Hometown Hero Outdoors
Welcome to the Hometown Hero Outdoors Podcast, where we’re more than just a show—we’re a mission. As a non-profit dedicated to enhancing mental health through life-changing outdoor adventures for military service members, veterans, law enforcement officers, firefighters, and EMS personnel, we bring you stories of resilience, healing, and community.
🌲 Why Listen?
- Over 5,000 heroes have experienced the healing power of the outdoors with us—through activities like hunting, fishing, camping, snowmobiling, and more.
- 85% of participants report reduced stress, increased camaraderie, and a renewed sense of purpose after our adventures.
- We share inspiring stories of mental health advocacy and people overcoming the toughest challenges, highlighting the profound impact of reconnecting with nature.
Whether you’re here for thrilling outdoor adventures, meaningful conversations about mental health, or to hear from real people who’ve used the outdoors to heal and grow, this podcast has something for everyone.
🎧 Subscribe now and join us on this journey of healing, resilience, and the transformative power of the great outdoors!
Hometown Hero Outdoors
Restoring Hope: The Emotional Impact of Outdoor Therapy
Experience the transformative power of nature with our latest podcast episode that dives deep into Hometown Hero Outdoors and its mission to heal veterans through outdoor adventures. Join us as we sit down with John Sewell, the passionate ranch manager at Harris Ranch in South Texas. Discover how this incredible organization honors the sacrifices of military personnel by providing unforgettable outdoor recreational experiences that promote healing, camaraderie, and renewal.
John’s story is both inspiring and enlightening, showcasing the intricate balance of managing a deer ranch while fostering a thriving habitat for wildlife. Through thoughtful conversations about hunting practices, land conservation, and community support, we explore how outdoor activities serve as a therapeutic outlet for veterans seeking solace and support.
Listeners will hear heartwarming stories that exemplify the profound impact of these experiences—from tears shared in the field to laughter around the campfire. It’s not just about chasing deer; it’s about chasing healing and connection with like-minded individuals who understand the struggles many carry silently.
As we navigate the challenges faced by ranch management, John opens up about working towards an ambitious goal of accommodating more veterans each year in this healing journey. The episode encourages listeners to engage with the initiatives of Hometown Hero Outdoors and highlights how community involvement can create lasting positive change.
Don’t miss out on these powerful stories and valuable insights—tune in to grasp the essence of what it means to support those who have served our nation. Together, let's foster understanding and appreciation for the outdoors as a sanctuary for healing. Join us on this journey, and consider contributing your voice and support to this worthy cause.
Produced by Phil Ewert Productions
Theme Music: Hero's Journey
Joel Loopez Tunepocket.com
Licensed by: Phil Ewert Productions
hometownherooutdoors.org
In the land of 10,000 lakes, a remarkable movement was born. Welcome to Hometown Hero Outdoors. We are dedicated to honoring our military service members, veterans and first responders by providing them with unforgettable outdoor recreational opportunities. We believe those who have served and sacrificed so much for our country and communities deserve a chance to reclaim their spirit and find healing in the great outdoors. This is Hometown Hero Outdoors. Welcome to the Hometown Hero Outdoors Podcast.
Speaker 2:Here is your host, chris Tatro. Welcome back to all our listeners out there. With the Hometown Hero Outdoors podcast, I am here today with John Sewell. John Sewell is the ranch manager down at Harris Ranch. We've had a partnership with John over the past, going on three years. Now John is down in Uvalde and I know I'm going to catch heat for saying it incorrectly because of my Minnesota twang. You said Down at the ranch. Down there is right on the border of Mexico and John just want to introduce yourself to the listeners, let everyone know who you are and where you're located.
Speaker 3:Good, yeah, I really appreciate you all having me on. You know we're way down here. You know close to the border, about 35 miles, I guess, as a crow flies, but in between San Antonio and Del Rio, basically, and we're in the brush country and and we're a deer hunting operation, a ranching operation, and you know I got involved with with you guys just through happenstance, and you know we've been off to the races for three years and we want to keep moving on. Obviously, I'm in the deer raising business. I love big deer, I love free range white tails and I have a lot of deer that need to be harvested each year and that's why I've chosen to take your guys in the field, try to make a difference in their lives.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah, no, thank you for everything you do for our members and working with the organization and really connecting with us. Um, you know, I I hear nothing but good things from everyone that goes to the ranch and I know some people get jealous and want to go back quite a bit, but you guys are sitting on how many acres down there?
