Hunting isn’t just killing. You have to know the proper steps in hunting and care for the game, care for the meat, and have a lot of respect for the hunt. Jeanette Hall is a passionate hunter and a budding author. Growing up in the middle Tennessee out by a little tiny place called Brush Creek, Jeanette was taught to show respect for the hunt and would always be found in the creek fishing or turning over rocks looking for snakes and crawdads. She says a big component of hunting is not just going out there and shooting something, but having an adventure and enjoying what’s out there. Jeanette shares how she got into hunting, and talks about respecting the hunt and the harvest, the medical benefits of the animals we take, and going organic. She also dishes out some valuable tips on hunting and on setting hunting goals.
—
Listen to the podcast here:
Discover Jeanette Hall Unleashed
I’m with Jeanette Hall and she is a global hunter. She’s an upcoming budding author and she’s got a book coming out in April or May called Jeanette: Getting Wild In The Kitchen. All you organic-minded people, it’s going to be great and I can’t wait to get with her. She also is on Pro Staff with a good friend of mine, Kirstie Pike, CEO of Prois Hunting Apparel. If Jeanette is one thing, she’s passionate about hunting and her story will certainly support that. She’s passionate about hunting in Africa. Jeanette Hall, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Bruce.
Let’s go back to the beginning when you’re nine years old and your granddad took you out and you went hunting for the first time. What was that like?
We went out with his old service revolver which was a little .22. He would set up a target on a big oak tree in Tennessee. This was in middle Tennessee out by a little tiny place called Brush Creek. That was my playground. Back then in the ‘70s, it was okay to turn a kid loose and let them roam the countryside without worry of some predator attacking them or stealing them or anything like that. I had an awesome childhood running amok and doing all the things that I love to do. My biggest thing is you would always find me in the creek turning over rocks to look for snakes. I was always looking for snakes and crawdads and fishing. I had such a neat, outdoorsy childhood that nowadays you don’t see that with kids anymore.
I started off life in a Foster Center in Rhode Island and we lived on a hill in a New England town. The brook ran through it. We’re always on the brook catching trout and frogs. I trapped my first fox along that creek. I’d get on my bicycle at 8:00 AM and be home for supper.
I was never in the house. I was always outside. I’d never had shoes on. You would see me running across the pasture and think, “How does she do that?” I never wore shoes when I was a kid. I loved it. I loved being outside. When I was introduced to shooting, it made things even more fun. I can go out. I can do the rabbit. I was taught, “This is food. You’re not just killing. This is something that you need to respect.” I was shown the proper steps in hunting. I was shown to care for the game, care for the meat, and have a lot of respect for the hunt. That’s important. A lot of people don’t get that. They’re just out there to shoot. A big component of it is not just going out there and shooting something, the big part is going out there and having an adventure and enjoying what’s out there. That for me is the icing on the cake is being out there.
You mentioned the journey and the adventure in Europe, in Germany. They have a tradition and they give every animal they kill or harvest their last branch.
Explain that.
I have a lot of friends there. What you do is you share your last meal. You break off a branch from a spruce tree and put it in their mouth and then you put one in your hat, and so you’ve share the last meal with that animal. It’s a sendoff thank you for your life, for my meal. You’re honoring that animal and they don’t just do it in Germany now, I’m seeing it pop up everywhere in Africa and New Zealand. Sometimes, I’ve seen it happen here. It’s a growing tradition and I like it. It’s a nice send-off.
I'm passionate about Africa. I love the people and left a part of my heart with those I was fortunate to share a sundowner with. The people of the land will stay with me forever. The red dirt is in my soul forever. Share on XWe could spend a lot of time talking on that. Throughout this podcast, you’re going to hear from two people that respect every animal that they’ve ever harvested. Grips and grins are great. I’ve got a bunch of them. Jeanette’s got a bunch of them because we’re proud of our trophy. We spent money, worked hard for our trophy. Even more, we respect it because we’re going to take that trophy and we’re going to eat it. All the deer that we’ve killed at our farm, we eat them. We turn them into meat that’s purely organic. One thing you’re going to hear from the show is respecting the harvest even more and what you said about growing tradition in other parts of the world need to come to America. That’s my thought. Your two cents on that, Jeanette?
