Transcript: PODCAST INTERVIEW: Trevor Hubbs of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers
Transcript
Intro:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly.
On this episode, I'm joined by Trevor Hubbs, Executive Director of BHA's Armed Forces Initiative.
Trevor shares his experiences in the U.S. Army and in the field and on the stream, and we take a deep dive into the Armed Forces Initiative, how it supports members of the military and their families, and how it creates the next generation of conservationists.
I think you're really going to enjoy this one. But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.
If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice.
It really helps us out. And folks, save the date.
Our friend Landon Mayer is hosting the eighth annual Clean the Dream on August 26 on the South Platte River. If you'll be in the Denver area, you should definitely check it out.
It'll be a great day of fellowship and stewardship.
Stay tuned to Landon's Instagram at LandonMayorFlyFishing for more details.
Now, onto our interview.
Marvin:
[1:05] Well, Trevor, welcome to the Articulate Fly.
Trevor:
[1:08] Oh, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Marvin:
[1:10] Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation and we have a tradition on the Articulate Fly. We'd like to ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.
Trevor:
[1:19] Yeah, I saw that on the, uh, the show notes, uh, it's, I don't know if I can pick one, I think it's three because I can't remember how old I was.
First one would be, I don't know if you're into jugging or not, but essentially like twined old milk jugs with a big old circle hook and a piece of chicken liver and you drop a bunch of these milk jugs in the river or lake or wherever you're at and then you just kind of tend them all night and when one moves there's a catfish there.
Doing that in Southern Illinois, the Mississippian Ohio River right where that kind of those kind of connect there.
It's probably about five and I was pulling in a catfish and we had a couple catfish on the bottom of the boat and I slipped and ended up getting spined by a catfish right in my butt.
I had to go to the emergency room all kinds of stuff so that was fun.
So it's either that one, or...
Or just getting hooked every other cast, fishing with me, my little brother, and my dad, just the local lake for bluegills, bobbers, and hook, stuff like that.
Marvin:
[2:21] Very cool. I haven't thought about trotline in a while.
Trevor:
[2:26] Yeah, so it's different. I don't think I've done it in 20 years, but that stands out as one of my earliest memories.
Marvin:
[2:32] Yeah, very, very neat. And so when did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?
Trevor:
[2:37] So my dad's always been a fly fisher. I didn't seriously pick it up until about 2015. So, I started buying my own flies, doing a little bit of tying, and yeah, 2015 and early 2016 is when I started into it.
Marvin:
[2:51] Yeah, very, very neat. And who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly fishing journey and what have they taught you?
Trevor:
[2:58] Oh, definitely my dad early.
He was just more about the stress relief and being outside. And I've definitely picked that up.
I mean, a good day for me is not necessarily catching all the fish in the world.
It's being in the beautiful places where you tend to be when you're fly fishing, whether that's the flats down in Florida or Laguna Madre or just up in the mountains.
That's what I picked up from him. It's not so much about the catching.
It's just about being there and being outside.
Marvin:
[3:27] Yeah, got it. And do you have a favorite species to chase on the fly?
Trevor:
[3:34] I was thinking about this a lot. I mean, it's real hard to beat like West Slope Cutthroat, But that's it because they make you feel like you're the greatest fly fisherman in the world because they haven't seen a fly and they're up at 8,000 feet and just hiked 10 miles. So you're a little loopy anyway.
But right now it's going to be smallmouth bass. That's just time of year.
That's what I'm doing before work. That's what I'm doing after work at the local lake here right next to me and it's warm water. It's available.
So smallmouth bass right now.
Marvin:
[4:01] Yeah I would imagine too since things I mean it's it's hot as blazes here in the south that the top water action is probably pretty good.
Trevor:
[4:09] Yeah, no, it's fantastic. We've got a lot of nice rivers up here in northern Wisconsin, and yeah, it's tough to beat the pull of a smallmouth on a seven or eight weight rod. They're fighters.
Marvin:
[4:22] Yeah, absolutely, and do you have anything else you'd like to do out in the field?
Trevor:
[4:27] Oh, I do a little bit of everything. I mean, we'll get into it with my job, but I try and be outdoors as much as possible all times of the year, so in November I'm deer hunting, in January I'm beaver trapping.
Right now I'm smallmouth fishing. When September hits I'm going to be teal and goose hunting. I'm all over.
Marvin:
[4:45] Have you succumbed to spring turkey hunting as well?
Trevor:
[4:48] I have, yeah. So I actually learned how to spring turkey hunt for, uh, like for this job. Like I've never spring turkey hunted before four years ago when I started doing this and I have picked it up and it's a, it's a good time. Yeah.
Marvin:
[5:01] It'll ruin you for sure. Right.
Trevor:
[5:03] Absolutely. There's a, I don't know if it's being this high up.
Cause I mean, I grew up in Southern Missouri and, uh, but being up in Northern Wisconsin, it's, uh, I mean, you're leaving the house at 3 AM and it seems like some, like legal shooting rights.
Of like legal shooting rights at 415 sometimes and you can hunt until eight or almost nine o'clock. And those are some long days in the spring Turkey woods.