Speaker 3:around 17,000, a little bit plus or minus more than that, but, um, you know, it's all, it's all, uh, brush country and and it's just whitetail country. Uh, I was born and raised in Florida, so my dream was always South Texas. And here I am. I've been here 29 years, so celebrating a long, a long haul here and just been very, very fortunate to be on a great direction, to grow big, fair chase, low fence, white tails.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So yeah, let's start there then. So you grew up in Florida. What did your upbringing look like as a youth, and then getting into adulthood and moving to Texas? Put us on that journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we, we got to have a whole nother show for that.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we can do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was very I was, you know, just been very blessed all my life. I feel like I was dealt a very good hand, even though I had some, you know, divorce in my family, as everybody else does, and separated parents and all of that. I was adopted to start with. So, you know, I was adopted at a young age into a family, you know, and I can't say enough about how fortunate I am to have been chosen by them, and my parents were working class people and we always my dad hunted and fished and so that led me to loving it and so all the years of growing up with him taking me and then, of course, getting old enough to take myself, I made some connections younger in life and a job that one of the gentlemen I worked for, his family, owned this ranch. So I was invited to come out here when I was a young kid, at 12 or 13 years old, and I just had a burning desire every year to want to come back.
Speaker 3:Well, when something happened in his family and some things changed and deaths in the family, according to you know, people that could or couldn't be here to run it, and so on and so forth I was asked would I be interested in taking the helm and of course I was very, you know, happy to do that.
Speaker 3:So I got the opportunity to come back and start piddling with it a little bit here and there and finally got an opportunity to to basically sell out the businesses that I had in Florida and move out here and take over. Maybe it wasn't the best move financially but it was the absolute best move for me in my life and I have a daughter that grew up here and she loves this life as well. You know I have. I just can't even say enough of how fortunate I am and you know that brings us to the next level of how unbelievably fortunate to take, to take this life and be able to share it with others, especially those who have issues and have troubled paths, that that that can't seem to get. Get by that stuff, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you already had some sense of business. It sounds like you said you had to sell.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sense of business. It sounds like you said you had a self-improvement. Yeah, I was in the tree relocation business in central florida for quite some time and I did a lot of work at disney and universal and I did lots of work in the in the tree industry and in florida and all the southeast as far as that goes. So, yeah, I mean I was savvy in business, but it's not so much business savvy savviness you need to to learn how to run a ranch.
Speaker 3:I did not have that background. I did not. I did not have any kind of formal schooling, past high school school of hard knocks. I got a lot of that coming out here and taking what I had in all the years of my life in the past, bringing it here and instrumenting a lot of things that were new to me and trying to understand what it was going to take to not only be a manager of deer but a manager of land and stewardship and conservation, and so you know that that's been a, that's been my goal and I always say if you take care of the land, it will absolutely take care of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and you chased your dream. Really, you know you've been going there for so long and moved away from other businesses and, like you said, financially was it the most responsible thing? No, but you know, truly, I mean with you. You took a leap, you took a leap of faith and you've enjoyed your life and your decision ever since.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I would just say that there's no one that has has been as fortunate as I have. And again, I say all the time, I don't know how I got, I don't even know how I got here, but you know a leap of faith. You said it, and so here we are. And you know a leap of faith, you said it and so here we are. And you know I was, I was learning how to run ranches and you know stuff about conservation and stewardship and water, which is so important out here, and I had some people come out to visit me after I've been here.
Speaker 3:I think it was a year, was 2017 then and uh, you, uh, you know, uh talked about some award, a Lone Star Stewardship Award. I never even heard of, um, and these people were like you know, you're doing everything that we preach to everyone and you don't even have any idea how you got here. And I'm like, no, it was pretty, pretty funny. But anyway, I was chosen for the Lone Star Stewardship Award in 2017. So that's an award given by the Texas Parks and Wildlife for the best managed ranch in Zone 8, which is probably 40 or 50 million acres of South Texas and you know, there's probably less than 300 of us that have ever been chosen, so very, very humbling period that validated everything that I was doing, for not only you know the future, but cleaning up what was done wrong in the past and being able to take land conservation to the next level. And being able to take land conservation to the next level.
Speaker 2:And you said I mean, that's a huge testament to your dedication to the ranch and the things you did there. You know you talked about not having any quote unquote formal education with conservation and land management, though, so those are the things that you would say you've learned throughout what you call hard knocks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I took everything that everybody would tell me and you know, read about it or look at things that somebody would say and instrument it into my situation, and if it worked out well for me, I would say you know, hey, they were right. And if it didn't work out for me, I would try to tweak it a little bit to make it, to make it what they're trying to tell me. And so so, taking what was told and being able to twist it a little bit or do it a little different, uh, for my situation, uh really paid off and, and you know, again.
Speaker 3:I I never even dreamed I would be in that position to get that award so very humbly that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:No, congratulations on that and hopefully you get it again another time. But uh, about, about the deer and the conservation that you do have there. I know you have 17,000 ish acres, you said you know, and is it fenced completely?
Speaker 3:no, it's not completely fenced, so we do have some bad neighbors that we have to keep out.
Speaker 2:But you know we have miles of still low fence also, all the deer can move in and out, so obviously you're not bringing in genetically modified deer. Essentially it's all free range, natural yeah, it's all free range.
