A lot of people can testify that nature has a certain glory that keeps people coming back for more. One of them is the Co-Founder of Outdoor Savage, Drew Fuglsang, since he got a second chance at life, thanks to the outdoors. After suffering from heroin addiction, Drew found solace in the outdoors, and he’s working to giving back to the industry. He talks about the changes hunting has made in his life, and he also shares some insights on how hunting can capture the interest of new hunters that’s testing the waters. Drew goes real personal and shares his past on how the outdoors gave him a new purpose.
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Outdoor Savage Real Deal – Drew Fuglsang
We’re heading down to Georgia, Kennesaw. We’re going to connect with Drew Fuglsang. Drew runs Outdoor Savage. He’s the Co-owner, Copartner and Cofounder. Drew, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Let’s give a shout-out to Kenny Maynard a good friend of mine that you met. He said to get you on the show. Kenny, props to you. What is Outdoor Savage? What is that all about?
We started out as an outdoor lifestyle brand, mostly doing apparel, shirts, hats, decals and things like that. We’re trying to grow the brand name. The idea is to grow it into a hunting outfitter. We’re moving the business and everything to East Texas which is where I’m originally from. We’re trying to get a brand name going enough that we can piggyback off it and do more things in the outdoor industry. My partner and I both, it’s our love, our passion and what we want to be a part of the rest of our life.
Are you a retail eCommerce type of platform? What are you going to do with it? How are you going to grow it?
It’s eCommerce, we’re selling everything off on our website. We did a bunch of trades, expos. We’ll be doing them again around the southeast. We have talked to a few retail stores, but at the same time we want to stay true to the outdoor industry. I know a lot of times companies get absorbed, at least in the south, into the whole fraternity college scene. It takes into that and that’s not what we want to be. We want to be for the outdoor industry strictly. We plan on doing more stuff apparel-wise. We came out with five hats that we put on our website. We’ve got a couple of designs coming out. For as long as the lifestyle brand is going to be strictly apparel, and then we’ll branch off from that to do the other things.
We’re talking about t-shirts, hoodies and button-downs. What stuff can we find on your website?
T-shirts, hats, long sleeves and some decals, we’re making a duck finisher. All things apparel is in the spectrum of what we’re going to do. It’s mostly hats and shirts on our website.
It’s the type of place that, if somebody had a company, they say, “I need some private label.” Would you make them hats, shirts, hoodies and all that stuff?
We’re able to do that. With our hats and shirts, we can do that. We haven’t had anybody reach out for us for anything like that. We haven’t had that come up yet, but it’s definitely something we’re able to do.
Why did you start this company? What was your thought behind that?
A lot of people don’t get hooked in hunting until they harvest. They don’t understand what you’re doing it for until you get that success. Share on XMy business partner and I, we’ve been hunting together and we hunt everything but we’re big duck hunters and we live in Georgia. We spend a lot of time on the road driving west. We always talked about doing it. We talked about we wanted to do something in the outdoor industry, both of us are finance majors. We came to the conclusion that neither of us can sit in an office all day. It doesn’t sound appealing at all to me. Finally, we were like, “Let’s stop talking about it, let’s do it.” We always had the idea of the name Outdoor Savage, and we threw it around to a bunch of people we knew that hunted and fished and those things. We asked them what they thought about the name and everyone thought it was a hit. We hit the ground running not knowing what we were doing or anything like that.
I made all our first designs, our first shirt we ran. We took them to the University of Alabama because my business partner was in a fraternity there. We took them there to see the reaction of what people thought. We sold out of them the first day. That’s when we had the idea like, “We might have something here.” It’s a constant learning curve for us because neither of us is very tech-savvy. I do have a small art background. I’ve been doing a lot of designing. We finally got on a graphic design artist who’s got some good stuff coming out for us.
How would people find you if they’re interested in checking you out?
Our website is OutdoorSavageCo.com. @OutdoorSavageCo is also our Instagram name. We’re on Facebook as well. All our social media accounts have links to our website on them.
Where do you want the thing to go? I’m hearing that you’re going to go to East Texas? Are you going to move there?
Yes. Most of my family from the Midwest are farmers. A lot of my cousins run cattle and everything. We’re buying a cattle farm out there for a little side business. We’re moving the whole business with it.
