Speaker 1: 0:15

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Son of a Blitch podcast. I'm your host, george Blitch, and I just wrapped up a wonderful conversation with Tyler Vander Kolk, who is the owner of Archery Country, which is located in Austin, texas. If you're in the outdoor community, you've probably heard about Archery Country before. There are a lot of people who highly suggest going and checking it out. They've had some amazing events that they have with some people that work in the outdoor industry wild game chefs like Jesse Griffiths, cameron Haynes, tim Kennedy. Obviously you, if you watch the or listen to the Joe Rogan podcast, you've heard him uh talk about archery country too at length. Uh, there's a reason, guys. The community that Tyler has built is second to none. It is amazing. They have all sorts of wonderful people that work there Uh, and they're going to meet you where you're at.

Speaker 1: 1:07

If you're a very much like a beginner, uh, like I've shot some bows and arrows with my friends and you know some that when I was a kid, but I kind of walked in there very green and they kind of took me through the steps, went back, figured out what was a good fit for me, figured out my draw length, what I could pull back, poundage wise, and then they set me up to try out some different bows there to see what I had a good feel with. We kind of ran out of time because, like I said, I was coming back from vacation and trying to get the family back home, so I ended up hitting the pause button that day, but I also really got a good feel for what it was that I was going to go forward with. And then you know, of course, as I talked about in some other podcasts too, starting that archery journey and doing a series of podcasts this is the first one, because this is where it started at all, and I wanted to shine some light on archery country and all the wonderful things they got going on, and especially Tyler. He's a really a community mindset guy. He's done all sorts of different things, whether it's, you know, running his own AC filter company, whether it's selling goats online, being a taxidermist, eventually, uh, being the man who's running archery country. He's done it all, and one of the things that he does throughout this is he cares about bringing together like-minded uh community uh people for something larger than himself. He's a really, really great guy and I think you guys are going to love hearing about his journey and you know what it his journey and what it is his ethos and his beliefs about archery country and making sure that he's meeting you wherever you are.

Speaker 1: 2:30

You are coming in as a beginner. You're coming in as an expert. You need help. They've got someone who's going to be there and going to be the right fit for you to get whatever it is you want out of that experience. He does a lot of work within the community and in and around Austin with the youth and getting them involved. He's just wrapped up a fundraiser where now they have enough funds to start up in two more elementaries or junior highs and high schools programs to get kids involved with archery. So it's not like they're necessarily trying to, you know, turn everyone into a hunter, but just the process of mindfulness going out there on the range and shooting and the mechanics that are involved, man, it's very therapeutic and so you know, maybe that might inspire people to get into the hunting world or whatever, and you know there's the equipment for that.

Speaker 1: 3:13

Whatever it is you are looking to get out of the experience, archery Country is going to help you get there and they have a great staff along the way. I can tell you that Great, great people. Tyler is just a wonderful, wonderful man. I'm so glad I got to chat with him today and learn more about him and Archery Country, and I think you guys are really going to enjoy this podcast. It's fun, it's entertaining, it's educational. It's all the things I hope to have that I can provide to you guys in a podcast and, yeah, so you guys are going to enjoy this one with Tyler Vander Kolk from archery country.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Make sure you guys go check out the show notes, check out the links and go see him in person. Please, please, please. You will be so glad you did and uh, sign up on his website or notifications when some of these events are going through, next time that Jesse Griffiths does some uh stuff there with him, or whoever it may be. Tim Kennedy, ken Haynes Uh, some stuff there with him, or whoever it may be Tim Kennedy, ken Haynes there's so many different people Tyler Jones from the Element, from Meat Eater there's so many people who put on some great stuff there and you will be very, very glad you did so again without further ado. Here is the podcast with Tyler Van Der Kolk you guys enjoy. Please share this with a friend and if you haven't already liked and subscribed and followed this podcast, please do. I got some more great guests coming up that I think that you will enjoy. So you guys have a wonderful day and thanks for tuning in. Cheers. Hey, tyler, how you doing today, man?

Speaker 2: 4:33

How's it going, george? How are you man?

Speaker 1: 4:35

Fantastic man, I am so excited to chat with you. Talk about archery country, all the wonderful things you got going on. But you know, as you may know, with a lot of my guests I like to kind of start at the very beginning and give listeners a little bit idea of who you are, where you come from. So maybe you can just kind of talk about where you born and raised and how you got involved in the outdoor lifestyle and we'll thread that through to archery country and all the great things you got kicking right now.

Speaker 2: 4:57

All the stuff, yeah, man. So it's pretty, uh, it's a pretty wild one. So I think you've probably heard this on another podcast, but I'm going to tell you fifth, because I don't want to lie to you, I could be a sixth-generation Austinite, but there's some turmoil in the family here on whether who was really here back in the day. But anyway, long story short, I'm a fifth, sixth-generation Austinite. I was born and raised here, went to high school here. That's as far as I went for education. I kind of did that. For me it was one of those deals where I was trying to carve it out right out of high school. I was like I'm going to go for gusto, right out of high school, I don't need to go to college, I'm going to go open my own business and I'm going to be a billionaire by the time I'm 40 years old and that did not work out. But it was a good college effort there. Man, the reality is like I said, born and raised in Austin, grew up here. I graduated from high school.

Speaker 2: 6:02

I worked for a year for my dad's company and this all plays into the thing here but I worked for a year for my dad. My dad worked for an air conditioning company and I worked for them for a year. Um, that was 1997. I started working for him, hated working for my dad because he expected the world of me so they'd make make me do all the really, really bad stuff in the early, early, early and late, late, all that trying to install some work ethic here. Anyway, I did that for a year.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Well, one thing I noticed at the AC company was they would get tons of phone calls for people wanting filter service so they would sell a maintenance contract. And that maintenance contract sorry about that, I need to turn that off my maintenance contract would in essence be a. It would be one of those deals where I would. They would sell a maintenance contract, they would do all this kind of stuff and then they would not do the filter part of it because they were like dude, we don't have time. We have a legit, legit job on the South side of town that is going to need big money and big stuff going on and we don't have time for it. There's no, no time to go change filters. So my little wheels got to spin it and I was like man, I'll start a filter company.

Speaker 2: 7:20

So in the abridged version is in 1998, october of 1998, I started a business called Austin Filter Service Company. I was just changing AC filters in commercial places and I would literally just tell people, man, I'm just going to come in, I'm going to change out your AC filters and then I'm going to leave, and that was all I did. I wasn't trying to sell them a plan, I wasn't trying to talk them into doing work on their units. I wasn't doing any of that stuff. And so, fast forward that whole time from my senior year until that started, I was just getting into hunting. I wasn't.

Speaker 2: 8:00

I didn't come from a hunting background. My dad was a Vietnam guy that really had no flair for killing stuff and going and doing that. So I got into it with some buddies of mine doing the rifle thing and all that. Anyway, I had that filter company and what I learned was it would be super busy in the summer months and in the winter months months it would dump off. So I started guiding down in south Texas with a buddy of mine which, hindsight, I had no business guiding because I had been hunting like three years and I was like I don't know what the heck I'm doing. Man, I'm walking around out here for patalinas and whitetails, like I know what they're gonna do where they're at. I'm just like no, we'll come across one here at some point. Um, so, anyway, I did that. Uh, I picked up.

Speaker 2: 8:49

So the guy that I did that with was a taxidermist and so from the year 2000 until about 2005,. I was doing taxidermy on the side with him, just doing little fun stuff and whatever. So, uh, did that. Um, in 2005, the steiner family, which is a rodeo family out of austin, here they bought archery country. Well, when they bought it, um, I knew sid through some other stuff and sid was like, hey was like you ought to put a taxidermy shop in. We already have hunters come in there. It's a good, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a crossover there, let's try and do it. So I did it.

Speaker 2: 9:33

So, once again, I had no business being a taxidermist, because the Steiners were telling, good, dude, this is bad. The Steiners were telling their friends like, hey, this is the only guy to do your taxidermy. You got to use Tyler, he's the best, he's the guy that does our taxidermy. They ran in a circle of people that I had. No, but I was two years out of like doing it on my own and like the one of my first customers was Rick Perry, the governor of the state of Texas.

Speaker 2: 10:02

One of the next ones after that was like Nolan Ryan and I'm like I'm taking it on, like I'm ready for the world. Like looking back on it now I'm like I had no bit. I should have gotten like a real taxidermist to do their stuff and get like good work to them. But anyway, everybody did it. It was cool, um, but that's my connection to the archery shop here. So in 2005 or 2006, somewhere in there I put a taxidermist in with Sid here at Archery Country. Sid had just bought Archery Country and I ran that until 2016. I ran both of those businesses, so I ran the filter company and that In the middle of that was all kinds of other really stupid adventures.

Speaker 1: 10:47

I sold goats online.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Dude, I sold goats online. I had goatdealercom with a buddy of mine.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Dude, brutal man. How did that happen? What was that, I gotta ask man.

Speaker 2: 10:57

How did you get into?

Speaker 1: 10:58

selling goats.

Speaker 2: 10:59

Oh man. So there's a crazy story behind this and there are. This could be a movie at some point, but my buddy a buddy of mine was one of those movers and shakers. There's a guy named James Stinson at Austin area. He's one of my best friends, has been forever. So there was a guy that was there. So I don't know if you remember back in the day, do you remember the green sheet Like it was a? It was a in Austin it the day? Do you remember the green sheet Like it was a, it was a in Austin.

Speaker 2: 11:31

It was called the green sheet and it was just a classified ads newspaper. They had them all over town, get them anywhere, whatever. So we saw an ad in the green sheet for a guy's wanting to buy goats, paying up to like $75 a piece. And there was another guy that was trying to sell goats and he was wanting like 50 bucks a piece for him. So me and Stinson, being the great entrepreneurial minds that we are, we're like dude, here's our chance. So we end up buying these goats for like I don't remember what it was 50 bucks and selling them to this guy for 75 bucks. So we sold 50 goats and made 25 bucks a goat, whatever. To us it was awesome. We sold goats, we made money doing it and with the money we made we ended up buying another set of goats.