Speaker 3:I did um, I did some some of a program that texas parks and wildlife offered to everybody in the state which is called triple t, and triple t stands for trap, tag and transfer. So you can go to uh before cwd. But you could go to a rancher that you knew had really high quality South Texas deer and he had been managing for quite some time, and you could ask him hey, if you've got 100 does to harvest this year, would you be interested in giving me 50? And he would say, sure, you can have them, they're not allowed to sell them. And then you have to hire a helicopter service and a crew and you would go down and capture them with a net gun and a helicopter and then you would relocate them back up here to your place. And so that brought I did that for five years and that brought hybrid vigor.
Speaker 3:They were all wild deer from the wild but I wanted hybrid vigor and I would like to change up my genetics and that was a program that was offered to everyone and I did that for five years and that was really a kickstart to a change for me. You know, I was feeding protein, I was feeding cottonseed, I was doing all the things that I was supposed to do and we were killing some big deer, some 170 plus inch deer, but they were infrequent and I know that's an infrequent animal. It's just the odds of killing 170 inch deer in fair chase is. I don't even know where it is today, but there's nearly 6 million deer harvested in the United States each year and I don't know how many of them are truly 170 class deer in low fence. So that changed my direction and then I kind of get to a plateau in the whole situation and felt like you know, there's got to be something I'm missing. Why am I not getting bigger and better? Some of these deer that I've brought in should have better genetics, should have helped me in the long run and the hybrid vigor. So I started working on some feed options and thinking what was going to make our situation better and quality of feed and so on and so forth. And quality of feed and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3:And I got with a guy, Hunter Barrett, and Hunter was also looking for a new outlet to start a business and so on and so forth. So he started working with his family, which were cattle feeder. His family were cow guys, they fed cattle, His family were cow guys, they fed cattle. And they started working on implementing a fortification for cottonseed, basically putting a mineral and a vitamin pack on cottonseed, just the same stuff that they put in deer pellets. So we changed it up a little bit and put chelated form minerals in there which are about 30% more digestible and utilizable in a whitetail deer and cattle and anything. So we started that about seven or seven and a half years ago or eight years ago and, uh, you know I just took a lot of time in trying it in a control to make sure it was going to be what I wanted it to be, and I was just blown away at the quality of change.
Speaker 2:That much just from the feed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely it has changed Three years ago. This is my seventh year on 365 days of free choice feed and it's all fortified cotton seed I feed, nothing else. Um, you know we do put out corn and that's bait. It's not feed Um and. And so, with that being said, 365 days of this feed has 165 days of this feed has not only changed our antler quality, it's changed our fawn recruitment. We have a super high fawn recruitment. Our survivability of our fawns are through the roof. Our conception rate is incredibly high. Lots of does almost all mature does have two fawns and a lot have three. It's just crazy what that change has brought in the last seven years. And so you know we're killing several deer in the last few years, over 200 inches.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:And that's just kind of unheard of in our country when I say our country, this northern end of the South Texas zone.
Speaker 2:Those are some massive deer and so over time you know you're talking about using the cotton feed and then also having the former. You know you have corn. You said too Do you see their habits or their feeding habits? Do they vary between the different types of feed that give them between the corn or the cotton seed? Do they prefer one over the other different types of feed that give them between the?
Speaker 3:corn or the, the cottonseed. Do they prefer one over the other? Well, you know, we keep cottonseed at every place. We feed corn and we keep cottonseed at every place we have water. Um, I'm going to tell you a deer at this point in the game our deer prefer cottonseed.
Speaker 3:Um, cottonseed is an incredible source of fat. Very, very high fat content 17 to 20%. Well, why is fat so important? For a couple of reasons. A couple of reasons are one it is what's needed for a doe to produce high quality fat milk for their yearlings or their fawns. Secondly, a deer, a cow, any ungulate will limit on fat. So when I say limit, they won't eat themselves into oblivion because the fat makes them stop In cattle feeds.
Speaker 3:They put salt in feeds to stop their amount, to stop how much they eat, based on a salt content.
Speaker 3:So we want deer to eat all they want to eat and we want them to get all the fat they can get and we want that fat to be available for those bucks, especially going into the rut and coming out of the rut.
Speaker 3:Anybody who hunts deer and understands deer harvest knows what their deer look like prior to the rut and they know what they look like after the rut and they're very, very poor compared to what they look like in September versus February. So turning those deer around with fat is ultimately the biggest part of what I've learned about this feed is those deer do not get to a point of no return. You know, most of your deaths in whitetail deer are post-season rut caused by being very weak and potentially having bad weather because of a very hard rut of fighting, so on and so forth. So this has taken deer that people would say, oh, you know, you better harvest them by six and a half because they're going to be run out and they're going to be poor and they're not going to be able to recover. We're not harvesting our trophy deer till 10 plus wow yeah, so it's.
