Cameron Hanes - Keep Hammering Collective - KHC 070 - Marc Smith

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Join us for a discussion with Marc Smith the Muley Slayer, a friend of Cam’s of 22 years from Texas. Listen in as they talk about Marc’s background in bowhunting, getting into writing and more! Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Follow Marc: https://www.instagram.com/muleyslayer1  Thank you to our sponsors: MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and free shipping Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv  MUD\WTR: https://mudwtr.com/cam use code CAM for 15% off  Sig Sauer: https://www.sigsauer.com/ use code CAM for 10% off  Black Rifle: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order Grizzly Coolers: https://www.grizzlycoolers.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off  Timestamps: 0:00:00 Intro: Thoughts on Cam’s Routine 0:04:44 Marc’s Experience with The Bow Rack 0:07:22 Becoming a Bowhunter 0:13:11 Marc’s First Bow & His Thoughts on Bow Shops 0:18:36 Marc’s First Deer with a Bow 0:25:30 Giving Back, Wild Mustangs & Marc’s Pop’s First Mule Deer Hunt 0:33:17 Getting into the Writing Industry 0:42:11 Inspiration From Cam’s Articles & Marc’s First Article 0:53:04 A Colorado Welcome & A Call From Cam 0:55:12 Hoyt Pro Staff 01:03:27 2003: Easton Axis Arrows Launch 01:09:37 No Limits: Marc’s Goals 01:12:52 Marc’s Son, Sponsorships & Elk Hunting 01:26:35 Marc’s Daughter 01:37:44 Today’s Hunting Industry 01:43:56 Outro

Every step I take, I move my truth. Every time they tell me stop I use. Every comment hate that makes my feel, gather up my energy and boom. I hear them talking, saying the way that I move it's so reckless. That is a part of my mind I've been blessed with. Giving my blood so I am relentless. All right. We're here on the Keep Hamron Collective.

I'm with Mark Smith, aka Muley Slayer 1 on Instagram. That's right. How you doing? I'm good, man. I'm feeling the Oregon experience, buddy. Yeah. I'm feeling the keep hammering lift run shoot experience to the fullest. I'm feeling it right now.

Yeah, we just got done with the lid. We just got done. So you should still feel it. Yeah, so if I'm still wheezing, excuse me, because I'm still recovering. But no, it's holy moly, man. This is pretty incredible. Yeah. Well, so what do you think of my daily routine?

It's, I think I've told you a couple of times today on there. Like, I don't think the Instagram, the Facebook and the videos that YouTube, they don't show, they don't show it all, and they don't show how real it is. And it is, it's pretty incredible. It was hard. So, you know, when you invited me out here back in the winter, I was out of shape, and I started getting in shape,

and just reached out to you. We've been friends for 22 years, and I reached out and said, dude, you're inspiring me again. I'm going to get after it. And you said, good, I'd love to have you on a podcast. I could have fell out of the chair. Because even though we're friends, and I know you're my friend,

And I know you'd, I feel like you'd crawl to Texas over broken glass to help me if I needed. I just feel that you're that guy. But to get invited on this podcast and see the great people you've had, I was like, man, I feel like this morning, I told you, now some feelings were coming up over the last couple of days. I haven't felt for a long time. And it's like when I first went pro in the 3D circuit and the first target I walked up to, it was Jeff Hopkins and Randy Olmer down in Tucson, Arizona. It's a tough group. And you're like, yeah, this is real. I bellied up to the bar with the real dogs,

and I knew I was amongst elites, and I was amongst the best in the world at what they were doing at the time. That's how I fell today. And so those feelings started coming over me last night. I'm going, this is real now. My son, Travis, been with, he's been my great supporter, my wife,

and I've been training. I even bought my own 72-pound rock. I've been carried around in Texas, doing a 5K with it every day. Love it. And that's so different than, um, this guy. on the hill but it still um i had the technique down right moving the rock around i had i felt

like i had it it was just the hill man right it's just the hill but uh i i feelings conjured up that i had not felt it was an excited nervous not a scared nervous right i'm not much scares me but excited nervous to come with an elite athlete um because i i'm like you you say you're average i'm going to tell you right now brother you're not an average man there nothing about you as Poser. No. People say I'm a poser, remember? Hey, if you ever come up to me at a show and say that, I'm going to punch you square in the mouth, I promise you because I love this guy and I care about him a lot.

And he's legit. And so doing that today, those feelings came over me. But it's like, you know, if I was going to step in the ring with Connor McGregor, you could get it all worked up in your mind. But once he popped you in the mouth, it's just Connor McGregor popping you in the mouth. Now it's time to get busy, right? Yeah. That's how I felt with you today. Connor McGregor don't ever punch me in the mouth.

But that's how I felt today with you. It was like once I go, and so you're like, hey, oh, by the way, we're not going to just go carry the rock up Piscop. We're going to go run Spencer's for a warm-out. I was like, are you even getting me right now? What? You're going to add extra? Yeah, but you had to get your money's worth. I had to get my money's worth, and I got it, bro.

And so I'm so glad I had that experience. You know, I've seen you and your brother up there so many times and all your other guests runs. because I got the full Monty, dude. So I ran Spencer's, most of the way. I ran up there and then came down, had some awesome lunch breakfast, and then went and climbed Piscan. Carried the rock up Piscay. And I carried it all the way.

I stopped twice. I stopped twice for three times, set it down, caught my breath, regrouped and went back up. But I carried it every step of the way. You didn't carry it up for me. And I was proud of that. That was what I trained for. I mean, I was going after record,

but once we hit the 50-minute mark, we were still a 0.5 of miles away from the top. I'm like, well, I won't hit the record by a long shot. But I'll be one of the guys that carried the rock by myself all the way up. And to me, that mattered. To my family, that mattered. And I did it. And then, man, from there, just the whole,

I just don't think people realize how great of an athlete you are. And I don't think they realize how great you have it in this town with the bow rack here and having those guys. Man, Trent is just like missed Wayne and Lisa and I'm so sorry for that, but man, Trent Trent had her back and he had my bow dialed, man. He already had my third axis set. I mean, someone that shoots as much as I shoot and had been a pro in the pro division, I should be expected to pop a balloon at 100 yards, right? Yeah. But to pop it that fast with a bow I've never touched in my life. So I know I'm a good shot, but to say I came in here,

grab this bow out of the box they threw a site and arrest on it none of it i was familiar with i wasn't familiar with that site whatsoever i just brought my own arrows and my own release with me yeah so to say um but you know my my friends and followers they're not going to be surprised because that's kind of what i do right i just get dropped off on the side of the highway and i come back with a dead mule dude i go troubleshoot figure it out and get it done so um i wanted to go for the record i did i wanted to pop the balloon at 200 yards but we had rain and wind and sleet and it was just you're like dude, we could be here until midnight, just trying to get lucky. And I don't want to get lucky.

I want to dial in and drill it. But that 101-yard shot, man, I got it. And it's like the second round and dialed it, not even no tape on my bow or nothing, just guessing and judging and shooting. Well, I was impressed. And, you know, yeah, shout out to Trent and the bow rack. They do such a phenomenal job setting on bows. And not just setting them up, but it's like the precision on, so you can paper-tune a bow.

And he can go through paper and anybody who doesn't know or doesn't look that closely, he'd be like, oh, that's a bullet hole. And you're good to go. But Trent is, you know, putting it back together where it tore through, looking to see exactly where the tip of the field point went through to make it as precise as possible. So he did that. You went out on the range at 20 and is almost right off the bat every arrow in the X. Yeah.

And then step back to 30. And it was about the same thing. Yeah. I mean, I've never seen somebody shoot a bow that good out of the box. No. That's the best I've ever seen. Yeah. Wow.

the bow did most of it. I was just holding it. No, I mean, I was watching you. You're a shooter. Yeah. And so it was, I love seeing that because the other things, yeah, you can train, but it's different when you get here and you get on the hill, when you start running and you're lifting weights and all that.

But what nobody could ever question or surprise you with is shooting a bow. Yeah. I mean, that's just like. Either you could do that or you don't do that. Yeah. And so it was, I hadn't, you know, to be honest, I haven't seen you shoot. Yeah. You know, and so to see that, I was like, holy shit, Mark's fucking shooter.

So I was impressed. Yeah. Thanks, man. That's a huge compliment. I appreciate it. But yeah, I've been doing it 40 years. I've been shooting a bow for 40 years. I bought my first one when I was 13.

I tell everybody I've been bow hunt for 40 years, but not really. Like, I bought my bow when I was 13 and just a bear black mag. And I could afford three arrows in the bow. And that's what I bought. Those are expensive. Fingers bare bow. They were the old game getters. They were green game getters and the olive green ones.

And I shot those when I was 13. I killed turtles and rabbits and birds and things with it and snakes. And just, you know, all game is big game when you were 13. We killed stuff with them with no sights and bow fishing. But I really changed and became a bow hunter. What I say, I'm a bow hunter. Like I can say I've been a bow hunter since I was 17. Something happened in my life where I was like, I had this revelation, man, about how powerful a bow and arrow is.

And maybe I'll just go right into that. Yeah. This is super, you know, bow hunting. People recognize that in me. You know how you, when you beat Armstrong in that race, it just says bow hunter beats Armstrong. To be a bow hunter, and I try to explain this to even Travis and stuff. Like, I'm a hunter and I have, you know, I'm friends with Weatherby, I have. guns and stuff. I love guns. But at my core, I'm a bow hunter. And to be able, they almost carry

some kind of weight when you tell someone you're a bow hunter. And what I noticed as a young man, my wife dating me is in high school, 17 years old seniors. Her father's a big hunter. He was. He just passed away last year. He's a big hunter. And it intrigued him, right? Like it won me points for his daughter. Oh, he's a bow hunter. Yeah, he's a bow hunter. And he's, you know. That take the people to be like, that takes real skills. Yeah. Like this kid, Because I know you've got to be close. Yeah, this is not some dope head out, goofing off. You know, I had a mullet in an El Camino.

Right. Listening to White Snake. But I was a bow hunter. And I was, so I was sitting in class, Fred Miller. Let me just tell you, Fred Miller was my ag teacher. My best friend through high school ditched me right before my wedding, right? He had borrowed the money to rent a taxi to be in my wedding. And then, like, a week before my wedding, he's like, hey, man, I blew all my money on fishing tackle.

I can't be in your wedding. I'm like, dude, you're my best friend. You made my best friend all through high school. What's going on here? And he's just freaking, to this day, I haven't talked to him in 30 years. I don't know what happened, man. He just ditched me. The next person that was in my life at that time was Fred Miller and my ag teacher.

And he was an amazing, incredible man. In Texas. Yeah, I was in ag all years of high school. And he mentored me. You know, his son and I are still really great friends when you go turkey hunting. every year. That's the memorial turkey hunt we go on. Austin Miller, and his dad was Fred Miller, and he was beloved man, loved by the entire community, taught forever.

He died, in 2017, yeah. He tragically died of cancer. And he had told Austin over the years, you know, Smith's one of my favorites. I can't save them all. As a teacher, you can only pick a few, and he picked me. By the grace of God, this man saw something in me and mentored me. And when I'd say dumb stuff, he was that guy, because I didn't have much of a father in my life, my father, my stepdad, amazing man. He was just back out of my life at that time. But Fred was fully engaged in my life, checked on me and would like, without going into too much, my parents were separated. They were in different places and me and my brother were set home by

ourselves a lot that year, my senior year. And Fred would, he caught wind of that. He'd stopped by the house and he'd see it's that no one's watching us. I'm 17, my brother's 13 or three years difference. And he brought groceries. He looked in my cabinets. He stopped in. He was talking to me. He's just walking around looking, right? And he's like, next day at night, he showed up with groceries and stuff.

And I'll never forget that. And so he was just a wonderful man. And so, but he was also, man, a hardcore hunter. Like he's the one that helped me. I learned how to build rifles. He taught me how to reload and all that stuff. And what he would do is he would bring on Fridays, goof off days. You know, he'd bring in a projector, or not a projector, but a VACR and a TV.

