Meet Chris From Hometown Hero Outdoors

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode h I Tell You featuring Chris
Tetrault from Hometown Here Outdoors and Chris tell us a
little bit about what you do and all the things
that you've got going on and really what you're all about.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, So we run the nonprofit called Hometown Here Outdoors.
We're a nonprofit based out of Stillwater, Minnesota. We started
in twenty seventeen. We do outdoor recreation adventures for our
military service members, veterans and first responders and it's all
the help with mental health. That's very stressful jobs, a
lot of lost time of family and friends. So we

(00:34):
try to re establish some of that community in the
outdoors to help with mental health, to support each other,
give the camaraderie back, and for people really to understand
what we do in the outdoors and help decompress and relax.
So it's been very instrumental. We're in twenty eight states
now actually, so we're spread all across the country and

(00:56):
we get about twelve hundred of our first responders and
our military service members and the outdoor a year.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
It looks like you guys plan a lot of different
hunting trips and activities. Can you tell us a little
bit more about what you offer in that way.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, hunting and fishing is very much our bread and butter.
I'm a retired game warden, so I used to be
in outdoors all the time. So I continue doing that
by taking people in the outdoors too, so I understand
what it does for me. So, but hunting and fishing
is not just the things that we do. So we
do ATVing, snowmobiling, We've done dog sled rides up in
northern Minnesota. We do hot air balloon rides, outdoor sporting events.

(01:30):
So if it's outdoors, we do it. If you are
familiar with the TV show Wicked Tuna, they were on
that geo for a while. We send people fishing with
them off the East Coast. After Eric Mattson, he was
a law enforcement officer that was shot in my head
back in twenty twenty, we gave him a trip of
a lifetime and I brought him up to Saint Paul Island, Alaska,

(01:51):
where he harvested a King Eider duck. He has nowhere
Saint Paul Island is No.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
I don't frequent toot, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Still, the show Deadliest Catcher familiar with that. Oh yeah, yeah,
so we went there in the middle of nowhere. I mean,
we're probably closer to Russia than we were in it all.
So Mason wanted to go there, so that's where we
took him. Yeah, it was crazy out in the bearing seat,
twenty foot rolling waves, but we got Eric on a
bird and we did a documentary about him. Yeah, So
it was about a three year process for us to

(02:23):
get him out there. During the COVID times they shut
down the island due to COVID for a while, but
we fought him with cameras for three years, kind of
showing the recovery process of what he's gone through, but
then all the way through his hunts until when he
harvested a bird and some of the fallow up after that.
So but that's the kind of things we do for
people who've served and we're just trying to give back
and you know, reclaim a little bit of themselves in

(02:43):
the outdoors.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
And it's you say, it's not just your bread and butter,
is the hunting and fishing, but you also talked about
how balloon rides and other things, So for people that
aren't necessarily into that side of the outdoors, the hunting
and fishing. What's the percentage you say it's your bread
and thought, is that like eight and the other.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, I would say eighty percent is probably good number.
That was a good That was a good uh pinpoint
on that. But yeah, So we do other things too
though that you know, we do equin therapy with horseback riding.
That's I think, Sam, you're into horses a little bit, right, Yeah,
just a little, So we do a little bit of that.
Uh So we do have different partners across the state
where we do some trail riding and whatnot. But then

(03:25):
there's another nonprofit that we partner with called the BIJA
on the backside of the Canterbury Park. They do equin
therapy with retired Thoroughbred race horses, which is pretty cool.
But then we do fat tire biking and stuff like that.
We do canoeing, camping trips. We also do family outdoor outings.
Like I said, we lose a lot of time in
these professions with our family and friends, so we try

(03:46):
to re establish that time in the outdoors. Every first
weekend of June, I take a parent and a kid
on Malax Lake and we do fishing for a full weekend.
This next weekend or this next year, we're gonna do
a tournament. So we're going to get some professional guides
that take out a parent and a kid and we're
going to have some friendly competition with the kids with
a professional guide on the water camping trips. We just

(04:08):
actually I met with Big Rock Miracon Big Rock yesterday.
We're going to do some camping up there and I
think Kroy Falls area. So there's just things that we
do all over the country. If it's outdoors, we just
want to get people out there to relax, decompress, and
have opportunities they may not get to. And plus we
pay for it all. So the only thing that cost
for people to do is to get there and then
maybe a hunting or fishing license, but we cover the

(04:29):
rest of the cost. It's free for them.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
What kind of difference do you see in the people
who participate in these organized events.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It's significant. You know. We actually do some surveys after
the trip and we talk about their mental health and
how things went. So not only did we talk about
their mental health, what was your mental health and how
did you feel with your stress beforehand and how did
you feel afterwards? And the improvement that people have with
their stress levels significantly drop, like it's very dramatic, and

(04:57):
you know, there's some studies out there that show that
outdoor therapy has a profound effect on psyche when it
comes to PTSD or an anxiety or what other things
like that. So we try to capitalize on that and
the surveys that we do show that it does happen,
and we've seen people rebuild relationships with family individuals who
have saved their own lives because we do crisis intervention

(05:21):
training with our own staff too. Because of the relationships
we build with people in the outdoors, they trust us.
They know that we're going to listen. We have a
shoulder to give them or provide to them, and they'll
reach out to us in their time and need. Maybe
it's just an event about an incident or something that happened,
or maybe they are suicidal thinking about taking their life,
but we have the tools in our belt with applied

