00:00:00
Speaker 1: I think variety is the spice of life.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: I’m I don’t. I don’t really like the whole measuring contest of you know, well, I’m better because I use a recurve or a bow or you know, whatever it might be, or I can shoot it a thousand yards or you know what, if you’re out there doing your thing and you’re enjoying it, and like you said the other day, and I think you’ve posted something the fellowship, you know what is a win. You know, there’s a lot of times that we just need to unplug. We need to go out there and put man versus beast, and we need to enjoy that sunset, you know, because I know that looking back at forty eight, I look back.
00:00:38
Speaker 1: And I’m like, oh my gosh, I squandered a.
00:00:40
Speaker 2: Lot of years just chasing things that didn’t really matter.
00:00:46
Speaker 3: Out here, the stakes are real. Effective preparation starts with fitness, but it requires so much more. This show explores the tools, knowledge, resilience, and skills needed to be ready when it matters the most. Join me Rich Browning as we apply the decades of wisdom I’ve gained through training and competition to hunting in the back country. This is in pursuit brought to you by Mouth Knocks, in collaboration with Mayhem Hunt. All right, in pursuit with Angelo di Chico. Chico, you look a very uh Jeff, can’t see you right now, but Angelo shaped to go tee. So with the mullet and the goateee, it looks very nineties.
00:01:36
Speaker 4: You said, I look like I’m thirty five years old.
00:01:38
Speaker 3: You do it? Does aid you in the incorrect way that you want to be aged?
00:01:42
Speaker 4: She goes, you could be twenty five or thirty five? Mike, what does that mean?
00:01:45
Speaker 3: Exactly what it means. So we got Jeff Helm, man of many talents, all around, good.
00:01:53
Speaker 4: Dude, stone cold killer, stone.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: Cold killer, Jeffrey Mark Helm.
00:02:01
Speaker 1: That is right, am I in trouble.
00:02:03
Speaker 3: Miss Michigan, Michigan native. Me and Jeff are Michigan natives. We got a lot of commonalities and uh but we’ve hunted with him last two years now at Access Camp in Texas and become really good friends and uh learned a ton from him, and so yeah, we just want to talk about you and uh just all your your endeavors and all the cool things you’re doing and uh, yeah, Jeff, so appreciate you coming on.
00:02:32
Speaker 2: No problem. I’m an open book.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Shoot open book and ask him if you found your buck. We did a recap on the hunt and told everybody.
00:02:44
Speaker 4: I’m YouTube’s number one villain now for not making a follow up shot.
00:02:47
Speaker 2: I have retold that story a few times. That definitely is an heartbreaker.
00:02:52
Speaker 3: We did. We did. You can’t be an enemy in the fact that you guys looked solid like and anybody who’s hunted for long enough knows it happened sometimes, you know, we just watched Force Gumps, so it happens. And uh yeah, I think you guys did your due diligence. Obviously it didn’t happen the way you wanted it to happen. But I think a lot of things played into what happened, you know, with the rain and all that. So we we we already recap that, so we won’t just keep burying Angelo under where he’s at.
00:03:21
Speaker 2: So I’m sorry Angelo, Yeah, yeah, me too.
00:03:25
Speaker 3: All right, So let’s let’s go back and what what got you started in hunting?
00:03:32
Speaker 2: That would probably be my uncle as much as anybody. My dad hunted too, but my uncle hunted a ton and we did a lot of raccoon hunting when I was young and got the bug to bow hunt. I think I got my first bow when I was like eight. So I’ve been bow hunting a long time. I’m now forty eight, and.
00:03:52
Speaker 3: All that started in Michigan.
00:03:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, creater hunting.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: I once got in trouble for trying to shoot a burn out of the bird feeder, missing and hitting the dining room window and breaking it.
00:04:05
Speaker 1: So I got a spanking for that. I think I was ten.
00:04:08
Speaker 3: That’s a spankable sense, I think.
00:04:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also shot I shot something out of the pool. I don’t even know if it was legal. Uh it’s a snapping turtle that too.
00:04:24
Speaker 1: I think I was eleven.
00:04:25
Speaker 2: I didn’t learn learn Did you put a hole in the pool or no? I hit that snapping turtle boy, and we ate it all right. It was good, you know, so but yeah, heck.
00:04:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, no. So we’ve talked a bunch on the mountain. So from there, you’re in Michigan. At what point did you move to Texas.
00:04:46
Speaker 2: I moved to Texas two thousand and seven, so about nineteen years ago.
00:04:50
Speaker 3: Okay, so were you running the machine shop then? What kind of led you to I guess to Texas.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: I was tull and I and machine shop oriented right out of high school, got my journeyman’s card. Then an opportunity came up to start a shop in San Antonio, and I really didn’t have a desire to move to Texas.
00:05:13
Speaker 1: And then just a lot of things played out.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: And you know a lot of times when doors open that you don’t necessarily aren’t thrilled about, You’re like, all right, this is the Lord. And so we got an opportunity to move to Texas, and I had a couple of partners. We started this machine shop. We were going to support facilities in Mexico and machine parts and do a whole bunch of stuff. And so put my house on the market as the house was getting soft, and sold it in less than a month. Everything fell into place and we moved to Texas, and I’m so dang happy we did. I love Texas.
00:05:53
Speaker 3: Yeah. So leading up to that point, you’re what’s your hunting looking like?