We watch videos. And he come in one day and he's like, hey, Smith, this is a good one for you. You'll like this. And it was Pete Shepley hunting brown bear in the 80s. Have you ever watched that one? I think I have, yeah. Dude, like, I'm sitting back there probably writing Christina a note and goofing off and Fred's like, hey, we're going to watch this.

And then he got my attention. He's like, hey, Fred, or hey, Mark, Smith, we're going to call me Smith. Hey, Smith, you ought to be up your alley here. They're going to be bow hunting bears. I'm like, oh, bow, bow, hunting bears. And Pete Shepley took the flow. plane. This was in 1987, the fall of 1987. I'll never forget. It changed my life. And I'm watching this guy. And he goes to, I knew who Pete Sheppley was. He was in every archery

magazine back then, right, with his mock fours and whatever, you know. He goes. And he, back then, you didn't have a range finders or nothing. You had that thing. You had to dial until it wasn't blurry, right? He had this pouch made out of caribou skin. I thought that was the coolest thing. and he shoots this brown bear with a bow and something triggered in me like right then because I had a deer rifle. I had a 30-30, a Marlon 30-30 was my lever-action deer rifle that I bought from mowing lawns and, you know, just making cash, selling bait, doing whatever, you'd pick it in your peas, you know, that stuff.

So I had a deer rifle, but I knew my deer rifle was not powerful. I knew that it was a good deer gun for East Texas, inside 100 yards. I'll kill deer. But what, what, and I don't, I've tried to articulate into words, and I can't quite, figure out how to tell someone this. But it's like, okay, a Marlin 30-30 on the beaches of Kodiak is not enough gun for a brown bear. But I had the sense to realize no matter how expensive that bow was and no matter how whatever that broadhead's made out of, whatever that arrow's made out of, no matter what

that bow brand is or anything, if you put a razor-sharp broadhead in the right spot with enough energy, that is all you need to kill an animal. Right. Bam. Yeah, brand doesn't matter. Nothing. How much the bow costs doesn't matter. A razor sharp broadhead in the right spot.

And I went, well, then that means my bow's good enough. Yeah. That means my bow will work, right? And so I was working at Kmart at the time. I was working in the sporting goods automotive department. So they had a bare white tail too with plastic dinan cams. It wasn't the white tail with the four wheels. It was the next level of, it was a step up of the bow I had.

That was the first thing I bought with my first check at Kmart, my first two or three, I haven't been a layaway. And I got this bow. And it was a 60 pounder and I could barely pull it back. And it was set at 30 inches. So the thing about my archery is the reason I was so impressed in this, there's certain things, I know you. And I know there's certain things that you're willing to let go.

And there's certain things you're not willing to let go. There's things that pissed you off a long time ago and that shit just not going away, right? That's how I feel about archery shops. Because when you're in an archery shop and you get that group of elitist hovering around the counter, they only want to give attention to the guys dropping the cash. Right. And there's this hungry for knowledge guy that the guy you can really reach and just win over this guy and get him started down the right path. But if he has $10 in his pocket, all he's going to buy is Knox and Field Tips, they would never give me time of day. He's white trash mark coming here. I wanted to be so bad. I willed myself into the

archery community as it is, right? I wield myself into almost everything I've ever done. Like, I started believing I was that before I became that. And I would go to archery shops. I would just sit there and listen to their stories and like, see me. Just see me, man. I want that. So today, I walked in. Well, now I've been doing it long enough to kind of a few people know who I am. So I walked in. They were expecting this guy you were bringing. That's what I've wanted my whole lot. I want you to give me attention when I come in. I'm in the business of service. So I know good service when I see it. I want good service.

And I walked into the bow rack. And man, it was like roll out the red carpet. They took care of me and not just fluff, but meat and potatoes. It took me. I started bow hunting in 1983. I didn't kill my first deer until 1993. It took me 10 years to kill a deer with a bow. I just never gave up.

I just kept going and learning. And every bit of it was self-taught until I bought a bow in 1993. I bought a PSC. PSC was making them. It was a precision edge, like a carol, right? It was an edge bow. And I bought it brand new. And when I realized I bought it brand new from that shop and all the accessories and the overdraw this long and all that, it was an 80-pound bow.

I had a carol intruder. Yes. Those are good bows. Yeah, man, they were killers. And when I bought that bow, I got the service I'd been looking for. Then I got the training I'd been looking for. You know, it was a funny thing back then, man. As soon as someone broke out a chronograph, guess what came out next?

Allen wrenches. Yeah. We're cranking them down, baby. So I'm out there. Like, I remember shooting, you know what I'm crazy. I remember shooting 1913 aluminum's out of that bow at 80 pounds. A bam, right. Like a 22 going on.

Yeah, dude. But speed was king. Speed was king. You might have been getting 280. Well, that's because, I mean, we didn't, nowadays, it doesn't even matter how fast you shoot because you got that range finder. Yes. So then you just dial it up or you hold your pin, whatever.

But back then, because we didn't have good range finders, the flatter that arrow would shoot, the more leeway you had on judging yardage. And that made a big difference. So everybody was addicted to speed. How flat could I get that arrow to come out of its bow? Yeah. And then you get older and it's like,

well, I want, I want it quiet. I want it quiet. And forgiving. And a good shooting bow. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we do. You know what?

And part of that story there, you said that I started in 83. He didn't kill till 93. I just think that that needs to be acknowledged that, do you know how many people would have given up bow hunting in 10 years with no success. You know, so that says a lot about you,

just about what's important to you and what you're willing to do to achieve your goals. Because a very small percentage of people would stick to something with no success for 10 years. You know what I mean? It was tough.

So I got to hand it to you. That's for being a young man, especially when you're younger, you want results immediately. Yeah. You know, and you want to be acknowledged. And we want, you know, I can empathize with you going

into the bow shop and not getting, you know, not really respect, but even just anything. Yeah. Just see me. Just see me, man. Just say something. Yeah. And so I get that because young men, that's what they want more than anything. Yeah.

They want to be acknowledged. And, you know, whether it's, you know, negative or positive, guys do stupid shit just to get acknowledged. And so I, you know, I can, I definitely understand what you're saying. But, yeah, I mean, 10 years of grinding to get your first kid. It was awesome. One time in the dark, I'd climbed up this pine tree, and I had a lever-locked bear quiverer where you shove it in and turn it and lock it and I'd missed the out.

I shoved it in and it locked kind of out like this. And opening morning, we skipped high school. We skipped school that day, senior year. I was shooting fingers, brass pins, big old, by then I'd had me some orange. Those, like, 70-game Gator, too. Oh, yeah. And I had a hundred. The autumn orange.

Yeah. And my hero. then was Dan Fitzgerald. Yeah. That guy was aggressive. He was the Cam Haynes of the time. He was the guy, man. I wanted, like, so Pete Shepley put the fire in me,

and then Dan Fitzgerald took me next level. Like, you don't need a gun, son. You just grab that bow and go and get on the ground with him and tear it up. And I just thought that was the coolest guy. So, and he was shooting 150 grain. Rocky Mountain Supremes, man. They were like this freaking big in those big orange eras. And that's what I had.

No thought. of how slow my bow was, right? It was so, so lame. Anyway, the opening morning, man, I had me a little pile of corn sprinkled on the ground over there, and I was up in a pine tree sitting on a board, and I heard a limb pop, and I looked, and this dough just walked out. And this is my first experience shooting at a deer.

So I started in 83, never even had a chance to shoot at a deer. So the first shot I had at a deer was a doe when I was 17. And I remember thinking my bow was like a 200-pound draw. I couldn't even draw. Like, I was always like, if I can get to draw, the deer's dead. If I get the draw, the deer's dead. We always said that, right? So get the bow back.

All I remember, man, is just let go while the quiver flew off of my bow. The arrow missed the mark by a million miles, and the deer ran off. And I'm just like, oh, man, this is so hard. As I climbed down out of the tree, I get my quiver, I go back up in the tree. 30 minutes later, this rabbit hops out. He's eating corn. Freaking drill him an eyeball, man. Just p-tobo.

Yeah. Like, dang, man. No pressure on the rabbit. Yeah. And so in 93, I was not in over a friend's house. Trey Weed, he worked over at the, he went to high school with him. He had a little bit of land behind his house. And I'm forever thankful of his family.

I've not talked to them in 40 or however many years. But Trey Weed, he was a cool guy as in high school with him. And he worked at, he ran a propane tank place there, propane grill place there in Spring, Texas. And his dad, Bo, super cool dude. They said, hey, you can come up behind our house? you know, Quebec,

I had nowhere to hunt, man. I just hunting any woodlot I could get away with, man. I mean, just, if I could get in there and hunt them on hunt there. Yeah.

And I was in this pecan tree of all things. I climbed up in this big pecan tree and put a board, wedged it between the, there was no tree stands. This is that, that carol,

that PSC. Yeah. And I'm sitting there, opening morning, and this big dough was walking through the yopons, just bushes kind of back over behind my corn pile.

I drew back and again like I don't even remember aiming and the arrow went over the deer's back I had a face mask gloves pulled up all this stuff and I'm setting that board yeah this is so hard why does this have to be so hard

I just want to kill the deer with a bow and arrow and so I ripped my face mask down I take my gloves off and I'm just sitting there just staring I hear limb pop I look here comes a spike buck walks through there 12 ringed him got him that's my first buck

I shot him and that's a another defining moment changed me. Like, man, I'll never, I'll never. So in Texas, back then, everybody hunted with a bow from October 1st to Halloween. Next weekend, you're getting your 25-06 out

or your 7-Margoy, you're going deer hunting. That was, you bow-hunted the month they gave you to bow-hunting. That was it, right? So I had this 25-0-6 that I just freaking murdered everything with. And, but that year, I was like, man, I kept hunting over in the gun season. So the year I killed one, I killed two. You know, it's always that way.

So you kept hunting with your bow? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so, and then I end up to shoot some more deer with my rifle, but I killed a doe with it too. And here's my dad, my stepdad, Bill Catherall. Oh, my gosh. I love this little guy.

He always like, whatever, man, he kind of, he was my stepdad, but when it came to the hunting thing, I ruled the scene, and he'd just go along, whatever. So that white tail, too, I never killed a deer with. Yeah. I gave it to him, and he took it down to the bow shop, and they put the new little plastic dining cams on it and got it set up with some good arrows and some, um, some Hoyt Black Hole Broadheads way back in the day.

And so the day, so I killed my deer opening day and we're going to go to this place where we were going to camp out and hunt at this guy's property. He was going to let us hunt. So me and my dad just packed coolers and food and stuff and we just like did this little

backcountry hunt in East Texas. And we just set up a camp and a tent. Big adventure. Yeah, man. And so I go and I hunt and nature call. I take a number two, man. So I climbed down out of my oak tree.

And back then I didn't have any kind of stand. I'd go in a few days before a season, take a hammer and some 16-penny nails, and I'd put them in until they're about that far, sticking out of the tree, and I'd hook my pinkies on them, and I'd go 25 feet up oak tree and set on a limb. And my dad did the same thing, Bill.

Bill did the same thing. So I'm the hero, man. I got me a deer. No one else. I got a deer. And Bill don't have one, but I gave him my old bow, and I'm just like,

he's going to go through the motions with me. Just having that meant everything to me. I get down out of the tree about 10 in the morning. I got to go, man. I go down the woods, take a dump. I'll go over to camp. I walk into camp. I can see Bill standing over there.

It's like, what's he doing back already? And he's eating his apple. I just read this big boony hat on eating an apple. And you know, like you do when you're in camp, the first thing you do is you look at your buddy's quiver, right? Yeah. Missing an arrow. There was a bloody bent one in there.

What? What? I said, did you get one? Did you get one? He goes, I got two. I said, you got two. He goes, yeah, man, that dough and a little one came in there, and I shot that big dough, and she just ran over there and dropped.

I lit a cigarette, and I said there and that other one come back, and I shot it too. I was like, I love you so much, Bill. You're so amazing. And the dough, he saw fall and die, but the little one, her earling, it didn't, he hit it back a little bit. I had a track it, blood trail it. Yeah. And it was the first time me and him ever tracked a deer, and I found it.

