent fellow.
I. Anyways, learning a little bit about their culture and, and what it's like.
'cause he's very heavy into the traditional hunting culture.
And, and I, I talk to my friend, he's like, yeah, we'll
get you out over in Germany.
We'll do some hunting over there.
He is like, my first hunt, holy crow, what was that?
Ever expensive?
I'm like, okay, well like, what do you mean?
He says, well, you gotta get all the traditional attire right.
You gotta wear the, the right gear.
Okay, sure, fair enough.
I get ya.
He says, but when you get your, um, first buck when you're over there with them,
now you gotta pay for everything, drinks for everybody, celebrate for every,
it's unlike in North America where the hunter has looked at, Hey, look at this
great hunter in what he came home with.
When the hunter goes out and they're successful, they now have to turn around
and thank all of the people who brought them there, the people who helped set
up camp, everybody else who was out hunting, who had eyes and ears out
and passing intel back and I thought.
Isn't that interesting?
I, I really like that idea behind celebrating the community and
everybody who made it happen, because we're not all gonna be the
one with the rifle in our hand, but we all play a very integral role.
Yeah, that's, that's interesting.
It's part of the, the village tradition.
The tribe.
Mm-hmm.
The
tribal experience of hunting when everyone worked for a common
goal with his extended family.
Uh, I think we kind of got away from that in the States with the pioneers.
Obviously the Native Americans were doing it, uh, but they had fairly small
tribes, but they all sort of had to work together and I'm sure there were
better hunters in the group and others were better at, at setting up camp.
And the women were obviously doing the cooking and a lot of the grunt work and
such, but everyone had his role to play and we've kind of gotten away from that.
Once we went off and got our.
160 acres and plowed the ground, put up the Saudi or the log
cabin and raised our families.
We were sort of individual.
That's always been a big part of America's individualism.
Mm-hmm.
And that
freedom, which I think is a great thing, but we really are not isolated.
So the, the sod buster who was out doing that with his family, he was
probably using a plow made out of iron or steel that was built by somebody else.
Mm. Mine out of the ground in another country, you don't realize that, you
know, you think, oh, aren't I sufficient?
Well, wait a minute.
Who made the plow?
Yeah,
that's fair point.
Yeah.
And you gotta think about all those things.
So yeah, it's, it's kind of the tradition, I think, in America as opposed to Europe
as you were discussing, where we're, we're still a little bit fresh with that.
Do it yourself.
Attitude and that that way of life.
But obviously now we've gotten pretty, pretty well away from it
other than the back to the land movement, the self-sufficiency
movement, which I think is pretty exciting, I think is a good move.
I think most people should consider, how much can I do to become self-sufficient?
Uh, we're living in an area, in a community where we have a lot of
like-minded folks, most of whom are at least indulging in some
production of their own food sources.
A lot of hunters around here, obviously, but then we have cattlemen
and some people raise goats and some people specialize in honeybees.
Some of 'em are doing sweet corn and orchards.
And when you get to know folks and you go realize, well, I don't
have to grow everything myself.
You're better at growing cherries than I would be, so why don't I get
my cherries from you and you can get your squash from me, or whatever.
We have to trade.
Mm-hmm.
That's a, a useful old fashioned lifestyle that I think can be
done even in suburban areas.
And you get to know folks who have, they may have a connection to
somebody in the country, but they also may have it in their backyard.
Mm-hmm.
Have suburban backyards in which you can grow enough vegetables to probably feed
a family of two for a year or close to it if you really know what you're doing.
Yeah.
There was a book back in, when I was in college, five Acres and Independence.
Someone had written about, we live on five acres and we provide everything we need.
Wow.
Obviously not, not the steel tools, but the food, they were growing.
They were making honey and maple syrup and they had rabbits and chickens and
eggs and uh, I think a milk goat or something like that, but they laid
it all out in this book on how two people could produce enough to live on.
Completely.
Huh.
Acres
might have to give that book a read.
That sounds very intriguing.
Five acres and independence.
Can't remember the authors, but it was pretty fascinating to me back in the day.
You know, we talk about independence and individuality.
Uh, my wife and I were in Sweden and we did a driven hunt.
That was the first time I've ever done a driven hunt.
That was pretty neat.
We're in historic solar on, and, uh, it's a, uh, it's a bit of a throwback
for, uh, Sweden, the whole community.