00:05:58
Speaker 2: Then at that point I had gotten the bug to chase whitetails out of state, so as you well know Michigan, although they just passed the one buck.
00:06:08
Speaker 3: Roll rifle throughout the state now too.
00:06:10
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, it’s kind of crazy, big things happening for our Michigan boys. But I was doing the out west thing. I called it out west. It was western Michigan, but I would go and hunt Missouri, Iowa, Kansas. Got into hunting big bucks, got addicted to it back in probably ninety nine somewhere in there, and was knocking down some big booner whitetail, and then I got the bug for elk and axis and I pretty much haven’t looked back since then. Went on my first elk hunt in two thousand and five, shot a bowl and I’ve been addicted to that ever since. And I think axis are kind of mini elk.
00:06:58
Speaker 4: Where’d you shoe your first bull?
00:07:00
Speaker 2: Wyoming? I had this dad joke. As soon as you said that, I wanted to say, right in the lungs.
00:07:07
Speaker 3: The bad part is when you you know, in ninety nine, Angela wasn’t even born, So that that’ll make you feel I know, I.
00:07:15
Speaker 1: Know that’s terrible.
00:07:17
Speaker 3: It really is.
00:07:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I got a bug for it a long time ago, and since, I mean since about ninety nine, I’ve spent at least two weeks traveling to hunt. And you know, Michigan there’s great fish in there, but the hunting wasn’t the best. So I’d love going other places where there was big bucks, mature Bucks, and and then elk don’t we don’t have well, we have elk in Michigan, but I’ve never drawn a tag I’ve been.
00:07:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think the Michigan thing will help. I was seeing you know, you follow random clips on podcasts where just guys weren’t shooting doughs for a long time, Like, yeah, you know, that’s one of the rules we have here at the house, like you have to shoot a dough before you can shoot a buck, and or the numbers just get so lopside. I think the two buck rule kind of helps with that too. So backing it down to one, you’re gonna be a little bit more choosy and then if you want the meat, you’re gonna have take some dough. So hopefully that does clean some of that up.
00:08:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was actually the interesting thing when we went to Ohio to hunt, was that, like do you can bait and their seasons longer, so you end up sitting and watching the same deer for a long time and you’re not gonna shoot the first thing you see because you know, there’s a bunch of big deer out there, so you’re like, oh wait, I know there’s a bigger deer. So there is like there is that part of the baiting thing, which I never thought of. I thought, you just bait deer so you can shoot more deer, and it’s actually almost the opposite the reason they do it. Did how much did Nuge have? How much stake the Nudge having this? I know he’s big well because he’s like I think where he hunts is literally like forty five minutes away from where Sam hunts. Really yeah, so he’s Southern Michigan as well. So I wonder how I know he’s a big advocate for like the hunting rules and laws out there.
00:08:56
Speaker 4: Did you see anything? Does he have anything to say about it?
00:08:59
Speaker 2: You know, I haven’t. I haven’t paid attention to what he’s done in the last couple of years, but Nudge has definitely been been an advocate for changing some of the laws up there, and I know he spoke a bunch on it. And you know, growing up, I actually met Nudgen a few times. Is his wife’s really nice? Because I used to work for cent lock back in the day. Which was another Michigan based.
00:09:22
Speaker 3: Out of there. Yeah, but my cousin manages some of one of the guy’s money that he’s a financial planner, and he’s like, hey, you guys, you know the guy owns cent Lock. I’m like, no, but I know what sent Lock is.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, the original owners, one of them turned into a pretty good friend mine. I still talk to him all the time today. He sold it a long time ago. But that’s how I got started in the hunting industry was through cent Lock.
00:09:47
Speaker 3: Okay, there was kind of The next next question was like, how’d you get involved in the hunting industry? Was that pre the tool and die stuff or was that kind of incongruence.
00:09:58
Speaker 1: With kind of incongruo.
00:10:00
Speaker 2: So I kind of had these two paths because I would work a full time job, but then on the weekends I’d work at a bow shop there in Muskegan, selling bow setting up bows, doing all that stuff. Fletchennaro’s, all the things. And they came in to do a sale set Locke did and met me and in the process said, hey, we’re looking to get some younger guys to work trade shows. And at the time, like Cabela’s Dundee was opening. That was a long time ago. Yeah, And so I went and did some openings and shot shows and atas and all that stuff, and that’s how I started meeting all the people that now have been friends for twenty plus years too.
00:10:38
Speaker 3: That’s cool you.
00:10:41
Speaker 5: I think we were talking about this at access to your camp. You killed your part of four elk kills this year.
00:10:50
Speaker 4: No, personally, you personally Okay, sorry, I do have this.
00:10:55
Speaker 5: Sorry that just sounded crazy to even say that you personally killed four. You were a part of nine lee correct, Yeah, legally, not just like shooting him at night.
00:11:03
Speaker 2: Yes, I did shoot four bulls last year with my bow.
00:11:06
Speaker 5: This is this is September and this is where’s this at? Where are these at?
00:11:11
Speaker 2: Him? I shot the first one in August in Texas. Perennial Colton has a bunch of ground leased up in West Texas where there’s a lot of free range elk. So I did some trade out with him and I shot a really big management bowl in August with him and actually with Jacob and Jordan was with us too, and so that was the first one, and then we went to Wyoming and we did DIY backcountry went ten miles back in with Lamas eight Lamas three hunters, and we killed three bulls in nine days in Wyoming. Made a film out of it. It’ll come out in August. And then I went to Idaho and hunted with Donnie Drake and the Elk one on one crew and my buddy Jody shot a bull there, and then went on to Oregon to finish off to hunt Roosevelts and killed one on the day before the end of season.