I found it. Nice. And it was cool. and have that experience with him. How old were you at this time? I was 23. Okay. I was 23.

I started Bowen when I was 20 or 13. And here I'm 23. I get my first one and I'm the hero for exactly 12 hours. Yeah. And the next day, Papa Bill comes over and wax two. But just the way he said it. I got two. I was like, oh my God.

Yeah. Yeah, because he could kill two doze in that county and two bucks. Okay. Yeah, it was legal. Nice. Yeah, we were always legal. But it was super cool, man. And then just to stay on track with Bill, when I moved out west, I wanted very much like you.

I have this heart. I just want to give, man. I've seen it today from you. And it's just amazing what you do for people. And I've always kind of been that way, especially with Bill. And I wanted to do something for him. So in 1999, I was already shooting for Hoyt. And I wanted to go meildear hunting with him because that's my thing.

Mule deer is my thing. Yeah. And I wanted to mule deer. Yeah. Muley slayer. Yeah. And so back then you could buy Kaibab tags over the counter.

And Kaibs are beautiful place. It's a good old days. Yeah. And so I was like, hey, I want you to come out here, man. I bought him a bow from the archery shop

that I was shooting through, put it on a layaway. I bought him a bow. Everything nice, brand new setup. And I shipped it to him. Shoot it. And then I want you to come out in August,

September and come deer hunt with me. Well, he came out. And he'd been shooting. it I could tell. I checked him. He was shooting. He was shooting pretty good.

And I had just wrecked my horse. I had this Mustang named Cabresto that we rescued from the government. There's this pin in Governor Door, New Mexico. I was living in New Mexico at the time. They go round up the Mustangs, and they auction them off, sell them, get whatever. And there was one in this pin. I saw it when Dad was driving by, and I went over there, and I talked to somebody, and they said, yeah, that one's got a hernia.

They're going to put it down. I'm like, oh, man. And my wife had been wanting a horse. there's a difference between a Mustang and a horse. So I was like, man, so I don't remember all the logistics. The next thing I know, I've adopted this thing from the United States government. It wasn't nothing wrong with him. The hernia wasn't even a hernia.

So they put a little band on it. Dried, fell off. He's awesome. Sure-footed mountain horse, man. A Mustang. Wilder than, man. They're definitely sure-footed, but you can stay on them. And I took him to this guy, Jose was his name, big old, big, Hispanic.

panic, man. And he said, I'll break that horse for you, I say, but I am no whisper. I'm no horse whisper. I was like, all right, I don't care if you beat his brains in. We've got to get him doing something. Right. So Jose breaks this Mustang. And I was riding him, and man, I was going to take him in the backcountry that year. I was going to do a backcountry hunt. So I was going to just start riding him and get him real used to stuff. And then I was going to just be paying your don't, basically walk him in with all my fear. While I'm riding him on this gravel road, we lived in a mobile home back then out in the country. And I was up on top of this mesa. And the school bus came put on air brake.

Uh-oh. And that sucker reared up. I went, I went off the front. When I landed like this, it propped like two ribs off my stern. I broke my ribs. And I was shooting an 80-pound Hoyt Viper back then. And that was about two weeks before Bill showed up. Or no, about a week before Bill showed up.

So I had to make him drive. I was over there taking Vicodins, man, and going to the Kaibab. But I still wanted to hunt with him. I'm just taking pain. I'm hurting bad. And we get over there. And there's not much. you can do for that either.

No, you just got to let them in. You got to write it out. Yeah. Yeah. And so I had, we had turkey tags. I think you could kill turkey there too. I think we had turkey tags and deer tags. I paid for all of it, man.

I mean, I had no business. I was making nothing, but I just wanted to take care of my pops. Yeah. So I bought him all this stuff and I paid for everything. We went out there, I had my cab over camper. I just like, man, we're going to kill monsters here. This is the Kaibab. We're going to kill giant bucks.

So we split up and I put him in this spot. I thought he might see some deer. And he was like, I'm just going to shoot one that's legal. I'm like, okay. And I was like, well, I'm going to try to shoot a four point. I at least want to shoot a four point buck. And I'm going down this ridge, and I'm just hurting, man. I already took my pain meds, and I'm just hurting.

I just sat down by this tree. And I look, here comes this dough walking up toward me. There's another deer behind it. It's a spike buck with velvet, but like that. And he walked up there about 18 yards and picked up a mushroom. I just remember that poor little sucker sat in there eating that mushroom looking around having the best day of his life, you know. And I freaking hammered him with that 80-pound hoy.

I was like, well, soon he pops home with some meat no matter what. Yeah. And I remember putting that deer up on my shoulders. That's how we carry them out, right? I still carry a deer out like that. It's not for show. It's just simply the easiest way to get a deer out of the woods. Yeah.

If you're not going to break it down and put it in a pack, just put it over your shoulders. Just way easier, man, I think. Yeah, I agree. And I come back. He was so excited, you know. And I got one. He didn't carry it. Man, you got one.

And I got, yeah, man. Any buck was a trophy back down. Oh, yeah, man. That is amazing. That's a good old days. Yep. And so the next day, we're going to drive up to this new spot. And I come around the bin, man.

There's a four-point buck standing in the bar ditch. Already hard antler. It was later in September. I was like, Bill, right there, right there. I said, I'm going to pull up here. You get out. He's over to the edge of the road. Shoot him up there.

Bill gets out, and he gets about to half draw. Man, the deer's only 30 yards. It was like 140-inch four-point. He was just right off. He gets to half-draw, and that bow explodes. Oh, no. He had his arrows all put together. in his in his case.

No, must have hit the string. Yeah. It cut the yolk. Yeah. And so when he got that pressure on it, it broke the other yoke. Oh, God. That bow you bought me broke. It blew up.

And I'm like, come on, man. Yeah. So that wrecked our hunt. We went home with a spike. And I, back then, man, I didn't start using a meat processor until I moved back to Texas, man. I did everything myself. I'd go get soot, put if I wanted fat in it or somebody to make sausage, whatever. I made, I did everything myself.

everything DIY. So I went home, ground that deer up for him, made him some hamburgers, some steaks, and sent it home with him. So he got a buck. But that's the only one of the only mule deer hunts, me and him ever went on. It was a cool experience. So, I mean, that's your origin story for Bowhoney. When did the writing start?

When did you want to be, like, in the industry? Man, that's an awesome question, man, because this kind of connects us right here. I, um, so I remember. I remember laying in bed with my wife. So I got married out of high school. I've been married 36 years. I married my high school sweetheart. We've been together ever since we were 17.

But I would read to her at night. I would just, she would read to me and when I'd read to her, and there's something special about reading to another person. You know, it's just such a connection. I used to read her Roy. Yeah, I heard. I love that. I love that.

Not exactly my wife, but I love that. We'd read bow hunting stories. I love that. And my wife, she would read me stuff that I was like, but I would read. read her, Bob Rob, I would read, I think he was one of my favorite writers, but back then, and then Jim Zumbo, and I'd just read anything that was interesting to me, and I'd read, and she'd just listen.

What was your favorite story? Like, adventure stories? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, big adventure stories, man. And these guys were, and I would tell her, I'm going to do this, I'm going to go do this stuff someday. I'm going to go be one of these guys.

This is when I'm 22 years old, right? I love magazines. I still, I know you do, too. I love magazines, man. I haven't had a new magazine in so long, but I, I joined Jason's thing, the epic outdoors. Yeah. Those are beautiful magazines.

You get four times a year and you just, oh, man, I read the stories. I love them. But anyway, I'd read to my wife and I'm going to be, I'm doing this. This is my life. I'm going to be a big time hunter and I'm going to write about it. I just want to do that. And so. What'd she think?

Dude, yeah, you are. She believed in you? My wife's believed in me. Like no one else ever believed in me. She still does. That's great. She's my number one fan. Just the absolute love of my life.

But she has always been that rock for me, dude. Like, not to get off the stray, but she would sign me up for stuff. I didn't even know it. Like we went to when we were in New Mexico, the first state indoor tournament I ever went to. This is how we work. We're in the archery shop talking to Jeremy Dugger and Larry, my friends, and she gets a flyer. Hey, this is a state championship down in Albuquerque. You're going to go to it.

You're going to win it. I was like, what? She said, yep, start shooting your bow. I don't even know what their scoring rules. I don't know. This is in the mid-90s. Like I just moved to New Mexico. We had no family there.

We just packed up and said, we're going to go start our life out in Mexico. And that's what we did. And so we would do things like that because she just like, I think you're good. She believed in me. Like, you can go do this. And I was like, well, shoot.

There was no internet. So I had to go like, I had to go back to the archery shop. Hey, what do I do here? We got to shoot these five spots. And if you could hit all the whites, that's a 300, you'll win with a bow. Okay.

Load it up, shoot my 80, pound bow with hunting arrows my carol that I had at the time. I took it down to Albuquerque and I think I placed fifth with that thing in the bow hunter class right and then I realized I liked that and within a couple of years man I was the state indoor champion in the pin class that was that right then I and then I decided to go to pro and start shooting three Ds and stuff but the writing I knew it was going to be that well when I lived in New Mexico um Jeremy had left to see us sporting goods went down to East Main Trade Center, which was a big pawn shop. It was the big hunting store in that town.

It was a pawn shop, but he sold new guns and hunting equipment. He was wonderful Glenn Fuller, excellent man. And he hired Jeremy to run an archery shop for him, him and Dana Clevenger. And I was, Jeremy, I had just, I've told mine in his story a thousand times. So I had keyed in on where he was hunting. and went to him and pulled a map when they said, I'm thinking about going here. He's like, well, you're going to be all over top of me,

so you might as well just come hunt with me. That's how we started our friendship, right? And that family took me under their wing, and he saw something in me. And so this is kind of hard. Jeremy Dugger's my Roy. Gotcha. And just believes in me like, I believe in Jesus.

He just believes in me, man. He's just that friend, dude. She's light, and he's salt. And he lifts me up, man. And we were going fly fishing one day. This is, sorry. We're going fly fishing one day. And he goes, hey, he'd already sign me on.

He saw me coming in the shop. And he's like, man, there's something special about you. He didn't say that, but his actions proved that, right? There's something about you. And he's like, hey, you'll be a co-op shooter? I'm like, what? You'll be a co-op shooter. What's that, man?

I know what that means. He goes, well, we'll give you a bow at 50% off cost. And you'll shoot for Hoyt, you'll represent Hoyt, but when you go to these tournaments around here, you'll represent our store. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool, man, I'll do that. He goes, we'll get some shirts with your name on it.

And he goes, we just signed on Jimmy Hamburt, too, and Jimmy's going to be our target guy, but you're going to be our hunting advisor. At the time, I'd kill three deer with a boat. But I'm going to be a hunting advisor. I was like, okay, man, yeah. Because I loved it big, man. And I'd killed a lot with a gun.

I loved it big. I loved archery and bow hunting big. And when you love it that big. Be a staff shooter and have your shirt with the name on it. That's a big deal for Young Bo Hunter. Yeah, man. And I'm like, yes, I'm all over that, man.

And so I took it so serious. I read everything Randy Omer wrote. I read everything. He was my guy. So I set my sights. I've emulated different men in my life that I'm a chameleon dude. I can emulate different men for the right reason. Like I told you about Tommy Young,

I emulated him to be the man I am. I emulated Randy Omer to be the industry man than I am. A deadly shot. approachable, friendly, intelligent about all matters, archery and bow hunting, and just be a killer, but just be a good guy. Yeah. First time I ever saw Randy Ulmer was at a shoot and a kid wanted his autograph. Randy Olmer reached in his quiver and pulled out his own ACC and autographed the vein and handed

it to the kid. I'm like, man, that's a $30 arrow. Yeah. And he just gave it to that kid. Pretty nice. Will you be my dad? So Randy knows the stuff about me too. Me and him talked a lot.

He's become a close friend. Not close. He's become an industry friend. And when he started hunting Colorado, I was living there. And he would call me and ask questions. So that's pretty big deal. And you had Randy Homer asking advice about stuff. I looked up to him big time also.