Speaker 2: 12:12

So if you want to hear one of the most clustered you know what stories of all time, our first load of goats, we borrowed a trailer from a guy and we drove down to I don't remember where it was it was somewhere like San Antonio or something like that. We buy a hundred goats, those hundred goats. We put them in the trailer and they were just all in the trailer. We were going to haul them back to Austin. We had them sold for more money and we were like, dude, we're going to be rich, we're eating steak tonight. This is life is good, or goat? Yeah, exactly yeah, we're eating steak tonight. This is life is good, or goat? Yeah, exactly yeah. So we were like, hey, this is going to be legit, we're going to make some money here. This will be awesome. Fast forward. We forgot to shut a trap door on the front of the trailer. So we pull out on the highway and Stinson's like oh my God, look at that and do? There are goats, just one by one, piling out this side door, all on a highway. I mean, we shut down a highway in a town for probably two hours with 50 goats before we could get out there and shut the door and they're just walking through fences. The sheriff's posse is out there trying to load them up. Dude, it was the biggest cluster of all time. It was so bad.

Speaker 2: 13:27

And that was you, would think, being an intelligent person, you'd be like, yeah, maybe this goat stuff isn't for us. But we doubled down on it. We were like, no, we just had a little hiccup, a little bump in the road. We're gonna make some real money doing this. So, uh, we started, uh, goatdealercom.

Speaker 2: 13:39

I say we stinson was really the one that started it.

Speaker 2: 13:41

I kind of was along for the ride. We sold thousands of goats every year and we never actually owned a goat. The deal was we had ranchers that would put together piles of goats. We would take pictures of them, put them online, sell them for $25 more a goat or whatever. And that was our shtick. It was our way to make some extra spending money, because filters weren't paying all the bills, taxidermy wasn't paying all the bills, it was just a cluster, but anyway, I, I did that and it's.

Speaker 2: 14:14

It's cool because it's part of the story of like an entrepreneur. Like in my mind. It was part of the story of being an entrepreneur because I never thought about maybe I should stop being an idiot and bouncing on friends' couches and eating ramen noodles and stuff. Maybe I should just go to college and get a real job and go work at a bank and have a solid income and whatever. It never crossed my mind.

Speaker 2: 14:38

Dumb as a box of rocks, I was just like no, we're going to make it big one day. I'm going to sell enough goats to have a mansion in South Austin or whatever it was. It was just I never. I could never wrap my head around like a nine to five or doing something like that. I just was like man. I got to make moves, we got to get to bigger and better things. So anyway, all that being said, uh started the filter company. I had the filter company rolling. It was going through this whole thing. We were selling sheep and goats, I was doing the taxidermy and I was just working around the clock doing all this stuff.

Speaker 2: 15:12

So, that all changed in 2016, when the Steiners kind of came to me and were like hey, we're ready to sell it. You're the one we're going to kind of approach first on this, you're the one we're going to kind of approach first on this. To which I was like man, this sounds awesome. I, you know it was what I wanted to do. So make a long story short. I didn't have the money to put together to do it. I called a couple of buddies of mine that were movers and shakers in the Austin area here and I was like hey, you know, I want to make some bad decisions together running an archery shop. I was like I don't know how to do it, but we're smart guys, we can figure this out. So at the time, I had sold my filter company to my brother and just basically had taken that money and put that in my bank account. I still had the taxidermy business. I still have the taxidermy business. I still have the taxidermy business to this day. It's still functioning next door right now.

Speaker 2: 16:08

And then Archery Country. When we bought it, I was the idiot Once again. The entrepreneur that never quit was like I'm going to blow this thing up. I'm going to make it a nationwide name brand that people know about, people want to go to make it a destination. Like I'm gonna do all this stuff. And it's funny because I remember at the time the manager of the store was kind of like yeah, I've heard this before, like whatever. And I remember thinking like man, that sucks, because I was hoping he would buy in and like want to help me try and grow this thing and build something tangible and something that people would want to do. And I could tell he wasn't that. So we ended up keeping him for a year and then he kind of bogeyed and, um, anyway, here we are now, eight years later, we're, we're talked about by Joe Rogan and all the players have been here and we're kind of it. And this is the first year I'm not taking in a bunch of extra taxidermy because I'm like we can't, I can't manage it, it's too much.

Speaker 2: 17:09

The archery shop is this whole solar system that just feeds itself and we're, you know it's. It requires more of me, which means less of me next door at the taxidermy shop, so something's got to give. Less of me next door at the taxidermy shop, so something's got to give. And I like I was telling you, I got a wife and two kids. I got an eight year old and a 10 year old that I still like to go watch them play soccer and football and try and be a dad and stuff like that. So it's one of those side deals, man. I uh try to do the work balance. You know, work life balance thing I'm pretty bad at it, but you know it's a. It's a, it's a concerted effort we try and do.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Well it's, it's a lot man, and I mean you've always been kind of a juggler, of those, like you said, kind of that entrepreneurial mindset. You know, I kind of want to, you know, definitely want to dive into more of what's happening these days, but I think we need to also step. Know you, I know you said you kind of you got started later on in life as far as hunting, you know, 17, 18, going with some buddies and things there too. Um, and you know you, you very kind of quickly moved into saying, man, the rifle thing just wasn't all that for me and it wasn't as exciting, it seemed kind of like an easy. You know. Okay, I think you were watching like a ut game or something. I totally was.

Speaker 2: 18:25

I remember the day it changed for me and it was the UT. It was that story which was, basically, I really wanted to watch this UT football game and I had one of those old school little black and white TVs and I brought it up to a stand with me. It had a little power pack thing to it and literally I had a heater going. I had the game going. I had a little power pack thing to it and literally I had a heater going. I had the game going. I had a thermos full of stuff, a deer stepped out and I was like, ah, that's pretty good, I'm going to take that. And so I'm like, you know, hold on a minute and open the window, boom, shoot it, watch it fall. And I'm like, oh, it's down right there, nothing's going to happen. Third quarter is almost over. I got to do that. And at some point you get to where you're like it's just the challenge is gone. And the next step after that for me was going to like Ironside. So I'm like a 30, 30.

Speaker 2: 19:14

I went to a store here in Austin, bought a Marlin 30, 30. And you know, I I hunted deer that way for a while, but you're still good to 100 yards, like anything else. So you know you're 100 yards from a deer, 80 yards from a deer, it has no idea. You're there and you're like well, here we go, let's take that one.

Speaker 2: 19:36

I don't know, I wanted more. I was hoping for more. I wanted more adrenaline rush out of it and stuff. And the only upside to it at the time it it was a, it was a desire to hunt, but at the time it was also I was broke, like we had no money, so me and my buddies would kill a deer. And it was like christmas day, man, if you came home and you were like, dude, I busted one. Today, man, we're, we're eating backstraps tonight. We'd go fire up our little weber in the garage and like eat it over charcoal and it might as well have been a filet mignon from perry's man to us I mean it was this is it, man, but it was, it was.

Speaker 2: 20:14

It was it wasn't a necessity for food because we had a little money we could go to hb or something like that, but at the end of the day it was kind of what we wanted to do. We were wanting it and I was starting to develop a love of hunting that I really wanted to pursue and be better at, and archery seemed like the next step into it. And um, the story there, the beginning of archery for me, was as weird as it sounds. There was a uh, this is really weird, but there was a car auto inspection place here in Austin called Allen's Inspections. Allen had a wall of death and Allen gave zero you-know-whats. If you didn't like hunting or you didn't want to see dead deer or any of that stuff. He had a wall of them in his shop, just him with deer. And he was a trad bell hunter. So he killed everything with with not everything, but killed a lot of it with trad gear. Well, I'm getting my car inspected there one day, my truck, and um, I was like man, this archery stuff looks legit. I was like I want to get into it. You know, eventually I'm going to get into this and whatever. And he goes man, go get a bow and I'll teach you. And I was like, yeah, cool man, whatever I, you know, I blew it off like just a guy talking.

Speaker 2: 21:26

Uh, fast forward about a month. I'm in a town called Burnett, which is just North of Austin, here, probably an hour Northwest. Um, I'm fishing out there because there's Lake Buchanan out there. So I'm fishing for striper, but he had a little crappy boat. We had no business being on that lake, but we out doing it.

Speaker 2: 21:52

And I run into alan at the heb in burnett. We were there buying groceries for our little camp out thing and all that. Uh, and he's like, hey, offer still stands, man, get you a boat, dude, I'll teach you how to do it. And, um, I don't know how or why, but I went to a pawn shop and I bought a bear, black bear, bow, and I was like I'm gonna hold this guy to the fire man. So I went back to Allen's inspections like the following week and I was like hey, you told me if I got a bow you'd, you'd help with this or whatever. And he's like right on, dude, he was like I told you I wouldn't. He's like, yeah, let's go to archery country. So we actually came here to archery country in Austin and it was funny because back then he was like we're only going to deal with a guy named Matt. Everybody else is douchebags there. He's like don't talk to him.

Speaker 1: 22:38

He's like we're going to go in. He's like if Matt's okay, I don't know what I'm doing.

Speaker 2: 22:42

So, anyway, that was the plan we did that. It was cool because he took me down this rabbit hole of showing me what everything was and what its purpose was, which is kind of something that we do now when we sell a bow to someone, we don't just say, you're going to want this rest, you're going to want this sight, you're going to do this. We're like, well, this is the difference. This is the difference in a stationary rest, a whisker biscuit. This is the difference in a dropaway. This is what you can. You know, here's pros and cons, here's what you you know some people like some people, hate. Here's whatever it is.

Speaker 2: 23:18

I remember walking away thinking I was much more knowledgeable, like I had learned five years worth of stuff and I had taken five years worth of learning out of my process because I had this like really really good teacher, but also a really really good guy that would explain, kind of what I was doing, and at the time I didn't know I would. I would put that into business practice at a later point. I didn't have any idea I was going to own an archery shop, the archery shop that I would do, but at the time I remember thinking, man, I'd be really cool if every business kind of functioned like that, where you walked away and you were like, wow, I made a good investment, number one, and and also I feel knowledgeable of what I have. It wasn't like, you know. I remember walking out of the gun store buying a marlin 30 30 and being like man, I hope I can figure out where to put a bullet in this freaking thing. This is not like my shotgun and I've never owned another gun, so I don't know what you know. I didn't grow up doing it. So I was like I don't know what to do and I remember thinking that, like I, you don't know. If you don't know, you don't know. So I I remember subconsciously I guess, if anything else, just in my mind thinking I knew a lot more than everybody else around me because I was like man, I, I, I picked up this weapon and I feel super confident with it and I and I also feel like I know how it functions, I know how it works, I know what I'm capable of at distances and stuff like that, and I just it.