00:12:08
Speaker 5: That’s incredible. Yeah, See, I don’t there. That’s probably an experience that a lot of people will never have. Like that’s really cool. I’m sure you know, like how lucky or blessed that just even that one season is. Yeah, and yeah, I wanted to bring that up because a lot of people almost need to hear that it’s here, like what’s possible?
00:12:27
Speaker 3: And like.
00:12:29
Speaker 5: I would say, obviously we know how good of a hunter you are, like being a part of all that, I mean, obviously you have to know what you’re doing.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years, and I try.
00:12:40
Speaker 2: And be a good student, Yeah, and I try and learn from my mistakes. I’ve been blessed to kill over thirty bulls in twenty years.
00:12:51
Speaker 1: But I’ve also had a lot of missed opportunities.
00:12:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I.
00:12:55
Speaker 1: Do spend a lot of time.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: And so when you spend time around animals just like access deer or even white tails, whatever, you start to learn and it really gets you to a spot where you start to figure out their tendencies and how they use land, how they use thermals, how they use you know, different weather patterns. And so my gut instincts have gotten pretty dialed over the years to where my guts usually ride on certain things. And that’s just reps in the field, just like anything else. Right. So I actually when I was bringing the fourth one out, I really had no intentions of filling all those tags. I was hoping that I could kill two. And when I was bringing the fourth one out, I had a moment to myself because I just thought to myself, I’m just a kid from Michigan, Like, we don’t even have ELK. What am I doing out here shooting bulls like this? This is ridiculous? Felt very blessed. It’s incredible, And you know, a couple of people have given me a hard time because that’s a lot of helk me.
00:13:57
Speaker 1: But I fed multiple families.
00:14:00
Speaker 2: Ended up giving one bowl to a guy who has four kids of his own and does foster care, and so he got a bunch of elk meat. We just did a grand opening for a bow shop. I donated sixty pounds of elk meat for elk burgers. I gave another part of an elk to a guy in Montana. It’s a good friend works for peaks and he hadn’t been successful, so I gave him some milk meat.
00:14:22
Speaker 1: And then the rest of them are in my fraser.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:14:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that’s great.
00:14:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, gonna hoard it a little bit. That’s awesome. So yeah, I mean you can kind of speak to like, you know, you you guide whitetail, you guide axis, and then you usually hunt elk for yourself. You’re not really guiding elk, but you take pieces and parts and tactics from different things you learned throughout the season, and man, I think it just keeps you sharp if your axis hunting kind of all summer, and it’s like almost like you look at it as reps to get you ready for elk season, because you know, we talked about some of the parallels between elk and the differences between elk and axis, but a lot of it is pretty close minus you can, like axes aren’t as callable as as elk are, but you still do a lot of the similar you know, spot stalk, thermals, trying to get ahead of them, cut, you know, just different things.
00:15:17
Speaker 2: So yeah, you know, and it’s it really where it really helps is in areas that have high pressure where because a lot anybody can go out there and do some calf calls or cow calls or even some bugles in low pressure areas and be successful. Where it really comes in handy is when you’re in high pressure areas, whether that’s Colorado or Idaho or you know Montana that has a lot of hunters and I feel like I have an edge on some of them sometimes because I don’t need them to talk in order for me to kill them. And that’s where access is, like it’s the best warm up to ELK.
00:15:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, they see a lot better, I feel like than ELK.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: They see a lot better.
00:16:01
Speaker 2: They definitely are more access, are more in tune with their surroundings all the time.
00:16:08
Speaker 1: And so you have a lot of doze that are on lookout.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: You have the bucke is in the back, you know, a lot of times with Elk, especially the time of year we hunt him, that bull is more clued into his cows than he is us, and we have to worry about the cows.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: And there’s just a there’s a lot of parallels.
00:16:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, And where I think that all that has come into play and helped me is I don’t necessarily get a ton of opportunities every year, but I can capitalize on those opportunities because I don’t have my backpack straps in the way.
00:16:40
Speaker 1: I don’t have you know, forgot to do a range.
00:16:43
Speaker 2: I don’t you know, my setup is pretty dialed, it’s pretty you know, sturdy. I use a lot of very sturdy equipment because I’m kind of hard on it, and so when an opportunity comes under fifty yards, I can usually capitalize on it, minus those occasional branch.
00:17:01
Speaker 3: Happens every once in a while. Yeah, yeah, you know, And I think I think that too. Like when people hear Texas, they just think high fence. I think that’s something cool about hunting with you guys at Perennial is these aren’t high fence access. They are free range axis and not just you know, like I’m sure axes that are on on a very big piece of property on a high fence, probably are skittish as well. But these you’re you’re actually you know, it’s it’s not a you know, a guaranteed hunt as we saw this week, especially with a bow. I think with a rifle it’s it’s I don’t want to say guaranteed. You know, they’re still you’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to do some things. On a three day hunt, the rifle is it comes down to that because you’re just gonna need time. You know, if we had seven, eight days, we could have gotten access done with a bow. But when you got three days, it’s like, all right, we’re gonna carry around the bow and our opportunity is the rifle, and we’re gonna take it. You know. I’m I’m at the point in my life with my kids, being away from my kids. They’re just fired up if I come home with anything, right, so they don’t really care down the road, you know, I’m like, all right, maybe I take eight or ten days and try to go just bow only. But yeah, so I think maybe speak to that a little bit about like maybe the misnomers about Texas at times. Man, I the more and more. We go to Texas, I’m like, gosh, this place is amazing.
