Cody Ingram - Making History with The North American Grand Slam

Cody Ingram helped make history with the North American Grand Slam, shooting a turkey of every species in America. The way it was historic was with two hunter, Justin and Brandi. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's lines and times. Thanks so much for checking out
the podcast. Thanks so much, by the way, for clicking
like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app in the iHeart
podcast Network. If you've been listening along for a while,
maybe you want to go back and you want to
check out some of the past episodes we had. We
talk a lot about fishing and a lot about hunting

(00:26):
and the outdoor life. Cody Ingram who runs Big Dreams Outdoors,
which is an incredible nonprofit. They help people who have
disabilities be able to access the outdoors. I think it's
one of the coolest things in the world. But I
also understand that our outdoors, as limitless as it feels,
is extremely limited, Cody, and it's limited by not allowing

(00:51):
every one of every walk of life, and even those
who can't walk, the opportunity to actually get out hunt.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, we've kind of and I guess from our perspective
is we we kind of put everybody in a box
and we've limited ourselves and we kind of put limitations
on the individuals that we serve. So I'm the chief
operating officer at UCP of West Alabama over in Tuscaloosa,
and so we served fourteen counties, a little over three
thousand families and within those counties. And I've been working

(01:21):
with special education since I was twenty one, been a
part of this world of working with kids, and so
when the idea of Big Dreams came about, it was
really to showcase ability. And so we started in twenty
twenty one doing a few hunts, doing a few you know,
outdoor activities, go into camping sites, going hiking, shooting BB

(01:43):
guns twenty two's riflery, archery kind of thing. And these
guys just were obsessed with it, you know, because it's
a thrill. You know, as a hunter you get it
like hunting and fishing and outdoors. It's just a thrill.
It's it gets the heart beat up. And so there
was this kind of like excite that I saw in
a group of people that I was like, Okay, well,

(02:03):
how do we how do we keep this going twelve months?
And one of the things that I looked at, I said, well,
there's got to be a program out there, right that
I don't have to recreate the wheel. We can just
plug people in and they can they can do this
twelve months out of the year, and there just wasn't.
Everything was more geared to what you and I probably
drew up watching Bugmasters the Life Hunt.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, it was the Life Hunt
like Jackie Bush those guys.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Right, and bug Masters is one of our partners now,
and that was it was interesting to watch that, you know,
you you took people and we took them on hunts
and that was awesome. But it was also a one
time thing. Uh. And so as a hunter or an outdoorsman,
I thought, man, that kind of that's not really fun
to go one time and you gotta wait twelve months
and dream about it to do it again. And I

(02:51):
was like, how do we keep the momentum going and
get the community involved. How do you build social equity
within the community so people without disability are learning about
people with and how to take them and do all
these things. And so that's where Big Dreams was kind
of birthed from, was that idea of like, look, we
don't want to do a dream hunt or one time hunt.
We want to do a lifetime and teach individuals the

(03:15):
skills to be hunters.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I feel like we've kind of skipped a couple of
things though, because as much as I appreciate you giving
the background. I dreams outdoors. What's your personal connection for
why you got involved with special education, why you wanted
to get involved with helping kids and people with disabilities
to access the outdoors.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
It's not really, unfortunately, that great of a story. I
was actually I actually was an educator. I was in teaching,
and when I was going through through school, when I
was kind of finishing up, I wanted to be I
was a football coach. I played football. I was coaching
in Tuscaloosa, and so the short version is I asked
when I was trying to decide my major, one of

(03:55):
the football coaches like, hey, you should do special education.
You'll get a job pretty easy. And I was like okay,
and so I started going over to one of those
schools volunteering, and I just kind of fell in love
with it. And that was the story. I wanted to
be a coach and I wanted to when I graduated
to have a job, and I was like, Okay, this

(04:16):
is what I'll do, and I did, and then I
just kind of like was obsessed with it.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
I like how you say that's the story, because it's not.
I'm going to try to tap into something with you
that I feel like will actually get to the moment
where you realized how much of an impact people with
special needs and special education had on you. So you
accept the job, you start teaching special education. You get

(04:41):
the curriculum based on what the state says is the
standards that you have to go through. Who is the
kid that changed your mind? Where you were like, this
is where I'm supposed to be there?

Speaker 2 (04:52):
It was quite a few. I think it goes back,
and you're right, you tap into what I was passionate
about was working with who was like coaching. You know,
you took an athlete. You had a ninth grader that
comes in and he's just, you know, little and timid,
and and then by the time he graduates, he's going
to play college football. And to watch that transformation and
that growth. Uh that's why we did it, and that's

(05:13):
why we woke up. That's what we were excited about.
Uh So the same thing with the kids that we
taught in the classroom, you know, that was watching them
go from struggling with social skills with if it was autism,
to being able to communicate and get their first job.
That's one of the big things that I'm passionate about
is watching someone develop and be a part of that development,

(05:35):
to see them then succeed. And so there was a
lot of those stories. I mean, we had, you know, families,
I think about the families who were who were hopeless
that their kid would would never what were they going
to do when they graduate? And they had all that
fear and that anxiety, and to be an educator that
you could WelCom slowly through the whole process and then

(05:55):
see them succeed after high school. That's that was the
heart that I guess motivated you every year to come
back and be excited. I was in it for nine years,
then transitioned out in twenty sixteen into mental health.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
So when I was a kid, I grew up in
the middle of nowhere, Virginia. If you ever saw the
movie with Bill Murray, What About Bob, That Lake's my hometown.
They just showcased it on Major League Fishing. They had
heavy hitters there. It's called Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, and
it's middle of nowhere. And I started going to this
small little Southern Baptist church called Stanton Baptist. And I

(06:35):
was eleven years old, and I remember it was the
first time I ever had an interaction with somebody with
Down syndrome. And I walked into the church and I
saw this little, old, elderly couple and sitting between them
was this guy named Matthew. And when matt turned around
and looked at me, I could tell that Matthew didn't
look like me. Right, we had differences in just our appearance,

(07:00):
but he smiled ear to ear. So at the end
of church. You know, my parents were big on making
sure I went up and said hi to people, and
I'm really outgoing, so for me, that was nothing. I
sought Matt out because I wanted to say hi. Where
I thought I was seeking Matt out, he was seeking
me out. He walked right over to me and he said, Hi,

(07:21):
my name's Matt And I said, Matt, how are you?
And we had this conversation. I'm eleven years old, and
I asked him how old are you and he told
me he was thirty one years old. Thirty one right, yeah,
And we're having this great conversation. And you know, I
can tell that there's obviously some things. And later in
the day, I remember I was home and I asked