The more you travel, the more humbled you will be. My first trip to Africa was the most humbling thing I’ve ever had happened to me. It changed me in ways I had no idea I could be changed. The more you travel and see different cultures and see different ways that they take care of their animals and their meat, the more it opens your mind and broadens possibility. Travel is huge. If you can travel to the US, if you can travel to Canada, if you can go to Africa or Europe or New Zealand, go because that travel adds more to your repertoire. It’s going to add more to your heart. You’re going to meet people that will take pieces of your heart with them when you leave.
It’s hard to explain to somebody that’s never been somewhere outside. For instance, if you’ve only ever hunted Tennessee and you’ve never been anywhere else, you just know that one little spot. It’s hard for you to understand what I’m talking about going to Namibia and seeing the sand people and listening to their stories and watch how they make their hunt. It’s difficult to convey that, “They don’t have a freezer to put their meat in. They don’t have a refrigerator and their floors are dirt. They don’t have wood or carpet or anything like that.” It changes your perspective on everything.
I have to reflect back into my journeys over the last several years. I remembered every single coffee shop I’ve gone into, I don’t care what state. It’s similar to the one that I left it in Wisconsin or in New England or in Colorado once you get away from the big city. Everybody has a story and that’s one thing about the show is I love hearing your stories and you sharing those things about your journey. Let’s start off on your hunts this year. Tell me about your hunts this year and the journeys and a couple of a-ha moments that you said, “I’m glad I’m here.” Not because of the game you took, but because of the people.
This was a fantastic year. I started off with a wild boar. There’s quite a few of them around here. They’re pretty nasty pests. They tear up crops. They’re a nuisance. On top of that, a lot of people don’t realize that these wild boars eat fawns. It’s important to hunt this invasive species. These are Russian boars. They’re not supposed to be here. For me, it was good to get that guy taken out of the population because that’s a few fawns that I managed to save. Who knows how many they eat a year. It provided some meat so that was great. For me, this year came in the fall when the fireworks started. That kicked off in October. I was having a lot of trouble locating a bear. In the spring, I was hunting over Bates, which a lot of people find that controversial but I have some great rebuttals towards that.
I had one bear come in. It was a nice bear, but you could tell he was probably four to five years old, a very leggy bear. That told me he still had some growing to do. I drew down on him and at twenty yards I decided to let down and not arrow him. I let him walk and it was enjoyable watching this guy looking around. You could tell that there was a bigger bear in the area with how nervous he was. He could care less we were sitting in the tree, but he was definitely wary of another bear that was in the area. He grabbed his beaver and took off. That was fun to watch, but I still wanted a bear and I love to eat bear. I cook a lot of bear meat. I haven’t had a bear since 2006. I’m a little bear poor here so I was craving some bear meat.
As the season went on, the June season closed. I had to wait for fall to roll around. Usually, if you don’t get your bear here by October, it’s a pretty good chance you’re not going to see a bear. Once the snow starts to fly, they go straight into their dens. The grizzly bears will still be out and about. I came across lots of grizzlies, but I wasn’t seeing any black bears. It was getting to be a little bit disheartening. I was seeing some tracks and lots of scat but no bears to go with that. One day we happened to be out for a walk. We were going down a cutline and I had my .300 with me because I was hoping to see a bear but you never know what’s going to happen. We walked down a cutline and he stepped out. I was in shock. I wasn’t expecting to see a bear and there’s a nice 350-pound boar standing there. Luckily, he gave me enough time to get my scope on him and I dropped him right in his tracks.
I walked up and took a look in his mouth. His teeth were so old they were worn down, busted, broken. That was a gift of a bear because that’s exactly what you want to take. You want to take an animal that is old, that is probably not breeding anymore. With his teeth being broken down like that, he probably wasn’t going to live a whole lot longer anyway. This was a much kinder way for him to die. I was tickled because now I’ve got some bear meat. On top of that, I’ve got a nice bear rug to go with it. I also have a skull to go in my collection that scores over twenty inches. It was a huge win for me. It was such a gift because it was unexpected.
Let’s go back. You were in the tree stand and a leggy bear comes in. If you haven’t done a lot of bear hunting, in 30 seconds you can get a good handle on the age of the bear, possibly the sex by observing the bear. When a bear comes into the bait, let’s talk about a young bear versus an older bear, physical characteristics.