Speaker 3:It's taken a whole different uh avenue from what we learned. One we always learned oh, you feed protein or you feed supplemental feed from after deer season to right before deer season and you stop. I think that's the biggest mistake anybody's making. Those deer do not want to stop eating that protein or that supplemental feed until the rut is on, so we've taken them off. In October Our fawns are 70 days old or 75 days old at the most, and we've taken them off. And then potentially, if we're harvesting does we're harvesting does early in the season that are leaving orphan fawns behind and those fawns don't have a choice.
Speaker 3:If you're feeding out of tube feeders that are elevated and a little difficult, the fawn can't reach that, so he has to supplement. Now his mother's gone. You've been supplementing them whole family because she was getting supplementation and then the fawn was getting good nursing and then you cut it all off and everybody kind of goes into a tailspin. Um, you know, gut health, I think. I think humans are starting to figure out gut health is absolutely important and you know, we've been battling gut health with with animals forever and if you can keep a roller coaster out of their life, keep them from going up being good and down being bad all the time by changing their diet and taking them off of feed and putting them on feed um the.
Speaker 2:The whole picture is better in the long run yes, that's a lot of time and observation and research, I'm assuming, to figure all that out yeah, that's what we call the school of hard knocks.
Speaker 3:I've made all the bad mistakes.
Speaker 2:That cost a lot hey, that's where we learn the best making the mistakes, and then you try not to do it again. So how much, how much feed or cotton seed do you guys go through in a year?
Speaker 3:I don't even want to say, but about 350 tons.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing. And then does it come from someone else in Texas.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hunter Barrett at Fortified Cotton Seed in Plainview, texas, north Texas, about seven hours from here, has a facility up there. A lot of cotton is grown in that area, so that's just a great place to have a facility. But, um, you know, I would like to think that we could get something moving a little bit further to the south so we could cut down on freight and all of the things that go along with that. But you know, we're moving it as far east as, uh, as georgia and florida, and so on and so forth, so it's catching on. Um, we reinvented the wheel. I really feel that.
Speaker 3:And, uh, I'm going to tell you I'll never go back to feeding any kind of pellet or supplemental feed other than cottonseed. It's a single feed. Um, very, very few pigs eat it. Uh, raccoons don't eat it, bears don't eat it, uh, turkeys don't eat it. So, and you just pour it out on the ground. Basically, you can put it in a basket if you want. You can put it in a trough that's covered so you can keep moisture off of it. You can pour it on the ground. They prefer it on the ground.
Speaker 2:So, uh, very easy to feed you know, and you got 17 000 acres, you know, with a massive deer population. If you were to estimate how many deer you probably have on that property, take a wild guess how many are there?
Speaker 3:Right now around 2,300.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of deer.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of deer.
Speaker 3:Too many. It's a full-time job, just maintaining a number.
Speaker 2:How many do you typically harvest a year?
Speaker 3:harvest a year.
Speaker 2:We're always pushing for 500 or in that 500 uh range about equal bucks versus does 250 and 250. It's a lot of deer too, I mean. But though you talked about your, your reproduction with the deer and that they are very successful with each uh, each mating season and having the birthing of, you said two yearlings per deer usually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I have a little area here that I frequent along the main road and there's three does on the main road that have raised three this year and they all look great and the doe looks great. So you know, it kind of comes with a double-edged sword we can't keep up with the recruitment because we just can't harvest the numbers. So, you know, that brings us to what I felt like I wanted to do for I wanted to do for for you guys is I wanted to find somebody who had some people that wanted to enjoy the outdoors and, uh, I wanted to help. I wanted to help people who don't have the opportunity that I have, and uh, so I reached out to some people and they asked me a couple questions. And you know, before I know it, I'm in touch with chris and I mean, I'm in touch with sean, who was in touch with you.
Speaker 3:And here we are.
Speaker 3:You know we're starting, or turning over, hopefully, a new leaf, moving forward the last three years and to make a long-term commitment and relationship with you guys to get more people in the field to help me harvest these animals.
Speaker 3:You know, it doesn't doesn't have to be a trophy buck and it doesn't, it doesn't have to be a monster buck for these guys that that are coming out. It has a lot more to do with the harvest of the hunt. And you know, I have just been, I guess, blown away from what I didn't know about what we're doing here and what it has meant not only to us but to the people who are coming. You know, they have not only the utmost appreciation for what we're doing, but they need outside help. They need people that are grounded, like us, that sit around the dinner table all together at night, that that that talk about real life things that we deal with every day, that talk about real life things that we deal with every day. And for myself, I'm not an ex-military, I'm not an ex-law enforcement, and so it really drives home what I did not know. And every time we do a hunt.
Speaker 2:It just digs a little deeper into what your being is and why you're here.