You’re not going to get away from the heat, that’s for sure.
I’ve been in the heat my whole life. I lived in Colorado for a couple of years. Otherwise, I’ve been in the south my whole life. I’m accustomed to the heat. I’m more of a baby in the cold. I’m not used to that as much.
Talk to me about people in the outdoors. Why is that important to you?
When I was young, I knew a lot of people that hunted outside of my family and a lot of those people I know don’t hunt anymore. They don’t have any desire to keep it going. For me, when I first got on my own, when I got older into college and stuff, I was joining hunting clubs. It was all 40, 50, 60-year-old men in there and I was this twenty-year-old kid in there. I was always the youngest guy. I heard so many times from them like, “I can’t get my kids to come out and hunt.” At least I know in Georgia, hunting land is hard to come by and it’s very pricey because all the land is owned by the timber companies. It’s hard for people to get places to hunt beside public land, and Georgia does not have good public land. I know out west and I know in Midwest where my family is from in Iowa, the public land is good to hunt in. To the point in Iowa, it’s a lot of quota hunts. In Georgia, it’s not good. It is bringing people out that have never been. My partner and I took one of his buddies from high school for his first time, he shot a doe and he’s been hooked. A lot of people don’t get that opportunity in that aspect.
What recommendations would you make to uncles, fathers, mothers, daughters and sons about how to get their best friend out into the outer doors?
When I was young with my cousins and my dad my uncle, they always made it fun. It was all about being fun. What we do with people, at least for deer hunting, we tell them, “Sit as long as you feel like sitting.” We don’t ever tell somebody like, “You’ve got to sit for this long.” I was in a club one time and they said, “If you go in, you can’t come out before 10:30.” For someone like me, I’m going to sit that long anyways when it gets colder, if not longer. For somebody who’s new to it, that sounds like an eternity or they get bored. They don’t want to be there anymore. It becomes unfun for them. Our buddy that we took that was a big thing for him. He said, “I don’t feel pressured to stay if I didn’t want to.” That’s a lot of what it is. It’s something that a lot of people don’t get hooked until they harvest. They don’t understand what you’re doing for it until you get that success. Until they get that, it’s got to be fun in some way.
Keep it fun.
That’s how it’s always been for me. I could sit in the stand all day and have fun, I like that. To me sitting in the treestand beats being in the suburbs any day.
Let’s talk about your techniques. I know you’re down south and it’s hot. How do you find those whitetail deer? For that matter, how far do you have to go away to duck hunt?
The early season is hard hunting. Our season started for bow, September 9th. I’ve sat probably ten days so far, morning and afternoon, so by 26 I’ve seen one dear. A lot of them keep jumping. I’m going in the morning. A lot of it is waiting for some cool weather for us. At the same time, some of the deer don’t mind. We were running around the property during the day and jumping deer left and right. It was 88 degrees outside. What we’re doing is acorns, all oaks have been dropping acorns. Our persimmon trees are dried up because we had that hurricane come through and it ruined it, pretty much knocked them all down. I’m sitting in oak bottoms with acorns and water. This time of year, usually the water sources that is big because it’s so hot. For ducks, we have properties in Mississippi and we hunt in Louisiana a lot, we hunt in Arkansas. I was down in Venice, Louisiana for the early teal season, the weekend of September 20th. It was about 95 degrees. My business partner, we counted 123 mosquito bites on his back that had bit through his shirt.
You’re in the Mississippi Flyway. How far is that away from you?
Venice is eight hours, with pulling boats. We usually got at least two trucks and two boats that we go with. We used to hunt in Guntersville, Alabama which is about two hours, but it hasn’t been producing too many hunters. Duck hunting, I hunt all in public. Besides the Mississippi, it’s private land.
No duck clubs?
I don’t do it. I have a buddy who I found out he’s been doing it for the past few years in Arkansas. I haven’t because I’ve had enough success on public land. We got access to 2,000 private acres in Mississippi, right off the Mississippi River. I put in a lot of time when it comes to networking, scouting and doing all that stuff. I haven’t had the need yet that I felt like I needed to pay thousands of dollars for that.