The first thing you’re going to notice is the ears are going to look huge. On a small bear, they’re going to have these big Mickey Mouse ears and they’re going to have pretty long legs. They’re not going to have a belly that drags towards the ground. They’re not going to have that big swagger. They’re going to walk in like a puppy dog. A young bear is a bear that can easily be eaten by another bear so they’re always on alert. They’re also a little bit cockier when it comes to people. Those are the bears that you usually hear about charging. I can tell you from firsthand experience that a four-year-old boar that thinks he owns that bait is a pretty dangerous animal. I’ve had them mock charge me before and it’s a pretty hair-raising experience that will definitely keep you on your toes. I don’t like shooting those bears. They’re not ready to be harvested yet. They’ve got some growing to do. I like to leave those bears alone. If they do mock charge, I’ll give them a face full of bear spray if they’re getting in that close. Otherwise, I’m not going to shoot them unless it’s absolutely necessary. Luckily, I haven’t had to do that yet.
What about the head? I’ve been told that a big boar’s head looks big. Not just on a grizzly, but on a black bear.
They’re monsters. The one that I got, his head was massive. I’ve got some pictures where I’m picking up his head and I could barely pick his head up. It was heavy. His ears looked super tiny and the main thing is the width between the ears. If his ears are fairly close together, that’s a pretty small bear. Once those ears start to slide over to the side of the head, you know that’s a good bear.
The other thing I’ve been taught is that if his belly is scratching the ground, shoot them.
That’s a big bear. That’s what I saw with this one. This one was a tubby, fat bear. I do prefer a fall bear over a spring bear. The spring bear is good to eat, but they have been hibernating for sometimes seven, eight months. If they’ve been in the den that long not eating, they’re living off of the fat that they’ve had. You have to keep in mind when they’re in hibernation, they don’t urinate and they do not defecate. All of that is being recycled back through their system. That’s why they don’t taste nearly as good as a fall bear because a fall bear, they’ve been foraging all year. Their system’s working perfectly. You have to also keep in mind that they’re eating berries and they’re going to taste a lot sweeter. For me, that is a super big treat because the fall bear is delicious and then you’ve got also the bonus of the fat. I like to render the fat. You can do all sorts of things with the fat. You can cook with it. You can even make some good biscuits with some bear fat. I also render it down and I use it for my horses if they have a scrape or a cut. Bear fat will heal a horse faster than any other salve you can think of.
There’s some wisdom right there. I’ve heard that. I’ve never had horses so I can’t say if it works, but Jeanette Hall does and it does work. The medicinal benefits of the animals we take, if you learn about them, you’d be amazed.
They’re not just meat and hide, there’s a lot more to it than that.
If you're confident in your rifle, you’re limitless. Share on XDid you hunt for Whitetails this fall?
I did and I was successful. I took a nice 4×5. A funny story on him, I wasn’t expecting. I was getting down to the last couple of days. I was like, “It’s something that has got to happen.” This has been a very poor year in Alberta for whitetails. Unfortunately, road hunting has become a big problem and it’s something that a large amount of the population does. Even though it is not legal, it’s driven the deer way back into the back. With that comes the issue of trying to get back in there and find a deer, which all the deer moved a lot later than usual. It was after the season that I saw all the big ones. That’s pretty typical, but our season ends the last day of November. Usually, around the first week of December, that’s when all the big guys step out. This deer was pretty nice, a big-bodied deer. I got a lot of meat off of him. He was about 350 pounds. He had some good weight on him. It’s not the biggest deer body-wise that I’ve ever taken. My biggest one was 400 pounds and he was like looking at a horse. This guy was loaded with fat and the tallow you can use that to render that down. I was happy with him. I only use a .300 Win Mag. That’s my gun of choice up here. That is a versatile gun. You can use that for bear, moose, elk, deer, you name it. It’s perfect. They’re good on coyotes too.
What bullets do you use?
I use a 180 Grain Hornady Custom for everything.
I know you’ve got the flexibility to go up and down. I’ve tried that with my rifles, but then years ago I decided to make it real simple. A 100 hundred yards, five shots, whatever that bullet is, shoot it and to load when you hand-load. It makes it a lot simpler. That’s another tip. Find what your gun shoots the best and it doesn’t matter what you go after. Put the shot where it needs to be. A .300 will take anything in North America, including grizzly bears, and stick that. That’s a tip from Bruce. What are your thoughts on that technique?