He was a legend. He's a legend. He's a good man. He's just a good guy. He's always been good and he's always been consistent. That's what I look for in a person. He'd be consistent. So I was reading his stuff and I started going to tournaments and just,

I took it way more serious than the next guy. So guess what happens in? you're the big fish and little pond. And I mean, I'm not just going out when. And I'm destroying by 30, 40 points between me and second place. And I'm just, and that's with pins. Once I put a scope on, I was like 40 points ahead of the next guy. And so I started out doing that.

Well, so Jeremy gave me that opportunity to be that guy. I was supposed to be just the hunting guy, but I can't. If it's a bow, I'm going to be competitive with it. And so I was spanking the pants off everybody. in competition until some people got serious about it. Then, you know, over a little bit of time, the next guy starts learning on, you know, and then you got competition.

I had to travel outside of my realm to get competition, though. And, but anyway, we're going fly fishing one day. Me and Jeremy, he goes, hey, he just throws this magazine in my lap, and it's Eastman's Bow Hunting Journal. First issue. This is a 99, I think. 99, yeah. Late 99, early 2000.

He throws me this magazine. He goes, hey, you can write. You can go hunting. write your stories, take good pictures, put it in there, they send you a hat. I was like, what? He goes, yeah, they'll send you a hat says, pro staff. No way! Yeah, dude, you can write.

I was like, who's Eastman? I'm like, you know, the old guy Gordon Eastman, when his son Mike now is running this thing and you can write for it. This is my friend showing me how to elevate. Yeah. Right? Not, I'm going to suppress you. I'm not going to show you this because I want to be the guy.

Now, you go, I know who you, I know who you want to be. You want to be great at this and share your experience. You want to go be bow hunting great. not popular, not famous, but greatness. I've always wanted to be bow hunting greatness. That's what I wanted. Like just a good, I wanted to be a Randy Homer. Yeah.

That's just, I want to go be great. But to your point, to have a friend that believes in you like that. Yeah. And you're right, because most guys want to suppress competition. Yes. You know, or they want the shine. Instead, he's showing you where you can get some. Yes.

And he knows your dream. Yeah. He knew my dream. And so he throws me this magazine, goes, you can go right, and they'll send you a hat and stuff. Cool, man. Well, I, that year,

I'd never killed one Popin Young animal. This was in 2000. I'd never killed a Popin Young animal of any kind. I killed an 80-inch antelote, my first antelote. I went to New Mexico. I got him. It's a big buck.

Yeah, 80-incher. Then I killed a 145-inch net, four-by-four mule deer buck, and then I killed a 143-inch white-telling Kansas. I killed three Popin Younger. Bucks. It's a good year.

Here we go, baby. I'm sponsored. I got my name on my shirt. I got the street creds. Now I can go write something that's meaningful. And I wrote an article called a Pope and Young medley. Like a vegetable medley? Well, this is a Popen Young medley.

I remember it. And I wrote it and I reached. And so I'd gotten an issue of Eastman's in the mail. And guess who was on the freaking cover of it? This dude named Cameron Haynes. And it was the most beautiful picture of an antelope you've ever seen. The light was beautiful. had your bandana on and here's this

golly man, things amazing. So I called the editor at the time something you told me early Rod Hart. Rod Hart. I called Rod. And I said, hey, I got this story. These are the three animals I killed. Okay. They meet the qualifications. They are DIY. The white tail was DIY

and the other two were DIY public land. So they all kind of meet the criteria to write the article and I'm glad they did that, right? Like there's criteria to get in our magazine. You know, back down there's no fences here, right? So I want to have the street credge to be this guy or to write this story. So I'll call him and I'm comparing my photos to your photo on the cover and he's like, that guy, don't, don't,

I just remember his voice. Don't worry about that guy. Guy's an anomaly. You don't, don't, you, whatever. Like, he wasn't discrediting you. It was like, that's so far from where you are right now. Don't worry about this guy. I was like, okay. So I write the article on hand wrote it. I hand wrote it on paper. I didn't have a computer back then. And I went over my sister. their in-law's house and she had a computer and I sat there one night at their house and I typed it all up mailed it to him and dude I subscribed yeah I had already subscribed that's how I got yours and when I saw my work in that magazine like it was just like getting a gold medal man like golly that's just millions of people are going to see me no I remember that feeling too yeah I mean

when you when you works not so you have to work so you have to work so hard to make it happen. And it's the sacrifice or years of putting in time, of learning this discipline, this bow hunting, then getting it done on a hunt, and then writing an article is hard work. Yeah. So to see that in print where other people are going to see it,

and your hard work is validityed right there. Yeah. That is powerful. And I had the cap, man. And you got the pro staff cap from Ethan's bowing. Yes, dude. I totally get it because I would race. If it was like within a month of when my magazine might be coming out that I had an article in,

I'd be racing to the mailbox every day. Yeah. Just waiting. It's so like, no one listen to this is going to understand that unless they've done what we're doing. Because it's such instant gratification to just pick that phone up and find whatever you wanted to say today. Well, and now you can just post it and say whatever you want. Before, if we wanted to share something other than if it was at the bow shop, it was six. months.

You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, man. Just having that opportunity to pin up a picture at the bow shop was big deal. Yeah. And then you write an article. And then everybody at the bow shop that gets that magazine looking at you different. Like that guy's legit, man. And it's an awesome feeling, man.

And that got me into Eastman's. And then like I said earlier, we were on the mountain talking. I learned to. So something about me is I'm like that Don William song, good old boys like me. I was smart and I could choose. I could learn to talk like the man on the 6 o'clock news. I can read the room and I can speak the language very fast. And I just, I might do that.

That comes from the beat downs of the childhood that I had. I had to watch what room I was in when I was in it. And it just, you know, it's just part of who I am, man. I'm figuring things out. Survival instinct. Yeah, survival instinct. Well, same thing in writing. So when my article came out, I would read, I'd go back and read what I wrote and I'd look at

the word smithing they used. in what they was published. Okay, changed this word for this word. Flip this sentence. And it was pretty good. I wasn't good in school, but I was good in English. I was pretty good in English.

It's terrible math, but I'm good in English. So I enjoyed it, and I wrote about hunting in high school. I mean, I would write articles about, I read stories at essay. Essay I wrote when I was running around with Fred Miller, he taught me the art of going and bartering

in a pawn shop, how to talk somebody down if you have cash instead of a check or a credit card. I wrote an essay about that my senior year of how to jew down or pawn shop to get a gun at the price you want. Isn't that weird, dude? But that's the kind of guy I am. I wrote about that. And I got an A plus on. She's like, that's some crazy content, but man, you know your business about this, Mr. Smith.

Yeah. Yeah. That's my passion. Just to know it, but also to put it pin to paper where it makes sense. Yeah. You know, so I mean, that's a skill. Yeah. Yeah.

And I had that. And so I was able to write a decent article. And then when I would look at what they edited and what I got back, I learned a self-edit. And then inject this dude named Cam Haines in 2002. So I'm getting a magazine for a year or two. And in there, like I'm thirsty. I'm hungry and I'm wanting more.

I want more information. I want everything I can read about hunting. And because I want to go next level, right? And so, oh, good story about how I got to Hoyt too. Okay. Don't let me forget to tell you about Hoyt because I did it on purpose. I got crappy on purpose. Okay.

Yeah. So I see this ad. They let you run ads in Eastmans for your, it had to have been to let you run ads for your book in Eastman's, right? For your first book, Bow Hunting Trophy Blacktail. And I got that. I saw that. And so I remember writing a check and mailing it to you. And I get this post office, you know, the boxes you put books in in the mail.

I'm like, I got this book. I think that's the first thing I ever bought mail ordered in hunting was your book. So I get this book. And I'm like, it's hardback. This guy's got this velvet buck on the cover. And your pictures just spoke to me, man. I'm like, this guy is connecting with me. Like I just, dude, I just felt it immediately when I started reading it from the forward, from Lon Lauber, because I was already reading his stuff.

Yeah. Like, oh, Lon Lauder, that's the man right there, you know. And so I really liked his writing. He was a good bow hunter. And then he wrote your forward and then your pictures, man, just the, I talked about that arrow coming out of the page. And you and Tracy with the llamas. I was like, this is a good dude. Because Ed, that matters to me.

your relationship with your wife and how you treat your family like we had that chili in there tonight with your that felt like I was just one of the cousins man yeah felt so good I just felt so inviting and warm and loving in there man and so I knew this is my kind of guy and it just made me hungry for more of your writing and then when you started putting features in the magazine I just became a fan like I just I couldn't that like when I would when I'd get the magazine I'd go straight to the table of contents and see what Cameron Haynes wrote and I'd go find it because that's all I cared about I didn't care about I didn't care up about this Yahoo from Montana, it killed a bull.

I want to go see what Cam said. That's when I got those magazines. That's all that mattered to me. And I saw you on TV hunting, I think it was when you were hunting with Mike Eastman, and you kill that hard antler buck in Montana in that ditch or something. I saw that right before I met you. That was like 2001-ish, I'm guessing somewhere in there, 2000, 2001. I can't remember all the dates.

But I knew that was the first time I saw you and heard you talking. No, it was some little bitty-four points you killed. I think that's what it was. And I think that was in Montana too. But anyway, I heard you talk and I was like, godly, I liked that guy. And then I saw the first, it was like the first ISE show ever in Denver in 2002.

I went and, yeah, they had that little tent set up where you're playing the videos in there, you and Roy and your bear hunts and stuff. And I went in there and I was like, man, this guy, the way you were dressed was different. Like, I never told you this. I'm going to tell you. I was like, man, this guy is coolish.

This guy is cool, man. He's different because you had on, like, pleaded, like, pants, and you had on a blue shirt, and you had these cool, like, buckle shoes on. You weren't dressed like a redneck. You were dressed like a professional bow under. And I'm like, man, this guy is, I mean, not, not, like, no homo. But I was like, this guy has got it. He's put together, and you were so cool, though.

The thing about you is how cool you are. And you was like, hey, what's going on, man? I'm Mark Smith and da-da-da-da. You're like, oh, you know who I? Like back then, you were still surprised someone to who you were, right? Yeah, yeah, man, I know. I got your book. And you were like, oh, really?

You got my book? I got your book. I read all your stuff. And then there was a copy of my article setting on the counter. And I went, yeah, yeah, that's me. You went, this is you? I'm like, yeah. And then you were like, you paid attention.

You're like, oh, okay. And then you came back over to the booth. Like, you found me later. You came back over to our booth. I was there with archery adventures, the archery shop I was shooting for. You wanted to talk to me. I could tell you. You couldn't act the same way I did.

And we started talking. And, man, I think from that point on, we traded emails. And it just became, that was, that's the day we met. We became friends. And then I can remember wanting to do good so that you would be proud of me. Like, I want to do good, man. I want to kill animals and I want to write these stories. I want Cam to be proud of me.

That's so, that's so it takes, I think it takes balls to say that these days, everybody. But it's true, man. I wanted you to be proud. of me because I was proud of you. I was proud of and I could see what you were doing. Like you were breaking the code to be a standout what you call an outlier. You were, you were breaking the code for outliers in our industry and I've always respected that and I've always seen that. I've never thrown shade at you. I've always just was such respectful of your space and what you were doing because I knew what you were doing. And I try to emulate that

too. Like I want to, you know, not I don't take risks. like you do. We talked about that today. I don't take big risk, but I just never felt like I could, man, and maybe I might be able to now. But I just saw what you were doing. And so I would write those articles knowing you were going to be the guy to read them and get them right and then publish them. And then you would call me because like that time in 2001, when I had that incredible season, that warm Colorado welcome. And I killed a big 181-inch buck, a six-point, no, a five-point bull, and another analog. of Snyder, me and Aaron Snyder, had gone out and killed this antelope, like, on the dark side of the moon.

He talks about that to this day. Like, that guy disappeared in this grass. It was an inch tall. I didn't, like, whatever. Him and Travis were sitting in my minivan. And he goes, and so I go out there and I shoot this antelope, man. I don't know how I did it, but I got him killed and I come dragging him back. And Travis is in the backseat.