Speaker 2: 24:52

It started it for me. So alan had a deer lease out and burn it he would take me out to and dude every 30 pound and under pig was dude. It was bad times for those guys, man, because I was, I couldn't. I'd shot a couple of the big ones and never retrieved them, cause I just didn't make bad shots, but I didn't know how to blood trail. I didn't know how to do any of this stuff. So I just look around and be like I don't know where it went. Uh, the little ones died easy. So I was like there's microwavable ones, these little 30 and 40 pounders are catching it. Man, and I was just out there plugging away at these guys. So, anyway, all that to say, I cut my teeth on pigs in the hill country. I shot probably 50 of them before I was even to a point where I was like man, I'm ready to take on a deer or something like that. So it was cool, man.

Speaker 2: 25:41

It was one of those deals where I don't know what my archery journey would have been, but I do know that that particular that was a, that was a. There was a definite point in time when I was like man. What a really cool thing. And I really feel like I know it and I really it's really cool that I've decided to pick this up. Like I, like there was a fire in me that was, like I want to do more of that, whatever that was more of that. Like I don't, I have no desire to have this for 30, 30. I need to go sell this, buy a new bow and all that stuff, and anyway, that's how it kind of happened for me. Man, I was just of the opinion that I was like man, I I just need, uh, you know, to get my act together on this and figure it out. Man, this is where I want to be, what I want to do, so that's awesome man, you still have that first animal right.

Speaker 1: 26:33

Didn't you make like a little uh kind of your own little trophy in the shrine that you still have?

Speaker 2: 26:37

I love that story still in my backyard man, it's a javelina skull on a texas flag that I spray painted and it is terrible. It is. I don't even want to say I did it, because I know people are going to be like aren't you a?

Speaker 1: 26:52

taxidermist. But anyway, yeah, this is a draft one right, yeah, I do remember doing it.

Speaker 2: 26:56

I do remember boiling the head in my driveway and being like man I bit off way more than I could chew for this. I had every neighborhood cat for seven miles just munching down on heavy cheeks in the driveway and I'm like, oh man, it's one way to clean it.

Speaker 1: 27:10

Yeah, there's one way. I mean I got it done, but ultimately it was.

Speaker 2: 27:14

There's probably better ways, but anyway it was fun. Man and I in I'm not gonna say that was my start to taxidermy the taxidermy stuff was wild because it was it kind of fed the same machine in that I was going out and hunting and I was like Alan was a big proponent. The guy that originally taught me was a big proponent of like use the animal. He's like if you're going to kill it, if you're going to take its life, he's like don't, don't drag it off and feed the coyotes or don't don't just take the hams or the, just the backstraps and then chunk it. He was like man, use the animal. Dude, which is cool. See, you have Jesse's books back there and all that stuff. That's a big thing. He preaches and stuff.

Speaker 2: 27:54

As a new hunter I didn't know. I didn't know what that stuff was good for. At the time I remember keeping front shoulders and being like what am I going to do with this crap? You can't throw it on a grill and I'm not going to gonna do it. You know, one day later, when I got the little hand grinder at the house and made breakfast sausage and I was like, oh man, this is legit. Yeah, yeah, you don't know if you don't know. So, um, there was a lot of learning curve as far as when they would take me into the woods, they realized pretty quick, man, I was just killing these animals and I wasn't really blood trailing. They were like, well, blood trail, go look for blood. I'm like I don't even know what you're talking about, dude.

Speaker 1: 28:31

I was like when.

Speaker 2: 28:31

I shoot them with a rifle, they fall right there. And you know, it's not that I was that dumb to think that they just fall right there with an arrow, but in my mind there would be a ton of blood leading up to a dead animal right there. I there, I didn't realize. Sometimes they lay up and they fill the, they plug the hole with dirt and then they keep running and stuff like that. There's just so much to learn. And that was where there was like a second teaching lessons there, because then Al and them were like cool, well, this kid really does have the fire, so let's really teach him this stuff. So those guys would go do it.

Speaker 2: 29:05

And those guys were the old school, they'd have thunderhead broadheads and stuff like that, and they would take the one that they were going to hunt with. They would shoot that into a target, make sure it was flying right, and then they'd be like all right, cool, well, that's the one I'm going to hunt with, so now pull it out of the target. And they were like, well, we might have doled it up, shooting it into that foam and we owe it to this animal for the quickest death we can get. So they go hone it on a thing. It's been an hour out there at the campfire just sharpening an edge and they just like poke it on their arm to make sure if it shaved hair. That was good, they put it back in their quiver, but anyway it was that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 29:40

I learned all that stuff by proxy. I did, I was. I didn't come from that background, so you just kind of jump in the game and do it and I don't know. It ended up being really cool. Man, I ended up taking a lot of lessons away from that stuff, of which I still put to practice. I still do some of that stuff.

Speaker 1: 29:56

So well, that's amazing. You know that mentorship is so important too. There's so many things like you just talked about, even like just game trail, right, we? We just this last weekend we're hunting and my buddy shot a beautiful melanistic doe out on the ranch and there was four of us that were out there helping him looking around and one of the guys was like I'd started looking for game trail cameras Cause you guys talked about like that patch released resistance and like, and he went and found it because he followed this trail Right, and I was like, oh man, that's cool, we talked to you about that and that's cool, we talked to you about that, and that's something that years ago. But it stays with you.

Speaker 1: 30:34

And not that we're some grand mentors here, but the idea of like, when someone takes the time and teaches you and the things that you can learn, what you can then put in your own proverbial quiver, if you will, those are the things that, too, like we pass on. This is generational, right. You can be able to pass on to your kids, our friends, our nephews and nieces and, whatever it may be, our daughters. You know like we're teaching them and passing on what we've learned, and you know that that kind of want to tie that back into you talked about like having you know that one guy that they say, hey, you know we're going to go see Matt there and you know if he's not there we're bouncing, because that was the guy that people trusted it.

Speaker 1: 31:04

And now I've been to your store whenever I decided I wanted to get into archery.

Speaker 1: 31:10

There was only one place I was going to go to make start that journey and that was there to archery country.

Speaker 1: 31:13

I've had so many people tell me wonderful things, friends of mine who work in the industry, who are like, listen, go check that out and go talk to you and went in there and the this staff was something that I understand as you talk about it now, what it was.

Speaker 1: 31:27

It was important to you and being able to have guides along the way and having people. And I think that I want to touch on this idea too of how intimidating it can be for someone when they're moving into, going into a rifle uh, you know store or archery and you don't know right, you don't know what you don't know and then it's an intimidating thing to ask these questions that may be dumb questions to you, but it's like those people that you might've heard, those people that are behind the counter might've heard that a thousand times, but they need to treat it like it's the first time and walk you through each step and meet people where they are. And I think I'd love to hear you talk about that idea of how you want to create an environment and an atmosphere that is very welcoming to people of all different levels, and why that's important to you.

Speaker 2: 32:16

So what I'll say is, when we took this thing on, I wanted to approach it from the standpoint of everybody's a beginner. Unless they tell you otherwise, they're in there just trying their best with what they have, and so I was like the first thing we will never do is make fun of people's equipment. I was like because I remember walking in with an old bow. I remember I bought a bow uh, this is bad, bad on me, but I bought at the time. There was a. There was a pse nova, which was a super popular bow back in the day, and I bought a pse nova and it was a team fitzgerald thing and it was literally, I want to say it was like 199 or 299 and it was a package. It had everything on it and I bought it at um like a bass pro. You bought it out of the catalog, it shipped to your, your house. So I was proud of that bow. I really was.

Speaker 2: 33:09

I came to Archery Country. I'm like, dude, this is legit. I got a new bow. I'm not shooting this old pawn shop piece of junk. Whatever, I got the bow and I remember walking in and not the main tech there at Archery Country country, but one of the guys that worked there, crotchety old guy, I remember him just kind of looking at it and being like, oh well, they must be having a sale at bass pro or something like that. It was the first time I remember being like that sucks man, like I freaking just spent, like to me, the three hundred dollars or the two or whatever it was money it might as well have been five thousand dollars. I didn't have it. I was scraped to put it together. I was banking on selling this other boat at the pawn shop to put the rest of the money together so I wasn't overdrawn and could eat that way. It was one of those deals and I remember being not disheartened by it, but I remember being like what a douche man. Like that's a crappy move. Fast forward to when I own it. I was like we a crappy move. Fast forward to when I own it. I was like we're going to treat everybody like they're new until they say they're not. And to me I kind of equate it to like you watch your language until you find what company you're in. If you're in a bunch of dudes dropping F-bombs and stuff, you're like all right, well, you know whatever, but you know if you're with the pastor of the church, you might be like, well, I'm going to calm down on the F-bombs this afternoon until whatever. To me it's the same deal, until a guy comes in and has his bow and is like, hey, this is my fourth bow. I killed this giant mule deer in Colorado last year. Check this out, I want to get this one set up. I'm like cool, we don't need to go through the basics here, but it's a place to start. So to me the biggest thing was the intimidation factor and it was funny because I had this conversation.

Speaker 2: 34:54

I went to a TAC event last year, the Total Archery Challenge thing, and I had dinner with that Donnie Vincent guy and I was a fly on the wall for this lunch thing. We were just all kind of hanging out eating food and all that and donnie vincent super famous uh you know movie guy does a bunch of stuff really good hunter, all that stuff. Uh, he was telling a story about the first time he bought a bow. He spent three hours in the parking lot just trying to get his nuts up to walk inside and talk to them. He was like I just knew they were gonna be like dude, you can't even draw 50 pounds, dude. My freaking wife draws 50 pounds. Get out of here, dude, or whatever. He was like I just knew it and he was like it wasn't that way. But he was like in my mind I had built up the scenario to where it was bad.