I went through a lot of ammo through that gun before I finally found something that it liked. It hated just about every ammo. Once I got into the Hornadys, it was like, “That’s the one.” It was expensive because I did go through a lot of different types of ammo. Once I found it, I’ve been shooting that ammo now for a few years and I love it. I cut my stock down. I got a custom Boyds stock for Valentine’s Day. I got it cut down to fit me. As soon as I got that cut-down, that thing was deadly. Very rarely did I miss a shot. I’m not trying to brag. Once you got the thing dialed in, it was incredible. If I wanted it, I got it. That confidence gives you so much. If you’re confident in your rifle, you’re limitless. It’s amazing what you can do with that gun.
Every single year, put through a box of shells in the summertime and then put on your hunting gear. Know that that rifle is your friend. There’s no question where the bullet’s going to go. When that moment comes, then it’s muscle memory and you pull the trigger and the game’s going to get harvested ethically and it’s going to die quick.
That’s what you want. You don’t want something to run a few hundred yards. The running thing, you would be surprised how much that affects your meat. The meat quality is huge. If you’ve got a lot of adrenaline running through that animal, that alters not only the taste but the texture as well. If you can surprise that animal and knock it down without it knowing what happened, your meat is going to be much better.
We shot a Russian boar in Alberta, Canada, which is an invasive species. There’s an open season on that, isn’t there?
In a lot of counties, we have bounties. If you take a pair of ears in, you’ll get $50.They’re a huge problem. There were a lot of guys up here that we’re trying to farm them and it’s almost impossible to keep those things caged in. With pests that big, they’re powerful animals. They’re also huge. You’re talking a 500-pound animal. They look at a fence and they’re like, “Like that’s going to keep me in.” All of these animals are escapees and they breed so fast that it’s impossible. Once they get out and you’ve got a few running, that’s it. You’ve got a huge problem on your hands.
If you’re going to Alberta, guys and gals, think about that opportunity because it eats well. That’s for sure.
It does. It mixes great with deer too.
Let’s talk a tad on why you’re in love with cooking wild game.
It’s because of a medical condition. I used to eat nothing but garbage food. I used to eat out all the time. I ate at McDonald’s all the time. Pretty much three meals out of the day, I was eating fast food. Next thing you know, I started having issues with my vision. I started feeling not so great. I went in and got myself checked out and lo and behold, they found a brain tumor. I said, “Something’s got to change,” and I changed my eating. That’s about the same time when I got into hunting, right around that 2002 mark. Once I got into hunting, that was it. I wasn’t buying any more meat from the grocery store ever again. I haven’t bought meat from the grocery store in many years and there’s no reason to. I hunt enough that I can sustain myself year-round.
What you’re putting in your body not only fuels your body but it can cause problems or it can correct problems, correct?
Absolutely. I’m on the mend. I’m doing a lot better. The brain tumor’s manageable. I believe because I’m eating right, I’m eating real food instead of processed meat.
What does that mean? Does that mean I don’t go to the grocery store anymore and buy meat at the meat counter?
I don’t. I don’t know what has happened to that meat. I don’t know what’s in it. I don’t know who’s touched it. I don’t know if someone has not washed their hands when they went to the washroom and then come back and started cutting meat again. I do know they wear gloves, but you don’t know. Did they sneeze on it? Did they drop it? That’s one of the things that prompted me into cutting my own meat and learning how to make the cut and process the entire animal myself.
With YouTube video, it isn’t that hard to take a deer apart. It’s sure as heck easy to do.
It is easy.
Do you have videos up on that or not yet?
Not yet. I am working on it. I do have some YouTube videos of me doing grouse. I’ve got a couple of me showing how to prepare a grouse. I also have a video of me cooking it.
When you do your scans, has your tumor shrunk at all?
It has.
Without chemo? How does that work?
Whatever they’re putting in people’s foods, whatever these pesticides and everything else that is getting dumped into the food, it’s bad for you.
We know organic is huge. What diet is the rage right now?
The keto diet and the Paleo diet.
Whatever they're putting in people's foods, whatever pesticides and everything else that is getting dumped into the food, it's bad for you. Share on XWhat are they?
The Paleo diet is what you would eat if you were a Paleolithic man. You would go back in time. You’re eating a lot of whole grains. You’re eating a lot of meat. You’re eating whole foods like whole milk, whole butter, none of this margarine garbage. It’s a wholesome diet. It’s a fabulous diet because it’s what we were designed in the first place to eat. We’re supposed to eat legumes. We’re supposed to eat lots of this stuff that we can grow ourselves and also find in nature. You can go out into the woods, go find yourself some Chaga. That stuff is amazing. You can find it growing on trees and there are many things that you can do outdoors that will make your health much better.