He's a little kid, right? Yeah. And Snyder's sitting in the driver seat of my wife's van. I was driving around glass and an envelope on this ranch shoot. And he's like, you know, Snyder. Holy F word. I think he got some. something. And he goes, he laughed. He goes, Travis looks up and he goes, you've never

hunted my dad for have you? And it was a cool moment for me, right? And so Snyder, we only hunted one or two days together and I killed this antelope. So I had this antelope, this buck, outsized really big buck and this deer. And that's the year the bear trashed our camp. Right. I just tore all of our, we left it. Yeah, we went home. We had that in the magazine. Yeah. Yeah. And you needed more information on that because you actually wrote a sidebar about bear safety for me. I didn't write about it. I just said the bear tore up my stuff, and then there was the picture of the tent, just trash. We left this tent with all the food dumb, right?

Stupid. All this stuff for a week to come back the next week to hunt. We showed up to camp, and it is like a bulldozer went through there. And so you called me on the phone. And back then it was just, if you don't talk to somebody, you're going to call them. You're not going to get, you know, DM, I'm on nothing. So you called me. I remember I was on Parker Road in Denver, Colorado.

I can remember it like it just happened five minutes ago. My wife's driving, and I was riding this, and you call. Hello? Hey, this can. Hey, man, what's going on? You're like, hey, I just need a little more information about the bear. I was going to talk to you about it. I was like, do you need to send you something?

You're like, no, man, we're getting this thing ready for press. Just tell me real quick, some stuff. I told you the stuff. And, man, exactly what I told you. Yeah. You put it in the article. And then, boom, I just started. Then I was, that's like, man, now I've been in Eastpins twice with epic adventure.

And then, and so meanwhile, respect to the Hoyt story, I had been trying to get on with Hoyt. And I was sending Mike, I'd ask Jackhead. He was the rep at the time. And I said, hey, man, who do I need to talk to to going Hoyt pro-staff? I want to go full-blown pro. I'm going to be Pro Boe Hunter. Why Hoyt?

Because of Randy? No. I just knew Hoyt were the best Bose. Okay. I remember being honest. I just felt they were. And Jeremy did too. And I just felt they were the best.

They've always looked like the most well-engineered bow. Yes. Just like, just something about them. Just premium. Yeah. And I'd already had already had great. success with them. And to this day, I think they have a warranty department. I couldn't tell you. Yeah. I've never to send one back either. Since 1998, I've never even tested their warranty

service. So I have no idea if it's good or not. Yeah. That says a lot. And so I, um, I wanted to be on their pro staff because of Randy. And I wanted to be on there because it was this prestigious place to be, man. And I just felt like I was pretty good bow hunter. I needed to be a pro. And so I kept sending letters, resumes, like putting together a resume like with pictures. And articles and I send them in every year I'd get the dear John letter back from Mike Luper not at this time not this time thanks for your interest thanks for your interest yeah that's hard I know I know I'm like you don't even know me man if you knew me you'd like I'd make you'd like me and so I was like you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna stick off the thumb right in their

eye and I went back to Grover Grover Cassida he was running the archery shop there on the archery hut the one bell pelagrino owns now yeah yeah it was on the Air Force Academy. Yeah. Yeah. And Grover Cassida owned it at the time. And he had just signed me on to shoot for him, and he didn't carry Hoyts at the time. And I was shooting Hoyt's for Jackhead.

So that was, I was getting a free bow from the rep. Right. And then I had to represent the region, not just a shot, but the region. And I wanted to go factory pro staff. And so. Because that was next level. That was the highest level. Yeah.

And so I got the dear John letter from Looper, and it just really set me back. Like, man, this is my third year trying. I had no business. I had no business being on their pro staff. But it's no fault to Mike Looper at all. I'll just say, I wrote my first book after killing seven bucks. So seven bucks, all of a sudden I'm writing a book on how to do it.

So it's like we sometimes, you know, this journey. the patience is a hard part. You want that end result before you really earned it. Oh, yeah. If we're being truthful. I didn't really earn the right to have written a book yet. But I did. I'm like, screwed.

I'll get other experts, South Cox, Lonlobber, and they can help me put this package together. So I totally get where you're coming from on third year. You want to be factory pro stuff on probably one of the biggest archery companies in the world. Oh, yeah, for sure, man. Yeah. And so I went down. to the archery hut there and I was talking to Grover and he goes well I don't I'll sign you on I

know your reputation and stuff and you can shoot and you're nice guy and all that but I don't carry Hoyt so what you got you know he was a huge PSC dealer so PSC let me see what you got that was the year the pream this is 2003 the year the Primo's STL speak the language came back can't even speak the land that was back when they used the barnsdale I think it was Armdell limbs. Yeah. Because I got burned on those tear drop

axle blowouts. Oh, no, you did too. I went through three of them in one season. Yeah. And so they were awesome bows, though, but this,

that was not good. No. Plastic injection molded on a bash for them. They're great people, whatever. But that Primos had those barnsdale limbs

and I liked that. And I shot that thing, lights out. I won the state outdoor target championship in the pro division with that bow and camouflage. It was a solo cam bow. It was a single cam bow.

It was a good shooting bow. And I freaking, dude, I, I shot really good. And I think there was about, and ain't like I was the only pro. I think there was like eight in the pro division. And I just wore them out with that camouflage bow. I didn't even work. And I was,

I wasn't factory pro staff. So if I'm not factory pro staff, I'm nothing. I wore a plaid shirt and a Dr. Pepper ball cap with a camels. bow bow and I spanked the pants off these guys and won some money and a trophy and then I took that same bow and there was a guy working there that could make stickers I said I want you to make me the biggest that will fit on this quivering bow red PSE stickers but you remember John May yeah John May was a

great bow hunter I don't know what happened to him that guy was a great he was a good guy we had him on the cover of Eastons of the big white tail big heavy white tail you remember that yeah kind of like at a night shot and then the antlers were yeah yeah I think it was a white tail. Pretty sure. He's just a good, I met him. He was a very humble good man. Yeah, yeah.

I have no idea. That guy fell off the planet, man. Great bow on her. Him. And you were on staff then, him, Jeff Dobbins. You remember that? There's a lot of people on that staff back then. And I, and so that was part of it, too.

Cam's on there. I don't go over there and be with those guys. And so I had this guy made me these big red PSC cutout stickers. And I put one on the hood of the quiver, on the front, face of the limbs, on the inside of the. limbs. I want every, I want the world to know I'm a PSE guy. And I'm going to go tear this mountain down. I'm going to make boy feel it. Yeah. And I did. That's when I went and wrote that determined article. And I, and I remember setting down by that creek, washing my face and

get my cup. And that when you open that spread determined. Yeah. And there's just me with all this PSC stuff. Well, that was in September. I killed that. Well, in October of the next the sales meeting, they would have this KB Outdoors, that was Jackhead, he would bring all of his sales, all of his shops in

to show them the gear and everything. It was at Hoyt headquarters. And I went to, I was going to tell you another cool story. This would lead into something else. So I went to, Grover's like, hey, I'm going to start carrying Hoy.

I was like, oh, okay. He goes, well, I know you know those guys and everything. Would you like to go over there and represent the shop and go set in? I'll go over there. Is Mike Lipper going to be there? He's like, yeah, so this article had just come out and, man, it was good.

Y'all did a good job. That's the only time I've ever been on the cover, but I'm in the corner of the cover with my pack on glass. But all that PSC stuff caught Mike Looper's attention because he got the hour, he was going to read everything that was coming out back then and he saw that. Well, I went to the sales meeting and I'm sitting in there, and Mike Looper just keeps staring at me across the room. And I can tell he's looking at me, right?

Like he's recognizing who. I'd never met him before. And so we break for our first P break in the morning, like 10 or something. And he walks over, hey, you look really familiar. I was like, yeah, I'm Mark Smith. Or who are you? He goes, I'm Mike. I'm like, oh, nice to meet you, Mike.

He goes, hey, I saw your Eastman's article. What happened, bro? What happened? I was like, what do you mean what happened? He goes, you had a PSE in your hand. He goes, what would it take to get a Hoyback in those hands? I said, that's all on you, bro. Yeah.

That's all on you, man. I've written you, I've called, I've done everything I can, and I'm going where the opportunities are. And, you know, it's a pretty good bosey got over there. So I don't, you know, I'm like, dude, I do anything. Yeah, he's like, come over, come over to the, can you come over to headquarters after this thing today? I'm like, yeah.

Dude, I walked out of there with a signed contract. Nice. More stuff that me and my family can carry of Hoyt's swag. They take me over to Easton, check this out. And he's like, we're going to take over to Easton, too, son. So they take me over to Easton. And I can't remember the guy's name then. He was the marketing guy for Easton.

But he liked to. Not Gary. No, it was before Gary. Okay. This was in 2003. Going into the 2004 season. Okay. And, yeah.

And so I go over there to Easton and the Fat Boy and the Axis weren't launched yet. They were going to launch them with ATA in January. I'm pretty sure. and I would have to go I don't know who I would ask but I'm pretty sure I'm the first human being to ever kill an animal

that needs to an Axis arrow because I went over there I got to sign contract a target bow and a hunting boat you know they're going to put me on hunting and target pro staff I mean they went all overboard

that's awesome yeah dude oh yeah that's a big deal yeah it was really big and I'm not trying to it was amazing like my wife and I are like a crime we left there like wow

because she was part of it My kids have hoit hooties. You know what I mean? My whole family. So we go over to Easton and this guy's like, hey, come here. We're not launching these yet, but I want you to have them. This is going to be our target arrow for like the 3D guys. It's a fat boy.

It's a thick carbon error. Line cutter. Yeah, I was like, okay. And he goes, and this one right here, man. This is the Eastern Axis we talked about in the salesmen. He's not going to launch. So you can't really let nobody see them until January. I said, okay.

Well, I had a bison hunt. in November. So this was like in October. I killed a bison with the eastern axis at 60-yard pass-through, shot him through the shoulders and dumped him. He didn't go nowhere. He didn't go nowhere. I'm filmed and just dumped him.

And it was private land in Colorado, but there was a place down the South Park. It was a huge ranch, like six thousands of acres, man. And so you couldn't just walk out and shoot one with a bow. The guy was like, y'all ain't going to get one with a bow. You can bring a gun to shoot one. You can get one with a bow. Like, oh, okay.

Challenge accepted. And we were in a foot of snow, me and Sean Denison. And, dude, it was $600. And you got to keep the whole thing. Wow. The meat, the hide, the head. I got the shoulder mount. I got the hide.

And the meat, those, oh, my gosh, those prime ribs were just amazing. And my wife's like, man, that was like, you know, if you could ever do that again, I keep putting in for the Henry's over in Utah. I'm like 17 points now. But it wasn't wild Henry's, but it was a hunt. You know, I made a hunt out of it. I found a two-year-old bull I wanted to kill. and I stayed after him all day in snow.

And here I was raised up out of the snow with my Ultratech, man, 60 yards and just laced him like right in the pocket. That feels good. Oh, dude. But I came with Easton Axis in 2003. Fred Eichler did not see his first Easton Axis until 2004. And so I'm like. Yeah. Yeah.

But it was cool, man. Like I have. Just to be acknowledged like that. I just have that. I have that. I have that. I can go look at that picture of that bison today and go, I know that story. And that's believing in myself, man.

So it's hard and we're impatient, but that self-belief, like even when no one else believes in me, all I need to know is, you know, have the Lord in my heart, and I have my wife on my side and the rest is cake, baby. I'm going to get mine. I'm going to go get mine. The hard thing has been for me, speaking of that, is that whole I'm going to get mine.