And, uh, the men, the women, they're all out there hunting and it's a little
different than in North America would being such a male dominated activity.
But the hive mindedness is, I guess the best way that I can put it,
the way that they all, they're, they're a very social culture.
And, um, red Deer goes down and everyone's working together and get
it on the sled and get it, drag the thing on out and get it up in one of
the farms hanging up and everyone's out there working on the different
animals and butchering 'em up and.
It's, uh, it's a very social sort of event.
Very, um, very natural.
And over in North America, I find there's, uh, this level of
individuality that tends to kind of, uh, tear, tear our community apart.
Firearms, community hunting community.
Well, I'm not a bow hunter.
Forget them.
Well, you know, I'm just a pistol shooter, right?
Forget those, uh, shotguns or whatever it might be.
And there's this sort of, um, uh, less cohesive nature that I've, that I've seen.
And I don't know if, I don't know why that is.
I don't know.
I, I, I have a feeling in Canada, I see it a lot because in Canada
I'm gonna do my air quotes.
Guns are special because you've gone and done a, um, uh, a two day course and
you've been criminal record checked and vetted, and not everyone can have it.
And they got all these rules that apply to you and.
So when you have all of these extra rules, I see these sub communities go out
and they start trying to have some sort of control over what they're doing and
they create their own rules and mm-hmm.
And I, and I don't know if this is a level of social engineering that's been
brilliantly put upon to try and divide things that are looked at as negative
guns, hunting the rest by, um, by society.
But I, I can see, um, I can see work like what you're doing and,
and others in the storytelling and the connectedness of helping break
down the chinks in that armor.
Like when I look over into the states, and of course grass is always greener,
but when I look on over, uh, there seems to be a lot more camaraderie between, uh,
different factions and less divisiveness.
Um.
I'll just throw that out there.
Yeah.
I didn't, I don't know enough about, uh, your Canadian gun and hunting cultures
to make that assessment, but I do know that we have a similar issue here with
the, I only shoot a bow, you know?
Right.
I'm a better father than you are.
It's not, some people really jump on it and they wear it as a
badge of honor, which is sort of silly, but it, it is part of it.
But what I do notice is there seems to be a built in negativity, and maybe it's
social media, but I noticed it before social media came in to a degree, but
it wasn't as blatant and noticeable because people had to do it face to face.
Right.
If you were out in the raffle range and you were shooting a, say an auto loader,
and the next guy was shooting an old black powder muzzle loader, he could climb on
his moral high horse and give you a bit of a ribbing about how he was the superior
hunter and shooter because you're using this newfangled high tech stuff, Uhhuh.
That always goes on to a degree.
But what I've noticed on social media is that people really
go to the hate side of it.
Hmm.
And I
think that's, that's a product of seeing the hatred on all the political issues.
Nobody can make a comment and say, I have observed that X, Y, and Z, so maybe we
should consider Z, Y, and X next time.
Mm. It's you worthless blankety blank.
So-and-sos who like the YZ Xs are full of it.
We're gonna kill you all.
Yeah.
Worthless, blah, blah, blah.
Oh my gosh.
You think, what is wrong with these people?
But I think part of it is, of course, they just need to vent whatever
undisclosed anger is within them.
Here's a place where you can spit it out.
Mm. Just
get your anger out there and be as nasty as you want because you're incognito.
Mm. We see you do it.
Or, or come after you after you've done it sort of thing.
That spills over into this.
Some of the things I cover, uh, just the other day we did.
A review, Tate on my channel did a review of a rifle, I think it was a ra.
Mm-hmm.
And
somebody had to write in and say, why didn't you do a, um,
a show of Tika in that review?
That was disgusting that day.
Well, how can you do a review of a ra if you use the Tika?
You wanna see the Tika review go there?
Yeah.
But they've just gotta complain about something and bitch about it.
It's just crazy.
And then the worst one is when they say, oh, that new cartridge they came
out with, what a piece of junk that is.
Nobody needs that.
Why my grandpa's old whatever is more than good enough.
You know, they're just gonna, they're just trying to take your money.
And I always have to remind these guys, of course, the ammo and firearms
manufacturers are doing it to make money.
That's what's called a business.
That's right.
And they're making the tools that you need.
Do you really want them to go outta business?
That's right.
Well, whose side are you on here?
Yeah.
You
sound like an anti gunner to me.
Totally.