Speaker 2: 35:43

And that's the one thing we kind of did when we started this over here was I was like we cannot have those scenarios play out. We can't. I was like it's something to where somebody's bringing in their hard-earned money. This is extracurricular, this isn't something of necessity in life. And then, to take it a step further, it's a niche of extracurricular, because the gun industry is 80 times larger than this industry. So it's a niche of a niche, um. And then, on top of that, you're spending good money and you're coming in intimidated, like you, you don't know what you can draw. I don't know what I can draw like there I remember the first time rogan had a 90 pound bow.

Speaker 2: 36:24

I'm like I can draw a pound bow I don't know what this thing freaking draws like and whatever I can draw it back. Luckily it wasn't too bad. Sorry, man, it wasn't too bad. But I remember thinking like, dude, I don't know how, you know, I don't know if I can do it, man, and I'm going to be right here in front of Joe Rogan. He's like, yeah, go shoot my bow, shoot it through paper, let's see if it's tuned. And I'm like, oh, dude, here we go. Dude, it's going to be real bad.

Speaker 2: 36:55

So anyway, all that to say, um, the the main thing we did when we started it was basically we all sat down and we were like, look, we were all here at one point. At some point we all walked into a shop, green. We didn't know what we were doing and how do you want to be treated? So put that into practice every day. Take people where they're at and make make the best of what you have, the situation, cause you're going to deal with guys that we. I mean we set those up for some people that are better shots than us. I was working on a guy's bow the other day and he's a shop shooter for us and I'm like I don't have any business working on this guy's bow. This guy shoots 10 times better than I'll ever shoot. He can walk out back right now and put one in a tack at 80 yards. I'd be lucky to get a pie plate out there. So the reality is you kind of take people where they're at. But as far as back to our business, I set out to have younger guys that weren't the crotchety old guys and I didn't want them too young to where you're dealing with a 15 year old and you're like dude, this kid doesn't even know, you know, have any life experience, so how's he going to help me on my mule deer hunt in Alberta that I paid $20,000 for, or vice versa. You have the guy that comes in and whatever.

Speaker 2: 38:03

I mean there's so many scenarios that play out every day over here but at the end of the day, taking people where they're at and really trying to just give them as much knowledge as you possibly can so they feel informed, and then when they walk out they're like what a cool bunch of dudes. I mean they can talk, whatever. It is Like I got guys. I have. The one thing cool about this shop is I have somebody for everybody. If you're a vegan, hardcore PETA person, well, I got a guy for that. If you're a you know, a college preppy kid, I got a guy for that. If you're a super redneck and you're whatever, I got a guy for that.

Speaker 2: 38:49

Like, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and we know it. So we play on those strengths and weaknesses and it's it's benefited us now, because when people come in, they don't come in and think, man, the intimidation factors there. They come in, there's cool music playing and then they walk up and my guys are like, what's up, man, what can we help you with? And it usually automatically puts them at ease. And if they have kids, we're like, hey, man, here's a quarter, go get some Skittles and hang out for a second. Like it's just, there's a whole lot of stuff that we do to just make put you at ease.

Speaker 2: 39:20

Because the reality is it is, it's it's an intense situation and everybody's personality is different. So some people super stress out on it, like Donnie Vincent waiting three hours in a parking lot before he gets the gall up to go in. Or you have guys that just walk in like they know everything and you're like this guy doesn't know anything but whatever, I'm going to still help him like that. So the reality is I don't know what's right or wrong.

Speaker 2: 39:44

I do know customer service will get you far and that's the one thing we kind of leaned on here was, at the end of the day, 99% of what I have on the wall short of a PSE or a Matthews or a Bowtech or Hoyt or whatever you can go. You can go buy it online, you can go to Amazon, you can go to Lancaster. You can get all that stuff delivered right to your house and you're better for it. You can put it on yourself, watch a couple of Dudley videos and you're in business. You can start shooting a bow. So the reality is we got to give them a reason to come here, which we lean on customer service and being cool and all that kind of stuff. So I know when you came in you dealt with. Was it Tommy? Yep, was he?

Speaker 1: 40:24

the one. Yeah, tommy was great, and you know I I brought in quite the crew.

Speaker 1: 40:28

We had just come from kalahari, so we're up there around rock right so we're all still dripping wet from the water park, right, and, yeah, my wife, meg, uh, my youngest, ellie, and then, um, I had my brother-in-law there, his two sons, my mother-in-law, so we brought like the whole family caravan and you guys treated everyone so well. My daughter was like I want to go ahead and organize these arrows over here, cause there's like some colors, and the other guys are like, okay, you can't do that, but like it was just fun and they just had a great time. And you know, and of course, I went back there and you know I had a little hiccup in the sense that, well, you know, I wanted to walk this through too. So, as far as, like you know, whenever I went there, what we did is figured out my draw length and we're looking at different types of bows and he, you know, he's bringing a couple back for me to try out, um, and then we're just shooting at paper what, maybe about five yards or so, maybe you know, and just as far as seeing and kind of getting a feel for that, so there's like a side room where you kind of go and kind of get a sense of things, making sure, hey, you're not going to get any arm slaps, um, and different things, like here's the kind of a technique, how you're going to hold it, and just kind of getting a little bit comfortable, not getting too much into super crazy technique yet, but just getting a feel for it.

Speaker 1: 41:36

And you know, feeling which one feels better.

Speaker 1: 41:38

And it's got to start somewhere and that was a great thing. And then all of a sudden, tommy's like hey are. So are you right? I dominant and my left eye has always been my strong eye, but I didn't really fully. You know, I shot with my right eye. Uh, you know my whole life, um, which is kind of crazy. I was born left-handed and then, like two years old, I dipped my hand in my dad's coffee and he's holding it. Never went with my left hand, ever again.

Speaker 1: 42:09

So you know I'm having to unleash layers of you know, repressed memories here, but when he did that he's like, okay, well, let's go ahead and get you a left-handed bow and see if you can even do it Like right now, you know, figure out, you know.

Speaker 1: 42:21

So we tuned down the poundage so I could do that. And then he was like you actually don't look. He didn't say you look comfortable, but he's like you don't look too awkward. But then the more I was shooting there, he's like okay, you know, here's something you need to think about and that was about eye dominance. And you know, before we kind of go further into talking about that, I'd love for you to address that idea, because eye dominance in shooting a rifle is different than eye dominance in a bow and I feel like, for people who may be coming into it and you know the idea that they want to get into archery, can you talk about the importance of how sometimes it may be? What the difference is is if you go with your non-dominant and dominant eye and maybe how that trajectory of how it can plateau or can keep going, depending on what you do and why.

Speaker 2: 43:13

So you can learn any way to shoot. You can teach yourself, you can do anything. What I always tell people the main, the main thing for me is take everything else out of the equation. Take shooting on the range, take all that stuff out of the equation. The reality is when you're in a hunt situation and there's a deer there or there's an elk and your heart's going 80 miles an hour and you're looking at this animal and you're like, can I move now? Can I not move now? Can I do what? What's my next move? Am I good? And there's my sight adjusted to this yardage. Like there's so many things going through your head.

Speaker 2: 43:51

You're always going to go back to the automatics and eye dominance falls into that. So if you draw back and you're left eye dominant but you're making it with a right-handed bow, well, you're not thinking of your step process. Like you are out on my shooting range where you're like all right, let's get my feet with the parts, let's come back to draw. Let's put our nose on the string, let's make sure we're all lined up. All with the parts, let's come back to draw. Let's put our nose on the string, let's make sure we're all lined up. All that's thrown out the door. You're trying to breathe. You're trying to just focus on breathing, but not too loud to where you shake. Yeah, so you'll go back to bad habits, and that's the way I look at it. Go to what your body is telling you, first thing to do. So if, if you do it and it's really awkward, and then you do it with your left hand and you're like, oh wow, this feels, you know, I feel like I aim better, I feel like this is it. Well, then teach yourself to do it that way, because the reality is in the heat of the moment, the situation. You know you're going to fall apart. We all do.

Speaker 2: 44:41

I'm by no means saying you or making fun of anybody, because I'm just as guilty of it. I draw back and there's times when I draw back and I have to close my eyes and be like all right, breathe, let's get the heart rate down here, because you're having a minor heart attack here, and then you settle in and you go through your steps and all that stuff. But the reality is you want to have something that's set up, that is the most routine for you and what you do. So if I dominance is that thing, you don't want to come back to full draw on a right-hand bow and then all of a sudden you're looking over your string trying to get your other eye in there because you've forgotten all of your steps. You're just heated a moment. You're like I got to shoot this bullies right, he's at 40 yards, right there. We got to make this happen now. So that's why I say the dominant stuff really matters and that's why Tommy took the time to do that. That's why you do that, because a lot of people don't know, or they do know, but they're like I don't even know if I can do it and we're like cool, well, there's one way to find that out. Let's go set up the bow, your draw link, let's go do it. It's at five yards. We're not trying to make sure you can get form, you can look through it. Everything lines up and it looks good, because if it's way too long, if it's back here, up here or whatever, we can adjust for that and we can get it to where we're. You're more comfortable with the way it kind of plays out. So, anyway, that's why I would say it does everything's thrown out the door in the heat of the moment.

Speaker 2: 46:03

Man in my playbook for all these years and I still get that fired up. I went on a mule deer hunt last year. Same deal, dude, I am usually calm, cool, composed. A deer steps in. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna take that. When I draw back man, this deer was walking through this maze field and I was literally. I was like I'm gonna shoot him, but I have that one window, so I yank this sucker back, I'm trying to aim. I'm like, is he, where's he? I'm trying to look for him and I have that one window, so I yanked this sucker back, I'm trying to aim. I'm like, is he, where's he? I'm trying to look for him and then I'm like, oh, he's there and whatever. And I'm just, everything went out the window, like I, I luckily I'd done it so repetitively that it was second nature to get my nose on the string and pull the trigger and go from there.

Speaker 2: 46:42

I don't remember like looking through my peep and being like, oh, that's the spot I want to hit. I remember being back, being there and being like, oh, he's there, that's it. Boom, send it and that's it. And I think that's a big part of it. That's why you practice and that's why you make sure you have your equipment right, which plays into what you were saying, that you know you got to make sure it's all right now. That's why we, like tommy and them, do that kind of stuff. And it plays into another thing that we do here at the shop, which is like, if you come in and you're like, hey, I don't know which bow is best or worst or what, I you know, I don't have a reference I you know, pse, matthews, hoits are all.