Everybody made their New Year’s resolution, “I’ve got to lose twenty pounds and I got to be in shape because I lost it.” That happens to the millions of us and I’ll raise my hand along with everybody. Everybody knows Cameron Hanes. He’s created the hunting athlete and huge business come off of that because you can google fit to hunt and there are probably ten people that pop up. You can get all the fitness in the world. If you’re not putting the right fuel in your body, then it’s not going to work out well. Your thoughts on that, Jeanette?
That’s right. If you go to McDonald’s, you’re going to find a lot of times that you’ll feel sluggish afterward. Sometimes I do have to stop if I’m in town. I’m running lots of errands. My blood sugar gets a little bit low. I’ll stop and I grab a fast food burger and within twenty minutes, I feel sick. My body’s not used to eating garbage anymore. When you eat stuff like that, it takes away your energy. When you come home, you want to lie on the couch. You don’t want to do anything. On the other hand, if you eat a big fat elk steak and you go out, then you’re going to feel much better. Put some vegetables with that, some onions, some mushrooms. Even mushrooms that you found yourself, you can go out there and find some good mushrooms in the fall and in the spring. That recharges your body. You have a little bit of trouble getting outside in the wintertime because it’s ugly. What I do is I say, “This is the perfect time to go shed hunting.” I’ll go out there and I’ll go for walks. Let’s face it, after Christmas, we have eaten ourselves to death. We’ve all gained a little bit of weight. I’m being one of them. With that thought of, “I could find an Antler. I might not, but I could.” With that prospect, that gets me outdoors and I go walking deer trails.
Do you carry your .300 in case Mr. Wolf comes by?
You bet I do.
It’s nice to be able to be able to do that and go out. You’ve got hunting goals set up and if you’re not booked out, if you don’t have your hunting plan set for how many states you’re going to put in for. What states you’re going to? If you haven’t reached out to all the DNR people, one, you need to do that. Two, you need to look and say, “I need to be in shape.” You need to be in shape to go deer hunting. There are a lot of people that hunt the gun season and they don’t think about it because they’re going to drive to within 100 yards of their deer stand. They’re going to climb a ladder, get in a blind in their tree stand, sit there, come down, and then go home. It’s not physical. What I challenge you is if you’re going to do all day sits, it’s a tremendous benefit to you to be in shape. Why? It’s because mentally you’ll be able to handle it. Your thoughts on that, Jeanette?
I went on a mountain goat hunt in 2016 in Northern British Columbia and that was the most physically and mentally demanding hunt I’ve ever been on in my life. It was a huge hunt. It’s the best hunt I’ve ever done mainly because it was difficult. Had I not prepared for it months and months before I went, I can’t even imagine going on a hunt like that without preparing for something that huge. If you go up in conditions like that, people have died. Even experienced people have died going up there after these mountain goats. You have to be in shape mentally as well. You’ve got to think about you are thousands of kilometers away from help. If something happens up there, how are you going to get out? You’ve got to have all kinds of game plans in place before you even do a hunt like this.
I almost roped up to retrieve my mountain goat. The guide said, “What do you think?” I said, “I can do it.” We had to go down a chute. It was almost like a chimney. The mountain goat fell down this chimney and he was lying at the bottom. Think of rock climbing up a chimney and that’s pretty much it. That was the most I was scared going down. I know I could get back up, but going down it’s like you’re looking then you go, “Holy fright,” but I did it.
Mine was the opposite. Going up was the worst part because we came down and it wasn’t bad. It was in daylight. Once we got my goat cut up, we had to go back up. One of the flashlights failed, the headlamp failed and then we went up the wrong way. We were on shale that you took two steps up and went back about five steps. The one guy behind me, I thought we lost him. He took a bad flip and he went way back and I thought, “We’re going to lose him,” and we all have meat on our backs and the hide. There are grizzly bears all over the place and I’m thinking, “How are we going to get out of here?” I pulled the trigger at 6:00 PM. We didn’t make it back to camp until 3:00 AM. It was crazy. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done in my life.
Your health now, do you go to the doctor every six months? How do you manage it?