And, and people don't see that.
I don't.
Yeah.
It's, um, being in the business and having been here for, um, I guess
1994, I started, uh, training.
I was in high school at the time, and, um, I decided I'll try and make a go of this.
I applied with the local police department in my early twenties and,
uh, the Vancouver police, they said, Hey, you did awesome on the physical.
You came top on the, um, on the written, on the, uh, intellect side.
I don't know what that means, but, um, but you're young.
You need life experience.
I'm like, okay, well I'll do this thing I've been doing on the side and
I'll make it into a business and when that fails because all businesses
have a high likelihood of failure, then, then I'll, I'll come on back.
Well, it never failed and they ended up becoming a customer and
I'm doing gun plumbing for them and for other police agencies.
And it kind of, uh, built out from there.
But I, and so my view has always kind of been in this industry, so maybe it's
a little myopic, but I, I see a lot of, I want to tear down your building
to make my building look bigger.
And maybe that's like it everywhere.
But for me, being in the industry, I sure see it a lot in the hunting
and firearms kind of community.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
It's just human nature building, you know, trying to build yourself
up by tearing someone else down.
Hmm.
One needs to recognize it and fight against it, but it
really does hurt our industry.
What's the point?
But I am amazed at the number of manufacturers who are buddies with others
in the industry, say, you are building.
You're making bullets.
Hmm.
And
I'll, I'll get these bullet people who are visiting with their competition
and comparing notes and getting along just fine and they respect one another.
And I think that's because they've been around long enough to realize
that the competition helps everyone.
Mm-hmm.
You see that your competition's selling more bullets because
they have a new designer or a new material that you didn't think of.
Now you get your brain going, wait a minute, I can't rest on my laurels.
I need to come up with something better.
Right.
And that's what pushes, uh, the, the product development throughout.
I've really seen it in optics,
scopes,
and binoculars in the last 25, 30 years is, for a long time it was, there are
two or three top line European makers of.
Binoculars and scopes.
They really have it figured out.
They've just got the optical science down to an art, and the others really
didn't know some of these secrets.
Hmm.
One of the first secrets that came out in the 1930s was zes.
They found, accidentally found out that a coating of magnesium sulfite on the
surface of a lens would cut the light reflection or the light loss in half.
Big deal.
Huh?
So they start making binoculars using this, and people would look
through 'em and go, holy mackerel.
This is the most incredibly sharpened, contrasted,
binocular image I've ever seen.
So they own the, they own that field.
Hmm.
Until others
finally figured it out.
Well, these days everybody's figured out all the secrets, as much as I can
tell, and they all know how to make it.
Now it's just a matter of finding the cheapest way of getting it done, whether
that's offshore with cheaper labor, or finding a source where you can save a
nickel on your materials here and there.
Or maybe skip the middleman.
Like some of 'em are doing it sell direct.
But the upshot is we're now looking at optical quality
in our binoculars and scopes.
The, that are half the price they were 10 years ago.
Yeah, yeah.
' cause of the competition.
Yeah.
And, and the benefits
everybody.
Yeah.
Well it benefits the end user for sure.
I, it's gotta be tough on the optics companies if they're uh, uh, always
looking for the cheaper outsourcing.
Like,
yeah, you can go too, too far down, I think to the bottom.
But I think what's also interesting is that how many
of them are still in business?
They pop up and they.
Shine for a while.
They, they start to get accolades for making an incredible instrument and
then they hang on for quite a while.
Um, I see way more optic companies staying in business now than were 30 years ago.
Yeah.
With, with the Optic.
So I've got some friends at Armament Technology and they do SAI optics
and tangent Theta and like super high-end, uh, crystal clear optics.
They're, they're really cool.
And what I'm noticing in, at least from my outside perspective looking in is that not
only is it a process of trying to make it.
The best out there and the most robust and, uh, sing and all dancing
and like, they'll innovate toolless re zero, so you don't have to, uh,
like cool little things like that.
But it's the storytelling that I'm starting to see
really kind of bleeding in.
I, I think people are becoming less interested.
I, I guess there's gonna be different groups.
There's gonna be those who are always looking for the cheapest one, the best
they can get for the cheapest price.
But then there's gonna be those who want to know the individuals behind the brand.
And if they have money that they can spend and they got their choice, maybe I'll buy
made in Canada, or maybe I'll buy Made in America over top of, uh, getting something
that's gonna be made, made in China.