Marvin:
[5:23] Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's funny cause we've kind of bumped into this, but we'll kind of really dive into it right now is, you know, you are the executive director for the armed forces initiative at backcountry hunters and anglers.
And I was kind of curious, kind of how you initially got involved, like before you became an executive director, kind of how you initially got it, got connected with the guys at BHA and kind of what attracted you to the organization.
Trevor:
[5:47] Yeah, so I, uh, I got out of the army in 2016 and I think that's when I became a BHA member because I was just looking around with all my brand new free time, trying to find places to hunt, places to fish.
And, uh, it just seemed like, uh, public land, backcountry hunters and anglers, the shirts were everywhere, the people were everywhere and they were just so welcoming.
Like you could call the BHA person, like the chairman of the board or secretary or somebody who is involved as a volunteer in Kansas and say, hey, I'm looking to come out and do some quail hunting.
Don't really know enough about Kansas. Could you give me a place to start?
And they'd have end up having an hour conversation with you.
That's that's really what first attracted me. It's just like there's not one BHA member that I've ever met that your life isn't improved by having two or three beers with them and just talking like you're going to learn something. It's a great group.
Marvin:
[6:33] Yeah, that's pretty neat. And I've always been incredibly impressed with kind of the energy and the breadth of BHA's coalition because I mean they, you know, they get people from every political persuasion.
They get young kids. They get older folks. I mean, it's really kind of been, it's really impressive. I think it's pretty unique kind of in the outdoor organization world. And I was kind of curious if you, you know, any thoughts about kind of what's the secret sauce there for BHA.
Trevor:
[6:59] Oh, I think the secret sauce is the same thing that is often the most frustrating when you're a staff member is we allow our local volunteers, our boots on the ground, like we really trust that person.
So if you're the chair of the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers chapter of North Carolina, like I trust you to be the North Carolina expert. And if you tell me we need to take action on something, then we're going to.
Now, the reverse of that as a staff member is you end up running around all the time because you've given your volunteer leader so much freedom and so much, uh, kind of use just free will to go pursue things they're passionate about.
But, uh, I mean, it's not a bad thing, but it doesn't, it does lead to some 80, 100 hour weeks, especially during the fall.
Marvin:
[7:38] Yeah, I was getting ready to say it's probably a little antithetical to your military background too.
Trevor:
[7:44] It's the, there's a, there's a very different structures of organization I've learned about in the world and the nonprofit space is definitely the least structured.
Like again, there's a lot of good things to that. You can get a lot done very fast, but you got to stay flexible.
Marvin:
[7:59] ISKRA Yeah, and we're going to talk a little bit more about your role with AFI, but you touched briefly on the fact that you got out of the Army in 2016.
You want to tell us a little bit about your service experience?
Trevor:
[8:11] MCDONALD Yeah, so I mean, I was an Army infantryman, airborne 82nd for a while over at Fort Bragg, which is now Fort Liberty, down there in North Carolina, and then I finished up in the Illinois National Guard in 2016 and then I was a ROTC instructor while I was in Illinois National Guard at Eastern Illinois University.
It's a great time. I highly recommend everybody go do that if you can.
But yeah, that's about it. I was in from 2008 to 2016.
I really enjoyed it. I come back to like the small town where my parents live and where I grew up. I get moms and dads all the time like, oh my son wants to join the Army, would you mind talking to him? And I always have to preface It's like, Hey, just so you know, I had a great time.
And, uh, if you don't want me to tell him that I had a great time, I'm not the person to talk to, like, sometimes I want you to like, talk the kid out of it. And I'm like, it wasn't my experience. I loved it.
Marvin:
[8:59] Yeah. Got it. And, uh, were you deployed overseas at all? Yep.
Trevor:
[9:04] I did a couple of, uh, training stuff, but I was just a regular infantryman, uh, like we've got guys on the board and ladies on the board that did a real special operations stuff.
And that's, uh, that's not, that's not me. did some training stuff and nothing too crazy.
I think I was fortunate in that regard, but it's also a little underwhelming. Yeah.
Marvin:
[9:30] And so, what's the most significant thing you've taken away from your time in the Army?
Trevor:
[9:36] The most significant, I think, is the gap culturally.
I guess that's really getting out of the Army, but just the gap between the standard U.S.
Citizen and the standard U.S. military member.
The U.S. Army is so wildly impressed by everybody I served with and everybody I meet in my current job.
And I just, you don't necessarily have that on the civilian side.
It's just a different level of language of commitment to things of just ability to get stuff done, I guess. ISKRA Yeah.
Marvin:
[10:10] I know you and I talked about that kind of when we did a kind of a research introductory call for the interview. And you really were talking a lot about the difference between the we culture and the me culture.
Trevor:
[10:22] Yeah, it's real, and I still don't have the best ways to explain it, but it is definitely something to look at for someone smarter than me.
Marvin:
[10:30] Can you elaborate on that a little bit for folks, kind of about what we mean when we talk about we culture versus me culture? Because I know you talked a lot about like the job was like there were some calls greater than everybody, and that's what we were doing today, this week, next month, all year.