You've got to realize when you've gotten yours and you've had enough and that's time to share. Yeah. And it was hard for me, all in that space coming up together. I always say me and you came up in the industry together, and we did, but I realize you were a little ahead of me, but you were so determined. You had such a, I can't say you had a plan. You were just, I think you're a lot like me where I don't necessarily have goals, but I don't have limits. I guess what I tell everybody,

even about my job and my day job, my career and refrigeration. I don't know. We're going to go because I'm a director now, and I have a huge span from Farmington, New Mexico, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and everything. everything in between. So Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico is all mine. I didn't go to college. I started off sweeping a refrigeration shop with a broom. And I'm a director on like doing good. And they're like, well, where are you going to do next? I don't know. If they need a president, I'll be the president. They want a CEO, I'll be the CEO. I don't know. I'm not going to put that limit on myself. Do I have a goal to go be a CEO? No. They have to travel too much. It cut into my

hunting. I don't want to go do that. But if they called upon me, I go where the need is. Right. And that's what I love about the group I work with now is, man, everybody's reaching across the aisle, helping each other all the time. I'm just, I don't, I'm where I belong in my day job. I just with the best people, man. That's great. Yeah. Shout out to the art of com group. I love those guys. I have just a cool CEO and my boss is just freaking salt, man. And I just, I don't have. I don't have. I don't. I don't. have to go to work, I get to go to work. And I love that saying you say it too.

I get to get up and do my job every day. And I just love, I have a team of men that they would crawl through the gates of hell for me because they know I would lead them there. I would be with them too. And so I love that part of it. But, you know, just being a leader and giving back to those people and giving them my time and knowing when I've had it, I've got mine. I can make things look easy because of experience,

but just given that encouragement, I have a group text with all my field leaders every day. And I tell them, good morning, fellows, how are we doing today? Anybody got anything burning down that needs my touch today? That's got to mean the world. I've never had a boss yet to me. Right.

And they'll be like, most of them are like, oh, I'm good, but some of them will say, yeah, man, I'm burning down over here, and I need help in this El Paso, where I need help in Abilene or whatever. And I call another service manager. I get people rock and roll into the deck will help them out. give just be there for them man and so that kind of you know my hunting career and my work career

they're the same thing it's about troubleshooting some problem solving and getting it done because backcountry hunts for a lot like that you know and so as I've been grinding and working my way up through the mountains and at my job they just paralleled each other man just like you you know it's like you saw me on that mountain today man that's troubleshooting I'd get that rock over here over here in the center. I'd bend over and I never puked. No, you didn't. I never cried. No, you did great. You did great. Yeah, so it's, so you're so you're kind of coming up to the ranks, making a name for yourself, getting added on to Hoyt's factory staff, everything going good. And then you were kind of saying, well, when have you got, you know, like determined? When,

when were you satisfied? Do you know what I mean? Or you said you don't put limits on yourself. I mean, you mentioned me that I have. hadn't and so how is how is that your journey kind of kind of uh mimic that I guess um like in the hunting industry of no limits yeah um the more involved are you where you want to be now no oh no I don't have my own studio I don't have lift run shoot I don't have to keep hammering collective and I don't want to copy you but I want what you have but I don't want to copy you I want to go have what mark has yeah I'm not a elk guy I'm mule deer guy right I'm going to be the mule deer guy that's, I don't know, but I don't, I want to do more.

Yeah. If I could make, if I could go, um, I don't know, man, I just love bow hunting. And then whatever the next steps are for me, if you had told me prior to three months ago that I'd be sitting here doing this with you, I wouldn't think you would ever, even though you're my good friend. I feel like you're my good friend. I, I don't belong here. Well, I don't belong in this room. But, you know, I think people listening to this that don't know you. You know, I mean, a lot of people in the industry know you.

Some that listen to this won't know you. But you cannot question your integrity, your heart, the words you speak. Anybody listening can be like, that guy's a straight shooter. So whatever he's saying, whatever it is, I might not know that much about it, but I believe it. Yeah. And that goes so far in this day and age, you know, because people just want. somebody who's gonna be honest with them yeah so you're honest um so i mean i think it's i love having you here and it's like what i the hunting industry it's huh you know there's so many so many

stories you could tell about it good and bad right you know because as we've said i've mentioned it there's a lot of ego and hunting and you know as i was telling you earlier today that's kind that goes with the territory because you have to believe in yourself to at such a high level to be successful in the mountains because everything is against you. So you have to have a little bit of an ego. I don't know if it's self-belief ego, those get mixed up. But when you're that type of person, you are going to be in competition with other men. So that's how the hunting industry works. But point is, it's like I, with you, you've always been in my corner. Yeah. You've always believed in me. You talked about your wife believes in you and Jeremy believes in you. Well, I feel like

you've always believed in me too. I feel like Roy always believed in me. And we're very lucky to have people like that who believe in us. And also in turn, I've always like admired just there's something about you that like I said, you're believable. And I loved, you know, how you cared so much about telling a story and getting that story just right. And I remember there's another story too about I think you were with your son and I think you killed a six, You haven't killed a ton of bulls, but you kill a six by six bull, I remember, right? Yeah. Wasn't that with your son?

Was there a story like that? There was a story where I took my son. I killed a buck and a bull. It was my next Eastman story. Oh, okay, yeah. But I had him with me at 14, 13. I took one of his first backcountry hunt. Yeah.

And I've always, I never pushed hunting on my kids, but it was, by it was always there. Yeah. You want to go. And so Travis, who was a little scrawny little guy. Yeah, that's what I remember. And he had. I don't know what year that was. He's got a picture.

That was in 2005. Yeah. There's a picture of him on the mountain drinking from a... He looks like a total little BA, man. He's up there drinking out of it. He had on a bat... And I made him carry his own stuff. Like, I pulled a haines on him.

Yeah. I made him carry his own weight. He had to carry his own food, his own water, his bed. He's scrawny. The dude don't weigh 100 pounds. Yeah, perfect. Little. He had a little Hoyt bow.

He emptied that quivered three times. He shot at a 3-40 bull because he had points that I didn't have. So I put him in for an elk in that unit. Yeah. And I watched him at 50 yards. And I had him shooting about 45 pounds. He was shooting cut on contact woss or Magnus Stingers. Yeah.

And I was like, you can get, and he was hitting, he could pop balloons at 50 yards. That broadhead would kill something. Yeah. I was like, do you think you can make it? And I watched it go right under his chest. It was a 347 by 7. It was beautiful bull. To this day, he's like, oh, man.

I watched him empty as, because you could kill Doze in that unit too. I watched him empty that quiver on Doze, but he had target panic like you could not. But, dude, I smoked a buck with him at my side. That's hard to do, man. Yeah. To kill a, I killed a big, heavy three-point buck, three-by-three, forking the back three-point. Me and him were coming up this trail.

I looked down this little bowl right below us in the willow patch, and these five bucks are feeding up, and I smoked one. And it started raining. As soon as I shot, I mean, bottom fell out, and we were above Timberline, and we got in a tent. I said, we'll get him in the morning. And I hit him quartering to me, so the eggs that exited way back here. So he went pretty far down the mountains, just running straight down the mountain.

And I remember, man, getting him down there and putting him on the blood, and I just stayed back. Yeah. I let him find it. Nice. Oh, man, he just, he loved that. But that was his first high country hunt. But I never, I want to say this, this is a good segue to this part that I want to talk about. I kind of thought about this earlier, a little bit about sponsorships and free stuff.

Yeah. So Travis is 20 years old, almost 20. This was in 2012. This was my last year as a resident in Colorado. And I was already smelling what was brewing on the horizon. I was going to be coming back to Texas. And so I was like, you know, I need to take Travis on a backcountry elk hunt. Like a legit back country eight miles in, you know, down my favorite elk spot.

And so we trained for it and got him shooting good and everything. and I was like, hey, he was working at Dick's sporting goods. He's already graduated high school. He was working at Dix. And I said, hey, I want to take him a backcountry elk hunt. And Chase Hudson, I talked to my friend from Utah, he was going to come over. He was living Utah at the time. So the three of us backpacked down into this wilderness in Colorado.

And I took him back to my favorite avalanche shoot. Like there's a spot right by this creek that, man, I can always find a bull in there. So I took him back there on, we hike. takes all day to hike in there, set up camp, get up the next morning, hunt your way up, and then you've got to be ready in the afternoon in this avalanche chute. There's a big meadow with the base of it. It comes down as avalanche shoots, a meadow, drops into this river, and then another big meadow down here. And I start cow calling. And man, I'm just bull lights up and these cows are all chirping. It's just like elk heaven right below us, man. I'm just

meh-h-h-h-h-buegling. I'm like, man, get ready. And so I said, I'm going to back up about 50 yards. I'm going to call that bull. He's going to come around across the creek. You're going to run right up here, me, you're going to smoke him down. Okay. There's a five-by-five bull,

and he comes across. I can hear him splashing the river below. My heart's pounded, man, and Travis, he rares back. And like I told you before, he has target panic. And this wasn't from target panic. This is just from, holy crap.

There's a bull. Arrow in between that thing's antlers, man. Like, I'm watching, and I see Travis shoot. This bull's looking at us, an arrow, like, goes between his antlers. Did that kill it? And he just looks at me with this look like, like, what?

I'm like, I don't know what. What did you, were you aiming? I had it on his brisket. I'm like, no, I saw you shooting, you know, he was hitting this, you know, this can at 50 last night. I don't think so, home boy. And so he was pretty deflated. And I was just like, hey, it's bow hunting, man. Yeah.

Trust me. I get it, man. Yeah. and he I think it was the same season maybe the season before it was the year before he killed his first deer with a bow he killed a dough at 70 yards with his bow yeah double like 12 ringer broadside it's a good shot yeah and so he got that one he's proud of it and everything and so this um he missed this bull and then all of a sudden this big bugle right below us I was like hey and on the hunt I said I said I only want to kill a big old six-by-six herd bull or nothing.

And you kill every other bull we call in. Well, I glass down there, man, there's 15 cows in this big old dinosaur. I was like, it's daddy's turn. I was like, he goes, no, no, no, I don't think I could kill that thing. So he got to watch me from a bird's eye view, stripped down, cross his river, come up the other side, belly crawl out in the middle of the herd. No call.

He watching bird's eye view of me crawl out into the middle of the herd. and make a lofty shot and smoke this huge bull down for Colorado over the counter. And I got him, dude. Really? Yeah. And he's just like, he ran up to me and just, dude, real tears. I mean, big ones just shooting out of his face. Like he's so excited and happy for me, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. He's like, you're just amazing, man. You're like, oh, you're just amazing guy. You're to get dad. You're an amazing guy. I'm like, cool, man. Whatever.

We got some work to do here. So I start breaking the bull down. He'd never seen any of that. I break the bull down. I put it in game bags. I got it all hung up. I was like, okay, in the morning, we got to hike out and call the packer.

We ain't backpacking this bull out of here. Yeah. So here's another experience. Backpack all the way up out of this canyon with his service. I call him, and I'm reading off GPS coordinates. The next day, the outfitter comes in, a friend of mine with mules. I mean, he's able to walk the mules right under the game bag, cut the cord, dropping the panyards and Travis light, you're like a pro, dad.

You're like a professional bow hunter. I was like, well, I've done this before, son. And so he's just seeing his dad a different guy for the first time. Yeah, like I just had this whole, you know, step one, step two, step three, like I had every step. Right. Then what really impressed him is now we've killed a bull, worked to the middle of the night, hiked all the way out, got an outfitter, come all the way back in. And the next morning he's thinking, it's coffee time and we'll sleep, whatever.

And I'm up before the sun. Yeah. Hey, get up. We got a hunt. We got a hunt. You got a tag. Let's go. And he's like, are you serious?

I can't even feel my feet right now, man. I'm like, get up, get your ass. We're going. You got to get you a bull, man. And we go, we go down the river about two, two and a half miles to the next avalanche shoot. And I hear a bugle. And I start calling and we start closing in, strip down, cross the river, close back on, go, grind, and go grind.

And it's very much like carrying the rock up Piscay. This grind is a grind to get up this hillside. And your dead falls and aspens and you're just going, man. And I push and I push and I push and I push and I push. And we're about to bench out. And it's like a 3.26 by 6 bowl. I can see him raking a tree. Yeah.

I'm like, hey, man, this is bigger than the one I shot. It wasn't older. Yeah. It was better scoring. Right. I was like, hey. And I'm just, I'm like, hey, this is a big bull. he's like 320.