Speaker 2: 47:22

Are they all the same? Are they different? What's the difference? What? How do you know? Well, everybody's different, I you know. In my opinion, sometimes a matthews is more smooth, sometimes a hoyt's more smooth. I've had guys sit there with a bow that I thought drew absolutely terrible, terrible, like I was like dude, I would never shoot that bow. And this guy's, like man, this thing's way smoother than all those other ones. And I'm like man. I have no idea what that guy sees, but it's just a difference in the way people function. You know, people draw a bow or people, whatever it is. So it's just one of those deals, like I said, there's no right or wrong man. You take people where they're at and you make it work for the best you can with what you got.

Speaker 1: 48:01

So what I loved about being there in that is it. You know, like Tommy took the time and you know, we, we kind of we we hit a point that day too where you guys were having ladies night. So like wednesday nights you have ladies nights, there's someone cooking out there.

Speaker 1: 48:15

They were all kind of coming in and he's like look man, we could say, hey, this blitz kid needs like one lane over here and and I was like, look, I don't, I I've got my whole family with me and we had already spent, you know, some significant amount of time because I was asking lots of questions and he was very, very patient with me, you know, and he, when he was going and tuning up the left hand bow to kind of get to my draw length, the poundage wise, everything I'm talking to the guys and just you know chatting about kind of some of the stuff I do and everything and, um, you know, asking questions about bows and like, and everyone is just so helpful.

Speaker 2: 48:48

I got it right there, like the crew I've put together here taking me and jason jordan. There, it's a good man.

Speaker 1: 48:56

They're good dudes, though, and you see people coming in like, so you know all the ladies are coming in and stuff, and so I knew we still had to make our drive all the way back home and so I was like, look, he's like, look, we can go ahead and do this. Or you can go, and you know, and go back to to to Houston and, you know, find a place that's local to you, go to a shop and just kind of get a feel for what feels right, Shoot some different ones and and right left, see which one you want to go with, and then come back here and you know, then we'll kind of get into your training and stuff too. And I ended up feeling really comfortable with the PSE bow that I had put in my hand, and so I was like, you know, I ended up reaching out to them and kind of worked out to where they sent me one, so super stoked that love it. And that's something that I've gone and done, some practicing, you know, I got set up in my backyard, got a set up at the ranch, and so I'm getting there.

Speaker 1: 49:41

But I'm kind of wanting to just go through the motions and then come back into you guys and take that next level of training, because there's certain things that I know that I'm going to need help with and making sure that I'm not developing too many bad habits, Cause I'm sure I'll. You know, there'll be things where I'm like okay, getting the rest of the exact same spot, you know getting. You know the drawback hitting your nose, all the different things that you know I wouldn't know what to do.

Speaker 1: 50:08

And just to be able to have consistency right and have that same kind of anchor point. There's so many things that you I think it's it's one of those sports where, uh, you know, you, if you don't have, if you develop bad habits, that's going to take longer to erase those. And having someone there from the very beginning be like, okay, georgia, do this, do that arm here. And I was like, okay, to where I got comfortable, that was really, really helpful. And he was like, hey, we can, we can stay here until you want, and or you can go ahead and, and you know, get comfortable with what you want. And I was like, all right, let's, let's take this move, I'm going to go ahead. And, you know, step off and and, uh, you know, kind of started getting a little bit fatigued with my left hand?

Speaker 2: 50:46

I'm not sure. Yeah, no, it's a different set of muscles, man, it's, everything's different and I've tried.

Speaker 1: 50:51

I mean, I went out to the ranch. We had a day it was like it was 100 and something degrees out. We're like spreading seeds out and I kind of doing all this work, and then I was like I'm gonna try it afterwards. I was like never when I'm super fatigued I was like, oh, this will be smart for me yeah for sure.

Speaker 2: 51:03

No, yeah, no, it's arrows in the woods you know, yeah, that's brutal and they're not cheap either. That's the one thing I always laugh about people who go to tack. They're like I'm gonna buy two dozen extra arrows and you're like four hundred dollars to just go shoot them into wood trunks and break them off. You're like man dang expensive hobby. Here it is.

Speaker 1: 51:22

It is yeah, but it's cool. There's nothing like it, man, there really is nothing like it. You know I haven't gone into the live animal that I'm hoping in December when I get out to South Texas there's a few setups there and I hope to have that kind of confidence because I'm not going to step up until I know I'm confident and I have a certain you know, you know shot that I'm having an inconsistency, but I'm getting there no-transcript and I think that you've set up something amazing with your staff there and I just want to want to applaud that.

Speaker 2: 52:19

That's been the goal. I really appreciate that and that has been like hearing that as the the ultimate, you know compliment, because, like I said, we strive for that and it's frustrating when you get the stuff that you know, you hear it. You see a Yelp review and some guys like, yeah, they're for 10 minutes and they didn't help me, and I'm like, well, that was on a day when there was, we were hammered and I guess we thought we had talked to everybody. It wasn't on purpose, it wasn't that we were ignoring you or anything like that. I'm like, come back, try it again. Man, that's not us, that's not who we are and all that.

Speaker 2: 52:56

But at the end of the day, if you don't have that, like I said, you have options. You can go buy everything you got on your bow from a Amazon or a Lancaster or whatever. So the reality is it works both ways For us. It's just as important to be that for other people, because that's what is paying our bills and putting food on our table is us being able to have the knowledge of the site and stuff like that. You can order a Spotahog, but then you got to put it together, figure out how to site it in and then figure out how to build a tape for it and all that stuff. And we got that down to a 30 minute fine art where you walk in. There's no guessing. We're not like, well, let me go read the instructions. We're like, no, come on, man, we're going to do this, We'll. We'll be done in 20 minutes.

Speaker 1: 53:36

Here, man, let's get this sucker rolling so you talk about that too, like there are a lot of people that that's something that is always going to be needed, because you even talk about some of these celebrity folks who are very well off, very great hunters.

Speaker 1: 53:50

But the nuanced, technical part of being able to put together that, tune up a site to a certain way or tune up the bow to a certain way, figure out how to go ahead and adjust the draw weight that is so many different nuances in that archery world and each piece of equipment you need to know how they move and how it's interplayed. And that's something that, even if someone can shoot really well and they have that discipline, they might not know that background to it. And that's where you're still going to always have business, where people are coming through doing that. I mean the cams of the world, the Joe Rogans of the world. It's like they're still coming to you for a reason, because that's what you have the expertise in and you have that expertise in customer care, which is kind of, you know, bringing those together in that way. Yep, nope.

Speaker 2: 54:36

That's like I said, that's exactly what we have been striving for since day one. That's what we're trying to do. But yeah, you're exactly right that when you get into it, there's so many moving parts on a bow at any given time that you can see how it can go south. I mean, there's people that dry fire bows and the limbs are busted and the cams bent and the strings up in the tree and you're like what in the world just happened? So when it goes bad, it goes bad like it's not a, it's it's expensive, it's not a, it's expensive, it's not a good thing. And we see it daily in here and a lot of it is just not knowledge, like they don't know, like they didn't know you can't draw your bow back. So we, like I said this goes back to the first stuff when you come in, we had an influencer girl in there this morning and here this morning that we were talking to her and we were like, hey, so here's the deal, don't let your friends play with your bow, because they're going to want to draw it back. And if they draw it back and they don't know how to let it down and they accidentally let it down, well it's going to dry fire. And now you have a bow in a million pieces and she's like noted, I'll tell my friends don't touch my junk or whatever. And we're like, yeah, that's 101. Like you wouldn't know that. If you don't know it, I mean she was looking at it trying to draw about. Even if you don't know, you don't know. So the reality is you. You, like I said, it goes back to what I said before, you take them where they're at, um, which, like I said, chase tank, tommy jordan, all of my guys are really, really good at that. That's the one thing we've all been good at is kind of taking people where they're at and being like cool man, this guy already knows not to do that, but he might not know man on that Garmin side, it's going to suck the battery drive you let it. So do this or whatever. There's so many moving parts to this stuff and luckily it's one. It's a benefit of our shop and I think it's why we're a better shop than a lot of other shops. Not that we're better, but it's why I think we're more apt to work on anything is because we have so many people that come through daily that we're tuning 10 bows a day. So we're going back and we're taking an old bear, and then we're going with a brand new Hoyt, and then we're going to a three-year-old Matthews, and then we're going to a four-year-old PSC, and then we're going whatever. The list goes on and we're tuning those posts, we're messing with each one. And then a guy comes in and says, hey, I just got the brand new spot hog, I want to set it up. And we're like cool, yeah, we've set out back, we've done tons of these. Dude, that's easy. We got to run through this and all. That Guy wants a new Excel or whatever it is. We've messed with all of it. And it's a benefit of ours because we're in a bigger town and we're a bigger shop that has a reputation.

Speaker 2: 57:20

I don't expect a little tiny shop in Kentucky to have the knowledge we have, because they don't. You know, they might deal with four customers a day and one of them's just trying to get some arrows and cause. This kid ruined them playing swords in the fray yard or something. I mean that's the way it happens, like they don't see that much stuff. So we have the benefit of being in a big town where there's lots of moving parts and all that kind of stuff. So we're tuning and we're working on those all day, every day. So my guys have a great, huge knowledge bank of stuff that we've worked on and we've done so.

Speaker 2: 58:04

When you come in, I'm not saying you can stump us, you can't stump us, but there's a 99% chance that one of these guys is going to be like no, no, I set them up. Or hey, last time I was doing those old PSEs, dude, they like to lean all the way in on the top, whatever it is. You can say, hey, this is the way it plays out, like you just have to, you have to, you got to do this. This is where you start. And then once that happens, literally it takes out all the learning curve where you're back there for an hour trying to figure out why this thing is tearing through paper and shooting funky and you can't figure it out. My guys figure it out in two shots and they're like no, we got to do this. Tommy said the best. I mean, that's what I miss, was it? So I think that's one of the things that sets us apart from other shops is we're so big, we're dealing with so much stuff all the time, um, and they're all smart guys, they're all guys that get it. They they're, you know, mechanically inclined. They know what they're doing when they grab a bow. They're not wondering, they're not looking at instagram or youtube or whatever.