00:18:21
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:18:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, of like, you know, hey, there is more opportunity. Like you’re saying, there’s elk in West Texas that are free range elk. You know, they’re not native so that is different, but they are. We saw four elk on the way home from the ranch, on the way home from camp back to camp one night. They all got hit by a car the next morning, but they were there.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, there’s so much to hunt black buck. Odd Dad addicts we kill the scimitar to orcs the other day. I think I’m saying a picture Angelo. There’s just so much game down there. It’s crazy. And so it’s a hunter’s paradise, it really is. And it really is because you can hunt three sixty five twenty four hours a day in hell whether you want to pull out a throw and that awesome. Yeah, And and those Cemtard orcs are really really good eating. So I love living down here because you get a lot of reps. By the time elk season comes around, you’ve probably let ten twelve arrows go, whether it was pigs or axis or you know, whatever you’re chasing. But it’s definitely a target rich environment, and that doesn’t mean it’s easy. A lot of that depends on the properties that you’re hunting, how much hunting pressure there is, how many animals you are. High fences are here, but high fences are Michigan, high fences are you know a lot of places. It all depends on the size. I’m actually not like anti high fence, other than when you high fence property next to mine, I’m not a fan. But but when it comes to you know, if you’re hunting a high fence ten thousand acre ranch like whatever, you know, it’s that they’re those animals can go wherever they need to go. That’s a huge piece of property. Now if you’re hunting two hunderd acres, well that’s a little.
00:20:05
Speaker 3: Bit little bit do yeah, and then you’re just picking it now, yeah.
00:20:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, because those animals can’t get away from me. You can figure it out. But I do all my stuff. The only thing I’ve ever killed in a high fence was pigs.
00:20:18
Speaker 2: We used to have a big ranch who went to in South Texas that was forty thousand acres, so high fence, and we would go down there pig hunt and it was a ton of fun.
00:20:25
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, sure, well, and you know that’s the difference. Just don’t bill it as hey, it was some hard hunt that we went on. We went on a it was a not a high fence, but it was over feeders, white tail, and it was a management hunt. And I’m like, as long as we don’t bill it as oh, we went on and killed this giant buck and we worked however many days now, dude, we waited and when the feeder went off, they were like, hey, don’t shoot anything less than four years old, and you know whatever, and so it was like, all right, cool, that was our you know, shoot some dose and man, it was just as fun.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: I think variety is the spice of life.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I’m I don’t. I don’t really like the whole measuring contest of you know, well, I’m better because I use a recurve or a bow or you know whatever it might be. Or I can shoot a thousand yards or you know what, if you’re out there doing your thing and you’re enjoying it, and it’s like you said the other day, and I think you posted something the fellowship, you know what is a win? You know, there’s a lot of times that we just need to unplug. We need to go out there and put man versus beast, and we need to enjoy that sunset. You know, there’s even right now, like I’m actually currently on a hunting trip and I have no cell service on this ranch. It’s seventeen thousand acres. There’s no cell service. So it’s funny. I sent my son a really big text yesterday giant one, and he responded back and he was like, Dad, I think you’re doing all right.
00:21:52
Speaker 1: And I’m like, I’m doing great. I’m just out here reflecting.
00:21:55
Speaker 2: Basically in this text, I basically told him, I’m like, brother, you need to you you need to take care of your investments. You need to make your money when your twenties, in your twenties, thirties, and forties, because by the time you’re in your fifties and sixties, you really want to time and energy on the things that you want to So don’t squander these times in your twenties, thirties and forties. And it was it was really a very much a dad text. He’s an amazing kid, and I just I don’t want him to squander the time because I know that looking back at forty eight, I look back and I’m like, oh my gosh, I squandered a lot of years just chasing things that didn’t really matter matter, and I don’t want him to do that.
00:22:38
Speaker 3: So there’s two things that I’ve got I see there, And so I want to talk about Jake and kind of how you’ve raised him and how he’s kind of grown in the hunting space and is now guiding as well on access stuff. I don’t know if you’ve spent a ton of time with Jake. I did last year. I didn’t get see him much this year, but good kid. But I do want to say, you know, like that’s a hard part too, It’s a battle. I don’t know if you listened to the Howardton sermon week or the podcast, but he’s talking about when Paul was in Rome and he’s, you know, waiting in jail, and at that time, you think it’s wasted time, right, you know, like I’m not getting to do the things I want to do. Like you’re saying, like I am working hard, I am doing these things and I’m stuck, or there are any fruits coming from it. But I think Paul wrote four books of the four Epistles while he was in jail waiting in Rome, and so like, you know, that’s it’s I think it’s a great perspective of like, hey, don’t get super caught up in the trials of right now, and you know, it’s just there’s such a balance to that, right. But what I think is so cool is that you know, Jake obviously loves you. You’ve done a great job with him, and he’s kind of following along in the footsteps, right, and so can you? Yes, how did that happen? How’d you get just make Jake come along?
00:23:48
Speaker 5: Was it?
00:23:48
Speaker 3: Ah? He wanted to do what dad was doing?
00:23:50
Speaker 5: What was it?