And the, the level of storytelling that I see, uh, in marketing essentially
is, uh, really seems to be the thing that's amped up over the years.
And I've seen it in the gun culture too.
Like when, uh, uh, Magpole started making training videos because they're like,
well, we can't advertise our guns, but we can put out a training video and if
you have this mag pull device on your gun and you follow our training, look at how
much of a better shooter you're gonna be.
So, um, uh, that, that's one area that I've seen really kind of propel.
And that's probably an area that you've had a fair bit of experience in.
Yeah.
And that might be answering your earlier question about storytelling
in social media and in YouTube instead of people reading the magazines
or heavens forbid, a book, can you believe that people ever did that?
That's right.
Yeah.
They're telling their stories in this new media and that is the,
the short film or the long film.
But you get to see the personality.
You get to hear the voice, and it helps.
It's a lot more challenging to get that through in writing.
Mm-hmm.
If you've read good literature and you remember some characters that
just struck you, they stick with you, you, you know, this person.
Mm-hmm.
How do you make that happen?
It's an imaginary person and you wrote words that made people
feel that they know this person.
But then you look at something like Lonesome Dove, Gus, um, Gus Mo it Gus call
on Lonesome Dove, the character in that.
I call it a movie.
It was on television.
Yeah.
And stuff, but the, the Best Western ever made because of that character.
Mm.
Robert Duval's character in that just grabs you.
And I try to imagine writing, well, heck, I don't have to imagine.
I read the book.
Mm. And it's just as good in the book.
You love this guy, you love this character.
In the book, I guess Val's Art as an actor was portraying that
e with equal effect in the movie.
And just what you mentioned now, if you've got a manufacturer who puts
out YouTubes on his website, or maybe he's putting him on a YouTube channel
or something like that, they've gotta be careful how they tiptoe through
the minefield of This is a bad gun.
Mm-hmm.
Mention this word and that word and all the thought police out there.
Yeah.
Yes.
How do you get your message across?
And storytelling is probably the, the right answer.
I think you nailed it,
huh?
Well, that's, do you find a lot of hurdles?
Like, I don't think, I don't think TikTok will let images of guns and
stuff, uh, easily, uh, Instagram meta that they, they clamp down
pretty hard, but not like TikTok.
And then YouTube is sort of a little bit broader of what you can talk about.
Do you, do you talk, see hurdles there?
Oh yeah.
There're hurdles all the time.
You're always tiptoeing you through the minefield and walking on eggshells
because you don't know exactly what thing you might say that gets
YouTube to say You're canceled.
Your
channel is gone forever.
It's so arbitrary.
They can do it if they want.
And you ask them what are your rules?
And then you try your best to follow those rules and then the next time
they're, they ding you and say, well, we're gonna pull this one
off because you violated the rules.
You go, what rules?
So they changed them.
Mm-hmm.
So the rules are constantly changing, but also individuals who check that
video, I think it's all done with ai, computer bot stuff, but you can ask for
a real person review saying, mm-hmm.
I don't think they got this.
Right.
That usually works.
Yeah.
You know, some guys won't even say the word rifle or bullet or shoot,
and they've got code words like pew.
Pew Sure.
And bang stick and freedom pills and all sorts of silly things.
I hate that because it's slow.
I know there's language, but
it's, yeah.
Like why?
Why do you have to hide what it is that you're talking about?
It's not nefarious.
Yeah.
But that's, that's the way it is.
So you've gotta be careful, and I'm glad we're having this conversation
because I hadn't really thought of the power of storytelling to
get around some of this stuff.
I don't necessarily have to mention specifically all the items and what
they do if I have a riveting story.
Mm-hmm.
That inspires people to investigate on their own.
Because everybody knows once you have the name of a product, you can come close to
approximating the correct spelling of it on a search and you're going to find it.
Yes.
So I gotta remember that and put it to effect here.
Well, it's, it's a direction that I took with my company a few years ago
and I was, um, silver Core Firearms training for the longest time.
It was started as Silver Core Gun Works and doing gunsmithing for
every Joe Blow who came through.
And I mean, anyone who's gonna bring their gun to a kid to work on
is not gonna be paying top dollar.
And, uh, every gun that I worked on was gonna be different, different issues.
And I learned, okay, start picking up armored car companies, police agencies,
they're all on the same platform.