Speaker 3:You know, generally speaking, us who have not been there are not doing enough. And I hate to say that I hate to throw everybody in that bus, but I damn sure wasn't doing enough. And I hate to say that I hate to throw everybody in that bus, but I damn sure wasn't doing enough. And now it just makes you want to do more. And wanting to do more is easy to take people hunting, but it's hard to afford it when you're trying to give it away. So you know, that's why we're kind of in a, in a, in the middle road of taking, you know, 20, 30, 40 guys a year. My goal is to take 100 guys a year. Can we get there? I think we can get there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:You know, yeah, we just need to. Yeah, the things that these guys bring to me is you can't put a price on.
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Speaker 2:That's spotlessdefendercom. Yeah, I mean, you know, the outdoors is a place for us to go and relax and bond together. You know, and yes, we do a lot of outdoor hunting and fishing and things like that. But that's just the vehicle. It's really about the experience and the people that you're with. It's the peer support, it's the conversations, it's the camaraderie in the outdoors. It's really about the experience and the people that you're with. It's the peer support, it's the conversations, it's the camaraderie in the outdoors. It's the relaxing and it's hitting that reset button in the place with like-minded individuals who've been through something same or similar.
Speaker 2:But really the world becomes a little smaller because you feel a lot of our individuals who have served feel like they're a bit on an island. But once you get everyone together in the same room or you sit with someone in a blind, like down at harris ranch, and there's other individuals there, you can really talk about the experiences you've had and really focus on all these things in a very peaceful place. You know, the hunt is an experience in itself which is phenomenal, but there's a lot of in between that happens there too, and I know that you guys have shared a lot of tears with people down there you know between yourself, john uh jim, who's there helping, as well as sean and other field staff that we go have assist at harris ranch. We know that people share a lot of tears in those blinds kind of navigating a lot of the mental things that they've been weighing on them for a while.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I say it every, every hunt, you know when we get done. I'm like how many grown, how many grown men cried this week.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You know and and nobody can say it wasn't me. You know, nobody can say that it wasn't me Because everybody, everybody sheds a tear. I mean, you can't help but to.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And so you know that again is what has been such a driving force for me to want to do more and help as much as I can. And hey, these guys got our numbers. We tell them that gate's always open. You ever have a snack 24 hours a day. You get ahold of us, we're grounded, we move on to the next job. Jim, of course he's been there. He's been in Vortac, he's been in law enforcement, he's been in the army. He's been in law enforcement, he's been in the army. He's been there. I have not. So Jim, ultimately, can bond with them way better than I can, because he knows what they're talking about. Myself, you know, I'm just trying to shed light on my real world, all the things I can bring to the table for them, whether it's something they're asking about or some question about something that maybe I have some help. But you know, the bottom line is is nobody leaves here with a handshake, everybody leaves here with a hug.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 3:It's amazing to me. We're all grown men, you know. I mean we're like a bunch of little old kids. When we get here and we bond, everybody leaves here. It's a whole. You know, grab and bust somebody on the back, because you're not just going to shake somebody's hand.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. Yeah, I hear a lot of people that I think this last go around, when you guys had a bunch of our members out, there was about a thousand applicants that put in for that week that you hosted people at. So the word's out and they know what's happening there and they know what you guys are going through and helping with and I think people are really excited to get down there and assist with that. But one of the things that you also brought up is you know you're you're doing 20, 30, 40 people a year and you really want to do a hundred a year and that's something we communicated at our gala when you were up here.
Speaker 2:Also, with a couple other videos we put out really talking about the mental health side of things and how some assistance from the general public would be absolutely phenomenal to help us to get more people there, because we know it's changing lives. You know I talked to jim not long ago and he's talking about just how much. You know he said that he's tired, but it's not that he's tired from all the physical work. It's really helping take on a lot of these feelings and working with individuals through what they're experiencing, which isn't a bad thing. You know, we're here to help and that's what happens. You know it can be a mentally exhausting too not in a bad way, but in a good way and I really do think that you guys are changing lives down there. I really do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been. You know, I mean just the stories we've heard from a couple of years. We've done it. I mean people, like when they have a crisis in their life, I mean we're like we're the next guy they call. We're not a week, a week down the road, I mean they call us, you know, pretty quick, you know, to tell us they've had a crisis in their life. They want to talk about it. You know that means you're changing someone's life, you're giving them an outlet. And with that being said again, how do we get a hundred people here? Well, I play the jim jim and I play the lottery each week. Or jim does and and says you know, if we can just win the lottery, you know we'll have it made. And because we'll just give it all back to this, to the organization to get more people in the field, I mean mean that's our goal, that's what we want to do.
Speaker 3:I'm almost 60 years old. I've been unbelievably blessed and fortunate and, you know, sharing this and being able to afford to keep it operating in the manner that it's operating and getting more people in the field. You know, unfortunately, hunting has become a rich man's sport and it costs a lot of money to operate and so on and so forth. But you know it's not all about that. If I got to do I told Sean earlier if I got to do 25 or 30 guys a year on my dime, then that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make a difference. It's just. It's just being able to afford it and being able to afford 350 tons of cotton seed a year and the electric and the fuel and all the stuff that goes along with it.