Trevor:
[10:45] At no point do you ever doubt that you're making a difference in the world when you're in the Army.
I mean, everybody has a job and everybody just jabs each other in good fun, but everybody is like, you're not going to eat till your guys all eat, till everybody has food. You are not going to sleep until all of your guys have had sleep.
[11:03] And that's just the culture. If you had a leader who wasn't going to sacrifice for their team, that leader is going to get fired.
They're going to get kicked out. If you had a member of the team that's not going to put out as much as the rest of the the members, then that it's not going to last very long.
And we'll find a reason to kick him out. I mean, one of the earliest things is, uh, we had a guy who had pneumonia, like real ammonia, it wasn't shaking or anything like he was sick, but, uh, because he was sick, the medic said he can't do this, uh, as a 12 mile ruck mark.
Well, in time to training, like just let's put some heavy stuff on our backs and go for a walk.
And he was so, I don't know if call it an embarrassment or shame or whatever.
He was so embarrassed that he missed it.
That for the next month in the barracks at night, like even though he was still sick like he put on his rucksack and just walk laps around the building until he got 15 miles or 12 miles whichever one it was he he just refused he did not his fear or whatever it was he did not want to be the person who wasn't pulling their weight in the unit and when you have a whole group of 40 people that are all like that it's I mean it's intoxicating in a way right like everybody wants to be better all the time like you finish your mandatory physical fitness and then you go work out again in the evening because at end of the day, you never want to be the person that is the weakest link.
You never want to, Like, I mean, and it makes sense, especially in infantry and some of the special operations groups, like.
[12:22] Something happens like you don't ever want to have to say like, yeah, I probably could have pulled them out of that burning Humvee if I had done PT harder.
If I was better, something would have been different. You never want to have to think about that. So you always make sure you're at your best.
And it's a. It's different. I mean, again, stakes aren't as high in the civilian world, so you just don't run into that attitude as much.
Marvin:
[12:43] ISKRA Yeah. Interesting. I mean, we talked too about there being other challenges kind of reintegrating back into civilian life, even if you didn't suffer a combat injury. You want to elaborate on some of those?
Trevor:
[12:56] Yeah, I think the biggest one and I've run into it a lot, I've actually been thinking a lot about, oh man, how long, about seven or six or seven years now, but I've been interviewing a lot of candidates for our skills grid positions where we hire someone straight out of the active duty military to come help us out.
And just in interviewing them, I'm like, man, did I make these mistakes in interviews?
Like, was I this kind of like clueless and I don't mean to offend anybody, but you learn just it's a whole different language that you speak in the military.
And there's things that like you get asked to say in interviews that you have no idea what, what the right answer is like.
So it's, it's tough. I didn't have a great transition. Like I went from running a team of 24 people to being a security guard at a an entertainment company, right?
Like one of the rental security guards for Taylor Swift and Dirk Bentley who had come to town and I was just $11 an hour Trevor, right?
I did that for a year before I got into like the business consulting world and was able to finish my degree and get like our, like a more grownup job or a more like responsibility appropriate job.
It's a, it's, it's just a whole different language. The only thing I can say is if you're, if you're interviewing somebody from the military, you got to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Like they'll learn how to talk your talk. They have all the skills.
They're just not great at expressing it because they never had to.
Marvin:
[14:18] Yeah, it's interesting because I've, you know, help people teach classes in fly fishing and been involved with like Project Healing Waters.
And, you know, you can see that willingness to be trained, right? To learn, right?
And a very deliberate posture from all the guys I've worked with in terms of like wanting to learn and get it right.
Trevor:
[14:39] Yeah.
Marvin:
[14:41] Yeah. Yeah. And so, kind of, we put all that stuff sort of in a stew.
Were those some of the things that kind of led you to the decision to form the Armed Forces Initiative.
Trevor:
[14:52] Um, I think that's that's one of the main reasons I work for the Armed Forces Initiative, but no, the forming was much more technical and it came down to members of the North American Board of Directors for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, two of which were veterans and they've always had like a high veteran or military presence at BHA.
They just didn't quite realize it until 2018.
So like like a lot of non-profits or even you know for-profit companies, there's an annual survey And I mean, it's what are you passionate about?
Are you more of an elk hunter? Are you more of a waterfowl hunter?
Do you enjoy fly fishing, traditional fishing? What's your bailiwick?
Where do you think the organization should spend their time?
How much time do you spend outdoors? There's all these kind of general questions that people want to know about their membership and their demographics.
But in 2018, for the first time, BHA asked, are you a U.S. military veteran?
And at that point, we were twelve and a half percent veteran out of our 40,000 members at that time, maybe 50, don't quote me on the numbers, somebody can look that up later, but 12% is extremely significant because depending on which survey you look at for the general U.S.
Population is between 3 and 7 percent.
[16:03] Have ever served at any point, right? So somehow BHA is doubling the national average without really trying.
That was in 2018. So in 2019, they started really researching this, they being the current, the staff then at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, figuring out, okay, well, how do we play in more to this key demographic?