(07:42):
my parents, can you tell me a little more about Matt.
My dad says, well, he has Down syndrome, and he
explained what Down syndrome was. And over the years that
Matt was a member of the church and I was
a member of the church, and I was growing up
as a teenager, I started to find out a lot
of things about Matt. Matt had a job as a
bagger at a grocery store. Matt competed in Olympic weightlifting

(08:04):
for the Special Olympics, and Matt was a beast. He
was back squad in six hundred pounds. And what I
realized is he got hyper focused on tasks, like if
you put him in a position where he wanted to
do something, that became his mission in his goal. So
I developed this friendship with Matt, and ultimately, you know,

(08:27):
I got older and moved out, I went to college
and all that kind of stuff, but I always tried
to stay in contact with him on social media. And now, man,
he's in his mid fifties and still crushing it. His
parents had passed away, so now he has to have
some assistance every once in a while. But he was
such a big part of my childhood that when I

(08:48):
would spend time in high school. My mom was an educator.
She was a principal for years. If I didn't have
school because I was in rural Virginia, she was in
the city. I would go to her school and I
would help as an assistant in the special need classes,
helping kids with math and reading and all that kind
of stuff. I loved it. I loved it. When Jeff
Barnes contacted me and said, hey, I want you to

(09:11):
talk to Cody Ingram about Big Dreams Outdoors, I said, Man,
tell me about this organization. He started telling me some
of the stories, and then I went to the website
Big Dreams Outdoors dot org and I started reading for
myself and seeing pictures. I just want to thank you, honestly,
because as somebody who loves the outdoors like I do,
I do feel that the outdoors is limited a little bit.

(09:32):
I do feel like there's a lot of states that
are starting to make some really big changes, and I
think it's because of organizations like yourself, where we're showcasing
to these other states into states like Alabama. Hey, we
have more than just able bodied people that want to
be able to go out and enjoy the outdoors.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, So it's all education. You know, you don't know
what you don't know. And the perception that people have
when it comes to an individual dull syndrome is that,
you know, look, this is the perception that some of
their families had when I started doing this, and I
would ask, like Justin, the kid that just finished the
drand Slam three years ago. I went to his mom,

(10:09):
who I knew, I've known her for years, and I
was like, hey, can I take Justin hunting? And she's like, well,
he was not going to enjoy that. He's not going
to want to go.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
But did anybody ever ask Justin? No, that's the best part.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Nobody had asked Justin. And I'm like and I asked mom,
of course, out of respect first, just to make sure
she was comfortable and made me doing this. And uh,
She's like, I don't think he'll I don't think he'll
enjoy it. And I was like, well, give me a chance,
Like we'll just go hang out and sit in the
shooting house and just chill, like just see if he
likes it, and we go and uh, it was I

(10:43):
think it was just a deer hunt and anyway, a
deer comes out and he was kind of he didn't
really want to shoot it, and so I ended up
I shot this dough for him, and then we went
out and did the recovery together and it was all
fun and he enjoyed it well. Then he the next
day he's like, hey, can we can? We can we
go again? I was like, we'll go tomorrow, let's go.
And the next time he's ready. You know, he's having
more fun and so.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
But that's no different than most people.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Most people outdoors. It was just like most people you introduced.
And so anyway, so we started doing some hunters education courses.
I would take him and do shooting like at the range,
and we we'd work on safety and how did how
do you know you operate the rifle and all these things,

(11:27):
and so then I got the opportunity. I think it
was like a September. We went down to Florida, had
a guy reach out to us, and we went down
to Florida and we did a hog hog hunt, slash
alligator hunt, and Justin ends up shooting his first wild
hog by himself three o eight and just hammers him. Dang, yeah,

(11:47):
I mean hammers him. And from that day forward, this
boy is obsessed with honey.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
And it's all because his mom said, I don't think
he'll enjoy that.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
And then his mom and I still laugh to this
day because she he's like, I never thought he would
be this upset. Like when I say obsessed, I mean
like you should have seen the whole process of the Slam,
what he went through to get this Grand Slam.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
So maybe explain to Grand Slam for people who are
listening that have no idea what that means in terms.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
So in North America there's something called the National Turkey
Grand Slam, and that's where you harvest all four species,
of course, of the wild turkey that's in the United States.
You start with Florida where the Osceoli is. It's the
only place that you can kill the osceolo.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
That's so cool looking. It's so cool. They look like
they're dipped in gas.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
And the part you know, the osceola is probably one
of the hardest because you can only get it right there,
that bird in South Florida, and so it's the only
only place you really can hunt them. So if you
missed that opportunity, it's really hard to accomplish the Slam.
Then you, of course you have the Eastern Turkey, which
is in the most most most Yeah, that's most everywhere
in the southeast.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
If you if you think about those turkey hand drawings
we all made in school before Thanksgiving, that's an Eastern.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, those are the Easterns. And then you had the Rio,
which is in Texas and other parts maybe Kansas. And
then you have the last turkey which we harvested, which
was the Merriam.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
So you don't go after golds at all. So that's
the world.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
So you have you have the World Slam, and so
we just went after this year the National or just
the United States, the National Grand Slam. And so those
were those four subspecies of wild turkey.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
They're so cool too, and they all have a much
different look. A lot of people don't realize how different
turkeys look.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
And they're all so different in how you have to
hunt them.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah, different personalities.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Oh, I mean, they're like, you know, they're just like people,
like you know, the Florida turkey is is aggressive.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
The Florida turkey is the one on spring break.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
He's on spring break, he's at Panama, just just have
the time of his life. The Easterns a little bit
stuck up didn't want to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
It's your New York City bird.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
It's just yeah, it's it's not a you know, for
the for a Southern bird there, they.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Don't have a lot of are usually pretty chill. There
is pretty chill. Yeah, they card they're.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Kind of like your buddy that the Rideo is like
your buddy who just walk into anything. You know, It's
like what's over there? And they just walk into whatever, Tommy,
you idiot. And the Miriam normally, traditionally is a very
vocal bird. And it was really different to watch Philip
and them call to this the Miriam's cause once you
get a Miriam excited, you never stopped calling.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
So how different is that the calling of seeing Eastern compared.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
To I mean, for me, I learned a lot through
the process of being around Philip Culpepper, who's like he's
just a turkey assassin. I mean, it's just the coolest
guy ever down to earth. He was. He was a
really big Him and Drew Keith were a huge part
of the success.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
How did you get them involved with big dreams outdoor?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
So it's a long I mean, I guess we're here
for it. Bennie Atkinson who's a really good friend of
mine that was over at Pray Wildlife in West Point,
miss City. You know Benny. So Benny and I have
been friends, and when I did this gator hunt in
South Florida, Benny called me and he's like, look, uh,
I got a guy you need to meet in Louisiana
and you can go kill some real gators and and
I think you'll appreciate what you're doing. And so we