I can tool all the same and they pay their bills.
So then it was silver Court firearms training, silver court training.
'cause the word firearms was getting blocked all over the place.
And, and recently I thought, you know what I mean, I, I know the gun stuff.
I was raised around the gun stuff.
Um, I know some, not all, I mean in, in my area.
But there's so many other things that I'm interested in.
And I rebranded to Silver Core Outdoors because firearms are a natural
portion of some outdoor activities.
And I found greater success in being able to tell the story of connecting
with people, connecting with their environment, connecting with their food.
And I reached far more people who I ever would than if I
just looked at the gun side.
Now, uh.
I, I can't deny that if you put the word gun in a post, it's gonna
have a very vocal crew of people.
But it's, it's the echo chamber, so to speak.
It's the people who would already be looking at your stuff.
Mm-hmm.
Um, if you want to try and win hearts and minds and show people that there are other
ways out there, and you know, guns can be really scary in the wrong person's hands.
Guns can be a, a dangerous thing if used improperly, but so can cars soak, can
household cleaning chemicals, right.
Um, let's, let's look at the story and the lifestyle behind
how you can connect to nature.
And, you know, there just so happens to be a gun in the
background in some of these things.
I found some success doing that.
Yeah, I can imagine.
Um, I think it's a lot more, it's a lot harder work, more
challenging to do it, but yeah.
Great storytelling.
I've, uh, for the several years now I've been sort of bemoaning the fact
that we don't have hunters as heroes.
Um, who's that author writing about a game warden?
His protagonist is this game warden in Wyoming, I think.
Uh, okay.
Box c CJ Box.
Does that sound right?
Okay.
The last name is Box.
He's got a series of paperback little novels that are, you
know, fairly good, pretty, pretty riveting, uh, for some folks.
He's real popular anyway.
Yeah.
But that's the first one I've seen in a long, long time.
Who made sort of the gun user hunter the hero?
Mm. He, I assume he had to sort of.
Ca couch it or cover it with Game warden.
So he's an official, officially government approved gun owner.
Right.
But still, at least the guns end up many times being part
of the hero, saving the day.
Mm.
In novels like that.
But now I think back when I was a kid, when a heroes were, we were seeing
them on TV with some Disney movies about Daniel Boone and all the old
Pioneer Heroes and the Cowboy Westerns.
That was a big deal in the 1950s into the seventies.
So people like Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone and the Lewis and Clark
Expedition and all these things that were not that far in our background,
which made America, which made us great.
A kid with a love for the outdoors and exploration and discovery and
adventure, would hear about those people.
And we heard about 'em in school.
They were on pop culture in those days, these days.
What does pop culture give you?
Mm-hmm.
Urbanites playing makeup space games and, and who can dance better than the next guy
on the street corner and things like that.
And, you know, more power to you that takes a lot of talent, but
it doesn't have that connection to the real world that we were getting
with our heroes back in the day.
Even a, a hero as fake as John Wayne or some of the Yeah.
Cowboys on, you know, that's like, obviously this guy's just a Hollywood
star and he's pretending to be somebody who was probably never really did exist.
Mm. But
there were people, there's a, there's a gram, a grim seed of truth in
that there were people like that.
Uh, they weren't the white hat perfect Western cowboy saves the day
sort of person, but they were were real people living out there who did
the right thing at the right time.
And they used often firearms to accomplish it.
Right.
Because firearms were a tool just like an ax or a plow or your horse or
whatever you, whatever else you needed.
In those days, the technology was what it was, and you used that
technology and did the right thing.
Of course, people could say, oh, what, what about all the people they
killed and the bad guys shooting and, and then the treatment of the Native
Americans are taking away their land.
You can always go to the dark side on all of this stuff.
Sure, it's human nature, but the idea that some good guy with a gun can
save the day, I think is still valid.
We just don't see it in pop culture.
You don't?
Well, it's shifted, uh, like I think you nailed it there when you talk
about good guy, it was the, the white hat individual who, and it just so
happened to be that the situation was such that a firearm necessitated the,
uh, prevailing of good over evil.
And over the years it changed from a moral, ethical.
Um, high ground.
Yeah.
Based on the zeitgeist, based on the culture to, um, to Rambo, uh,
who's, and it's more about, well, the person with the biggest gun and
the biggest muscles, and there's this whole fascination in Hollywood with
the just go out and shoot 'em up and, you know, it ends justify the means.