Because following up on that research is when I got involved in the what would become the Enforced Initiative, and actually four of the members of my board got involved as well. They're like, well, why do you like BHA?
What do you like about it? What do you do for BHA? And the most fascinating thing about that research is not only did we have more veterans than the general U.S.
[16:46] Population, but the veterans that we did have were the ones running each state chapter. They were organizing the river cleanups.
They were organizing trail, native plant restoration projects, all this stuff, they were our most active volunteers.
So now we really needed to figure out, okay, how do we engage, like how do we make this military population more a part of BHA?
And that's what formed the Armed Forces Initiative, because they're just like Trevor.
And again, I started as a volunteer, so there's just Trevor, Ryan, Andy, all those the main guys we still have, and girls, go figure out a way to increase our military members.
So So, I kind of stumbled into it, I mean, it was like seven people and we're all taking a few hundred out a year just on our free time, just teaching them to hunt, teaching them to fish, just wherever we were locally.
We were just so disorganized because we didn't know what we were doing, just kind of trying to build the plane while we were flying it.
And yeah, today we're like a whole, whole organization with insurance and everything.
Marvin:
[17:49] Yeah. So how did you make that jump from, you know, building the race car while you were driving to being an official organization with insurance and all that kind of good stuff.
Trevor:
[17:59] I think we're still going through the process. I mean, we went from our first year, so 2020, we did our first event in eastern Montana, and that was with 18 participants, and we're just, all right, let me teach you how to spot and stalk mule deer hunt.
Like, this is the gear you would need, this is how you get a hunting license, how you pass your hunter safety, this is, you know, firearm safety, what an ethical shooting range is, how to make sure you do make the most with the of meat? How do you break a big game animal down?
Like we went from that where we learned a lot. We learned a lot of each of these events.
And then we did turkey events. We started doing smallmouth fly fishing events and salmon fishing events.
And I think we went in our first year we went from 18 participants in 2020 to 2021.
We had 700. And then in 2022 last year we had 1700.
And then this year we're taking 2300 people out.
And it's the growth. I guess we've had to kind of formalize, otherwise we'd never keep up with the growth.
So we have 14,000 AFI members within BHA that are all just super excited about what we're doing. And with seven people managing it, you have to come up with a way to strategize and to build a budget.
Marvin:
[19:12] Yeah, you might need a few systems and some processes, right?
Trevor:
[19:16] Yeah, it's not just me. I like smallmouth best thing let me grab the four guys and take them out yeah then so tell me a little bit more specifically about AFI's goals yeah it's the goals have been have been challenging just because we keep meeting them we keep exceeding them dramatically like when we did 2021 is when I came in and we had 700 participants total from that year and I was like all right well so before AFI I did I was like a business consultant I ended up getting my master's degree in business and try to apply those kind of skills to managing a non-profit as a staff member.
I was like, all right, let's shoot for 20 percent.
20 percent more participants, 20 percent more events, it's 20 percent across the board, and we'll see where we're at because we never measured it before.
We went from whatever was 700 participants to 1,700. It's like, okay, well, that's dramatically more than we could have ever hoped to do.
And we expanded from six states to 46 states in 18 months. And it's a...
So goals, like right now, where do I want to be in five years?
I think realistically, we're going to hit a cap. We'll hit a plateau where we either run out of funding or run out of just capacity.
But I think a solid number to shoot for is going to be 20,000 people a year. ISKRA Got it.
Marvin:
[20:35] And, you know, maybe some of the softer goals about kind of the purpose and what you're trying to kind of achieve with the participants?
Trevor:
[20:42] MCDONALD Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, that's simple. So there's, There's, like the US people, I guess, the humans have always kind of known that there is a value to being outside, right?
And you could look at that from just Teddy Roosevelt, helping to form the National Park Service in part to help the people that he was in the Spanish-American War with find place he saw valued for himself, hunting, angling, being in these wild places.
So when he became president, he started to really work on making that his mission as these kind of wild places.
Everybody read Hemingway in high school, Man in the Sea or something like that, For Whom the Bell Tolls. If you look at Hemingway's life, like that is a story of a man who's seen some things, whether as a reporter or during a war or just losing children and.
[21:32] Anyway, dude had some demons, but he always found peace through being outdoors and fishing, whether it's deep sea fishing in the Keys or fly fishing over in Idaho.
Even if you want to go back farther than that, what's it called?
I think it was the Cherokee Nation had a mandatory 14-day wilderness period for Braves returning from battle.
So before you could rejoin the tribe and come into the community, You had to spend 14 days hunting and fishing after you came home from battle.
We've always seen that there's a benefit to this, right?
Now, as far as what does that mean scientifically, like with endorphins measuring dopamine, I would recommend everybody go check out Dr. Keith Tidball at the University of Cornell. His work has been amazing. He's got a doctorate degree.
He can speak that scientific language, but he's done some amazing stuff with us and with some other organizations in the space where he measures, like he does hair samples, blood samples, spit samples before an event and after event, and the dopamine, the endorphins, like just the overall feeling of happiness is so much higher and measurable after an event, it's incredible.