I go in for MRIs every six months. My neurologist works with my optometrist because it’s pressing on my optic nerves. With that, I’ve lost all of my peripheral, which has affected my hunting because I can’t see to my sides anymore. I have to physically turn my head if I want to see. It’s the same as if you’re looking through binoculars full-time, except you don’t have that graded vision. I can only see a little bit. I can’t see directly below me. I can’t see above me and I can’t see the sides. Unfortunately, I have to move my head more than I want to, especially if I’m still hunting. I’ve got to look around and use my ears. That’s turned into something that I’ve had to depend on a lot is listening. Can I hear them walking? My sight isn’t what it used to be, I’ve had to depend on different senses and smell too. You can smell these bucks. You can smell them from quite far away if you know what to smell for, the same with elk. You could smell him from 200 yards away. It’s pretty amazing how your body, once something has been taken away, how it’ll flip over and it will increase in areas where it wasn’t so much before.
You’re an amazing individual.
I’m doing what makes me happy and hunting makes me tremendously happy.
A lot of people have possibly taken a different route with physical challenges. With something lingering that’s manageable, but still lingering.
If I couldn’t hunt, I don’t know what I would do. That would be a pretty sad day when I can’t hunt anymore. I’m hoping that in my 80s or 90s when I say, “I can’t do this anymore,” but I want to continue on with this for a long time. My optometrist, I’ve been working with him and he set me up with some good contacts. I can see well far away. My vision has constricted badly that without the contacts, I can only see about four to four feet in front of me before everything becomes completely blurry.
There’s no way they can release that on the optic nerve?
Unfortunately, it’s in a bad spot. It’s on top of my pituitary gland, which messes up a lot of other things because that’s your master gland. They can go through my nose and they can get in there and get it, but I’m looking at a 50% chance of it coming back and then also coming back even larger. Air travel is going to be an issue for me for quite a while. With me going to Africa, that’s going to be a little bit difficult to get there. I’m holding off as long as I possibly can because I got a lot of places I still want to see. I haven’t been to New Zealand yet and I want to go there. I want to check out Australia. I want to hunt Germany. I’ve still got a lot of places to go and that requires an airplane. If I go through with the surgery then that might be put off for who knows how long.
You can't pick and choose. You either stand with hunters or you don't stand with them at all. Share on XWe all have a story. There isn’t one of us reading this that doesn’t have a story, but we’re hearing from an incredible lady with a passion for hunting. This is one reason why we do the shows and uncover these people and let you know that whatever your story is, you’re not alone. People are out there going through something themselves. Jeanette, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to do that?
You can find me on Facebook. I also have a hunting page on Facebook called Adventures In Hunting With Jeanette Hall. You’re more than welcome to check that out. I’m also on Instagram under @AlbertaHuntress. I’d love to connect with you guys out there. You can follow along and see what I’m up to. I put a lot of cooking and hunting and horses. I’m big into horses. I do mounted archery as well, you can check that out. I’d love to meet more people. If anyone else is out there is with a brain tumor and dealing with that, I’d love to connect with you and talk to you about it. Especially if somebody has had surgery, I would love to see how they did. Did it come back? It would be good to know for my own peace of mind.
Do you have a website at all?
I don’t. I used to and it wasn’t getting much traffic. It was getting way more traffic on Facebook so I went ahead and shut it down.
We’ve got some backfill. You’ve got some great stories. You talked about your passion. I asked you a question, I said, “What are you most passionate about at hunting?” You didn’t hesitate. It’s Africa. There’s more in hunting Africa than just harvesting game and having grips and grin. Let’s talk about your passion for Africa.
I have been dreaming of Africa since I was nine years old, sitting on my granddad’s lap looking at National Geographic magazine. I would see these animals and so much of Africa captivated me. I knew that one day I had to go. That dream finally came true for me in September of 2011. I went to Namibia. I hunted with some amazing people. Being there, flying in, it was surreal that it was happening for me. When we touched down at the airport, I looked around and I couldn’t believe I made it. My poor PH, I sat there, “Look at that, there’s a zebra. Look over there, there’s this and that.” He’s like, “I know. I see that every day.” For me, I was like a kid. It was beautiful.
I was bow hunting. In my blind, I would sit there and I chat with my PH while we were waiting for the game to come in. I learned so much from him. He was in a book that I purchased before I went to the airport. He was Conservationist of the Year in Namibia in 2006, which was interesting that I was hunting with someone that is passionate about conservation. We had some great conservation topics that we touched on like poaching and how is that affecting Africa. How is that coming from somebody that’s never been there to see these things? While we’re sitting there, what comes up is a black rhino. He says, “This is a treat. Here you go. Here’s an animal that is highly endangered and you get to see one at twenty yards away.”