But the, the human ethical part of the whole story, um,
seems to have been minimized.
And I,
yeah, and they, they also celebrated the actual evil guy.
Right.
Many of the movies would have the bad guy in the end getting
his riches and his rewards.
And the good guys didn't.
Mm-hmm.
And you, you look at those and think this is not helping anyone.
I mean, I get the artistry in the story, but what a downer of a story.
And then I think back to something as simplistic as the Rifle Man TV series.
Mm-hmm.
Back in the sixties, love that show.
Mm-hmm.
Still
do.
But like most of the shows in the sixties, there was a moral lesson in there.
Mm-hmm.
Pretty,
you know, pretty, uh, softly delivered, but it would be paw showing the son
that you, you can't just go around, uh, bullying everyone in the streets.
You're probably not gonna work.
Right.
I have this rifle that can settle the score with these crew of bad guys.
Yep.
Yeah.
But, okay, great.
So you've got your white hat hero and he's usually, well, he was
always depicted as doing the right thing in all aspects of life.
He took responsibility for himself.
He didn't stick his nose into other people's business generally until it
was required, you know, push him to the edge and now he's gonna do something.
But I think the story that came through is that each of us, within
the community has to do our part to make that community successful.
To make life worth living.
Mm. Help
one other out, mind your own business, work hard, do your part, and it'll
all mesh pretty nicely, but as soon as you get the, the greedy guy who
wants to come into town to make easy money, whether it's robbing the bank or
cheating at cards in the bar and all the rest, all the stories that they told.
Sure.
Yeah, the moral was always the right, do the right thing,
and it works out in the end,
right?
We're away from that and now we're to the, the guy who's the strongest,
the toughest, the meanest and cheats the most is going to win heck of
a message to send to our kids.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
Well, looking at the different legacies that these characters have
left over the years and how that's changed, if I were to look at you
and say, what would your legacy be?
What would that
be?
Hmm.
You know, I used to never think about it, but I hear a lot about it from my.
Viewers and listeners and fans these days.
And I'm beginning to appreciate it because to them, I'm Grandpa Ron
or Uncle Ron, somebody who's been fortunate to have done the things
that they dream of someday doing.
So they, they look up to me, uh, because of that.
And then IF feel that it's my obligation to provide them with the,
the best information education, if you can call it that, that I can.
And ultimately I would like my legacy to be that I helped prolong
our tradition of outdoor mm-hmm.
Of, of, I don't wanna say hunting specifically, but
that's definitely a part of it.
A huge part of it.
But our outdoor lifestyle.
Let's go with outdoor life, you know, the outdoor life adventure,
the canoeing and the camping, and the exploring and the fishing and, and
finding mushrooms and, uh, just living off the land and staying connected
to nature as we were designed to do.
I mean, you think about how long man lived that close to nature, the stone
age cultures, of which we might have two or three left on the planet that haven't
been influenced by modern things, but what it was like to be that close to nature,
to understand that you could eat this plant in this season, but not this plant.
And you could, how you would get this meat to keep you and your
family alive without destroying the environment that supported you.
I, if my legacy can do that and the same time maintain or restore, uh,
a bit of, um, let's say glory, but.
A proper place for hunters.
In other words, we're not the bad guys, we're not the anti
hunter's ideal of an evil.
Kill all the animals.
You don't care about 'em thing, which is ridiculous, but it's out there.
Mm-hmm.
I would like for more and more people to understand that hunters can be
an influence for good in nature.
Uh, we, many of us have been obviously what we've done since the start of
the conservation movement, uh, ending market hunting, establishing wildlife
lands and refuges and Nashville forests and grasslands in place, protecting
the wild so that the wildlife could then thrive with good management and
understanding all of those programs.
I think we've done a great job of that, or at least our two generations ago did.
I think we're falling on our faces a little bit here in
the last generation or two.
Hmm.
Or three where we was riding on the coattails.
Like I, I grew up in an era where the Canada geese were
starting to come back until, wow.
Now look at 'em.
They're all practically a nuisance.
Mm-hmm.
Whitetailed deer were never around when I was a kid.
They started coming back and now look at how many whitetailed deer there are.
We brought elk back, pronghorn back on and on It goes until
we just took it for granted.
Isn't this something we get to go out and hunt?
We get, I, I used to be able to get eight deer tags in one season in South Dakota.