[22:44] As far as a goal for each one of the events we do is, I like to, it's threefold, right?
Again, I don't have a doctorate degree, I'm not a doctor, but the first one we just call it short-term medicine or wilderness medicine or just being outside.
That's just take participants into the backcountry, pull them away from their cell phone, their e-mail, all of these small everyday distractions that happen in life and just put them into the natural world and some of these amazing, beautiful places and try and teach them a new skill, teach them how to interact in that natural cycle, whether that's hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, trapping.
I mean, depending on what part of the country, you have different events all the time, but just let me pull you out for two, three days and just let you decompress, right?
[23:31] Now the second thing I want everybody to take away all our participants from each event is building a tribe or building a community so we try to.
Make our events and it's getting easier now we have more chapters but extremely local right like I want.
Everybody from South Florida at the same event in South Florida or everybody from Western North Carolina versus North Carolina or Montana like the goal is I want to pull people for with similar life experiences.
That all have an interest in being outside and hunting and angling.
And I want them to kind of form their own community, the military community, around this.
So that time at the campfire just, I don't really like the word safe space, but it is a safe space.
It's pretty interesting, just the honesty and the types of conversations you can have with people that have gone through all the same stuff you have.
Everybody's struggling the same ways, everybody's looking to succeed, not sure how.
But that's the second thing, is this tribe or this community.
So if I can give, If I teach you how to hunt and fish and I can give you a group of people to go hunting and fishing with, the odds are pretty good that you're going to go hunting and fishing again.
[24:37] And that plays in the last part, which is just a mission. So, like, we like to say we want to give the military community a new mission, and that mission is conservation.
[24:45] And that's really, like, the key to this.
Like, if I just wanted to put people outside with another group of veterans, like, you could do that through, I don't know, outdoor goat yoga, or bike riding, or a running group, or something like that.
Like, that's, everybody has that. Like, those are, and those are valuable.
But the mission is something unique to the the angling community unique to the hunting community because conservation just is already there and we already have this amazing recipe in the North American model of wildlife conservation that if I can teach people like, hey, this is how to hunt, this is how to fish, this is a group to go hunting and fishing with, and this is why you should hunt and fish as a veteran, as a member of this military community, as an active service member, right?
This is what you get out of it. This is a uniquely American pursuit and this is another way for you to continue to serve your country.
Like and it doesn't really matter to me whether they get super involved in like let's say I take six veterans smallmouth fishing in northern Wisconsin and one of them would just get so incredibly excited about smallmouth like that just ignites a passion in them that they want to go start.
They don't want to be involved in BHA at all. They want to go start the Smallmouth Alliance or Smallmouth Unlimited whatever a small specific or even a watershed-specific charity because that's what ignites that passion, that's what gets them up in the morning, and that's a good way for them to serve their community, to serve their countries by making sure there's always smallmouth in this body of water for everyone.
[26:10] Like, that's great. I don't need you to come back to BHA and be a BHA leader.
Like, I'd like that. But as long as we get you into the conservation conversation somewhere, like, that's really the goal. Like, we like to to say we don't do once-in-a-lifetime experiences, we give you the tool for a lifetime of experiences.
[26:28] We want you to go do this again and again and again. We want you to introduce other people to it.
Ideally, if you go to one of our events, let's say we've got a tarpon fishing event in the Florida Keys next year that I've been planning recently.
We're going to take 12 people. If you go home from that to Tampa or somewhere in middle Florida, I want you to take the skills you learned and let's get six months down the road, take four of your buddy's fly fishing, right?
Or just go to the local bass. They can be like, hey man, this works for me.
Maybe it works for you too. Like, let's introduce it to some more people.
Does that make sense? I kind of ramble when I get into talking about this.
Marvin:
[27:03] Then no, it's all good. I can tell you're excited and you're passionate about it. And so clearly, you know, the, the outing is the main outreach mechanism.
Are there other things that you do to support people in AFI outside of the downings.
Trevor:
[27:19] I mean we have all kinds of stuff. I like the outings we call them dual skills camps. We're going to teach you how to hunt, we're going to teach you why to hunt. Right? That's the dual skills there. A little bit about the hunting, a little bit about the conservation.
So everything we do as AFI is to support these dual skills camps.
How do I have more of them or how do I make the ones that I have better?
Right? So any funding event, any of that stuff, any habitat work, like it all goes toward the dual-skilled camp.
[27:47] We're out here building conservation. Now we do have all over the place, like I said, we're in 46 states. We have 26 active-duty installation chapters for people that are currently serving on post where you can get involved.
But we do like habitat restoration, we do watershed management, we just did, we just finished like a $50,000 access project.
Actually right near the woods in North Carolina, the Deep River, ended up just opening that river up for like 12 additional miles of recreation for fishing, hunting, trapping, all that stuff that was kind of closed.
It was a public waterway, but you had no public access to it unless you wanted to kind of jump off an overpass.
So we do a lot of conservation work, right?
We do that, we do again in North Carolina, Fort Bragg, we have some native Bob White quail restoration work we're doing on the base, which is really, really cool.