Speaker 3:I mean, everybody knows it's not like we're poor mouthing, but we're trying to make a difference, um, and not have to sell these hunts but to give them away and, uh, and getting to that level of where it's going to take to get 100 guys in the field. I mean, we have a member that makes wooden flags and I told him when he brought an unbelievable flag down here and I said my goal is to get the back of that flag signed by everybody and get 1,000 names on it. So he brought a pretty big one and that's our goal on it. So he brought, he brought a pretty big one and that's our goal. So we have everybody that's coming signing the back of that flag with their branch and their name and their date, and we were telling them not to write big because we want to get a bunch of people on the back of that flag.
Speaker 2:Oh, good old Josh Melching, he's a good guy.
Speaker 3:You bet yeah for sure, and you know the connections that we have made and, hopefully, the changes we made in other people's life. Um, you can't put a, you can't put a cost on it or price.
Speaker 2:So so, yeah, I mean it's just you talked about, you know the expenses and stuff, but like you can't, like you said you can't put a price on that, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Just, it's just the sheer help that is massive and mean just it's just the sheer help, that is massive. And there's a couple people I want to send down there at some point here. I know they've been through a lot on the enforcement side of things in the recent couple years so it'd be good for them to get down there meet you guys and get to experience the ranch. But, um, you know we did do a fundraiser about two years ago and that we did sell some hunts for that for you guys, and that helped us with some of the expenses down there. Um, but down the road I'm looking to see if there's any individuals that would like to assist. Uh, and we are more than grateful for anything that people can provide to assist with other individuals, just like the organization all, but specifically harris ranch, because it is a very unique property and they're very special people there that are running the harris ranch and that are giving their own time and I mean you've had how many people this last time that went through there, was it?
Speaker 3:you know we had the last two weeks. We had 12 and um, we're to do 12 more. You know what we found and and I think it was the first year we did you know up to 50 guys and we ran them through too fast. You know, we gave them the hunt and we gave them a night here and we gave them um a day here, but nobody wanted to leave and and you really just start to get in to a bonding situation on the second day. So we made these hunts last a little longer this year. It let us take less people, but it gave them more time and that more time potentially is a lifesaver for some of these guys.
Speaker 2:Found that sweet spot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no it's good. I mean, you know, when you have people that are here, chris, and they show up and they hunt with us for a day and a half and someone mentions that maybe someone's not going to be able to make it on the next hunt, and they say, well, can I just go stay in uvalde in case they don't come. I'll get a hotel and then can I come back.
Speaker 2:You know.
Speaker 3:You know it's meaning something to those guys, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's, you know, and a lot of people too. I mean, you do have probably some Southern folk that are from Texas that do come to the ranch, but a lot of us Northerners, you know, it's a. It's a different experience for us to come down to Texas and experience your guys's form of hunting and deer management and the ranches. We're not used to that up here. It's very, very different and it's very eye-opening. But it's also gets a little bit of a different sense of hunting culture, which I'm not used to, you know. So I love going to texas myself.
Speaker 2:You know I used to come down on hog hunt every year for man go back to 2012 almost, but I've been coming to texas to hunt with sean at his youth hunt for the last three years, going on four, you know. But it's I just love coming down there and experiencing it and just the, the culture and how everyone respects our, our law enforcement and our first responders and military. It's just a different world and I think that's an experience in itself, on top of what you have to offer. I think that's why people like it a lot, especially coming out of state.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we got guys that come you know on some of the hunts from you guys all the way from North Dakota.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, that's pretty, that's pretty impressive to come way down here from North Dakota for a couple of days, you know. But shoot man, we love it.
Speaker 2:We love them to come from anywhere, whether it's close or far.
Speaker 3:We're in bucket list thing to do for a lot of people. But you guys also do other hunts on property too. I think you guys didn't. You have a couple javelinas? Yeah, we have javelina. We have, of course, wild pigs. Um, um, we have wild turkey. We don't do any. You know much turkey hunting in the fall, but we do in the spring. And then of course we have doves and all those things that go along with just normal everyday hunting. But, um, you know, for the most part we're we're focused on deer and and and we we get some free range in exotics. They get in here and, um, you know, like sean can tell you, I hunt those things like the plague. So, um, a'm not a exotic guy. So we get one, we try to hunt them until we can get them.
Speaker 2:For the exotics.
Speaker 3:Exotics would be axis deer, fallow deer. You know, right now we have audad, we have red deer, we have axis deer and we have fallow deer one of each of those species and they jump in from the outside. They get out of somebody else's place and they jump in from the outside and we target them and try to get rid of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's exotics all over texas, I think. I just saw a news report where someone was sitting there, deer stand and had a tiger walk underneath it recently oh gosh, yeah, we don't have any tigers yet no, I don't want any of that nonsense yeah, no doubt, and do you guys have any like, uh, fish ponds on the ranch or anything like that?