(15:15):
got hooked up, went over to Honeybreak and started doing
activities and hunts over there. And I approached Drew and
was like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this this Grand Slam.
What do you think And he's like, cow me in.
But he's like, buddy, that's going to be a tall
drink of water, Like you know, it's tough for that's
a tall task. It's a tall task. Like he's like,
it's it's tough for anyone to complete this. And he's like,

(15:39):
you want to do it with two boy and a girl?
And I was like yeah, I was like, I want
to do a boy and a girl and they.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Both have so.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
The the kind of story behind what we started doing
was I had done some research and from the research
that I that I had done. There has never been
a documented turkey and slam by a person with Down syndrome.
It's never been completed and it's definitely never been documented,
and so I was like, look, I want to I
want to document this. And this was kind of during
the process that Buckmasters and I were kind of sealing

(16:11):
the deal with our partnership and so they were going
to film it. Well. Drew, of course, knew Tyler Jordan
real well, the Real Tree team. Me and Tyler had
met previous to that. He had done some stuff for
us with with some Camo. Just one of the most
nicest people in the world. Oh, the Jordan family is incredible,
nicest humans, I mean, just incredible people.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
So what they've done, and not to get you off topic, no,
what they've done for the hunting industry is as revolutionary
as anything could possibly be. The idea that you could
take clothing to try to match the landscape, yeah, changes
the game of hunting in ways that I don't think
people would have thought about, you know, one hundred years ago.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
And maintaining such humility, yeah, and kindness and community and
very giving giving, Like I just can't speak highly enough
of them. Tyler's been in incredibly you know, generous to us,
and we're just really appreciative. So I reached out. I
called Tyler and I was like, Hey, here's my idea.
What do you think? And He's like that sounds like

(17:12):
a like a good idea, and so I think, you know,
Tyler and Drew all of us just kind of kept
talking about it. And the next thing, they're like, look,
we're gonna put Spring Thunder the TV. Their their TV
show they have for turkey hunting. They're like, we're going
to send a camera crew to document the whole thing
for real tree That's how Philip got pulled in, So
Philip got I was introduced to Philip. It was actually

(17:34):
at the n WTF and Nashville, and so he and
I met there and we started making plans and the
first first stop was in Florida, so where we went first,
and so it's all documented on Spring Thunder. You can
watch the whole transformation.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
The fun part of watching is all of our personalities
and our friendship kind of drew because we met in Florida.
I think Drew and Philip kind of knew each other. Sure,
I kind of knew fill up from NWTF just meeting
him briefly, a new Drew of course, and so we did.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Everything was kind of loose.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Everything was loose, I mean yeah, I mean we had.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
At the same time that you're watching over two individuals
with down syndrome, you're also trying to figure out the
personalities that you're going to be spending a lot.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Of time, a lot of time and trying to make
sure everybody's safe, make sure that everybody understands.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
A lot of things happening.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Oh it was. Yeah, it's been a hectic May. It
started May sixteenth and it has been wide open and
so trying to you know, take this young lady. Drew
took the young lady Brandy, who is so funny. You're
telling a story about your friend. Brandy is an Olympic swimmer.

(18:49):
She was told she'd never lived past like two, right,
she's forty three Olympic swimmer. She's gone to I think
it was like New Zealand or Australia for the special
Olympics swimming. And so when I approached her about the
Turkey Slam, her mom was just like in tears because
she's like, we're another chance to prove to the world. Okay,

(19:13):
Brandy and everybody like Brandy has, they have the capabilities,
and we're going to show it.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Isn't it wild that there are certain communities in this
world that are given such catastrophic news to start out
their life that they always feel like their backs are
against the wall.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
They're yeah, year behind the eight ball, yet.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
They always seem to battle and show people that what
your perception is is not true at all.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
It's why I love the special needs community because again
I keep I always tap into that sports metaphor coaching,
like when you're backs against the wall, what are you
gonna do to fight your way out? And that's how
it is for families. These families are the most resilient, passionate.
They they have just such deep love for their kids

(19:59):
that they're willing to go to any extreme to make
sure that they have opportunities. And so I think that's
the part for me that gets me emotional. It's the
part that I drives me to do what I do.
But it's the part that s Smosh rewarding is when
you see Brandy and Justin accomplish something that everybody said
it'd be cool if they did it, but there probably

(20:20):
wasn't a we don't have high hopes. We don't have
a lot of hygh hopes. Yeah. Now everybody in our
team in camp, we knew we were going to do
one hundred percent were we knew like we were going
to do this.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
People don't realize how much a positive mindset impacts every
hunt you go on. Uh. Just you go into the
hunt thinking I'm going to be successful today and you
have an opportunity, there's a high chance you're successful, and
you know it.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Goes back to like again, I'm such a fan or
a believe believer that parents and people need to put
their kids in situations where they'll succeed, where they'll fail.
Same thing for special needs communities. The one thing that
I would say about our community sometimes is that we
we want to we don't want to see them fail,
which is not fun. But I always tell them failure

(21:03):
is a part of the growth. Let's put them in
a situation sometimes that they might fail, but then we're
gonna build them up and then hopefully we eventually will
achieve what they failed in, just like you and I.
I think that's the one thing that we're learning as
well through this is to give people I had a

(21:26):
parent that their sons in our outdoor program and has
cribral palsy a little bit of he has some intellectual disabilities,
but the mom and dad have such a positive outlook.
And the dad he told me one time, he said,
you got to look at the risk and the reward.