Is there any correlation between duck hunting and whitetail hunting?
You’ve got to find the food source. The big difference is the fact that they are migrating. You got new birds. The second you feel like you learned the birds, they’re almost gone and then it’s all over again. That’s something that got me hooked on duck hunting. It’s a never-ending strategy game trying to figure them out. For whitetail, when you hunt the same property, you learn it. You run cameras for so long you get an idea of their highways, where they’re going for water, their food sources and all those things. You still got to be there at the right time of the day to catch them, but for duck hunting, it’s always changing.
Duck hunters are a smaller group. Not everybody likes to get out there wet, freezing and trekking through swamps to shoot six ducks. Share on XI went to school in Wisconsin and hunted in Mississippi. We get the local birds, we start off with teal, and then we get the local bird. As soon as the front went through then we get the orange feet birds the northern birds of Canada. That’s good shooting because they decoy. They come flying in on the front end of the flight. It’s great days on the river.
It’s a lot harder for us in the south to get them decoy, they’ve seen so much. My dad, one of his buddies is in a club up in Michigan of Lake Erie. I go there and hunt with them every year. The way the birds decoy up there, it’s what we dream of in the south. They’d seen it all by the time they get to us.
How do you hunt them? You don’t jump shoot them.
We try to switch things up, we don’t run your classic J patterns. We run a lot more in motion in our spreads. When we’re in Michigan, we may put out one MOJO spinning decoy. Down here, we’re running two jerk lines, three MOJOs. Some days, they’re flaring on the MOJOs, we run out there and rip them all out of the ground. We may switch up our spread four times in the morning before we get them to start coming.
You have to work that hard for whitetails, I don’t know if people would do it. You’re working hard for those ducks.
Most people think my crew is pretty crazy for what we do when it comes to hunting ducks. Duck hunters are a smaller group. Not everybody likes to be out and get wet and freezing and trucking through swamps to shoot six ducks. It’s definitely different.
Let’s change it up a little bit. I know you’ve got a backstory that we want to share. It’s important people understand that we all want to have stories, and yours is compelling because here you are. You’ve got your own business, you’re hunting ducks and you’re hunting whitetails. Life isn’t all that bad and you’re moving down, but it always wasn’t that way. Was it Drew?
No. What supplement it into was December 12th, 2011 when I got sober. I went to treatment, it was my third time going to rehab for heroin. It’s one of those things. Kennesaw is right outside of Atlanta. I’m 25 minutes from the city. Heroin is huge in Atlanta, it’s a big problem, as most of the country it’s an epidemic. A lot of people think heroin addicts had these traumatic childhoods or they grew up in an orphanage. I grew up in the most Leave It to Beaver-like Midwest family there is. I didn’t have any of that. I played sports my whole life.
It all started out with pills and opiates. During my freshman year in college when I was eighteen, I ruptured my lower disc in my back. I had a doctor that didn’t want to do surgery and prescribed me Oxycontin for almost a year. I make a point to say it wasn’t the doctor’s fault by any means before that I had done Oxycontin, it was big at my high school. When I was in high school, it was recorded as one of the highest drug usages for any public school in the country. The high school I went to was in the richest zip code in the state of Georgia. There’s a ton of money where I grew up. When there’s that money and not anything to do, that’s what ends up happening. I got into that, I got cut off after the surgery. I was off at school down in South Georgia and I ended up leaving school down there, I came back to Atlanta. A bunch of my friends up here were doing heroin and that’s how that all started. I struggled with that.
I got sober at 23. The first time I did heroin, I was twenty. That was pretty much pure insanity and misery. Something that I always say, “I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.” That’s a drug that gets dark quick. At the time right before I got sober, I was living out in Colorado. One of my best friends had got out of treatment. It’s hard to say but I was sitting on my couch in my apartment in Denver, I just about made up my mind to commit suicide. Because I’ve been to treatment, I didn’t know if there was any way else to end the pain, the misery and everything that comes along with it. Essentially, at that time I thought it was my only way out. My phone rang, he called me and he was like, “What are you doing? Come back to Atlanta and get treatment.” I called my dad, got on a flight the next day and flew back here. I went to treatment and that was December 12th, 2011. When I say sober, no alcohol, no drugs, no anything. No mind-altering substances as they say.