Speaker 3:uh, we have some small ponds, but we don't really stock them or do anything with them. They're kind of flood in the river and they come and go, so we don't mess with that much there are all the turkeys, the rios yeah, all the rios here that's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are hard to come by, especially up here.
Speaker 3:It's all eastern and miriam, so yeah, we don't see a whole lot of those yeah, you know, we got got guys that chase the grand slam and the world slam and all of that turkey hunting nonsense. But um, I've done all that you know I love, I'm an avid turkey hunter and yeah so I've killed the world slam a couple times and the grand multiple times and royal slam four or five times. I mean I was. I was as crazy of a turkey hunter as there ever was oh, I love turkey hunting.
Speaker 2:You know, for us there's something about being cooped up all winter in the northland and then all of a sudden you get the spring to hit and you have a responsive animal in the woods and sitting out and listen to the. The woods come back to life and the birds and just everything's waking up and having those, those thunder chickens come back at you.
Speaker 3:So much fun I love it that it's good, Sensory overload kind of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I love it.
Speaker 4:I love it. This one's scary 66% of Americans would struggle to pay for a $1,000 emergency. We don't keep any money in the savings accounts, right? The scary part about that is that 8 out of 10 of us watching this right now are going to experience a $5,000 whoopsie every 10 years. Something's going to happen. Kid's going to break a leg and there's going to be out-of-pocket max medical that year. Right, there's going to be a hell, storm or a fire or some kind of a natural disaster that causes us to have to write a big old check for our deductible for the roof replacement or the car. Right, something's going to happen. And I want you to think back to the last time you had a financial emergency. Was it the event that caused the stress or was it trying to figure out how?
Speaker 2:to pay for the event that caused the stress. Well, very good, yeah, so you know. If any individuals want to become involved with Harris Ranch, say you do other haunts outside of our organization. How would individuals go about doing that?
Speaker 3:You know I, I unfortunately do not have a website. Um, I don't advertise at all because I really don't have a lot of spots available for others. And, um, you know, the best way is to to just contact me um via cell phone. And uh, you know I hate to throw my number out there to 10 million people, but hey, you're good.
Speaker 3:Once they come hunting, um, you know, I would, I would certainly talk to them. And and again, if you're military or law enforcement and you want to get out, uh, you need to follow HHO uh on Facebook, I believe, and uh, you know those guys are very good about getting back to you. I know Sean fields, a lot of people, vic, josh, you, um, and, and a lot of people are interested. So we want to get people out there and give them an opportunity, and we're going to try to do a couple weeks of hunting in late january, so we're going to have another another couple trips available fantastic, and if there's anything else that you would like to you know, let our listeners know about you or an assistance that you're looking for.
Speaker 2:Would you care to share any words about that?
Speaker 3:well, you know, not much to talk about me. It's nothing about me. It's about doing something for, for guys that are struggling. Um, uh, again, I've been very fortunate and I've I feel like I'm, um, I'm done with worrying about what tomorrow's going to bring me. I'm worried about what tomorrow's going to bring these guys. So, um, you know, assistance for me. No, I don't need any assistance. I need to figure out how to get a hundred guys a year in the woods. So, if anybody has any any really good ideas about, I'm not a marketing guy and I'm not, uh, I'm not a charitable donation guy. I'm none of that. But what I am is a guy that can provide an outlet for people who are struggling and, uh, and there's a lot of that.
Speaker 2:No very good point. Yeah, there's a lot of people struggling, you know, and we're just trying to change them, you know, one day at a time and make sure they can stay to fight another day. That's the biggest thing.
Speaker 3:So you know, you know the thing that you don't see and you don't really understand. I never. When I heard this story of 22 people a year I mean a day committing suicide, ex-military, and the number of people with PTSD and law enforcement, you know I never thought that was real, but it's real. I see it every time we have a hunt. But it's real, I see it every time we have a hunt. And again, I mean you got a bunch of grown men crying all the time because there's so many struggles that they don't want to talk about and finally they got somebody to talk about it with and uh, you know, if it doesn't, I say to everybody if you don't think it's real, just come down here and spend a couple days with us when we're doing one of these hunts.
Speaker 3:And, for you know, there's corporations that are donating to lots of causes and just because we're a cause doing hunting and guns and all of that stuff, we're making a difference. So, you know, I challenge anybody that wants to help or make a difference to to to get ahold of you guys so we can get more guys in the field.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, you know, and to your point too. You know. One thing I do at our suicide awareness prevention walk is have everyone in the crowd raise their hand, and this is, you know, a hundred plus people. And I tell everyone, you know, raise your hand if you have anxiety, depression or experiencing that, before Some people raise their hands, raise your hand. If you know someone who does have those, raise your hand if you've known someone who's taken their own life. You know, by the time I'm done asking these questions, look around and almost everyone has their hands raised, you know, and it shows that you're not that far removed, even though you might think you are from all of the mental health hurdles that people in our professions go through Not just our professions, though, in society in general but on top of that, it just hits home a little closer when it might be someone that you know.