(21:46):
He said, I want my son to see there's positive outcomes,
there's also negative outcomes, and I want him to feel
all of those emotions that I feel, so that it's
a complete of life. Like it's not like, Okay, we're
just gonna put you over here and everything's always going
to be easy, positive and happy, Like I want you

(22:08):
to feel like, Okay, I didn't get what I wanted today,
but I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna work harder.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
In the morning, when I went to a big Dreams
outdoors dot org and I was looking around, I thought
it was incredible that you work with people of all
different levels in all different communities. So some of the
communities that we've already tapped into cerebral palsy down syndrome,
what are some other communities that you guys work with.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean, I think it's the whole span. I mean,
so UCP, which is our company that I work in.
We work from the time a child is born to
the time that child becomes an adult and dies and
is elderly. So we complete life. We do a complete
life up to like twenty one. No, no, no, we're
complete life. I mean we have everything from daycare programs
where we go in and supplement and help daycares learn

(22:54):
and how to include kids with special needs. We have
a high school program this summer. We're kicking off Monday. Actually,
we're going to have one hundred and nine high school
students with intellectual disabilities and they're going to be in
the community six days, five days a week working and
I have job coaches set up and they'll be at hospitals,

(23:17):
they'll be at restaurants, they'll be at you know, academy
or wherever.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Uh working big dreams outdoors.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
It's just a peace.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's a piece set of what you guys are doing.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, it's just a It's just a piece of the
It's another part of life. So, like you know, a
lot of the world that we're in with special needs
is focused on employment, focused on getting people employed or
having those types of quality of life which everybody supports.
But I also always remind people when I go to

(23:48):
conferences or wherever I speak at or whatever I'm doing, like,
what do you do when you're not working? You have fun?

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Right?

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Well, our guys, what are they doing if they're not
working well, they may not be having fun because who's
who's making sure that they are having fun well?

Speaker 1 (24:03):
And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier.
If you have a parent who's saying they wouldn't enjoy that,
that keeps them from having the exposure to something that
they might actually really enjoy.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
And it's education, it's community. Like we we have a
partnership with Peer forty three over in Tuscalusa at the
Lake Tuscalusa, and we get two pontoon boats for the
summer and we go water tubing all summer. Love we're
putting putting people on the tube and.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
We're just we're just too doubling up the wakes and.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Like, oh yeah, we find everybody. They jump off, I
mean everybody's jumping off into the water. But that's the
you know, it's the thrill. Like and I'm like, who
wants to just sit in in the old days like
count coins and sort you know, buttons, and it's like,
that's not life, that's not like. They want to feel

(24:52):
those thrills and they want to get outside and they
want to have fun just like we do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
When I would talk to matt Uh, the kid that
we were talking about earlier, I mean I say kid,
he was already twenty five years older than me. But
when I was talking to him, like he would get
passionate talking about his job, yeah, but he would freak
out when he talked about weightlifting.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah, he's an example.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, it got to the point where it was like,
all right, dude, we get it. You lift weights. I mean,
he showed up to our school. This is a this
is an adult. Okay, he shows up to our school
for football practice because so many of us knew him.
And he walked over to a backsquat rack and he
put five hundred and fifty pounds on that bad boy
and he started and we were all cheering him on.

(25:37):
And this is way before social media. I mean I
can only imagine what social media would have done now,
you know, back then in highlighting how brute strength this
kid had and he was so passionate about it. Knew
every lift, knew the way that he had to work
the bar and lift the bar. It's it's incredible when

(25:59):
you can see somebody who has an opportunity to show
what they really enjoy.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, and so what's cool to me And you know
this from being in the outdoors hunting and fishing, and
the outdoors can fit one hundred different people in different personalities,
right because you have the camping, you have fishing. You
may not like to go sit in the cold and hunting,
but you love deep sea fishing. We love we do
a lot of deep sea fishing down in the coast,

(26:24):
and that's one of the most fun things for people
because they love being outside. It's sunny, it's hot, we're
on a boat ride. It just can be archery just
going out and shooting, shooting the bows at the camp
or whatever you're doing. So so the outdoor piece is
so much more And that's the part that I'm trying
to teach people. We're not also, we're not just a
hooking fish or a hook and shoot, you know, we're

(26:46):
the whole thing. Like we take kids and we go camping,
We're gonna go We'll do a three day camping trip
and just introduce people into the outdoors.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
But they get the experience too, right, Like let's say
they go camping.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, they go camping.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
They see how you select a camp site, how you
put up the ten, how you do everything, how you prepare.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Me for the camaraderie around a camp. Yeah, like everything matters.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
That all of us do when we go into the outdoors.
They get to experience alongside you.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, and that's the part that you want to do.
There's it's interesting. So I think in twenty twenty three,
twenty twenty four, there was fifteen million people in the
United States that purchase a hunting license. You know, there's
over fifteen million families just here in the United States
have kids with intellectual disabilities. That's not tapping into a

(27:35):
lot of the kids that have autism, that's not tapping
into all the other things. It's just families that have
kids with intellectual disabilities. That's a big population. So I
think that's the part that the outdoor industry is learning
as well. There's a whole group of individuals over here
that don't really know a whole lot necessarily about what
we do, the heritage of what we do while we hunt,

(27:58):
while we're hunters and gathers and how that's part of
our DNA that I believe. I think it's part of
who we are. Man.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
It goes back to access. Yeah, you know, the hunting
industry is trying to access those people by saying, hey,
we have an opportunity for you. Your organization is trying
to give them access to see what the outdoors are
all about.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
And that's where I hope that I can have impact
with with states with decisions and bills and legislation that's
being passed when it comes to you know, a lot
of states, going back to what you said, they're starting
to learn. But you know, it's pretty difficult for a
kid with our personal special needs to go to another state.
It's expensive, you know, justin if he goes to hunt

(28:40):
white tails in Illinois, it's the exact same cost as
it would be for you and I, even though he'll
have to have someone with him. And and there's all
you know, there's certain there's a little more work there.
There's a little more work into it. You know, they're
not making yet. We haven't we haven't got over that
barrier of saying look, we need you to be a
part of it.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well, and you know, we're talking about people with intellectual disabilities.
There's a lot of people that have physical limitations. I
got a buddy of mine, he was a war veteran,
is a war veteran, and he's missing both his legs.
He got blown up by a bomb. He loves the outdoors.
He's heavy into talking about the outdoors. He's on Fox

(29:20):
News as a contributor. It's Joey Jones. I went turkey
hunt with Joey, and Joey said to me when we
started going down this hill, it was a little bit
of a pitch. He was like, Hey, I'm gonna have
to put my hand on your shoulder because I got
to be steady with my prosthetics. I said, I totally
understand it. Said, Man, if it comes down to it
and you need me to carry, I'll carry it. And

(29:41):
he's like, it may come down to that. And I've
witnessed him on hunts where he's had to be carried.
And you know, State of Georgia. One of the things
that I really like that the State of Georgia has
done is if you want to go out and you
want to hunt, they have handicap accessible blinds that you
can go to on public lands, but they only have
like one or two, but not everybody has a track

(30:01):
machine to be able to get in there, you know,
if you're in a wheelchair or something like that. So
I love that you guys are being able to.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
It's pretty interesting that you kind of talk about that,
because that's that was part of my thought pattern when
all of this was going on, like what what do
you how do we have stability? Anytime I build a program,
I try to think long term, like if you remove
me from the program, will it remains stable? Can it
have longevity? What what does it look like? And I