I like this project a lot, and it's ongoing. The problem, the only problem with it is that you'll never be finished, but that's not the worst thing in the world.
So like Fort Bragg is home of the 82nd Airborne.
It's, so you have these big drop zones, which are basically just these huge open fields where they drop paratroopers for training jumps, for just mission prep, things like that.
But what happens with any open field is you have to manage it, or it won't stay open. Trees will start to grow there.
[29:08] So one of the things we've had with a lot of these drop zones is, all of a sudden, they're 100, 200 yards smaller than they should be because trees are encroaching from the sides.
[29:19] So our Fort Liberty AFI team goes in with chainsaws, with fire, and they just manage that drop zone.
They take back the trees, to replant native wildlife seeds, creating habitat for native bobwhite quail, right?
So the Army wins because there's less paratroopers landing in trees and getting hurt.
Bobwhite quail win because there's more habitat there.
And BHA, the Armed Forces Initiative wins because now there's more places that these active duty soldiers can go recreate and go hunt on Fort, on Bragg, on Fort, Fort Liberty, sorry. It's gonna take me a while to wrap my head around that.
Marvin:
[29:56] It's a relatively new change and so, you know, the outing is the main thing.
And so why don't you kind of give folks an idea, kind of what a typical AFI outing looks like.
Trevor:
[30:09] Sure, I mean we do one day outings, but we try to stick to this.
This three day. Kind of a. At four day including travel, but like a four day really.
Experienced and I like that because it gives you that time to decompress and really do that. We call it wilderness medicine or just kind of disconnect from the regular world, but essentially you show up.
We work at five o'clock on a Thursday. You've taken off work Friday and Monday.
So, Thursday evening you pull into camp, you have your local leader who's running the camp, they're going to do cookie dinner, fill up introductions, talk about where you served, who you know, how you learned about AFI, why you're in hunting or fishing or whatever the task at hand is, and then they'll talk a little bit about what's going to happen the next day, whether it's hunting or fishing or whatever you're going to do.
The next day you get paired up with your mentor and depending on the activity, we'd like to do a one-to-one mentor, but there's some some activities like for example, if you're fly fishing out of a drift boat, the mentor can be the person rowing the boat and he has two mentees with him because you have two spaces.
So it just depends on what you're doing for what the mentor to mentee ratio is, but traditionally it's never more than three mentees to one mentor.
[31:21] So you're going to go wake up in the morning, going to grab a breakfast burrito, cup of coffee, and you're going to go do the day's activity.
So while you're doing that, your mentor is teaching you the tactical skills about the how.
Like, oh, that's what a riffle looks like. That's why you're going to want to find trout here.
Let's flip over this rock and say, all right, these are the bugs that are here.
How does that translate to what I have in my fly box and why do I want to tie this on?
What's hatching at normal times of the year? Just all that stuff like those kind of the technical skills that you need to go down to Cabela's, get yourself a fly rod set up and go do this again the next weekend.
So then you get back to camp at night for dinner. Dinner's always prepared for you.
You get back to camp at night and then we'll either event leader or a guest speaker or something will come in, we'll talk a little bit about the conservation.
All right, everybody had fun on the river today.
[32:15] Everybody caught fish or you didn't catch fish. Why didn't you catch fish?
Now, this is what's interesting about this river.
They talk about conservation. We talk public lands 101 or access project.
We can talk about history of the watershed and it just depends again what the camp is based on.
My favorite kind of recipe and what we've seen really work is bringing in a biologist, whether that's a Trout Unlimited biologist or one of the state fisheries biologists to talk about.
I mean, it's not a college-level biology course, it's very kind of open, but it goes for about an hour and just explain what you saw your first day, right, what experiences you had, why you had them, just in a more technical manner than somebody who doesn't do it for a living.
Next day, wake up, same schedule, going to do it again. We may switch up mentors, switch up teams, make sure everybody knows each other.
But you're going to do the same thing again. We're going to do something a little different. Like if we fished out of a boat the first day, we're going to try walking and waiting around the second day, maybe doing a little smaller creek stuff, trying to give you a wide breadth of experiences.
If we're hunting, we'll try a day of stand hunting, day of still hunting, day of spot and stalk, trying to give you as much experience as we can.
But then when you get back to camp later that night, we're going to be talking about, um, kind of like a.
[33:36] Like probably a policy 101 is the best class for it, which are civics, or basically how to use your voice as a veteran to make sure these places, this wild environments still exist.
All that hinges on just the fact that right now, politically, you can't necessarily go against veteran interests in a public way.
If you stand up at a, or anybody stands up at a natural DNR meeting and says, as a tax attorney, I think you should do this with the deer population, Versus, hey, as a veteran of the US Army, I think you should do this with the deer population.
It just makes more impact. It's more impactful for the veteran to say that because politicians don't like to go against the military community.
We teach them how to engage there.
It doesn't have to be a policy meeting. It can be just a local Department of Natural Resources meeting.
Talk about the Menominee River in Northern Wisconsin. Hey, this is what we're doing. This is our population goals.
Just how to weigh in as a citizen conservationist and make your voice heard and be a part of the conversation.