For the people out there that have kids, that are struggling right now with “an addiction,” you can pick your own poison on that. Why do you think you get seduced into it or sucked into it?
The other thing that I could say is I have my CAC, I’m a Certified Addiction Counselor, and I did that for a little while. I was a psychology major for a long time. As much as I want to help people, I do not want to deal with people that are coming off hard drugs because it’s very hard. At least the way the medical field describes it, you’re born with it. You’re born with that gene and you hear a lot of people say, “I have an addictive personality.” You can do that and never be “an addict” because you’ve never come across the substance, whatever you want to call it.
For me, a lot of it started out as boredom and trying to fit into a degree. That’s essentially what was cool at my high school. At a lot of high schools, the football players are the cool kids. At my school, it was the kids that partied every weekend were the cool kids. It was the thing. When I was a junior in high school, MTV was going to do a documentary on my high school about how messed up it was. That’s what I knew, what I thought it was to be normal. When I went off to college is when I realized my high school was not normal by any means. I would say the physical addiction part definitely came from being prescribed to the painkillers. I never felt withdrawals or anything like that until I had that prescription and would run out early. I dealt with a lot of parents, I did interventions for a while and it’s one of those things that I used to tell parents like, “There is no way to prevent it but there is a way to fix it.”
It’s hard and I watched the parents. I watched my own parents and family go through and I’ve watched friends’ families go through it, all those things. It’s hard and it can destroy families. A big thing I always tell them, “As hard as it is, you can’t blame the addict because it’s like his brain is hijacked.” You can’t take anything they do as personal because that’s not them. It’s one of those things that are hard no matter what and it’s only becoming a bigger issue. You get on Facebook nowadays and many people died from heroin overdoses in this city. It’s finally starting to get the media attention that it needs for something to be done about it. It’s something that’s very hard to deal with. It’s not easy by any means for anybody in the situation but it is fixable.
We’re making a video about Outdoor Savage and our struggles with addiction because you don’t hear success stories. A lot of people get sober and there’s this underlying thing in recovery. Societies put it on that you should be ashamed of what you did type of mindset. My business partner and I are the opposite of that. We are more vocal than a lot of people about what we went through and that’s because you don’t hear success stories. That’s why some of the guys have pressed us to push this video that we’re making because you don’t hear the success stories. You hear the bad stories.
Are you a huge rarity? I believe you are on what you’re saying, but there are going to be thousands of people that hit rock bottom, call it what you want. They worked their way out. Unless they told you the story, you’d never know.
In this country alone there are over one million. Somewhere in that number are members of a twelve-step recovery-based program. It’s a lot and it’s big and they have conferences for it. A couple of years ago, I was in Atlanta and there were 80,000 people in the Georgia Dome that were all sober. From two days sober, there’s a guy in there with 60-something years in recovery. It’s big. It’s a lot of people who don’t voice it and don’t want to wear it.
I heard something, once an addict always an addict. Is that true?
Absolutely, from a psychological standpoint, the disease of addiction is stored in the same part of your brain as eat, sleep and drink. Once you’re a full swing addict, it’s there. That’s why the people that have success with it is at 100% complete absence from anything. That’s why it’s taught that way. In my experience, it’s the only way I had its success. The first time I went to treatment I got out and I thought I could drink alcohol. It wasn’t four hours after I drink alcohol I was back doing the same thing. In my case, it is. It’s a thing that there are a lot of opinions and there are a lot of personal beliefs when it comes to. I know for me, it’s true. All my friends would say it’s true as well. Once an addict always an addict doesn’t mean you act like a drug addict or you act like an alcoholic. You can recover from the addiction, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t go back there.
It’s always lurking it based on what you said. If you screw up, it’s going to spring the trap again and you’re going to go into dark places and have to work your way back out.
There’s a big thing in the twelve-step meetings, I get in the rooms and people say, “While I’m in here doing this, my disease is outside doing push-ups getting stronger. The second I feed it, it’s off to the races.” That’s why I say and yes, it is, “Once an addict always an addict.”