(30:31):
think Bid Dreams has is starting to really truly develop
that stability and that that long term piece. And it
goes back to community. And so that's where my focus
was when this hall that started coming together is I
didn't want to just say, Okay, we're gonna go honey,
we're gonna go access public land, we're gonna do ABC
and D. It was getting people involved and so I'm

(30:56):
a big podcast.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
To help make decisions and make things happen.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Who yeah, who knows people will have land? Who knows?
You know? Because it goes back to a lot of things.
So we have a program and a UCP called Tidy
Up Tuscaloosen. It's really easy, a very simple program, and
that is we just go around once a month in
the community and we pick up trash. And the thought
pattern on that was, Okay, why are we waiting on

(31:19):
people to pick up the trash for us? Let's just
go pick up the trash and we'll have volunteers and
people in the community and we'll go do it. And
so we do, and we do it once a month
and we pick high schools or different areas and we
just spend the day and we pick up all the
trash in that area and clean it up. Now does
it stay that way forever? No? No, they're gonna put
more trash out and we're gonna go pick it up again.

(31:40):
But the idea is, why are we waiting on people
to do things for us? Just let's just do it together.
Let's be a community and let's just go do it.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
It's such a hunter's mentality because when we go hunt,
we only have a limited time of the year. So
it's like if you were waiting on people to get
things done, it's the.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Same thing for hunting. If you're what it's like, why
went on one hunt, and they waited twelve months to
go on another. Right, Well, that's not that's not being
a hunter. You got to go hunting, but you're not.
That's not becoming a hunt.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
And then your season's over and you got to wait
another nine months to be able to go again.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah. Yeah, so that was the part. The idea is like, Okay,
let's develop friends. Family. I've got brothers, sisters, I've got
friends and cousins, relatives. I mean, we do this across
the state of Alabama. I've got friends now that live
in Missouri and Kansas and Illinois, and they're asking me, Okay,

(32:33):
how did you Okay, I'm gonna start taking some people
next year.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Do you see this going as a national thing? You
guys are kind of the mold.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
I don't know. I mean, I hope people will will
connect to it and resonate to it, and I think
it's got potential because it is very different. Right, It's
like when Jeff came over and he did a turkey
hunt with us. It's different. We're not we're not just
going on a hunt. We're not looking to just kill
his education. It's teaching is safety, It educating the parents,

(33:02):
you know, Mom, and Dad, I know, you've always gone
their dad's always been. It's a little league baseball. Dad's
always been right there. I'm like, no, no, no, Philip
and Jeff got it. They're gonna take her. She's safe,
she's gonna be okay. We've taught, you know, the safety.
She understood it. We're okay, and I get it. It's
like again, it's little league baseball. It's hard for dad

(33:24):
to step back and sit over in the bleachers. But
they need that separation, they need that independence, they need
to see that that accomplishment. And honestly, they build such
good relationships and friendships.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
I was gonna ask what the reaction is when they're
away from their parents.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
They're so funny. There have been moments in camp I go, whoa, hey, no,
you know, because it's just funny. They get they become
a part of the you know, the.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
That's such a beautiful part of life.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, to have those moments just with anybody, it is.
And that's when people ask me about haunting and they say, hey,
were you successful this weekend? If I didn't shoot something,
I say, absolutely, yeah, what was successful? I got to
know a little more about Cody that I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
So again back to what you Yeah, these are adults.
So the other the other perspective that we have to
change with people is like you said, when you see
a person went down and you're like, oh man, wonder
hell that person is. And then you find out Justin's
thirty nine, Brandy's forty three, and you're like, they're older
than me. Yeah, and so you you have to shift.

(34:39):
And that's what I meant by like, it is sometimes
so difficult to shift your mind to think that they're adults,
like they're an adult that's not a child over there,
Like I don't I can't treat you like a child.
I have to still have safety, you know, procedures and
things with anybody, with anybody, and you know, and I

(35:00):
think there's a yeah, there's also you have to have
some of those things. But I try to give them
as much freedom and opportunity to express themselves.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Are as much as they're forty three, thirty nine, forty two,
whatever their age. Most of their life has been like playing,
like going bowling with bumpers. Oh yeah, you know, And
that's probably why when they get an opportunity to be
away from their parents, they're like you know what, let

(35:31):
me see what I can do. Let me stretch my
wings a little bit. Oh yeah, give them an opportunity. Yeah,
I want to go back to the Grand Slam with
Justin and Brandy because there's such a good story that
comes out of Justin's hunt, and it really shows the
dedication that you guys had to making sure that you
got everything accomplished you were looking for.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
So we were in Wyoming at seven j and it
was a three day hunt. We arrived on Monday, I
got settled in camp. Tuesday morning was the hunt. So
in Wyoming, the time difference in the sunset and sunrise
is so completely opposite from here. Legal shooting light was
at four fifty three. Sure, so we were getting up

(36:17):
every morning. It was two thirty wake up call, coffee,
breakfast to thirty too. You know we're out the door
by three thirty, so we're we're hitting the road at
three thirty in the morning. You got a thirty minute
ride on a buggy up the mountain.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
How good was Justin at waking up?

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Oh he's ready, Yeah, he's ready to love that.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Because I'm a morning person.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
So the thrill, I mean, they don't it's just like
flip the light on. Hey, Budd's time, and he's getting
dressed and ready to go. Brandy, you know, Brandy's a
little more. She liked to sleep a little bit more.
But but hey, it was like she she was excited
and she'd get it. She would get on up.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, but saying Brandy know each other.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Not prior. No, So they built this relationship and friendship
and camp as well, which is just an incredible story
in itself. To make a friend, you know, and to
see your friend and then encourage each other. They're doing it.
Uh So you had about a thirty minute buggy ride
each morning up the mountain.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Seven j sits at about five thousand feet elevation, so
you we were up fifty five six thousand feet water,
a lot of water in the mornings. And so we
get we get up and we'd hunt and you might
take a thirty forty minute lunch break and you're back
at it till seven.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Now are we talking fighting stock?