[34:38] Next day, going to do the same thing, just getting them out fishing, getting them out hunting.
Coming back, wrapping it up, and then the last night is always what the next step.
We like everybody to leave with a mission, like with a solid next step, and whether that's connecting with the local BHA chapter, or hosting a fundraiser, fundraiser or writing a congressman or whatever it is, it depends.
What it normally is, though, we found about 73% of the time, what the participants want to do is they want to come back to an event.
They want to take their buddies. They want to, hey, how do I do this in my own community?
Because again, when we started, we were in six states.
And that's how we spread to 46 states, because we used to invite people from wherever.
We pay for everything except your travel to get to the event, and you have to buy your own hunting license or fishing license.
But people go home, like, hey, how do I do this for my friends in Michigan?
How do I do this in Wisconsin and Arkansas, wherever?
So that's how we end up growing. That's what most people want to do is the value they see in the natural world and this conservation is, oh my God, I feel amazing out here.
I know a lot of veterans that are hurting. How do I get them out here?
Marvin:
[35:48] Yeah, got it. And so, you know, what are the requirements to participate in an outing and How do you screen candidates?
Trevor:
[35:55] Yeah, so that's something we're working through right now. We don't have a solid answer because there's just so many people that want help, that want to attend.
We have just tens of thousands of people on waiting lists.
And again, it depends on the event.
In 40 days, I'm taking 10 people on an Alaska caribou hunt.
So hundreds of applicants for something like that versus in Georgia doing a learn to fly fishing event for panfish, bluegill, bass.
Maybe we have 50 applicants for 10 spots.
Again, it's different, but all you need to attend is you need to be interested in hunting and fishing and be a active duty National Guard, Reserves, veteran affiliated with the military community, Gold Star family, any of that would work.
Space Force, Coast Guard, we have everybody.
[36:46] And that's really the only requirement. You can already know how to hunt and fish and you just want to come for fun or to get better.
You could have hunted and fished before, but you haven't in a long time.
You could be brand new and not know anything about it. Like there's plenty of spaces for you.
We do a lot of educational classes. So if you tell me you want to come to our Whitetail event in Ohio in October, are you all right? Well, it's July, so we got to get you into a concert or a hunter's educating course.
We've got to get you into this.
And we can do all that work pre-event with your mentor, with your local leader to make sure you're ready.
But, um, yeah, you, we like to say you could show up in jeans and a t-shirt any of our events, and we'll make sure you have everything you need.
The caveat to that being, uh, you have to tell us in advance that you're going to show up in jeans and a t-shirt.
Like we can get you all this stuff, but don't, don't, uh, I mean, don't sign up to go on a, like an Alaska mountain goat hunt and then show up in jeans and a t-shirt without talking to anybody, Yeah, that probably won't work very well.
Marvin:
[37:42] And if someone wanted to get more information about AFI, whether it was, you know, they were interested in being a participant, they wanted to be a volunteer, or they wanted to be a donor, where should they go?
Trevor:
[37:53] Well, donors can call me directly at any time of day, but that was a joke.
It was a bad one. No, just go to backcountryhunters.org.
You look at programs, you see all the programs BHA has. One of them is the Armed Forces Initiative.
You can learn what we do, value statement, mission statement.
There's some videos on there, some articles from interviews to people who've been on the events and what they take away from it.
There's a donation page, you can see our corporate sponsors, everybody who's on the board, get their bio, all that kind of stuff.
And if you need more information, you want more than that, email armed forces initiative all together there at backcountryhunters.org or you can just email hugs, H-U-B-B-S at backcountryhunters.org.
That's my personal email address, but I monitor both addresses.
So either way, it'll get to me. You could Google it.
You can hit the contact us button at BHA. You can email the admin team, give the office in Missoula there a call.
Like benefit is that we have, we have one staff member and that's me.
So anybody else at BHA, you ask about the Armed Forces Initiative, you'll get to me pretty quick.
Marvin:
[39:05] ISKRA There you go. And you know, AFI is a relatively new program at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. And I was kind of curious, What's been the biggest surprise or challenge so far?
Trevor:
[39:17] The biggest surprise so far has just been the growth. We try to do a – it's not really an audit.
I try and keep tabs on other organizations in the industry like Project Healing Waters, Warriors and Quiet Waters, just other freedom hunters, groups that if you take the military into the field and you teach them to hunt or you take them hunting or fishing, whatever, just try and judge how we're doing.
How we're doing and I didn't realize like Warriors and Quiet Waters I kind of put at the top and they do amazing things but they're taking out 256 people last year.
Like last year we took out 1700. So when I look at that like the biggest surprise like oh my god we are we grew fast.
Now we have the benefit of being part of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers which is a huge membership and we already have a lot of structure built in but yeah that's the biggest surprise is to pick the job up at six states and hope to be in 10 states by the end of the year and all of a sudden you're at 40 something.
It's uh yeah the growth, been nuts.
Marvin:
[40:15] Yeah and you mentioned earlier in the interview kind of the five-year goal about kind of how many outings you wanted to do but are there any other goals that you would like to see, you know, fulfilled in the next five years?