(05:41):
suicide intervention skills training to be able to respond to that,
get them off that ledge, make sure they're okay, and
then we can get them to a mental health provider
or somewhere where they can get additional assistance. But it
does help people to rely on us and just re
establishing that connection, the camaraderie, and giving them an outlet
to be able to talk to people.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
I love seeing these organizations. A lot of them are
popping up over the last few years, I mean, really
focused on first responders and the veterans, and it's a
testament to everybody who is certainly very very different in
this world, because I think I would have more stress
being on the Bearing Sea with twenty foot waves. So
it's just to each their own that deal. I mean

(06:23):
when you said that, I'm going, how does that apply there?
But hey, if Eric had a good time, then so
be it.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, it was wild. You know, if you watch the doc,
there's a line I have in there and I'm thinking
to myself, I'm as We're flying into Saint Paul Island
from Anchorage, and I'm looking out the window at this
little dot on the map coming in the island and
seeing the waves from you know, we're twenty thousand feet
or whatever it is we're coming in, and I was
I can think to myself as I'm like, man, Eric

(06:51):
made it through all this and we're all going to
die right here. So yeah, it's effective.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
How do we find you? I know you can make
this very easy and have it on our website and
all the Chris Caring Company socials and came onto two
socials and everything. But again a number that you may
want to throw out there. People are listening on a podcast,
they can stop it and rewind it and everything else.
But how do we get a hold of who do

(07:20):
we get a hold of you personally or who answers
the phone?

Speaker 2 (07:25):
I have a website.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
The website's kind of our center of our universe. We
host all of our trips on there where people can
put onto and see the events that are coming up
or outdoor activities. So if they go to our website,
which is Hometown Hero Outdoors dot org, they can find
it there, or our social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn,
and they're all they all point right back to our website.
So when people apply for our trips or adventures, it's

(07:48):
all done to the website. Right now, there's a couple
pages worth of trips and adventures on there. South Texas,
we got a big deer hunt comment, some other waterfowl stuff,
and some other outdoor adventures. But the Home Hero outdoors
dot Org is the place to go.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Does anybody from down to Texas come up here for
a hunt or anything? Or do people from up here
go down there for I mean, obviously for sending people
to the bearing you see, it's probably all over the place.
But do they stay kind of local most of the
time or is it always as exotic as like Eric's trip?

Speaker 2 (08:18):
People go all over It's pretty incredible to see where
people travel to. And that's to get really gauge, and
I'm sorry, experience different things that we may not have
to offer in Minnesota. So a lot of hog hunting
that happens in Texas and a lot of people from
northern Minnesota obviously don't get that opportunity. So a lot
of them had down there and they Texans think we're
crazy for coming down there just a hog hunt, but

(08:39):
Texans will come up here to bear hunt. They don't
have that down there.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Is that dangerous? Is it aunt kind of dangerous?

Speaker 2 (08:46):
It depends how you do it. Are some individuals that
are yeah, I mean there's some people up there a
little bit they got to screw loose and they'll chase
down hogs and that's not for me.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
I will not do that some people, I mean run
them down with your legs running.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
What do you do? What do you do when you
when you what what happens there? Do you rope them?

Speaker 2 (09:11):
They use they yeah, they use dogs. Some people have
very mixed feelings about how that hunt goes, So we
don't do a whole lot of those. But there are
times where we utilize hunting blinds to hunt from and
they're invasive species down there and they cause a lot
of damage to the farms and the crops and stuff.
So a lot of blind hunting, they use corn quite

(09:34):
a bit. But then like bear hunting up here is
obviously all over bait. He really can't find bear else otherwise.
So it's uh, yeah, people travel everywhere and they try
to experience something they may not get at their home state.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Does anybody just want to go to a spa? Just
take a spa day, right, you know?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
And that's something that we're trying to integrate here. We
actually have a partner out here in Skillwater that has
a business opening with some outdoor therapy, just SPA related
type stuff with saunas and stuff like that. I said
that the northern people hate me, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
It's a little something for everybody.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Then, yeah, just variety, you know, and and sky's the limit,
you know, it's as creative as our volunteers are and
what they're what they're interested in. So doors wide open.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Well, Chris, you're doing the lord's work man. Nice job.
Thank you, thanks, thanks, thank you. Yeah, I mean let
us know what you need. We'll gladly talk about you
and send people your way. And yeah, not just I
mean above and beyond this podcast, but keep us posted
on stuff. I got to go watch some documentaries here, yes.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, go watch that. Keep an eye out. We have
a TV show starting quarter two April of twenty twenty
six that's going to air across Minnesota and other states.
I'm actually running numbers right now for other states and
TV markets so we can showcase people's stories. We want
to show the community and the country what people go
through and what they give and showing them reclaims some
stuff in the outdoors. And then this next March we

(11:04):
also have our gala and still Water here at the
GX Event Center. So good things to kind of keep
focused on.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Excellent. The TV show will be called Hometown Heroes Outdoors.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
It's going to be called hero chronicles.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Hero Chronicles. Okay, all right, you got it. Nice work man,
Thank you very much, and uh yeah, let's stay in touch.
I want to want to kind of keep an eye
on you guys and watch all the cool things that
you're doing for all the people that are very much
deserving to be well. Thank you, not only on this planet,
but do you have the fun that they deserve to

(11:36):
have after going through everything?

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Absolutely well. I appreciate the time. I appreciate what you
guys do to give back to organizations like ours and
people who serve you. Guys do a lot of good stuff,
so I.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Appreciate that great organization. All right, thanks for listening to
this episode of I Tell You What. You'll always find
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