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yeah? Yeah, we'd ride a buggy, get out, walk, you
might walk, you know, half a mile a mile and
call and if you don't anything, walk back to the
buggy and then you I mean seven J's four hundred
thousand acres.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah, people don't realize with turkey hunting, it's not really
just sitting the blind. You can every once in a while.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah, I mean you have these people on social media
who are like, oh, you're hunting, you know, like we're hunting,
you know, chickens in a cage. I'm like, no, these
are these are the smartest animal you'll ever face.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
You booger it up and it's bigger. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
So the idea that we're taking uh a god, fill
up myself and a cameraman and justin we're five deep
in the woods. Yeah, it's a lot of bodies to hide.
And that's a lot of bodies. So you understand as
a hunter like that, there's a challenge in itself. Now
you take the fact that you have something.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
We're not a small dude, no either way.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
No, I mean I'm I'm trying to like hide behind
pine trees.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
I tell people all the time when I go hunt,
I'm like, I'm six five, two hundred and seventy seven pounds.
You find me a tree bigging up the.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah, I mean it's like we're you're just trying to
find somewhere to hide.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
My buddy when we were Turkey hid, he goes Spencer,
you got to stop moving, I said, Pal, it is
hard when you're this size, Like I get it for
you little guys that can sit in the cedar tree
or in the.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Bank and belly crawl behind a belly crawled behind a fan.
You know. Look, I'm just praying. Every time the turkey
saw me, they're like, maybe that's an elk, Like, yeah,
they'll mistake me.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
That's a black bear.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
That's a bear. It's not gonna mess with me. And
so we're trying to get this bird to work, and
so it's really difficult. Well on top of this, when
we get there Monday, ninety chance of snow. So we
wake up Tuesday morning twenty eight to threes by an

(39:16):
inch and a half of snow. And here we go
up the mountain and we see it. And the first
thing off the morning we get got we get Turkey's goblin,
and we're sitting in the snow for forty five minutes,
for an hour, not moving. I mean they're at sixty yards.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Were you guys completely geared up for it? Like did
you have the right I don't know that you.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
I mean we had the right camo. I mean, of
course real Stree hooked us up, so we had the
right camo. But I don't I don't know that you
can really prepare yourself when you left two days ago
from ninety to three weather to sitting in an inch
a half of snow, like and the wind's blowing.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, it's a little bit of a shock.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, your hand, I mean every I
just don't know that you can really prepare for it
like you can, but you can't.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Just add one more thing, to add one more obstacles
that could possibly be.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
And so we and the thing that these birds are
so stubborn and they're so frustrating. I mean they're at
sixty yards. We can kind of get glimpses of them.
They're hammering, they're gobbling, and then they just won't close
the distance.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
And eventually we're like, and you can't because they're probably
in somewhat of an open field.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
We're in timber. But everything up there's open, right, you know,
it's just open open timber.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
So well, you get those pods of trees too, so
it's hard to move again.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
But you got five people, right, and if you just
hun down, you gotta hunt her down and you're just
waiting it out. So anyway, it doesn't work out, and
we hunt the next three days Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and
Thursday's like, okay, this is it. We're gonna go. We're
gonna hunt all day. We're taking a ten minute lunch again,
leaving at three point thirty, coming home at seven. You know,

(40:52):
Justin's coming into first The first night he came in
and they're like, Justin, was it? Was it fun? And
he goes, that was not fun. You know, we've climbed mountains,
were exhausted, we're all having to take something to keep from,
you know, cramping up, and I mean it was hard.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
At least he's honest.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Oh but he never looked to your point, never complained right,
never quit, And that dude showed such resilience like we're
all in awe, which made the whole trip even more.
I had never felt it might have been like one
time when I was coaching, we were in the playoffs,
I felt that anxiety of not achieving, Like oh, I

(41:35):
had such anxiety I couldn't even sleep at night.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
There's there's a beauty though, in him being asked did
you have fun? And being completely honest and saying it's
not fun because to me, I don't read that as
he had a terrible time.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Oh no, he's ready to go.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
The next morning he had in his mind that Yeah,
while it wasn't great and it wasn't ideal, it was hard,
I still want to go and do it because there's
a mission at the end.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
One hundred percent. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Never.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
The next morning was not like Cody, I don't I
don't want to go. It was we flick the lights on.
He's like, is it time, Yeah, let's go, let's go.
So he's already gotten through that.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah, and even if you're faced with that again, you
already know how to get through it.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
I'm a hunter. That was not fun, right, I did
not enjoy sending in the freezing cold and walking up that. No,
it's not fun, but it's also what makes it fun
that it wasn't fun, If that that makes sense. Yeah,
it's kind of like playing football. It's not fun having
two am or you know, two a days in the
ninety degree summer.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Weatherla is getting wrecked by alignman who WEARHS three hundred pounds.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
No, that's not fun.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
But when you break that line, but.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Maybe when you win yeah, and you feel that rush.
There's nothing, there's nothing that comes close to it. Same
thing with Justin. This is the closest thing he'll ever
feel to that rush of I'm a winner.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
So day two, you guys go back out tea same thing.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, day two it is starting to get a little warmer.
How was like forty five. Okay, so it's a little better.
Not as chropical, yeah, as tropical, not as bad. Day
three is nice, but there's nothing, I mean, we're not
We may get on one bird that whole day.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
So did it feel like that the the bird intensity
was kind of dropping?

Speaker 2 (43:15):
The birds, So, I mean it was it was a
rough time. I mean everybody in camp was having There
was fourteen hundreds in camp. Everybody was struggling. The birds
were on the last We were the last Groupian got
it and the birds were on the tail in. It
was just I think to what had happened there was
that big freeze came in and and what happens is

(43:37):
a lot of those those eggs are killed, they die,
and the hens go back to rensting and doing the
things that turkeys do. And so I think there was
a lot of the turkeys that were hend up there.
They just the gobblers were not what Miriams normally are.
They were not aggressive, they were not coming in. Uh,
they were very standoffish.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
It was just hard.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
It was a hard hunt, and the birds just were cooperating.
So we go that last day Thursday, we do a
whole whole day hunt. I mean when we leave camp.
The only thing we took a break for was the
thirty minute lunch, and we were back at it. And
so we went till seven seven thirty and it was
an o go and so me and Philip and everybody

(44:21):
at this point, you know, they're trying to keep me positive.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
And Brandy had already gotten one and she was hunting
somewhere out.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah, they were over by Devil's Tower, and uh, they
had a beautiful hunt. Turkey came off the hillside, full strut,
full fan.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
She made a great shot at like twenty yards.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
So she has her Grand Slam North American justin day three,
last time, doesn't get it, doesn't get it. He's got
four of the five.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
They got four of the five, and so we were
trying to figure out how to spend it and kind
of what was going to be the story, you know, hey,
great try we you know, going back, we were we
were we gave it all we had. We just gave easily.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Been like, hey, look yeah we have one person with
down syndrome who was able to do this. That's huge.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Mean, yeah we made the accomplishing. We were the first. Yeah,
we were the first to do.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
I know you as a coach, Yeah, you're not satisfied unless.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
You get Oh I didn't sleep. I was so mad.
I was so just. I was just I was frustrated
with myself. I was like, because you go back and
you're like, what we could have done? Well, we could
have done that time that I moved a little bit,
Did I move too much? Did this way and not
cross the right way? Yeah? You know you start replaying
it and philipping them were so positive and because they
had been in this it was kind of like in
my world of coaching and things like that, I had