Speaker 2: 59:00

That was a funny one. We had, uh, saturday we had a guy come in and uh, he goes hey, man, he goes, can y'all, can y'all tie a d-loop on a bow? And we were like, yeah, we tied probably 30 a day. Man, we're like we can do it in our sleep. Almost. We're like what you got. He's like I just need a d-loop. And so we're like, well, yeah, give me the bow. You got an arrow, let's, let's do it right now. So he's like, oh, I don't have to drop it off. And we're like, no.

Speaker 2: 59:27

And so my guy grabs it, goes back it was jordan he puts it on a stand, puts the air on it, levels it, make sure it looks good ties to, ties d low in three minutes. And, uh, so the guy goes and that's it, it's perfect. And he was like, yeah, go shoot it, it's perfect, but great, it'll work for you. And the guy was like so you not throw anyone under the table. But he was like I was at a big box store. Uh, an hour ago, and he goes. I told them I wanted a D loop on this bow and uh, he goes.

Speaker 2: 59:59

The tech took it, went in the back room and was gone for like 30 minutes. And uh, he was like, so I walked back in the room after 30 minutes Cause he was like I was like I don't know if I'm supposed to leave this overnight, or like well, he's like I don't know what the deal is. And he goes. So I go in there and the tech has the bow on the thing, it has the top part of a D loop tied on the string and is watching a knock-on video on the computer screen, like trying to learn how to tie a D-loop off of a knock-on video. And he goes. I just told him hey, man, don't worry about it, it's cool. Do I owe you anything for what you've done? I'll just figure something else out. So he comes into our store wondering if A we can even do it and how long it takes and all that, and I'm like, do these? I was like I would venture to say that Jordan could tie a D-loop in a minute in his sleep and have it look perfect on a stream.

Speaker 2: 1:00:51

I might not be in the right spot, because you've got to measure that.

Speaker 1: 1:00:54

Yeah, you've got to open your eyes for those.

Speaker 2: 1:00:56

I could blindfold and be like yeah, here's your D-loop, there you go, You're ready to rock man, what do you got? What else? But people don't know. So if you don't know, you don't know, You're coming in blindly, hoping that you're going to a place that knows what they're doing. It's no different than being like my brakes are squeaking. Is it the rotors or are the brakes shot? Or is it totally fine? They got a little piece of gravel in there. I don't know. That's why I'm at your shop asking you it's the same deal. We're trying to provide a service and do it as honestly and best as we can and do all that stuff. And that's ultimately what sets us apart from other shops is we're we're, we're trying to be better and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:01:36

So you go to these big box stores and I mean I've seen it time and time again the person that's behind the counter isn't necessarily the person that knows everything about what they have.

Speaker 2: 1:01:47

I mean from the shoe department a hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 1:01:50

a hundred percent, well, I mean, you know there's a big sports and outdoor store here in Texas and they have a lot of different things you can buy and there's a whole different, you know, like environment where you can go in there and you can see everything. You can kind of pick out what you want. But when you go for the expertise behind the counter, there's like times where people oh, you can only hunt deer with a 30-06 here and I'm like what the hell are you talking about?

Speaker 1: 1:02:12

yeah, I find myself it's hard to go in those because I might be going to get ammo or something like small or whatever it may be, just like you know, and then I kind of want to be like hey, you can do that with any of those rifles up here you know, and just so it.

Speaker 1: 1:02:27

It bums me out when I see those kinds of things. I see people being steered in the wrong direction. I'm like not my place to step in here, but you might want to go to a specialty shop and that way you can get that type of hands-on experience, people who have that true knowledge base they can pass on. And that was again that was apparent when I came through to to your store there, and that's awesome. You know what I've, what I've.

Speaker 1: 1:02:49

Also, a thing that I really liked that I've seen a lot here in the last few months, you know, and as I kind of learn more about you and we kind of chat some mutual friends and things too is all the events that you have too that I think bring people to the door to kind of be a part of these different events you got going on and I'd love to kind of chat a little bit about those.

Speaker 1: 1:03:06

You know you had Jesse Griffiths, mutual friend, there who's coming and doing wild hog cooking. You got Tyler Jones from the element as part of the meat eater and that already is going to bring people to the door and I think those who are maybe were a little, maybe uncomfortable, they're inquisitive, they're walking through your door and then they're, like they might be, you know, leaving as, like you know, bow hunters by the end of the day or or just someone who loves the practice of shooting and the discipline of learning a sport, cause not everyone who walks through are you trying to get up in the stand and and get blood on their arrow right, like there's a lot of people and even children and different youth group things are going on.

Speaker 1: 1:03:43

So you have so many things going on, I definitely. I just want to want to, you know, take some time to kind of piece apart, like what are some of these events you've got going on? Uh, you know the bat city archery, I think is what it's called yeah, we just did that one, which that's?

Speaker 2: 1:03:57

that's a huge one, man, so it's a really cool thing. The super short version is there's a guy named jim deline here in austin. Uh, jim had a daughter in an elementary school right here in these neighborhoods, right within five miles of us here. His daughter wanted to do archery so he started an archery team at her elementary school. She goes into middle school, did the same thing, she goes into high school, did the same thing. So he started three programs, kind of like following his daughter and all that stuff. Um, it blossomed into this year. He has 15 elementary, middle and high schools with 500 kids doing it. And he's got a waiting list of other schools that want to do it, that are waiting on either a funding or be you know a facility or it's some capacity. They want to do it.

Speaker 2: 1:04:46

So I had lunch with Jim and I was like so what do you actually need? And he's like he's like you get down to brass tacks I. He was like it takes a couple thousand bucks to start a program. He's like you gotta have, you gotta have Genesis bows, cause they do the NAS. They follow the NAS program, which is the national archery in the Schools program, you've got to have the Genesis Arrows. They try and make it a level playing field, so it's all the same bows, all the same arrows. They can't have sights, it's all instinct Stuff like that. So, long story short, I was like, well, I can't, so I can't donate. Like my kids school. They're trying to onboard a program right now. My kid would be a stud. My older boy would be an absolute killer in this thing. My younger boy might, I don't know, he might grab a sword and like an arrow, like a sword, and just start beating his friends, but my older boy's stud. Anyway, they're trying to build a program. Well, it costs a couple thousand bucks. So the reality is he's like man, I could really use you as a coach because I have seen you help kids and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 1:05:51

And I'm like dude, the plate is full over here. I was like between two kids, a wife, two businesses, a taxidermist, a hammer, this archery shop is busy. I was like I don't have, it's not possible, it's not an option. But I was like I can cook a bunch of food on a saturday and we can sell plates for 10 bucks a pop and whatever. He told me that they on this saturday. This last saturday, um, I didn't stay up overnight because I had a trigger, luckily, and a buddy of mine had a trigger too, so we cheated on that part. But we made pulled pork and sausage and hot dogs, sold plates. I bought it all. I didn't ask for anything back from it. We donated all the money they made a little over $4,000. So now they can onboard two schools that weren't going to be able to do it because they needed to buy the 10 bows and the 10 sets of arrows and the targets and the backdrop and all this stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:06:43

So the reality is my point to that whole story is there's probably 15 programs like that around that I'm not aware of, but if I can bring awareness to it and all that stuff. So what I did? I basically I went back to the customer service aspect, which is relying on community to build it and grow and do all that stuff. So I called on my archery community and I'm like, look, I know a hunter might not care about a fifth grader over here at Highland Park Elementary School, but it's the future of our sport. It's a really cool thing. It's getting kids off of iPads and doing stuff. It's a cool thing, man, why wouldn't we want to give back to that? Why wouldn't we want to foster that and try and grow that Um, which, you know we raised $4,500, which is legit. Um, the community thing is huge for us here at archery country, for me at least, personally, because I've relied on that to build, to build this orbit that we're in right now.

Speaker 2: 1:07:44

So, jesse's we you know we have a mutual friend in jesse well, a bunch of people were like man, I'd love to see him butcher one, you know start to finish like I, not just look at his book, because you can learn a lot through that. But it'd be cool to see the dude do that. And I was like, why don't we cook? And you cook some stuff. He made like wild boar, chorizo tostadas and rice and beans and then we showed everybody. We got 100 people show up and they got a book. They got a hog book or a turkey book and he did the whole deal. Um, when we do that stuff, people are just like dude, this is so legit. They were like I've never thought I would be able to be around jesse or eat his stuff or see what he does or see if he's really as legit as everybody says he is or whatever. It's that way, with all of it.

Speaker 2: 1:08:31

We have John Dudley come through here. We've had, we've had Cam Haynes come to events. We've had all kinds of people we had last year. One of our really awesome ones was there was a. Have you ever heard of barklow? John barklow with sitka? Um, so barklow and aaron schneider came here and did a backcountry 101. Here's what you look for in a pack, here's what you would want to do in this and all that. Well, people eat that stuff up. It makes us look like studs. Because they come here and I'm like all I did was give them a venue. We put a bunch of chairs and tables in the range and they do the hard work and we're like yeah, I had Josh Smith from MKC come in and do knife sharpening demonstrations in here last year.

Speaker 2: 1:09:13

I mean, it just moves mountains because people are like man, how do you get these people? I don't know how I get them, but I do know this. I do know that the community draws together. Everybody tells me the same thing After we do one of those events they're like man, what a cool deal. They're like we should do more of this stuff, and it's one thing that I don't see a bunch of other shops doing. I don't. You know, there's some really big shops West Houston and Houston that is a giant powerhouse of a shop but I don't really see them doing like events, like we do, and stuff like that. And I'm not saying we're better, I'm saying it's how I did.

Speaker 2: 1:09:52

My business model for this is I was like I want to build on the community because eventually you connect with these people and they're like well, tyler's my guy, I don't really go anywhere else because that's my guy. Or you have like what's happening right now? People are like well, I know I can buy Q80 broadheads and have them delivered to my front door, but that doesn't help. You help, jim the line, build a kid's school program. So I'm going to come spend my money with you. It's the same cost both ways. It's just now I got to spend the trip over here to come gap it up with Tommy and Jason or whatever. You know, it's that kind of stuff. So the reality is, when you build that community, it just it. It it's kindling on a fire, it feeds itself and eventually it's just.