What? I was like, yeah, he's good. He's bigger than anyone I've ever killed. Look, don't look at his antlers. He's broadside. When we ease up there, he's going to be about 40 yards. Just put your 40-yard pin on smoking, man. You good?

Yeah, I'm good. Okay. We ease up there, man, and the bulls just raking a tree. But right when we topped out, he decided to walk around the tree and looked right at us. Oh, God. And then he's turned down facing us. Yeah. And then he starts to turn

And I went And I leaned over at the waist I went 43 and I leaned over But the instant he hit full draw The bull just bolted And it was gone God dang it Yeah

And he just He I have this picture of him Sitting on a log It starts raining to beat the band And he's sitting on this log With this thing pulled over his head And he's just sitting there With this bow in his lap

And it's the epitome of defeat That's a low moment It's the lowest moment And he's sitting there. Because you were this close to glory. This close to glory. Yeah. And we get, and he's like, he's fried.

I've already got a dead bull. He, he, he, he, he, he, has been a roller coaster of emotions for that kid. And he goes, hey, dad, I want you to know, I love you. And I'm so, you are an amazing person, but I have had all I can take. He goes, I, I, I, I cannot tell. take another letdown like that. Let me go regroup and rebuild and re-strengthen for the next season, but I cannot,

I can't not kill the next one. Like, I don't want to stop trying because emotionally I don't think I can take it if I don't kill one. And I'm like, all right, man. Well, at this point now, it's your hunt. I'm going to push you to the point where you don't want to go. But if you don't want to go, I get it. He goes, no, no, no.

I am so grateful. I'm so thankful for this experience. And it's been so enriching and everything. And we ate elk stakes on open fire and the whole had the whole experience. And we get back to camp that night, and he's like, hey, I get it now. He goes, all my life that I can remember, boxes of stuff show up, binoculars, camouflage, boots, bows. Everybody knows you, all this stuff, right?

Like, that's all you, like, probably like a lot of your kids, they don't know. They just, they do now. They're grown. But when they're little kids, they don't know what you did for all of this stuff to show up at your door. and he goes you and you have your son tell you this is incredible he's like you're an amazing man like you are

you work harder at that than most men work at their job I get it now I know why Hoyt wants to give you a bow they're glad to give you a carbon bow every year and these arrows and these broadheads and these boots and these things he goes I just took it for granted but no one no

no one's gonna outwork you on this mountain I just really appreciate what you've done, Dad. And to have your son tell you that is powerful. It's powerful, man. And then I'm like, good. I'm glad you get it. But it's also, I mean, I don't know, I have to, just for him to have that perspective as a young man. Yeah.

That's rare. Yeah. So whatever you've done, however, or maybe that's just how he is, but however it worked to where he could have that insight and that, because that's wisdom in some respects. Yeah. To be able to articulate that. how that felt for him and to see you in this light. That is, as a father, I don't know if it gets any bigger than that.

Yeah. It was, it was, I don't want to say life-changing, but it was important. It was an important moment from my son and I on the mountain. And so now he works for me. I'm his boss. And, you know, it's weird. It's hard. People think that if you're the boss's son, man, you've got it made.

It is way harder. with the expectation that I have on people. I expect a lot. I expect excellence. That's in my tagline at work on my signature. You know, expect excellence. I expect excellence because I'm going to give you my very best. Right.

And if I'm going to give you my very best, I expect your very best. And my son being working for me, that's got to be hard, man. He told me, he's like, dude, you cast a freaking huge shadow. Yeah. And he goes out of it. Like he wants out of my shadow and he wants to be able to go do his own things. but we're just like best friends. And he just wants to be involved in everything I do.

It's a weird mix, but I never let it get out of balance. I never let it get out of check. But I also treat him like a partner, and I've had since he was 13, since the first time he went on the mountain, I let him help me make decisions. Like from, hey, where do you think we should camp? And if he makes a decision, then he has a positive impact from that decision, then I've strengthened him to make good decisions.

He's building confidence. Yeah. And he's like, well, where do you think we should, bed. I said, well, I always personally sleep in deer beds. It's the only flat spot on the mountain. So I would just try to look around. So he starts looking around and I knew we were in the proximity of where I wanted to be. But he's like, I think this is a pretty good spot. I think that is a pretty good spot. So we made camp, right? Let him find the, you're empowering now. Yeah, I empowered him to make decisions. Yeah. He's a business leader. That's a big deal.

Dude, he's leading $10 million worth of my business right now. So it's like, dude, you're, you're amazing little guy. And he's a good partner. But, Anyway, I had that. And I have stories like that with my daughter, too. You know, my daughter, Casey, she's older than him. But 2007, she came, she was, she was going to go to the Navy. I was like, oh, okay, I'm not, whatever. I went in the military.

I love the military, but I wasn't in the military. She was spending in the summer with her grandma and grandpa and grandpa, he's a Vietnam vet. He got in her ear. He got in her ear. Like, you know, go get your VA loans. He was right. Yeah. And she's like, my daughter is very much like Taryn, like bookworm, like small.

like smart man like um super smart and so she went in the navy man she was a she was a petty officer or whatever cryptic she was like she intercepted enemy fire types she's like she has the highest level of security that you can get in the nation she could have a job at lockheed martin space x stuff like she's super intelligent and she's super um just she's mom of four right now yeah but she got a degree and she was in the navy six years on a warship wow and saw some crazy stuff, man. Just be proud of her, yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm super proud of her.

But she went to boot camp, got out of boot camp, was fixing to go to A school the last week of August. Mm-hmm. And she could come home. I'm coming home last week of August. Mm-hmm. Shit, man.

I'm fixing to go deer. I'm fixing to go to the mountains, man. And so I was like, man, I want to spend time with Casey. But I want to go bow hunting. And I think she just, I'm her hero, you know.

She would adore each other. My daughter adores me. I adore her. I want to be around her. She wants to be around me, but I don't want to go bo hunting until. I don't want to miss opening weekend of both season. So it's cool, this cool thing, man,

I come in and my wife, she comes in, they'd been at the store that day. I'm in there packing, like halfway packing, feeling the room. If I'm going to go hunting, am I not going to go hunting?

But she knew how important it was to me. And she, my wife comes there. She goes, do you think Casey could go hunt with you? You think she'd go? She wants to go. Oh. Yes.

She's going in. That's awesome. Yeah. And so I go in there and I was like, so she's like, well, just go ask her if she wants to go. Okay. So I go on there and I say, hey, Casey, how long are you in? So whatever. I was like, I'm kind of a compromise.

I said, I don't want to miss you. But I don't want to miss opening day either. Would you, if I cut my hunt, my first week of hunting just into a couple of days to get the opening weekend in, would you like to go with me? Yeah. So we went down to Walmart and bought her some Ozark Trail. freaking hiking boots. She still owns to this day. This is in 2007.

And she still owns them and loves them. And we bought those. And back then I had this old international scout that the starter had gone out on. So I had to always park on a hill. Yeah, get rolling. Get rolling, pop the clutch and get it going. That's the only hunting vehicle I had at the time. And so we just made this adventure, man.

We got her the boots. I got that little Badlands, 2,200 pack, got it with just enough stuff. for her. I took a two-man tent, not a bivisack. I took a two-man tent. I took a little bigger camp. I carried most of the load.

I took her to the women to choose wilderness. High country. Yeah. It's hard as it gets in Colorado. And we go up in the dark. By the time we get there, it's dark. She puts on that pack.

I'm like, okay, a little sailor. Let's what you're made out of. Yeah. And we just go up in the dark and headlamps. I mean, we go above Timberline, probably four miles, get up there above Timberline, get set up on this mesa and hunt, and there's some dudes in there.

And they'd kind of bump the deer. Dugger was up there. Him and Omni Warner were up there too hunting. And I could see him and I waved to him. So I was like, ah, these guys are up here. Let's go back by the trailhead. I've been seeing some deer over there. And then let's go back over this other big place.

And so we went parked and started, and we went in about a mile. And she said, Dad, I love you. But these new boots are killing me. I want to show you my foot. And she had this horrible, blister. Open wound blister in your foot.

And I'm like, oh, man. So I made a decision right then that it's not always about big bucks. I'm like, you know, I'm going to compromise even further. I was like, hey, let's go road hunt tonight. Let's just go pop some eats. I love nut goodies. You know what nut goodies are, the little maple nut goodies? They're little candies.

It mean her both level. And that's our thing. I was like, let's go get some Dr. Pepper's. And let's get some nut goodies. And let's just go road hunt some of these roads and see if we can find some bucks. Freaking smoke down a four point buck. And did you? Me and my daughter, dude.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. We come around this bin and men has heard of bucks. They were up real close to a trailhead, and they were just kind of going up on the side of this burn. Yeah. And I parked and stalked out there probably 200 yards, smoked down a nice four by three. And she witnessed it, saw it.

We got a buck, man. Wow. Like God just, you know me, man. I'm a believer. And I just believe that God just guides everything in my life. And it's just like because of my compromise, because of nine, not, I didn't, I had scouted some big bucks. I was going after a big, you know, $190 plus buck that I scouted. But that moment was bigger to have her with me going off to the Navy.

Like, I'm shipping her off, man. This is it. She's going to A school and she's going to battle. And, man, you know, weird thoughts go through your head. And I want every minute with her. So she'd never had a mountain house meal. And to this day, to this day, you could ask her, hey, what would you like to eat? She'll tell you, I want a beef strogan off mountain house.

She's like, dad, this amazing. It's the best food ever. I'm like, I know. I love it too. It's only good in the mountains. Yeah, it's only good in the mountains. At home, not so much. No, no.

I don't know. There's been a couple times I didn't feel like cooking. I've eaten some peak refuel that I like a life. Well, I've had, you know, some meals in the mountains. I'm like, I would eat this at home. This is so good. And I get home and do it. Yeah.

Way different. Yeah. But, yeah. But my little girl, man, she's a, she's amazing. She is, you know, we all believe that our kids are amazing. Yeah. She's a mother of four. Married just the best.

dude, man. He's a sheriff's deputy in Blunt County, Tennessee. They live in Tennessee. Now, he's from Virginia, and they didn't want to live, like, right up our butts or up his mom butts. So they picked a spot in the middle, went to Tennessee, which I love going to Tennessee, man. So she's over there and with my four the babies, man, I got two kids, I got eight grandkids out of the deal. Wow. And so. They're making the most of it. Oh, man. It's just, it's incredible. Well, those, those two experiences with your kids, I mean, you know, Travis on that hunt, your daughter. on that hunt. It's like, you know how many people go through their lives and never have like a real meaningful type experience? You know, they might, Disneyland isn't like that.

Right. Disney, your kids aren't seeing you in a different light and like just looking at their dad and going, my dad is incredible. It doesn't happen in Disneyland. You know what I mean? So the fact that you've had those experiences with your kids in the mountains, that's, I mean, that's once in a lifetime almost, you know, for some guys. Yeah. So it's amazing. She's also incredible Archer. And she is Hoyt in her blood.

Like, man, when I, you know, I'd left that little stint we talked about. Yeah. She was the biggest anti. Don't do it. Don't do that. Don't, no, no, no, no. I love, like, she loves Hoyt. Yeah.

And she, man, anyway, my point of saying that is here's this 30-something middle-aged mom of four. Two years ago. She called me. She goes, hey, I'm getting like a really big tax return. turn. I want a new bow. She grew up Bow Honey. My daughter grew up. She killed she killed some exotic animals hogs. She killed a lot of, she killed a hog

with a bow when she was 13. And legit, legit with my wife's target bow. A red white and blue flag, Hoyt Target bow. My daughter took it and I set it up again with a fixed on, you know, contact head. She killed a hog in Texas. Oh, pigs can't see that well. No.

And she killed she's killed some really big hogs and she killed that ram but she's like hey she calls me two years ago she's having a bow I want to get a new bow moan and get a good tax return

I like to have a hoit so we got on eclipse blacked out eclipse with that blue string this is such a cool looking bow man yeah and so I get I order it from Evan and I got it

I put a side on it I cut down some arrows and found a box of old 85 green broadheads and got it all put together and kids got out on spring on fall break. Are they Rocky Mountain titanium?