I knew where this is going, I knew the questions I was going to ask, but as an older gentleman, I’m proud of you for deciding, “No, I’m not going to do what you’re thinking of doing in Colorado.” A friend reached out and here you are, with a lot of opportunity in front of you running little cattle, you’ve got a company and shooting ducks and maybe a whitetail. Are you married?
From a psychological standpoint, the disease of addiction is stored in the same part of your brain as eat, sleep, and drink. Once you’re a full swing addict, it’s there. Share on XNo, I don’t have anything in that field. I won’t stay away from it. I know that’ll put a damper on my dreams.
That’s what I was going to say. He’s not married. That’s how the heck he’s driving eight hours.
When people hear what I do, they’re like, “You can’t be married.” I’m like, “No.”
I had to ask.
I’d never been able to live the life I live.
What do you do for work?
I am a supervisor for a valet company in Atlanta. I am also finishing my finance degree. On top of all the hunting, I work 40 hours a week. I take fifteen hours of school and I run Outdoor Savage. I don’t have a whole lot of free time besides the weekends.
You’re going to need to eat and sleep, right?
Yeah, that plays a part in there sometimes.
Drew, this has been fun. I’ve enjoyed the heck out of it. It’s enlightening, heartening all those adjectives. To meet a guy like you and say, “This is where it is. This is where we’re at.” You can beat whatever you’re fighting. We know there are guys and gals out there that you may be drinking too much, maybe using illegal drugs or pharmaceuticals. They don’t need pharmaceuticals, but they’re using the pharmaceuticals as their drug. Think about Drew and think about what he overcame and you can do it too. We’re all not in a bag of chips and something else. We’re just people. I’m happy to have Drew on and share some things about Outdoor Savage. Share some things about getting people in the outdoors and sharing his story. Many times, we miss it and we’re talking all about this and that about whitetail hunting, but this is real life. Thanks to my friend Kenny Maynard for getting us together.
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We’re heading out to Nebraska and we’re doing to meet up with Eric Dinger. Eric is the Cofounder and CEO of a company called Powderhook. What’s all about Powderhook? A lot of us are looking for a place to hunt in various states. A lot of us want to go fishing in various states. A lot of us want to find out how I can build a community online with like-minded people that are going to give me some insights into where I want to hunt fish. Throw that all together and Eric Dinger has put that together in a digital format and an app called Powderhook.
Important Links:
- Outdoor Savage
- OutdoorSavageCo.com
- @OutdoorSavageCo – Instagram
- Facebook – Outdoor Savage
- Eric Dinger – next episode
- Powderhook
About Andrew Fuglsang
Drew Fuglsang is a recovered drug addict, Owner of Outdoor Savage, and savage about the outdoors. Drew Fuglsang and Kenny Cobb started Outdoor Savage with the passion to have a career related to the outdoors. The outdoors lifestyle was something they were raised in. They grew up hunting and fishing with their family. They believe that it’s a passion that you are born with and they take pride in.
The outdoors lifestyle means so much more to Drew the most. It means a second chance at life because of a struggle with addiction. December 11, 2011 was the last time that he put any drugs or alcohol into his body. When he got sober at 23 he was more lost in life then he had ever been. The outdoors was the first thing that gave him a purpose. He grew up in the outdoors but after getting sober he fell in love with it all over again. To this day the outdoors mean everything to him and is a big part of the start of Outdoor Savage. After battling the disease of addiction for many years they sought help and began a life of complete abstinence.While in those years of the struggle they lost everything including knowing who they were. They believe the outdoors helped save and rebuild ourselves. There is a sense of peace that comes from being in the outdoors and providing for ones’ self. It is a place that they feel they can come closer to God and connect on a spiritual level. In a sense they believe that the outdoor lifestyle that they where raised in as children helped save our lives. That is why they started Outdoor Savage. They wanted not only to have a career in the outdoors but also help give other people the opportunity to fall in love with the lifestyle. Outdoor Savage is not a hobby to us; it is a lifestyle.
They started Outdoor Savage to be apart and give back to something that helped save Drew’s life. They hope that someone can be inspired or feel a purpose from going into the woods or on the water. They want to not only give back to this hunting and fishing but also those that are or have struggled with addiction. This means more then just making apparel and building a brand. Its about saving lives and continuing to teach the next generation about the great outdoors.