00:23:54
Speaker 3: You know?
00:23:54
Speaker 2: It was a combination because Jake is actually especially growing up, he was very different than me. He was he was very quiet and he’s still kind of quiet unless you get him up. We are not the same person. We definitely have a lot of the same similarities personality. Internally, we have a lot of the same wiring. But I just never let him be a bother.
00:24:20
Speaker 1: My dad never.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: I love my dad, but he never took me on any trips, you know, out when he went out west, that was for him. When he went to Alaska, that was for him. And a lot of it was because he couldn’t afford to bring me, and so there’s extra costs involved when you bring you know, your kids and stuff. And so from the time he was I think he went on his first l count with me when he was eight years old, and there was challenges, There’s no doubt in my mind. Over the course of from eight to sixteen, he cost me more than one bull. But we had some amazing experiences. And on those trips, what I noticed is, you know, when I would take him, you know, usually it was a twelve to fourteen hour drive to wherever we were going, and on the way there, it was a lot of anticipation of the hunt and so on and so forth.
00:25:14
Speaker 1: While we were there, it was a lot of struggles.
00:25:16
Speaker 2: So there was many times that I was like, hey, Jake, you sleep in this morning, I’ll come back and get you. Because he was he was tuckered, you know, when he was nine, ten eleven, he was tuckered out. And we’re getting up early, we’re staying up late. You know, it’s just it really runs you down. And I just tried to be in tune with who he was, where he was at, and I really tried to let him enjoy it. In the amount of bears that we saw, and elk and mule deer and fox and just all these different memories that we have over the years.
00:25:48
Speaker 1: He was never a bother. I never was upset with him.
00:25:52
Speaker 2: But what I noticed is at the end of that trip, on the way back, he would talk to me about the things that were bothering him. It was something with school, maybe it was something with the fam, you know, his mom, sister, you know, just growing up. Just he would open up his friends, you know, as he got older. We talked about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. You know, we had the sex talk on the way back from an Elk trip, the birds and the bees. And I wanted to be the one to lead. I was actually reading a book called point Man at the time and which I think of Stephen Ferraer incredible book. And I was like, you know what, I’m gonna have this talk with Jake. And I wanted to be the one not to put alcohol or sex or all these different things on this plateau where where it’s it’s cool, you know. I wanted to put it in a godly perspective where it was like, hey, sex is amazing between a man and a woman that love each other. You know, hey, alcohol all things in moderation. There’s nothing wrong with having a drink. However, being drunk, it’s not good and anything that has as a hold of you on that level is bad.
00:27:02
Speaker 1: So all those conversations happened on our way back from Elkhunt.
00:27:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that’s cool.
00:27:07
Speaker 2: So throughout those years, I just I was his friend and his dad, and we talked about everything.
00:27:15
Speaker 1: Nothing was off limits.
00:27:16
Speaker 2: And I can see now I really didn’t realize it at the time, but I can see now it was huge. He’s he’s one of my best friends today and he’s twenty three years old. We talked about everything.
00:27:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, and you can see that, you know, it’s not just like a fake thing, like you can tell, Yeah, it’s real, and you know that’s that’s it’s reassuring, you know, because that’s what I try to do with my kids here, and it’s like, yeah, especially white Tail at the house. I have like in the last couple of years now that they’ve gotten to where if one of them says, hey can I go, I’m like, yep, let’s go. And we’re probably not going to see anything, or we might see something. But if they’re out there. Then then we’re out there together and it’s it’s been a ton of fun.
00:27:57
Speaker 1: Oh, it’s a blast. And Jake did all that.
00:28:00
Speaker 2: I mean, he killed white tails, he shot his first one with a gun, and not very long after he killed one hundred and thirty inch buck when he was eleven years old with them. And he would not allow me in the blind because I was too loud. I’m like, what are you talking about?
00:28:15
Speaker 3: Him?
00:28:15
Speaker 1: Too loud?
00:28:16
Speaker 2: You know, was like whatever.
00:28:18
Speaker 1: So he was by himself.
00:28:20
Speaker 2: I was four hundred yards away in a tree stand and he shot his first first pope and young buck by himself.
00:28:27
Speaker 1: It was incredible. All those experiences just compound.
00:28:31
Speaker 2: I took him out to get reps on pigs and he shot a lot of pigs over the years, and then it kind of culminated last year where he went out on his own to a unit he’d never been to in Colorado, scouted it, called in a bull shot, it hauled it off the mountain all by himself.
00:28:49
Speaker 1: Nobody there, nobody there the work, nobody.
00:28:52
Speaker 3: That’s crazy man, that’s awes.
00:28:55
Speaker 2: And I got one of the most emotional videos from him afterwards because I was in the back country making a Peaks film and I got this video and I was definitely the allergies kicked up. I was like, man, I love this kid.
00:29:11
Speaker 3: Ya dude, good job. Man, I think that’s it’s cool. Once again, not just saying it, but man, he’s he’s a good kid. So that’s cool. We’ve done a good job, all right. So talk you’ve kind of from that point you transition to working with Peaks and now I guess part owner or have an ownership ownership stake in it.
00:29:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. We Basically I wasn’t even looking, you know, because I was in the I was a salesman in uh basically sold car by tooling and stuff, and an opportunity came up to go to work for Peaks. I’m the sales manager there and I also work with the pro program and community marketing and all that stuff.
00:29:51
Speaker 3: And so.