No, they were, these were slick trick, 85, 4 blades. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, and so, and she's shooting 50 pounds. So this bow comes in like, hey, I'm going to start you off at 50

and just see what you can do. She drew it back easy at 50 pounds. That's impressive. Yeah, and, man, I had her, so she comes on spring break, I'm sorry, she comes on spring break, gets the bow, goes home to Tennessee,

shoots on her own free will, a middle-aged mother. I want to shoot a bow. She loves it. She loves it. My daughter is a, like Travis is a hunter. Casey is a bow hunter, period. She is bow only.

And she shot, stayed in practice and had a big ground blind set up in my spot in East Texas. And I stayed out of this spot. There was this young Spike Buck just coming in there pretty regularly. I'm like, Casey's going to smoke this Joker. And so they came on fall break. So they were there that spring, got the bow, went home. She shot in Tennessee all summer. She come back in the fall.

This is two years ago. And I sat with her, me and her together, setting in this blind. And I see him coming through. I can see his ears flipping mosquitoes and stuff. He's coming through there. And I'm like, hey, here comes your buck. Fregan smoked him. She's a middle-aged mom.

Got her first buck with a bow and arrow. And I was just like another amazing moment. And then her son, my oldest grandchild is her son, Mason. He's, oh my gosh. Carson, Travis's a boy, he's a killer. He's already killed a deer when he was seven. He killed a deer.

He's killed a 200-pound boar. He's a killer. He's a killing machine. But Mason, he was, he became a bow hunter in one day. We were going, last year we were going to go over to the deer lease and I stopped at academy. That's a big hunting store there in Texas. I was like, do you have a bow?

He's no. I'm buying you a bow today. really? I'm buying you a bow I went in there and I found this I don't know what the brand is I think it's a bear I think a little youth bow Camo there's a pretty legit bow Yeah

And we get him a coal ball I think all the grandkids are getting cold balls For Christmas this year But I got him this bow And we go side in the top pin And I took him down to the big lake there that night We went frog hunting He's like four big bullfrogs

Yeah His first time ever shooting a bow And then we brought him home And his little sister I took her fishing And she caught her limb of Cropi So we had this big fish fry frog leg fry they can't eat that no they're just like they're eating frog legs yes and they they were so proud i got a picture of my instagram from that year holding this plate there's frog

legs and fish on it both of them holding a plate for me for a man you know like do you know what that means to me man like everything yeah they're just incredible man well like with all the changes you've seen and your whole journey what do you think of the hunting industry today um man i don't want to be I don't want to cannibalize as ourselves. I don't want to be down on it, but it is just a different place. Yeah. It's a different place

where me and you had to learn the ropes. People talk about epic days on the mountain, and they talk about game changer. This trinket, this gadget, this thing's, no, you know what a game changer is? A range finder, son. That's a game changer. The fact that your bow stays pretty much put together

and your peep site comes back most of the time is a big deal. Like, you don't even know what that was. liked. I heard Wayne. I love Wayne. I was listening to Wayne the other day about peep sites and being at tournaments checking your cam timing. And like these guys, man. The string stretched all the time. You know, our parents and our grandparents, they had these stories too. Well, in my day and you're like, just shut up because whatever. But now we're those guys. And it's like, well, back in my day and we just, we were definitely tougher.

Yeah. We were just tough. You weren't allowed not to be tough. because you weren't going to survive if you weren't tough at school, at whatever. You just, people were just. Well, the difference I see like the mapping programs, like you remember going into the back country? I mean, unrolling a map. Now everybody knows where you're at exactly where you're at and exactly where everything is. You don't have to know how to read a map. No.

Nowadays. Yeah. So just that gives people so much confidence because most people wouldn't go deep in the mountains because they wouldn't know for sure where they were going to, how to get out. What if something happened? If it got socked in with fog, you didn't know which way it was which. So most people hunted close to the rig just because of that. Yeah.

And now, you know, you know exactly where you're at all times. That one thing is a huge advantage. Yeah. I see people all the time. Go to their phone and type in the grocery store. They've been to 5,000 times and follow the lines. Yeah. I'm like, what are you doing, man?

Can you remember? where you were at? No. No, when I want to know where I was at, back in the day, when I want to know where I was at, I had to stop hunting and climb a peak and look around to figure out which bowl I've missed or which basin I missed. I remember being off the mark by just a few degrees. Yeah.

Looking at a map and going in the wilderness and being off a couple of degrees, you lost a whole day of hunting because you just didn't end up at the right spot. Yeah. A lot of times when I'm lost, I've killed some big stuff. Yeah. But if you want to just be somewhere, if you didn't have those, whatever, go hunt, onyx and all that. Yeah, I can't even, I don't, yeah, I don't, we probably wouldn't be who we are.

No. And I would never be able to contact. I never had a satellite phone. No. I never, you know, so I would just go back in there. And if anything happened, I don't know how anybody would find me. Yeah. But there was like something about that, that changed who I am, you know, because you had

to believe in yourself to go back there and do stuff like that. You had to believe that you could survive. you could get it done back there. And it's just different. It's not easy, but it's easier than back in the day. Yeah. I'm glad we still have people that won't hunt. Yeah.

And I'm glad we have people like you still putting bows in people's hands. And I try to put bows in hands. And I hope this puts a lot of fathers and putting bows in their kids' hands. Because you can't. You just have to help them believe in themselves and they can go do it. because we got a like I said I don't want to cannibalize our own when we're bad about that yeah as an industry no I'm not trying to touch sure I know I know you're not and and because that's why you brought it up we got to lift each other up into into the light like Jeremy and like

Roy and it's not you're just anybody you know if you're a shop owner man you're in fact you're affecting someone's life man take two seconds and ask that young man sitting over there and staring at you for that what you need man yeah what can I help you with what can I you know don't think about the dollars. Think about just what can I do to help you be successful. And I see that, though. I do, Jeremy Dugger's shop is that way. He'll, he sees everybody.

You don't let nobody get out of there without help. I feel that from Wayne. I feel that today when I was in there. I just, this service. And we got to do that. And, man, more programs. I love the programs that get kids involved. And I love to see people like Hoyt making kids bows, man.

You know, and giving families. They make a women's bow. They make kids bows. They make men's bows. That's your whole family. Yeah. Once you have the membership and the arrows and the bow, man, that's every day, every weekend.

You can go out there and have just the time of your life with a bow. Yeah. I like, too, that nowadays, you know, people see what we do that aren't hunters. You know, so it allows us to grow that sport, you know. And it's like before it would be, you'd write an article that was just other hunters. You'd be on TV that was other hunters watching it. Now with social media, people can talk about, negatives of social media and there are plenty of them, but there's also some positives.

And so people can see shooting an arrow, watching that arrow go and see that like shooting the balloon today and that big that smile and a fist bump did it. Who doesn't want to experience that? Yeah. You know what I mean? So that's we're able to share what we love and what has changed our lives every day on our feed. And that's going to impact people.

That's going to that's, you know, people are going to say now how do I learn to do this? Where do I go to do this? And I get that all the time. Just local pro shop. Yeah. Google it. Go to the bow rack if you're in town. You know, and it's, that's what I love about it.

I do love, there's a lot that I love about today in the reach that we're, you know, we're lucky enough to have because that wasn't always a case. No. Back in the day. So it's a, I think it's a good time. Yeah. It's a great time to be in our industry. And for the, for the consumer and the manufacturer.

Yeah. It was amazing. You can't make any simpler to get going. No. They've got to have that human touch a little bit of time. The equipment's going to go. And you're back where you should. I mean, you've been where you should be, but you're shooting a brand new hoight.

Oh, yeah. Like this. What about this bow right here? Oh, that baby right there is the 100-yard Bloombuster. Look at that bow. Dude. Yeah. I mean, do you know how sexy that thing looks?

Yeah. All black. I mean, an RX8 Ultra. you shot that thing like you've been shooting at your whole life today. That was a good bow, man. I mean, look how good that thing looks.

It looks fast. It just looks slick. No, it looks beautiful. Yeah. It just, you know what I mean? It just looks like grease lightning. That thing's bad to the bone.

The first time I drew it back, man, I mean, it was just a couple of shots popping bullet holes. And then I don't have a tape on the side. I don't even have anything past the 30-yard pin sided in and I popped a balloon at 100 yards with it. Yeah, you did. It was like just-

You're shooting so good today. I was just figured it out, man. Man, this thing is set up. And I can't believe, I can't believe after this whole journey, we're sitting here today. We're at a table that's honoring Roy, who, you know, changed my life by introducing me to Bowhunting. You talked about people who changed your lives. But we're sitting here today across the table from each other after being friends for over 20 years with a brand new bow that is, you know, as a kid, we would dream about something like this. Oh, yeah.

you know and there's no way we could afford something like this when we first started coming out no not even close you know and like we're sitting in like i i don't know it feels surreal how lucky we are yeah been bohunting now 35 years you 40 years and we can talk about this like from this place of experience in this long journey of these ups and downs and it's just like i can't i just can't I just can't express how grateful I feel for your friendship and for this experience and to have this moment and to be where we are in life. I just, Mark, it means everything to me that you came here to my hometown. You shared my routine with me, the lift run shoot.

You've been in my corner for decades. And brother, I love you. I love you too, man. But hey, I got something for you. What? I brought you something. You did? I don't have a badass world championship jersey.

And I don't have a game day jersey, but I have something very meaningful. I'm fixing to give you. All right. I've been hiding it all day. Okay. This arrow killed the first mule deer I ever killed, the first public land animal I ever killed. Really? A hundred grain thunderhead.

If you go to my Instagram feed from today and look, I posted it on purpose. Okay. This arrow is in that. quiver. No way. Just like this. You can still kind of see the blood on it. Oh,

hunter grain thunderhead, big old five-inch feathers to make it fly. But Larry Dugger built this arrow in 1995 and I killed my first meal deer with it. That's yours. Oh my gosh. I rode on it. Look at this. I rode on it.

Aztec, New Mexico, 1995. Mark Smith, 916, 1995. Yep. First meal deer. First public land now. I want you to hang that in here somewhere, man. I'm going to. That's the.

only thing I thought I could give you that would mean what this moment means to me. Yeah. Wow. This is this is incredible because also you know okay first of all when we first started bow hunting this arrow right here I couldn't afford these arrows. These are double like 75s. Yeah. You know how much does cost? I know you know because you had to pay for them too back then yeah but in the 2314s because that's a thin walled big shaft arrow. Um and the thunderheads That's what I started bohunting with, too. Everybody shot Thunderheads back in the day. But I just, this means a lot.

I know it does. That's why I wanted you to have it, man. This means everything. Well, this is going to go here. This is going to go right behind me somewhere right here. Yeah. I'm going to put it somewhere right here, right now. All right.

Look at this. We're going to be able to see this at all times on this podcast. That's the only thing I thought of that I could give you that was as big as this moment. That's incredible. Thank you. That means a lot. Love you, man. I appreciate it.

Thank you, brother. And here's your brand new bow. You can take that home today. Oh, yeah. That thing's going to stack up some mules and a wilderness bull this year, buddy. I guarantee it. All right. Well, thanks for an amazing day.

Lift, run, shoot. Incredible podcast. Thanks for the stories. Thanks for the friendship. I appreciate you. Thank you, man. All right, guys. All right, guys.

Welcome to the brand new Cameronhage.com truck giveaway. This truck used to be read, but we got this sick, badass rap on it to go with the theme of this giveaway. what you do in the dark matters. That means we got to train at night. We got to get better. We've got to earn that edge at night. So what you do in the dark matters out there getting in those miles,

maybe shooting in the driveway and the headlights of a truck, or maybe just pushing weights in the gym. We've got to do something to set ourselves apart. So that's where, hey, the night shift comes in. And this brand new, 2023 RAM TRX, 702 horsepower, killer-looking ride is going to go to somebody who enters to win at Cameronhane's.com. Whoever that is, I'm going to fly them out here. They're going to get this ride. I'll hand them the keys and 10,000 in cash. And I hope it's you. So again, head to my

website, figure out how to enter and win. Good luck. Keep hammering.