The things we got to see were amazing. We had an elephant come in and we were sitting underneath an acacia tree that had fallen over, that was our blind. Watching this bull elephant come in and he’s like, “This is getting a little close so let’s give him some room.” We got up. He saw us and his ears flared out and he came towards us. The next thing you know, he’s 50 yards away and I had a bow in my hand. I’m like, “This is a dangerous situation.” He spoke to the elephant in African and the elephant backed off and turned away. He went over to the waterhole and we got to watch him for twenty minutes to take a bath. He went and put some dust on him and walked away. An hour later, I shot my dream animal. My kudu bull came into that exact spot.
The whole hunt was such a dream hunt. It wasn’t so much the hunt itself of me taking a kudu and the other animals that I took. The dream also became real when the villagers came in and we watched them divvy up the meat. Having those villagers come and shake your hand and express extreme gratitude for that meat to take back to their village changed everything for me. These people don’t have refrigerators, they don’t have freezers. You walk into their village and every house has dirt on the floor. They don’t have wood floors or carpet or anything like that. It’s primitive living. It captivated me. It was like, “These people don’t have the stresses that I have at home. They don’t stress about a car payment. They don’t stress about a mortgage. They don’t have any of the stresses that are giving us health problems back home. This is such a much simpler life to live.” I wanted to come home and throw away half of my stuff and live a lot as they do. Can you imagine living a life like that where you don’t have so much stress? It was humbling for me to go and see that. I had never thought about that before until I went there.
When you think about Africa and talk to people who hunt Africa or go to safari Africa or go to Africa and spend time with the people, not the people in the cities, all of a sudden you gain an understanding that you can echo what Jeanette has said. Hunting in Africa is about giving back. It’s not about the grips and grins. Every morsel of that red meat is consumed quickly and it’s shared. When you think about that, you can do the same thing with your game here in North America. There are plenty of food pantries. There are plenty of places. I remember traveling one time to hunt elk and I got an elk and l wasn’t going to fly it home. I went and made a couple calls to a couple of churches and said, “I’ve got a couple hundred pounds of elk. It’s all boned out. I need to do something with it,” and that was gone. It took me a matter of hours to do that. With Google and social media, you can get that meat gone in an hour or less. Think more about doing that because there are people in this country, the United States of America and Canada that go hungry every single night.
Here in Canada, they’re imposing what they call a meat tax. They’re calling it a sin tax if you buy meat in a grocery store. I was in Costco and a rack of beef ribs that’s not long was $92. It’s shocking to see what they’re doing to people. The price of meat here is expensive that if I didn’t hunt, I don’t know how I would feed myself. They have made it expensive to purchase meat that it’s ridiculous. There are people that need this meat. Here you get two doe tags and a buck tag and if you’re not going to use one of those does, by all means, give it to someone that needs it.
The meat in the States is expensive. Hamburgers are $3, $4 a pound. The last rib eyes I bought, they’re expensive, $15 apiece. I don’t understand this tax. Why would you want to tax the meat unless you don’t have enough supply? Can you unpack that a little bit?
What we have up here is they imposed this carbon tax. They’re very much against farming, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. What they’re doing is by imposing this meat tax, they’re trying to limit how much people eat because they figure, “If there are fewer cows then there are fewer emissions from the farm,” which is stupid because in Canada we have a vast boreal forest. We produce less carbon than anyone else on the planet. With all these trees that we have, we’re in the minus. We have a rather psychotic prime minister, which I’ll probably get in trouble for saying that but that’s okay. That’s how I feel. I feel that this puppet is trying hard to destroy Canada and everything in it. One part of destroying Canada is to take away the people’s food and take away the people’s money and then you’ve got the people.
If you don’t feed people, they’re going to die.
It’s stupid what’s happening here. Watching it, I shake my head. It’s incredible watching one person kill this country.
I’ve been up there goose hunting. You have vast townships of wheat fields. He doesn’t want people to grow wheat?
He doesn’t want anyone to make a profit from anything, I don’t believe he’s. He’s something else. If you watch what’s happening up here in Canada, you’re seeing that we’re having some bad shifting. This is an upcoming election year so we’re praying that people have the common sense to get him out. Unfortunately, there are many people in the East, in the cities that don’t care what’s happening in the country that he’s likely going to get back in. If he does, I don’t see how Canada is going to survive.