Speaker 2:You know, I just had this conversation with someone recently. We just lost another soldier, a, here in minnesota two days ago. Uh, due to suicide, um, due to some of the mental health that they've experienced and the things that they went through, and it's just, I hear about it way too much and it's got to stop, or at least we got to try a little harder every day. And that's what you guys are helping do down there and I appreciate everything that you guys are doing. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Uh, we're doing everything we can at the organization to help get that goal of a hundred people for every year and we're looking for assistance from other individuals who would like to be a part of that and we're please reach out to us at the organization or John Sean Oldsberg I got to give him a big shout out. You know he's been a very key element with the organization and being at Harris Ranch, he spent a lot of time with John and Jim there, plus our members, helping them do everything that they do in the field.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it's a great organization. It's a great organization. I obviously reached out because I was looking for a organization that was not heavy in the cost of operation. I was looking for an organization that had people that were volunteering their time to do for others instead of getting paid to do for others. And you know, and that's where you guys are. And you know, and that's where you guys are, and that means a lot to people like myself who feel like if we're giving the time and the effort and offering the hunts that are going to people who really need them, and there's somebody else not skimming half of the half of the dollars off or or doing something otherwise.
Speaker 3:You know you guys are all working people. We got people taking weeks off of their scheduled work days to come out here and help. I mean, you know, what more do you want? What kind of what more operation do you want? They're not heavy at the top. We're getting just about every dollar that we take in goes to helping somebody. I mean that's a, that's a big shout to where you guys are headed and we just need to do it as a team and again.
Speaker 3:I mean it's, it's. I don't. I don't need any appreciation, I don't need anybody to pull my chain. I just need a way to get these guys in the field, and it's going to take a team, and it's not just me by myself.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen, no, I, I hear you. It's all about the volunteers and the people around us, and those are helping us stand and we help them stand back, and very good point, you know. And one thing I just had another podcast not long ago where I talked about, you know it's it's about being able to share the resources and the experiences that we have to help others, and that's what you guys are doing. You know you're sharing that and that's what's going to help. So is there anything else that you'd like to add before we get going here, john?
Speaker 3:Well, we can talk all day about it, we can talk all day about deer, we can talk all day about that stuff, but you know, again, it's not about what I do. Um, just because I have the outlet, uh, I feel like what I do. Um, just because I have the outlet, uh, I feel like I feel like it's what we have to do as those who have not been in the armed services or have not been a law enforcement officer, or who've not been a first responder, um, you know, uh, I'm just, I'm just basically got my hat in my hand going. Anybody got a really good idea of how we can make this happen, to get a hundred people in the woods, get a hold of somebody and let's get it done?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, and we do have a couple of videos on our YouTube and social media channels with Harris Ranch. We have one specifically with John talking about the ranch itself and his experiences, similar to the things that we've talked about over the podcast. But then we have another one that we do talk to some of the members and they do talk about their experience at the ranch and the things that they've encountered, and I encourage you to head over to youtube and check those out the harris ranch videos, uh and really get a deep dive into what some of these people are experiencing. I believe we have one member who talks about how he hasn't hunted for a while, um to the fact that his brother took his own life in their hunting spot, which is a pretty drastic thing, and then all of a sudden he's at the Harris Ranch and he begins that healing process a little further. But for our listeners, I just want to say thank you for tuning in today. Thank you, john, for being here. I appreciate everything you guys are doing down in Texas. I hope to come see you soon and be able to help some members down there as well. Big shout out to Jim and Sean as well for helping out the ranch. But for the listeners, if you want to get more involved with Hometown Hero Outdoors or Harris Ranch specifically, please reach out to our email, which is info at hometownherooutdoorsorg. Again, that's info at hometownherooutdoorsorg. And then for other listeners too.
Speaker 2:You know we are not mental health professionals by any means. However, we are a peer support group of individuals across the country who want to assist you in the outdoor experiences and help your mental health. If you're feeling like you're down or you're having a dark day, you can reach out to us at any time. You can either do that through social media, our phone number on our website, or you can reach out to one of our field staff in the community group. We have applied suicide intervention skills training that we use and that is a tool in our belt to help you through that crisis. We will find you additional help after that if it's needed, but other than that, you can call 988 or text 988, which is the crisis line, if you do need additional assistance. So please stay here to help us help you another day and get you out in the woods or on the water. So thank you to our listeners for being here today and thank you to Harris Ranch one more time and we will see you again next week on the Hometown Hero Outdoors podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you, the Hometown Hero Outdoors podcast is made possible by the following sponsors O'Neill Electric Contractors. The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association. Relentless Defender, apparel and Financial Cop Financial Advisors. Thank you for listening to the Hometown Hero Outdoors podcast. For more information, visit our website at hometownherooutdoorsorg.