(45:32):
seen that fourth quarter come back. I had seen all
those things, so you have a little more faith in
hoping it to know that your team can. You know.
So Philip and them been in the this space. They
had seen turkeys on the last minute and that drand slam,
you know that just home run all of a sudden.
So Jeff, the owner of seven J was like, hey,
let's uh, do y'all have time in the morning to

(45:54):
do a quick hunt on Friday? And Phillip and Everybody's like, well,
we got to hit the airport by seven thirty because
we got to we fly out of ten. And he's like, well,
that's fine, they'll give us two hours. I've got a spot.
We've been on a bird there before. It was like
Tuesday or Wednesday. We had seen a bird there and
tried to work him. He said, let's just let's just
give it a chance. I was like, okay, and so

(46:14):
we were. I didn't sleep a lot that night, really
really nervous and anticipating the whole thing. And we got
up extra early. We were sitting on the mountain at
four o'clock. We're waiting, we're there. We're there an hour,
you know, forty five minutes to hour early.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
And the reason was we.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Were hoping that a bird might gobble a little early,
so we can any any.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Time that you can extend the hunt is a good time. Yeah,
and if you've only got two hours, so.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Buddy, listen to this. We're sitting there four I would say,
four to twenty five, four point thirty. It's still dark
off in the distance, and everybody just stopped. So like,
no way, he gobbled this dark because now we can
make a move. We're gonna get under him. You got

(47:06):
the cover of darkness. We got the cover of darkness.
And so we take off sprinting down the hill. We
run probably I don't know, one hundred yards, one hundred
and twenty yards, and we stop and we get to
this flat and they're like, let's just listen. And then
the next one, Oh, sounds like it's in your kitchen.
He's sixty yards. We're under We're there. He and so

(47:27):
we just we just sat down. We got up against
this big pine tree, big enough to cover me in
just and so we get behind this pine tree. Cameraman's
to my left, Justin's in the middle. So Justin's shooting.
He's shooting a twenty gage retay and barrels pointing straight down.
I'm on his right. Just Philip and Jeff run back

(47:50):
up the hill to get away and call. Try to
make the call sound extended. You know, the bird is
cutting Philip off. I mean, he's just every he's just
he's mad and then it gets about four probably four fifty.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Ish, three minutes away.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
We're three minutes away and all of a sudden, we
hear and we look up thirty yards. All the hens
are above us. Oh, roosted, roosted above us. And I
was like, okay.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
He's like, I hope they all have a morning coffee break.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Man, say you start my heart, everything's racing. I'm just
in my head. Okay. If you fies to the right,
I'm gonna do this. If you flys to the left,
I'm ia move justin here.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Here's the other problem, you being underneath roosted birds like that,
any move anything, You're done the whole time.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
I mean, I'm in in Justin's ear and I'm like,
don't move, and I'm talking to him through it, and
it goes back. Man, that coach like just just hanging
there with me because he's tired. Like we had sat
on that tree. He's he's locked and cocked. Where we've
been there in one position going on fifteen twenty minutes.
He's getting tired. He's kind of like, oh, I just
want to stretch my nose or just move my head.
I'm just like, don't move. Four fifty three hits. We're

(49:04):
legal shooting light gobbler. Still he's still on the limb,
he's still gobling. I look down at my at my phone.
It's five o three and he gives us this one
last just and he pitches off. And when he pitches off,
he flies right into the gun barrel, right underneath the

(49:25):
hens and he hissed the ground. I looked at the car.
I said to the cameraman, do you have him? He said,
shoot him?

Speaker 1 (49:34):
He said, Justin shot.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
After the hunt we ranged it. It was forty two
yards past the barb wire fence and Justin just rolls him.
And you would have thought, I mean, the streaming, the yelling,
the high fives, the hugs, I mean, I about cried.
It was. It was just a motional as it could be.
And Jeff comes down there and I was like, but

(50:03):
you may not want to hunt here for a while.
This was probably been busted up, you know, because I
take off and I'm running down there and I grab
his burd and I'm bringing it back, and uh, it
was just you talking about the low where you just
you're just so you're just so mentally just you know,
disappointed to that peak.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Of the high dude, don't you feel like it's when
you're recharging batteries you just put him down. You're seeing
that percentage go twenty one, twenty two, and it's taken forever.
And then you put it on a super fast charger
and it goes all the way up to all the way.
You're adrenaline in that exact moment will keep you up

(50:45):
for three days.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Oh man, I mean it was like it was just
such an emotional high where I thought about it all
the all the way home.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah, I mean I was justin's it's sun.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Yeah, but you have to watch you have to watch
the video. I don't know if you've watched any of the.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Hunts, Big Dreams Outdoors.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah, they're in on spring Thunder. Yeah, they're on the
spring Thunder YouTube channel h spring Thunder three sixties on
the three sixty five.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
I want everybody to go check it out because you
got to. Yea, even if you haven't gotten into turkey hunting.
You and I talked about this a little bit before
he came in. There's something about turkey hony. You mentioned it. Guys, Oh,
I go duck hunting or dirt deer hunting or whatever
you mentioned turkey hunting, and you can tell like it's
a different.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
It's a different passion. Yeah, yeah, And I think it's
because of those close encounters. It's just you and the
bird while you're talking to them, and I'm having to
fool this bird to do something that's not natural normally.
The hens, you know, the gobbler sits down there like,
you know, puffed up, you know, big daddy, and he's
just calling and he's gobbling, and the hens come to him.
So you're trying to manipulate this bird to be so

(51:55):
frustrated that he's gonna come up here.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
To get if you think about it, doing the calling,
Philip doing the calling was able to trick that mail
into believing that even out of the thirty or twenty
however many hens over there, yeah, there's one that's better.
And it's almost like it's that that sickness that some

(52:19):
of those guys have where it's like the grass is
always greeting. That bird was like, well she might be
wearing a two piece, so I might need to check
this out.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
I'm going to go check this out. And it was
his last it was his last last thing he'll remember,
but it was that's.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
A good memory for him, though without smiling.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
He went out smiling and Justin man, but Justin's just
so he's so funny. You gotta go watch the videos
because it's also funny, like when he when a bird's
coming in. We didn't realize it when we went back
and watched the video ourselves. You can hear Justin. He's
miked up and you can he's down the gun barrel
and he's looking through his red dot and he's like,

