Lab Companions, Elk Hunts, and Baja Adventures with Dave Zoby 518

In this episode, host Rick Saez sits down with acclaimed outdoor writer Dave Zoby, whose evocative essays and stories have graced the pages of top magazines like Gray’s Sporting Journal and The Drake.

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Show Notes

Why Some of My Best Stories Are About Not Catching Fish (and Why Editors Still Say Yes)

What Happened:

I didn’t grow up out West. I grew up in a shipbuilding town where “outdoorsy” meant mowing the lawn. So you can imagine the culture shock when I moved to Wyoming. Suddenly, public land was everywhere, the rivers were full of trout, and I had this wild idea to write a poem about duck stamps and send it to Gray’s Sporting Journal.

Back then, submissions weren’t digital. I had to physically print the thing, drive to the post office, buy a stamp, and drop it in a mailbox. It felt like time travel. But lo and behold, they wrote me back. Not a rejection. Not silence. A real, live editor wrote back. And that one little poem opened the floodgates.

I started pitching stories. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew how to tell the truth. Not the glossy, influencer kind of truth—more like “I went fishing, caught nothing, but had a spiritual epiphany about life and Labrador Retrievers” kind of truth.

Turns out, those are the stories that stick.

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Principle:

The biggest myth in outdoor storytelling? That you need epic wins to earn a voice. You don’t. You need honest stories—ones that carry the smell of pine, the sound of bugling elk at 2 a.m., and the feeling of wrestling a kayak into submission while your dog watches, judging.

Real stories about imperfect trips and imperfect people—those are the ones that resonate. That’s how you connect. That’s how you build a community. And that’s how you create something editors actually want to publish.

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Transition:

But here’s the rub—most aspiring outdoor storytellers are waiting for their “perfect” moment before they write. They think they need the big trophy, the remote trip, the Instagram-worthy fish. Meanwhile, the real stories—the good ones—are sitting right in front of them, getting ignored.

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