Wow.
It was in my twenties.
Yeah.
Wow.
So you start to take it for granted and now you, you look at what's happening
now and you, I like to tell folks we've gotta do what your great-grandpa did
and your grandpa did, which is get on the ground and, and build the wood
duck nesting boxes and, and lobby to save this wetland from being drained
and put into another shopping center.
Because when's the last time you hunted in a shopping center parking lot?
Yeah.
And then it's really funny, I'll say that to some young kids that live
in the cities and it's just like they get this look on their face.
Like, oh gosh, you're right.
I never thought of that because I've been around long enough
to say I used to hunt there.
Yeah.
Where that center is.
Yeah.
And how long can that continue?
So if my legacy is waking people up to that reality so that they continue to
do the good conservation work that was started a hundred years ago by real
conservation hunters, that would be cool.
I really like that.
And you know, I think there's this idea within people that the conservation work
is hard or it's somebody else's job.
And I think maybe what they overlook is the opportunity for themselves.
'cause you know, society is often, what's in it for me if I do this well?
L lots in it for you, for your kids, for your grandkids.
Oh, that's too far in the future.
I just look right now like what's in it for me right now.
I mean, we've got a local group, pit water fellers, and they're building duck
boxes and they love bringing people out.
And you can go up and you can volunteer.
And what do you learn?
Wow, I learned new places I can hunt.
I learn other people in the community who are like-minded and I'm picking up tips
and tricks and maybe I'm gonna be more successful on my, on my next season out.
I mean, if it's something that you're interested in, one of the
biggest things I've heard people say is like, how do I get into this?
It's so expensive.
And how do I find a mentor?
Well, through the conservation groups is one way that you put out and infinitely
get back for generations to come.
So right now you get back connections and people might not tell you their
secret honey hole, but they'll get you pointed in the right
direction to kind of get you going.
Yeah.
Excellent point.
Yeah.
The conservation group like that, you don't think of it as, no, I have
to go out in the hot sun and, and uh, pull weeds or whatever they're
doing and I guess I could sacrifice.
No, you get to be a part of that community that is improving wildlife areas for
everyone's benefit, including yours.
And you're gonna meet folks who say, yeah, come on, join the club, take you
under the wing, be a mentor to you.
Or you know how it works.
You get to be friends with somebody and you go, well, shoot,
I want to take this guy hunting.
Yeah.
I
enjoy him so much.
So suddenly you do have a place to hunt because you've made a new friend
who's taken you and then you return the favor with something that you're
doing in your neck of the woods.
Yeah.
I've got a, an old friend that I bumped into a few years ago and
we just connected and now he comes out to the ranch to pheasants.
He shot his first pheasant in something like, what did he say?
It was about 20 or 30 years since he'd gotten a pheasant really.
Yeah.
And he hunted with Covey and me on the ranch, and I was tickled
to have him shoot my pheasants.
Totally.
You know, it took him quite a while.
'cause his balance isn't as good as it used to be, and a few issues.
And when you get into your seventies, sure these things happen.
But he made this beautiful shot on a, a big rooster that Covey
pointed and went across his front and he killed that rooster.
And he was just about crying because it felt so good.
No kidding.
His puppy made the retrieve, which made it even more special.
And so I get as much joy out of that as, as shooting a aluminum
pheasants in three seconds of myself.
Mm-hmm.
You know, the whole thing just comes around.
So, yeah, it's, it's a great way to do it.
Join Ducks Unlimited or Pheasants Forever, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
All these user groups who are conservationists, who are striving
for the kind of work that needs to be done to keep us all in the field,
enjoying open spaces and wildlife.
That alone is a great legacy for anyone.
I love that.
Ron, is there anything that we should talk about that we haven't talked about?
Where are you gonna take me moose hunting next?
Come on up.
Yeah, I think what we're talking last was, uh, I was on
the moose hunt there and yeah,
no, no, this, this has just been great.
I'm happy to visit with you.
I love your insights and your passion for this.
Um, I didn't really know where this was going to go, uh, but I
figured, hey, you talked to another conservationist hunter and it's probably
gonna be some pretty good stuff.
Well, I really enjoy this conversation Ron, and thank you so much for
being on the Silver Corp podcast.
My pleasure.
I'll be, uh, more than tickled if you invite me back someday.
I can guarantee it.
Thanks so much, Travis.