(53:00):
I love it. He's just talking to himself. And you
catch him and you'll see this too. We catch him
in moments where he doesn't know we're watching. He didn't
even know we're filming. We might have been off over here,
just said chatting. It was just him being him. But
he was having a moment, just sitting there, excited, talking
to himself. And the one in Osciola was the most

(53:22):
I think that was the one that got everybody really hooked.
Was he was standing on the road. He shot two
by by the way, one shot. Oh yeah, he kills two,
which is which is legal in Florida, which I was
very thankful. I was very thankful for. But he he's
just sitting there talking to the talking him to himself,
and he was so excited and Brandy, you know, Justin

(53:44):
was a personality and he was funny, and but Brandy's
resilience and how she uh, just her love for the
outdoors and the love that her parents had and watching
her and uh, the whole thing is just it's memorable.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
You've given them so many operaspportunities to create core memories.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
They gave us though, me and me and Drew and
Philip talked about it from a guy like Drew Drew guides,
what's I don't know, sixty duck hunts a year. Uh,
they go sixty two days out of the year something
duck hunting every day. And it's it's so different because
you know, they's so raw, it's so real, and it's

(54:28):
just a for Drew and Philip, I think they they
really saw something that was different and then they understood like, Okay,
this is completely different what we're dealing with here. It's
not again, it's not a dream hunt. This is this
is a lifestyle that we're trying to create for people.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
You give them an opportunity to come back the next year.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Oh they're with us. So again, going back to what
I was talking about with the community. Justin he'll probably
go I mean he goes hunting, probably deer hunting. He
probably goes on twenty five thirty deer hunts a year. Wow,
there he's hunting once a week. I mean he's got
he's got my buddy. I got a buddy that's a banker.
In the afternoons, they're picking him up or somebody's gonna

(55:09):
go grab him. And his mom just knows that, Hey,
he's got buddies that are gonna come grab him and
they're gonna go deer hunting, they're gonna go turkey hunting.
They're gonna go do it. Oh, it's changed, it's changed
his whole life. So we do that with a lot
of our guys. Now, I say when we we probably
I think we took around close to one hundred individuals
this year on some type of hunting and fishing trip.

(55:31):
What people need to understand is we don't just hand
you a gun or a bow and say hey, good luck,
hope you have fun. It's we start off with group punts.
We have a friend down in Tuscalusa who has a
big piece of property, and we'll do a group punt
three times a year on his farm, and we will
take eight to ten people. I have volunteers set up,

(55:52):
we have shooting houses, we do the whole thing, and
out of that group hunt, we figure out who really
loved it. Okay, then we take those individuals and we
will put them through the next program and that may
be the more of the hunter's education, getting them hooked
up with more safety and understanding how to use a
weapon and all those things. And then once they you

(56:15):
see that interest in that, then we progressively move them towards. Okay,
here's Michael. Michael owns a farm. Michael, I've introduced you
to his to his mom. Michael just goes and picks
them up and now he starts taking them. So you're
you're really learning what they love. Like there's some of
them that hate deer honting of because it's boring, right,

(56:36):
I mean, I'm not a huge deer hunter anymore.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Don't necessarily disagree either.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, it's not really that exciting. Uh, there's not enough
that keeps my attention. I don't want a deer hunt,
but I love me yeah full of it. Yeah, Yeah,
I think there's something about unmedicated But yeah, I think
there's some of.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Us that have ADHD where it's like the idea of
just sitting in the sand. Now, I love bow hunting,
and I'm bow hunting is different.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Yeah, there's something about bow hunting in the Midwest is different. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
I love to go bow hunting in like Illinois or
Missouri or Kansas something like that, because there's action, but
bow hunting in Alabama. I mean, I'd rather just sit
and drink coffee.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
And I know some people will hear that and they'll go, well,
you know what if you only have one opportunity to listen,
it's all up to you.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Yeah, it's individual.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Whatever you feel is the best. I'm a big fan
of the hunts that I enjoy the most are the
ones that I'm having a conversation.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
I like camps. I like going somewhere and just having
I could sit around a the camaraderie, just getting to
know people, having conversations and getting to know people and
humans and like what makes people tick and understanding personalities.
That's what I love. It's why I also enjoyed the
Turkey camps right going meeting these outfitters, meeting these people.
But the hunting side of it, you know, we're just

(57:53):
trying to find their niche in the outdoors. But we
take that one person who they're like, deer hunting's not
that much fun. But you take them and we do
a goose hunt in Arkansas every year. Oh totally do
like canadas or snows specs. We do it. We'll take
them to do speckle belly and snow a little mixed
bag of snows blues and specks. But we go doing

(58:14):
that specklebelly season and they just fall in your lap.
And so we just take some guys and they're obsessed
with it, not interested in deer hunting, but you put
them in front of some waterfowl. It's it's like a
light switch.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
It's a whole different thing. Like not every hunter likes
hunting every species that you're.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
I got buddies that could care less about hunting some
and stuff I love.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Just guys that like to fish, don't necessarily love to hunt.
Like everybody has something that.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
I'm not a big deep sea be big fishermen. But
one of my best friends who is down in Florida,
he's obsessed with it, and I'm like, buddy, I love it.
You can take all these guys fishing. I'm more of
a land creature, Okay. I like to have my feet
on the land. I'm not much about being in the ocean.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
It's hard though, when you live around Alabama, because how
good the fishing is here. Like bass fishing. Yeah, if
you had an opportunity where these kids wanted to get
out on a boat and go bass fishing, yeah you
I mean you're in the thick of it.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Yeah, Now, bass fishing is a little different. I'm not
big fantom offshore. Yeah, I get it rocking and getting seasick.
That's not my thing.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Throwing your line down, not knowing what you're gonna get
me sometimes that's fun.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Yeah, but there's But I have a lot of individuals
that's all they love to do. So come June here,
in the next few weeks, we will start fishing. We've
got boats lined up and we'll send people down and
I may go down and just hang out on the
beach or something.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
But I love what you guys do. If you guys
want to find out a little bit more about Cody
Ingram and Big Dreams Outdoors dot org, that's exactly where
you need to go. Get to know their mission, get
to know a little more about their organization because they
are really doing something that a lot of people have
talked about, a lot of people have tried to do,
but you guys do it in such a big way.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Code appreciate it's it's really good.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Big Dreams outdoors dot org. Check them out today. Don't
forget to like and subscribe to the Lines and Times
on the iHeart podcast network.