00:29:52
Speaker 2: Bryce, he’s the majority owner of Peaks, is a tremendous individual and turned into one of my best friends and and he and I got to know each other a few years ago. Because of all the connections in the industry, a lot of the guys that were at Peaks or are at Peaks came from Sitka and I’ve worked with Citka for ten eleven, twelve years, I guess, And so when the name came up for a sales manager, my name was dropped in the hat and I was actually fishing for smallmouth in Michigan when I got a text and he said, hey, I think I’ve figured something out. Maybe maybe you can come to work full time. And that’s now been two and a half years, I think, and it’s been fantastic. We’re growing leaps and bounds. It’s it’s really awesome. I love it, and it’s a great group of people, great products, and it’s opened up a lot of doors, and we’re hustling. Everybody that’s at Peaks is working hard and growing, so we got a ton of stuff coming out, so it’s it’s kind of it’s kind of fun working in the industry. I didn’t know if I’d like it full time. I tried to do it years ago with set Lock and it didn’t work out. And then this time I wasn’t looking. I had already come to grips with the fact that I was just gonna do some guiding and keep working trade shows for different brands, and then this popped up and and here we are, and I love it. It’s fantastic, and then recently opened a bow shop.
00:31:22
Speaker 3: That’s where I was going next. I was going to Arrowheads after that Arrowhead. So you’ve kind of your next endeavor. I guess, well, you’re you’re kind of you’re guiding. You’re guiding with Perennial And do you do any other guiding or just with those guys?
00:31:35
Speaker 2: Yeah? I also guide with Austin Land Wild Country outfunder Fitters out of Utah. They’ve got a big Texas lease and I do some guides and trips for him too. Austin’s a really good guy and they do a lot out there in Utah and Texas.
00:31:49
Speaker 3: Cool. So you got that working at Peaks and then just recently kind of passion project sounds like.
00:31:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s uh. Once again, I wasn’t looking. Really good friend of mine, Cody Wells, great guy. He used to live down here in the Burning area where I live. We became really really good friends, and he moved back to Waco when some stuff happened family with some medical stuff. So he moved back to Waco and for years he said, I want to open a bow shop. What do you think? And I’m like, you know, bow shops are not for making a lot of money, probably other things you could do, and yeah, exact one thing led to another and and uh, he put together a crew of people and said, we want you to be a part of this. And and it’s been almost a year that we’ve been planning it, and we opened a couple of weeks ago, and it’s fantastic. We actually a lot of those guys are part of Legacy Outfitters, which is a non denominational men’s ministry up there, and so.
00:32:54
Speaker 1: Legacy Outfitters actually has an office in our building.
00:32:57
Speaker 2: Everybody that’s involved with Arrowheads is just a great great guy, loves the Lord, loves their family, and leads from the front, every single one of them.
00:33:07
Speaker 1: They’re just awesome people.
00:33:09
Speaker 2: And I’m confident that it’s going to be a source of encouragement for that community.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: It’s a place that you can go.
00:33:19
Speaker 2: A lot of times, the hunting community isn’t necessarily welcoming to newbies, and I want to change that. If someone wants to get into archery and they’ve never hunted and they’re forty one years old, I want to show them how to shoot a bow and be there as a source of information to help with the learning curve. I think archeries for everyone. There’s a lot of good in shooting your bow, and I call it group therapy, right. You can just put your phone down and fire some groups down range and it’s good for the mind and body and soul. So we’re going to try and use that as kind of an opportunity to bring people that maybe are struggling, maybe they don’t have things right in their life and they’re struggling with depression or not measuring up. But there’s just so much out there, you know, rich and when we talked about like there’s people that are you know, turn into suicide and many times because they don’t have their priorities straight, you know, they don’t have God at the center of what they’re doing, and it ends up being a problem for sure.
00:34:28
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I think all those things are great. I think, you know, there is the parallel between the fitness and archery as well as faith. You know, we’re we’re men of faith everybody here and so you know, and I think that’s a huge thing of you know, having the background of hunting but not really ever being taught per se. There is that like, oh man, I don’t know anything, so you feel like an idiot and nobody. I don’t want to say, there’s like a little bit of a scarcity mindset of like, oh, if we’re letting more you know, people into the community, there’s less opportunities for us to hunt. But man, you’re just like, the more and more I’ve gotten into it, and the more and more hunts that I’ve been on, it’s just the shared even if you know I’m not one taking the shot, it’s still just being a part of the you know, Jake talking about Jake going out by himself. That sounds awful to me, Like, and we’ve talked about it on the mountain, like as long as I have one other person that we can you know, bounce ideas off of, and you know, the fellowship of it, I think you know, there’s a lot of biblical stuff in there of like out Jesus sent people out too by two you know, and so uh, that’s to me, that’s what I look forward to the most. Obviously, the the harvest is is the goal, right is the number one goal. But man, some of those byproducts of just you know, me and you didn’t know each other last year and now I would call you a pretty good friend if I needed something, I’m in Texas. I’m like, hey, I’d call Jeff. Jeff will be there, you know, and so man, I just the connections and and for the most part, the shared you know, we’re on a shared mission together, right, you know, we’re we’ve got one task that we’re trying to get together and we don’t know each other from but we kind of learned how how each other thinks, and and we come out on the other side better. And then hey, most of the time we don’t even have the cell phone as much, you know, we depending on where we’re at. But Scott always talks about that of like when we were in Colorado, we became super close because for seven eight days it was uninhibited, you know, just conversation, especially when I think back to like the early days with me father Steven, a good buddy of mine, and Scott, Like we were on the mountain together for seven days straight, you know, nothing nobody else really being there, just talking through life and things. And you know, we had some cool moments, even this last time where you didn’t know Scott beeps, which is it’s still it has made it home a little bit, which is so good because it’s just so far from like Scott’s Ye, very regimented, always doing things the right way, and that Oh man, I wish you could have been there beeps. So we kind of told that story. But yeah, man, I just you know, it’s it’s just such a cool it’s hard to it’s just outside to understand that.