Speaker 2: 1:10:37

There's this ethos of people wanting to come and wanting to be a part of it. And then they're like what's your next deal, what's the next cool thing that you're doing? And I'm like I don't know, I'm trying to work on it and then all of a sudden it happens. I get a call from somebody and they're like, hey, let's do a cool event over there. And it just always happens. And I've tried to do them now to where, three or four times a year, we're doing something that's really, really cool, that moves the needle, that's not just a nobody like jesse's deal. We're talking about doing something with jesse where we, um, shoot a deer that morning.

Speaker 2: 1:11:11

But I do almost like a taxidermy demonstration, like the way, I would want to cut it for a shoulder mount. So we have this deer hanging up in our range that we shot this morning. So I'm like here's how I got it. Uh, here's where I cut to make my initial cuts for taxidermy. You might not know this. You might not know I need a lot of the brisket for a shoulder mount.

Speaker 2: 1:11:33

A lot of people see a shoulder mount on their wall and they're like, oh well, this looks about right. And then when they bring it to me, I'm like that doesn't work. Man, I've don't, I don't have enough brisket to cover all the mannequin. I don't have that. People don't know it. So I told Jesse I was like why wouldn't we do a cool thing where it's a collaborative effort of a taxidermy slash meat processing? And he's like I love it, let's try and figure something out with that. So now we're going to do a thing where I come in we have a whole deer.

Speaker 2: 1:12:00

I show people the way I got it, I show people the way I would skin it for a shoulder mount and then I say, cool, now we're going to let Jesse show you the meat part of it, cause he's way better at it than I can do it. I totally know how to do it. I'm not near as fast or as efficient with a knife as Jesse is, but here's how you do it. And then we can go a step further. Hey, y'all want to learn how to make sausage or make tamales? Here's how you do that. Here's what the next steps are for that and all that.

Speaker 2: 1:12:30

That stuff moves mountains, man. People love that stuff and they're looking for something to plug into a community like that of cool stuff. And it's not out there for the offering. These little archery shops don't have a budget for it or they can't and all that stuff. And we're fortunate enough, we're okay on money. So when stuff like this happens, I'm like, yeah, I can cook $500 or $600 worth of pork butts overnight and donate it to that. They made $4,500 towards their kids program. That's awesome, that's a $600 write-off for us. Didn't hurt us that much. And, man, man, look at the community impact.

Speaker 2: 1:13:04

I got 10 new parents that were like we're gonna start coming here.

Speaker 2: 1:13:05

I just thought it was for hunters.

Speaker 2: 1:13:06

They were like I didn't realize this was like kids could come here and all that. They see my kids running around shooting bows and yapping with my guys and having a good time and they're like, gosh, I had this place pinned, all wrong. I thought it was only for hunters and stuff. So, yeah, like I said, building on the building, on the community, building on the customer service stuff, it moves mountains, man. That's. It's how you do it. In my opinion, it's how you move the needle forward and I know it works because I talked to some of these bigger distributors the Matthews and the Hoyts and the QADs and the Hamskys and all these guys and they're all like man, when you think of like shops making a splash, you guys in the bow rack are the two that come up and the bow rack has Cam Haynes pumping a bunch of stuff through it and we're doing our thing and they're like, oh, the only two, I see, they're the only two that I like that are national, nationally, like making moves and going towards something better.

Speaker 1: 1:14:00

So it makes you feel good, you know you're doing something kind of right Halfway, right man, you know it's it, I know it's cliche, but if you build it it'll come right. You bring this idea and these ethos together of community, of respect, of teaching people, meeting them where they are and helping them get to that next level, whatever it is incrementally, uh, sometimes it sleeps in bounds, sometimes it's like a lesson to lesson that they get better. But you're, you're y'all's patients. Uh, the camaraderie that you, I feel you have when you step into your shop is, um, it's not like anything I've seen before and I've, I've listened, I've gone to West Houston archery I can see it across from my office, right here and they've, they've had some great guys that helped me out there too, because I went there to kind of make sure I was putting the equipment on, because I just happened to live, you know, a little bit further from Austin.

Speaker 1: 1:14:46

But you know, my first stop was at yours for a reason, because of all those things, because of everyone who I know and people in the industry who have all said the same thing about your shop, and that it's like that experience is second to none and there's a reason that you guys have, um, that kind of attention and I love that you're. You're about it the right way, man. It's about that community aspect and having these types of things. You're bringing in new people in such a great way and, like you just talked about there too, that's amazing. You're doing that with Jesse and the idea of like getting ready for taxidermy. You know my buddy and I like we're just literally he was, he got that melanistic dough and it's like he wanted to take the whole cape and he's like huh, okay.

Speaker 1: 1:15:25

You know and you're on the YouTube right, and you know I did it the first time. I shot my melanistic buck and it was in 16. And I'm like what the heck do I do?

Speaker 2: 1:15:33

He had no clue but, would I have any second.

Speaker 1: 1:15:37

Any one of us that that any of my friends at hunt would have gone to that to see like, okay, what does a professional do? And how they're breaking apart this animal and how are they making this cut to be able to get this piece of meat off? Like there's things that I might have known in my 30 something years of hunting and it just takes that seeing that one thing oh, that's a better idea, that's a better mousetrap and just seeing how other people do it, it's just a cool okay.

Speaker 2: 1:15:57

Well, you know maybe I'll take it, leave it. Yeah, and I was going to say that matters because if you ask any of my guys, I've skinned deer for them and they're like dude, you are bar none the fastest skinner I've ever seen. They were like you can skin a deer faster than anybody I've ever seen and I, you know, it's a point of pride for me. I'm like yeah, I am Well, I'm down at a ranch in South Texas a year ago and they were like hey, get julio over here. They were like that dude will whack one out and julio comes over and I'm like dude, I look like a sloth, like a freaking two-toed sloth with a knife compared to that guy. Like, so my point to that is there's always somebody bigger and better and all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:16:35

Yeah, at some point you just need to know how to do it like you. Like, if you just saw, man, I remember I was at that Jesse Griffith thing in the archery range and Tyler just did a round cut around it and then he started cutting this and then it all kind of fell down. That's all you need to see. Like people, people don't, they don't need the nuance, they're not trying to become the fastest skinner or the best one in the world. They're just like where do you start? Like what do you? What do you start? The world? They're just like where do you start? Like what do you? What do you start? Like, if I'm trying to gut this pig on the ground, where do I start? Do I start up at the sternum and go down? Do I start with the butt and go up? Like what, what's the move? Like, how do you do it?

Speaker 2: 1:17:10

So, seeing it once or twice helps, but my point to that is is like it's good, it's building on the community aspect. Again, it's getting people together, all learning at the same time and not trying to be better than anybody else, not trying to be anything. You're not. You just come in and say, hey, man, there's 10 different ways to skin this. In fact, there's a dude that works on the Southern Ranch and you know, pierce, all named Julio. That would smoke me at this, but here's the way I do it, and it works, because now you have a piece of taxidermy that the guy's not going to be like oh, I don't have enough brisket, you can't do a shoulder mount, or we're going to have to find another tape, or we're going to have to cut the skull plate again because this is all jacked up and you know we're going to have to do some modifications here or whatever. You can get away with all that. So the point is like the community building and the team and like having people that just keep coming back to the well, it means a lot to me because it means you're doing something right and everybody is like man, what a cool deal They've like.

Speaker 2: 1:18:09

Some guys were like I've seen Jesse, like there was two guys at that event that had been to Jesse's uh, like one-on-one course, like the one where you pay and it's five guys watching him break it down, and they were like I just wanted to see if this was much different. They were like it wasn't and this was way cheaper and this was awesome. I learned almost as much as doing that. But they were like man, it was such a cool event because it was not just like you and Jesse right here and him being like here's what I do next, pop, I just hit that and broke the pelvis or whatever. It was 75 people in a little huddle and he's like hey, all y'all watch this Cause.

Speaker 2: 1:18:47

This is kind of cool and this will help you if you're out on the, you know, on a Sendero, and you're trying to do this in the dark and this will make it way lighter or easier or whatever it is. It makes a huge difference, man and people love it when they're all together eating good food and all that. It's pretty easy. Like building community is one of people have asked me like how I do it, and I'm like it's the easiest thing in the world. It's literally putting food in front of people and drinks and getting people in a big group and being like, hey, this is what we're doing tonight. That's community. There's. No, you don't have to add or subtract or take a bunch of stuff to it. You just have to be like, hey, man, we're all going to watch Jesse cut up this pig and, by the way, he's making wild boar chorizo tostadas. We're going to eat good and we're going to learn and everybody thinks they just had an epic experience and I'm like all we did was make tostadas and watch him cut up a pig.

Speaker 1: 1:19:41

It wasn't that big of a deal, but it is so it is when you create that space for that man and I mean there's other ones coming up. I mean, by the time this airs, you'll have just finished this up, because we're recording this here kind of mid october, but you've got um tim kennedy. Uh, tell me a little bit about that, because I know that's kind of the most recent one by this time yeah, so so that's this Friday.

Speaker 2: 1:20:01

So what that one is is I've got. So Tim Kennedy is doing what he calls a bow provider course, which Tim Kennedy, through Sheepdog Response, does these courses, whether it be pistol or long range shooting or grappling Like. He's got all kinds of stuff you can do. You know you can doiu-jitsu, you can do it all, sure? Um, the bow provider course is them teaching you what they do when they bow hunt.

Speaker 2: 1:20:31

So you they're going to assume you know how to use a bow and arrow. You're going to go hunt. You're going to go do all this stuff and then fast forward. You're going to come in and you're going to say, cool, well, now that we've done that, here's the next step. We're going to come in and you're going to say, cool, well, now that we've done that, here's the next step. We're going to go hunt. So we're going to go put y'all out. We're going to go hunt some stuff. We're going to try and get a pig or something, a deer or something, and now we're going to blood trail. We're all going to blood trail this together. So if you hit it, good, there's a bunch of blood.

