122: Hunt to Eat Founder & Photographer, Mahting Putelis

Sometimes I feel oversaturated with news about hunter numbers. They’re up, they’re down. And then back up again. Now Outdoor Life says we have no clue what they are. Whatever they are or aren’t, I think we need to do better. Even if hunting spiked last year, we have to realize there is some bubble happening here. Of course people hunted more last year, it was one of the only things you could do. How many times have I said that we were losing hunters to youth sports? And Netflix? Well youth sports were shut down last year, and there’s only so many rounds of your favorite show you can watch before you have to move or become part of the couch. There are some really interesting plays happening in the outdoor space. You have people like AJ De Rosa, Nic De Castro, Slade Johnston, Murielle Gaither, Adam Gifford, and my team at GoWild so many others, who are making strong tech plays to get more people outside. I hope that together, we’re building a strong enough community to avoid losing hunters when this bubble bursts. And just like the ammo and gun shortage, it will burst. We’ll either be prepared for it, and have handled it well. Or it’ll be 2016 over again, when the demand for guns slumped, a time the gun industry calls the Trump Slump due to it coming along with Trump’s win of the election, and then firearms companies started getting their butts handed to them. Today's guest is another guy who deserves to be among that list of people I mentioned. It’s Mahting Putellis, the founder of Hunt to Eat. He’s going to talk about hunter recruitment and retention today. And what he and his team are doing to help more people get outside. HunttoEat.com