00:37:03
Speaker 4: I guess.
00:37:04
Speaker 5: I mean, it’s like it’s shared suffering, like as part of it, and it’s just like having the same goal and that’s the The failures obviously make it even better and then hopefully the success at the end.
00:37:15
Speaker 4: Is like brings it all together.
00:37:18
Speaker 3: It was pretty miserable sitting in that rain on day two. I don’t know about you.
00:37:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, but tell me about it, tell you about it.
00:37:26
Speaker 2: I want it’s it’s meant sorry one more things, but the mental toughness side. I love the struggle, like I find myself in a spot that I love the struggle. I love that portion because I feel like it brings out either the best or the worst in people. And when you’re on a mountain for eight days with somebody, if you’re intentional not only just to take an animal, but also to connect, which I’m pretty sure you figured that out.
00:37:55
Speaker 1: Like I wanted to get to know Scott better. Oh yeah, sure, And you know, because it’s at the end of the day. I try and search for.
00:38:02
Speaker 2: The genuine ones. Those are the ones I latch onto and those are the ones I try and keep in touch with, or the genuine ones. And when you find those people, you need to invest in them. And some will need you and some maybe you need them, right, But those relationships are just fantastic and I value those far more than I do. Any rack that sits on my garage floor, on my wall.
00:38:28
Speaker 3: Well, even those racks, those memories come back up, right, you know, like, oh, people get so tied up an anti rack, man. I yeah, anytime I walk by, I have the memory of who I was on with that hunt. And you know, those are the things, right I try to, like, either keep a picture of that group, like I like to take a group picture with the animal. I know for some you know, they want the individual. Man. I like to have the group picture of who was on that hunt, because that memory, Man, it just sparks something way different that I don’t know. It’s just such a cool thing.
00:39:03
Speaker 2: I agree.
00:39:05
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, sorry, I’m glad you finished, because I was going to change sub just a little bit. How did you get involved guiding? Like obviously you were hunting and kind of either on your own or with a group. And then what how did you.
00:39:17
Speaker 4: Decide to start guiding or was it like presented to you? Yeah, how’d that start?
00:39:22
Speaker 2: Great question originally, So Texas is difficult. You either it’s a pay to play state, you know, whether that’s high or low. And years ago I didn’t have any money, and so I’ve I’ve always been a serial entrepreneur. I owned my own machine shop and it was not always in the black until the last or four years there. But so I had a few places to hunt with handshakes and meet people at church and different things would let me shoot white tails. But I wanted to hunt access and I wanted to hunt stuff. So I started reaching out to the ranches that had access and said, hey, would you be willing can I guide for you? And some of them I had hunted, like actually the ranch here that I’m on currently, I had hunted sixteen years ago and I think I shot a buck and the following year is when they let me come out and do some guiding. And so I’ve got a lot of history on this piece of property and it just kind of went from there trying to help people. As Rich talks about camaraderie, I have a lot of people. Most of my friends don’t live in the state of Texas, but they want to come here and hunt. So I’m always on the lookout for pieces of property or opportunities. That’s how I met Colton, That’s how I started guiding for Colton, and then getting Jake into that as well, because I don’t as much care about the money as I do the opportunities. So if I can go guide and then it opens up opportunities like last year, Colton let Jake shoot an odad Ram with his bow, which was just epic.
00:41:03
Speaker 1: And then even my elk.
00:41:06
Speaker 2: You know, the elk hunting down in Texas, even a cheap one is over ten grand, and so instead I did. I’ve never paid to go on an elk hunt ever, I’ve always done the DIY thing. So Colton and I were able to trade that out and so no money actually had to come out of my pocket for that elk. And so just looking for opportunities really, and at the end of the day, especially once I got into sales, most of my sales work was done Monday through Thursday, so I could guide a Friday, Saturday, Sunday hunt no problem, and you know, just trying to find places where Jake and I could go kill stuff. That’s cool, that’s awesome.
00:41:44
Speaker 5: Uh Okay, So this is something that we’ve been talking about about the axis steer that make that makes no sense to us, but it is definitely true.
00:41:54
Speaker 4: They love the sun.
00:41:56
Speaker 2: They love the sun.
00:41:57
Speaker 5: That is not normal for I mean, I guess, I mean, I guess white tails do like, you know, a sunny day, but they like it when it’s you know, when the weather changes, you get five or six degree temp drop, you know that’s going to be a good day to go hunt white tails. It was not that way with access. It was like it warmed up and then we saw movement.
00:42:16
Speaker 2: They they’re originally from India, so I don’t know if that’s something that’s hardwired in them. I know that their extremities don’t. The way that they work, they they their blood flow is very different from a white tail, and you notice that in the freeze, like they’re actually have a hard time getting around and moved out slower. So it’s almost like they’re frisky when it’s warm out. And there’s so much about access that are so different than mule deer and white tails. Even the fact that they can drop fawns throughout the year. Yeah, so you can drop multiple fawns in a year. They literally can go back to back. And so here you’ve got a group of thirty access deer and they’ll be too hard horns and two half grown velvet.