Speaker 2: 1:21:08

You want to say there's like 30 people 28, 30 people that are coming, some of which have hunted before, some of which have never shot a bow before. They don't even know what they're doing. We're going to take them all where we're at and do what we normally do. I've got my guys showing up. We're going to set bows up, we're going to make sure they're comfortable with them, we're going to make sure they know what they're doing and all that stuff, and then we're going to go back on that range and from four to eight or nine that night, us with Tim's instructors and Tim, we're all just going to go at it and see if we can make sure everybody there is pretty confident with a bow, hit the bullseye at 20 yards before they leave and then they'll go on saturday to their other class.

Speaker 2: 1:21:47

But bow provider stuff is pretty cool. Tim's got the. The sheepdog response thing just in general is a really cool thing. It's it's all about being a little more self-sufficient, being, um, a little more like wary of your surroundings, a little more about being self-reliant, like you don't need somebody else there. If you're a woman, you don't have to have your six foot five husband looming over your back in a dark alley to handle it yourself. Whatever it's that kind of stuff. He's teaching you life lessons and stuff and this is the one we're doing with him. So Tim's another influencer that comes through the shop, friend of mine, good buddy, cool dude does really cool stuff. So this Friday should be a really cool deal. We'll see what happens, but I bet it's like the rest of them, it'll be a fun deal.

Speaker 1: 1:22:33

So I mean you just keep providing space for amazing things to happen. The community continues to grow. You know, again, I just I recommend for anybody who's looking to get involved, and obviously here, we're here in Texas and uh, but you got people that come from other States to come check this out. I mean, if you, anytime you guys go through and you get a chance to check out archery country, I highly highly recommend you guys do it. There's a reason why the buzz is a plenty all across the nation, man, and there's, uh, you know it's great to be able to go in there and say hi to Tyler and go see the crew man.

Speaker 1: 1:23:04

It's a fun spot and grab a drink and hang out Heck, yeah, heck, yeah, man.

Speaker 1: 1:23:07

Well, uh, you know, before we leave, I had a couple other questions that I kind of wanted to tackle and, um, you know, one is about this idea of legacy.

Speaker 1: 1:23:15

Right, you have talked about a lot today, the community building, this group. Um, you know the camaraderie and it's around, you know archery, but I think it's even more than that too. It's about mindfulness and about this approach that you have of you know, whether it's kids and everything, and obviously that, uh, you know you have a spot for this that you've created. Um, and you know, I wanted to ask you, as far as like that idea of like legacy, what it is that you want to leave behind and be remembered for, and, you know, not just in in this professional setting too, but in a personal one as well. Is this something you kind of think about on on, maybe not necessarily day to day, but is this something that comes through? Is it, you know, what you want to be able to kind of build and make sure that you can pass on to others, and that kind of that amplifies out.

Speaker 2: 1:24:11

What is it that you kind of view as? When someone talks about legacy, yeah, um, that's a good one. I didn't think about that. Um, what I would tell you for legacy is leaving a positive mark for the ones that you love. So, like, my kids and wife are kind of my kind of everything right now, um, I would love it if the legacy for me personally would be what a cool dude he tried to, you know, help people out. He tried to take people where they were at and help them, whether that be archery or, you know, in life in general, whatever it is, um, taking them and just being a good person. And I'd love for my kids you know, if I'm dead and gone, for my kids to be like man. My dad was a really cool guy. He sold goats online and did dumb stuff, but man, at the end of the day, he had really cool like, he believed in really cool stuff and he he believed in it enough to keep pushing forward for it. And, at the end of the day, I would want to be remembered as just someone who was, who tried to make everybody better and tried to become friends with everybody and all that.

Speaker 2: 1:25:14

The world's crazy to begin with. You can get on the news right now and see how everything is falling apart. It's crazy and I know my kids are gonna have a rough not a rough go of it because they don't have a rough go of it. Our kids deal with different circumstances than we had. I was talking about this the other day because, um, I was thinking about how spoiled my kids are. Uh, just in the sense that it was, it was like a friday night and my youngest I was like, well, if you could have anything for supper tonight, what would you have? And he goes, oh, we should do a ribeye with some new potatoes and some of those string green beans. And I was like, yeah, that sounds good, we can do that. So I'm an heb fast forward an hour later and I'm buying like freaking prime ribeyes at the meat counter and I'm like if I was a kid and I would have told that to my dad, he would have been like, oh, yeah, you want to. You want to eat that in your Lamborghini on your private Island, like freaking high right now. Like, what are you doing? Talking about Eat your freaking spam macaroni and cheese. Anyway, I was like I think about it, but it's a different set of circumstances that our kids are going through, because they have to watch the news of people beheading other people because of hate for something. They don't even know what to hate them for. They're just taught from an early age those people are bad and we're good. It's a crazy world we're all living in and taking that back to legacy. I would want my kids to be like man. He was just a good man. He was a person that tried to help others and tried to build community and tried to do cool things.

Speaker 2: 1:26:52

I don't have any illusions of trying to be something. I'm not. I don't think I'm ever going to be a Joe Rogan and have a massive following and have tons of people, you know, looking to my every word for what I should buy or what I should do next. But I can affect the ones that I do touch in my smaller circles and stuff like that, and that's what I like about. Like my guys here at the shop uh, tank and Tommy, when kids come in for the archery program. I have kids at our elementary school that come up and they're like hey is Mr Tank. I'm like he's there every day, man, and they're like I'm gonna go give him a high five. When I get there and they've made it a point to where we don't charge these kids to come practice, so they all come in, they high five my guys, they ask how their day was and then they run back on the range and shoot their bows and take off.

Speaker 2: 1:27:39

Um, that's a legacy, in my opinion. It's a legacy, it's a cool, it's. It's they're, they're garnering something and they're they're remembered for something that maybe those kids might remember that when they're kids I mean when they're an old man they might be like yeah, I remember walking into the archery shop and there was this giant guy named Tank, but he'd high five me every time he'd I'd walk in, or Tommy was riding his skateboard and talking to me about this or whatever. That's legacy. And going back to it, like I said, that's what I would want. I would want to be known as the dude who tried to build community, tried to do cool stuff and tried to have a cool little ethos around him. And I'm hoping one day that my boys do it like I do for my dad, like what a cool man he gave. You know, he tried his best and whatever. So that's the super long version of uh, that's what I want my legacy to be.

Speaker 1: 1:28:31

Well-answered, tyler. Well-answered, no, and you know I can speak to that. I already know that you're creating this, you're continuing to. There's all these different events that you're putting together, making the space for that to happen, and it's a. It's a beautiful thing For those who want to follow in the journey, learn more about archery country, and yourself too. Can you go ahead and give us the socials website address of of where they can find you in Austin and kind of go from there?

Speaker 2: 1:28:53

For sure. So the website is Austin archery countrycom. If you go to that, there's a little link on there that will like run you to like just basically sms and email blast on what we're doing and events and stuff like that. Um, our socials, the same. I'm terrible at our socials. I have a guy he used to be a guy with, like, uh, yeti and all that. There's a guy named sloan brown that runs my stuff. S's a stud. He makes us look way cooler than we actually are.

Speaker 2: 1:29:25

But and it's actually a lot of fun to follow us on Instagram. We do a lot of stupid videos, but anyway, it's all lowercase archery country for our Instagram handle. Facebook's the same, the reality is, that's the best places to follow us. Um, facebook's the same. Um, the reality is that's the best places to follow us. Um, other than that, you can catch it kind of if you come into the shop. We're always putting posters up of the next big thing and stuff like that. So we'll we'll be doing more stuff. But, yeah, austin archery countrycom and, uh, lowercase archery country all one word for, uh, instagram and Facebook. So nice, nice.

Speaker 1: 1:30:02

Nice, well, I'll have all the links and your physical address down below and the notes and descriptions there. So, everyone, I highly encourage you to check that out Before we leave. Is there anything that you want to kind of you know, tell you know folks who are maybe beginning to have that spark of interest to get into archery? What is it that you want to kind of impart to them? And maybe you know kind of a message and kind of welcoming them in and you know, what is it that you'd like to say? Heck, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:30:28

No, I for sure would. It's just take the first step. You got to walk in the front door. That's step number one. You'll see, when you, when you take the first step in, it's always intimidating. It's never going to get easier. You're always going to be like can I draw this much weight, can I pull? Whatever? You'll have a million excuses. Walk in the front door, you'll see. The guys are going to be super friendly. There's probably going to be some cool music playing in the background and grab a Coke, if you want, and walk around for a minute and check it all out before you go, approach a guy at the counter or whatever. They're going to come find you. But man, the first step's always the hardest one and going back to like, like what I was saying with, uh, donnie vincent, like the first step's the hardest one. He had to work it up for three hours to actually get in, to walk in the front door and then make the first thing and it ended up being a good experience. You, you never know until you're there, but you got to take the first step. So I would implore people, give us a try.

Speaker 2: 1:31:28

Don't think it's all super rednecks that are just wanting to hunt and not wanting to talk to you and all that stuff. That's the biggest thing that I fight over here is I'm in Austin it's a liberal stronghold and I'm in the belly of the beast. I'm I'm literally in the smack middle of it. You can't get more central than I am and I these people that come in and don't know what we're about and who we are and what we're doing and all that stuff. And here we are, like you come in and you make the first step and then you're like man, what a really cool deal. They always leave 99.9% of them leave thinking man, man, what a cool bunch of guys. I wish I'd have done this sooner. I'd you know whatever. So come see tank and tommy and chase jordan, me, nick andy, I got a bunch of guys in here. I'll put you at ease and have some fun while we're doing it. So yeah, man right on, man.

Speaker 1: 1:32:20

Well, I encourage all you guys, take that step, man, and go over there and check out archery country in Austin Tyler. Once again, man, I'm so glad we connected. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:32:33

We'll go do some hunting together. I'll get you out to my place and we'll go see what we can do. Get you some blood on an arrow.

Speaker 1: 1:32:40

I cannot wait. I look forward to that man. Well, listen, uh, until we meet again in person and hang out. Thank you again. And uh, you know, appreciate all your staff there. Please give them all a big hello and thank you. And uh, yeah, man, we'll see you next time.