Trevor:
[40:27] Yeah, I mean, we do like a once a year we do a transition class.
We're in the process, like we're part of the Skills Bridge program, so we hire an active duty soldier, sailor, airman.
We give them an internship with civilian skills. We try and hire them if we can.
We try and get them hired somewhere if they'd rather go work somewhere else in the conservation space. Once a year we do like a transition course on, hey, if you'd like to work in conservation or in the outdoor space and you're in the military, come to this online seminar. We're going to teach everything we know.
But it just plays into our vision and our vision, I'm just going to read it off the website, is a military community actively engaged in a conservation conversation in the field, on the water, and active participants in the legislative process.
I truly think just with the basic ingredients of most members of the military community that I've met, like that selfless service, that we attitude, they could be incredibly impactful in the outdoor industry, right?
Whether they go into manufacturing or legislation or come work at a a nonprofit like Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, like my goal is looking 10 years.
I think we should have 10% veterans in the outdoor industry across the board.
I think it's realistic. I think they have the skillset.
They have everything that'll make it possible. It's just helping put the right people in the right seats on the bus.
Marvin:
[41:42] Yeah, I got it. And you mentioned also that you got kind of a team of folks that you work with. Like you're the, you're the paid guy, but you got some other volunteer folks working with you. You want to tell us a little bit about the other folks on your team?
Trevor:
[41:54] None of it happens without the team. We have an amazing team here from the first, myself, Ryan Burkhart, Andy Ruskowitz, those are the three kind of main that we've always been like the tripod there since the inception of the Armed Forces Initiative.
And even those two guys were around for six or seven months before I was.
One's active duty, one is a veteran, he got out out of the Army a few years ago, but they're just incredible. They serve on our AFI national board.
We've got Navy guys, Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen.
We've got everybody on this board represented and they just do some amazing work, plus the 46 state leaders we have, the 26 installation leaders.
I mean, it's almost too many to list, but everybody's just doing an amazing job. And the most incredible part is nobody has any experience.
Nobody knows what we're doing.
If that makes sense, like, this is not, you can't go to college and get a degree in Veterans Adjunct Outdoor Therapy, right?
But then all of a sudden, three years in, we're all part of this organization that's being asked by the Department of Interior and the VA and the Department of Defense to, hey, can you come to Washington and brief this task force on how to use federal public lands for Veterans Outdoor Therapy?
It's wild. It's amazing. And none of it could happen without the volunteers.
I get really my job is to support them.
Marvin:
[43:19] That's that's what I do Yeah, very neat to see people kind of a line around the mission, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and before I let you go this evening Trevor. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners? Um.
Trevor:
[43:33] The biggest thing that not just for for BHA or not just for the Armed Forces Initiative is the thing for me is there are so many veterans that that need help right now.
I'm not I don't I'm not arrogant enough to to say that I think hunting and fishing is the answer for everyone, but the answer is somewhere.
So just do what you can whether it's a financial donation to a local organization or a veteran's home or a veteran's job placement or something.
And get out and volunteer and help that community. If you look at the VA veteran suicide studies, I mean, they just released a new one and I'm not ultra familiar with it, but the shocking statistic for me is a male veteran age 18 to 35 is 63% more likely to commit suicide than his civilian counterpart of the same age.
And that's an insane stat. female veterans, it's like 27% more likely.
It's, yeah, it's, there's some real problems here that, I mean, we're not going to solve them all at the Armed Forces Initiative.
We're going to try, but just whether you're into hunting, whether you're into fishing or anything like that, like find an organization that can help the veteran community and try and get involved.
Marvin:
[44:44] ISKRA Got it. And if folks want to get in touch with you, learn more about BHA, AFI, what's the best way for them to keep track of all those adventures on and off the water?
Trevor:
[44:56] Best way is probably Instagram, and I'm not a huge social media guy, but I do have some people that are real good at social media on the team here, so just follow BHA underscore AFI.
Honestly, if you type that in, I bet there's 46 state versions of the Instagram that'll pop up. Follow your state, follow the main one.
You can set up there at backcountryhunters.org.
Just go to the blog, post pictures, videos, YouTube channel.
We're all over the place. We've got an article in Fly Fisherman Magazine coming out next month, article in Shooting Sportsman. You.
Marvin:
[45:35] Keep your ear to the ground, but BHA, AFI, those six letters are, we're getting out there.
Things are happening.
Trevor:
[45:54] Yeah, so I'll drop all those Instagram links, not to all the states, but the want to charge me any money for it, I would love it because I have never set a website up before.
So if you look at it and you're like, well, this is ridiculous, Trevor, let me know and then come help me.
Marvin:
[46:11] Well, there you go. Well, Trevor, I really appreciate you taking some time out of your evening and not fishing for smallmouth bass this evening to come talk to me.
Trevor:
[46:20] No, thank you for having me. Anything I can do to further the mission is good with me.
Marvin:
[46:23] Well, listen, have a great evening. Take care and be well.
Trevor:
[46:27] Yeah, you too, sir.
Intro:
[46:29] Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.
Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend, and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcast of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.