00:43:01
Speaker 3: We saw that.
00:43:02
Speaker 1: We saw that happen, and you might even have a shed buck in there.
00:43:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, like.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: Any sense, it does not compute to this Michigan boy. But that’s just the way that it is.
00:43:14
Speaker 2: So if you want to kill access to here needs to be one hundred degrees, it needs to be sunny, and you need to be sweating, dealing with gnats and knocking the ticks off yet and then it’s going to be a good day of We had.
00:43:26
Speaker 3: Both of those. I had nats and then when I got in the shower that night, I had a tick latch onto my side.
00:43:30
Speaker 1: So good thing Beeps was there to knock it off.
00:43:34
Speaker 3: Keep old Beeps. Yeah, Scott wasn’t here to defend himself on that, but yeah, we told the whole story where I was just I. It was Jeff’s first interaction with with Scott and being Scott. I’m about to rip the watch off Scott’s wrist and just chuck it, and Jeff’s kind of like half chuckling at like, who are these two going on?
00:43:56
Speaker 1: Like these two brothers can’t get along? It was like, well, barrel on steps.
00:44:01
Speaker 3: It really was.
00:44:04
Speaker 1: You guys, come on, get it together, beep again, and we’re just like it was great.
00:44:11
Speaker 3: Which is funny because me and Scott usually worked pretty well together, where our our artisms lined up pretty well. But that that watch thing, man, I I it blew my mind that he was not even he wouldn’t listen to it. He was like, no, no, I can fix it. I’m like, we’re not going to try to fix it right now, you know.
00:44:29
Speaker 4: And so that’s it’s so funny. I wonder what was he trying to.
00:44:34
Speaker 3: I mean, I know the tracker and it just kept dropping breadcrumbs and I think would dang every time it would do a breadcrumb, and I was trying to turn it off, and he didn’t want to turn it off because he wanted to use the tracker. And even though we didn’t need the tracker, it was just a whole micro college and we just got in there we’d driven through the night, probably on real short sleep.
00:44:52
Speaker 4: You know, so his watch is beep queen, Oh yeah, we do, Yeah, he does.
00:44:58
Speaker 3: He does. It was this a bliss yep? Uh?
00:45:02
Speaker 5: Okay, you kept saying, and I haven’t asked yet, what what made you want to go hunt Axis? You said a couple of times, like I wanted to go hunt access. I wanted to like I did, and I’m sure Rich did too, But I didn’t even know what I was getting into.
00:45:15
Speaker 4: What got you into it? What made it so enticing? Yeah, that’s a good word.
00:45:21
Speaker 2: The roar to the roar is uh. I So when I had the machine shop, one of the guys that worked for me had sixty or seventy acres out towards where I live, and he told me he had access gear on it. And one of the first times I went out there to shoot a white tail, I heard an AXIS roar and I was like, oh, my gosh, that that reminds me of a elk. Yeah, and uh so I’m like, oh, vocalisms and just all that. I fell in love with them. And I actually killed my first access buck ever on his place, and it was I was hooked. Ever since, I’m like They’re beautiful. They are gorgeous creature, and they communicate and they taste great. I don’t miss a meal very often, and I love access to here.
00:46:08
Speaker 3: So yeah, that’s what I keep telling people here. Like, my first passion, first thing that got me into hunting was turkey hunting, and then I immediately went out west elk hunting, and that’s that’s my number one passion. And I enjoy whitetail now. It’s like I’ve acquired the taste of hunting white tail the last couple of years. But man, Axis, when we went last year, it was just it’s like a close second to elk now for me, where I’m like, man, it’s so it’s like a good off season, you know, it’s a May, June, July hunt for a big animal that is like an elk.
00:46:41
Speaker 4: They are and they just look so cool.
00:46:45
Speaker 2: Yes, they’re amazing, awesome.
00:46:47
Speaker 3: Jeff, Well, where can people find you? Instagram?
00:46:51
Speaker 1: Helm dot Yeah, Helm dot yeah, and uh yeah.
00:46:55
Speaker 3: So and the bow Shop Arrowheads is in Waco. Yeah, passing through there, make.
00:47:01
Speaker 2: It happen and see us. We’re right off I thirty five about eight miles or so, eight mile road. It’s actually in Mick Gregor, which is just outside of Waco.
00:47:10
Speaker 3: Actually have some cousins that go to Baylor, So maybe I’ll come down there and we’ll do a little Mayhem Hunt at Arrowheads. Come on Faith Fitness and shoot some bows. Let’s do that.
00:47:20
Speaker 2: One of the guys would love to do a workout, Scott, one of the owners is a big Mayhem Hunt fan. Thanks you.
00:47:26
Speaker 3: Let’s do it all right, Jeff, thanks for hanging through the technical difficulties. And you’re going out this afternoon. You got your guide in this afternoon.
00:47:35
Speaker 2: I am.
00:47:35
Speaker 1: I’m hunting for myself in about an hour and a half.
00:47:38
Speaker 3: One nice, all right, Get your Shopify emails done and then get you go, get you one.
00:47:44
Speaker 2: We’ll do it. We’ll do it. Appreciat you guys, all right.
00:47:46
Speaker 3: Love you by
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