Posting disrespectful photos fuels the fire. Share on XPeople in the cities are going to find out they got no groceries. There’s nothing to eat. Good luck with that.
It’s unbelievable what’s happening.
If I live in the country, I’m going to eat because I’ll be a hunter-gatherer.
There’s going to be a civil war happening here soon at least in the next few years. I guarantee it.
We’re digressing but this is a good segue because the world we live in is changing. Jeanette Hall, an international hunter, Pro Staff at Prois, well-known in the hunting circles was told by one of her sponsors not to put up pictures anymore. What’s that all about?
When we renewed our contracts in January, everything looked great and I signed back on. In February, I received a revision. In that revision, it says twice, “You may not post any photos of African or exotic animals.” They were adamant about you not posting African or exotic animals. For about 24 hours after I made my post, I didn’t expect it to go viral the way it did but it blew up overnight. As I was watching this whole thing, still after 24 hours, there’s nothing from Cabela’s. They still haven’t contacted me via email or phone or any other way about any of this. I wanted to know why. We’re getting constantly bombarded by anti-hunters and I saw this as a personal attack on hunters because if you’re telling us you can’t post certain photos of certain animals, why are wanting us to hide? I wanted answers. I contacted corporate several times through phone and email asking them, “What is this about?” They would not give me an answer. This frustrated me.
By December, I had made up my mind that, “This is wrong. I’m not going to be renewing my contract,” even though I was sent a renewal. I said, “The public should know what is happening with Cabela’s.” After this merger, a lot of things changed and this was something that came on with that merger. I’m not sure, but I do suspect it was something to do with the Bass Pro and one of their policies. I made this post online because I wanted answers. I knew I would get an answer somehow and I didn’t expect it to go everywhere but it did. It was a good thing because it got Cabela’s attention. For the first couple of days, they made a statement saying they knew nothing about it. On the fourth day, “It must’ve come from someone inside and we didn’t approve it.” I don’t understand why they denied it the first few days and then come back and make another statement saying, “We saw the email and we didn’t approve of it. Someone must have done it on their own.” My question is whoever did it on their own, did they do it on their own? Did someone in corporate tell them to put that on there and they’re going to end up taking the fall for them?
How long have you been a Pro Staff with Cabela’s?
Three years.
Is this paid or volunteer?
You’re a volunteer. They don’t cover your fuel, which for me it’s a three-hour drive round-trip to go and do my presentation. Typically, I do a full weekend. I do Saturday and Sunday. That’s six hours’ worth of driving. With gas, if you convert the US dollars per gallon, I’m paying about $5.25 a gallon. That’s a little bit on the expensive side, not to mention I also drive a truck.
Do you go from your home to Edmonton?
Yes, I’ll go in the morning and I have to spend a minimum of eight hours there in the store talking. At the end of that, they give you a gift card that can only be spent in store for $150. That’s it. A lot of people seem to think that it was a paid position, which no one gets paid except possibly the ambassadors. An ambassador and a Pro Staff are two totally different things. None of us Pro Staffs were getting actual money. We would get a gift card that had to be spent in the store. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use it to pay for my fuel. On top of that, the discounts changed drastically once Bass Pro took over. We used to get a pretty good discount. We’d get 25% off of most stuff. Even guns we would get 5% off as well as ammo, we would get 5% off.
Once Bass Pro took over, there were no more discounts on guns and ammo. You only got a discount on Cabela’s-branded items only, everything else was full price. We lost a huge amount of our discount. We weren’t getting a whole lot anymore for our efforts. Sometimes in one day, I would do three talks and each talk was about an hour. That was a lot of work. They wouldn’t even promote us anymore. They wouldn’t put us in their flyers and say, “Jeanette is giving a talk on this weekend. Make sure you stop into this Cabela’s store and come see her.” We’re promoting for nothing.
The winds of change are here. They’re not coming, they’re here. Cabela’s started in Sidney, Nebraska. A couple of guys, a couple of brothers who gave flyers away. A dozen flyers for free and you’d pay $5 for postage. They started a great business and they were hunters. They were pro everything. It isn’t that way anymore. Unfortunately, we’re going to see more and more of this. If you aspire to be on a Pro Staff, make sure you understand what that commitment is because to have your name as a Pro Staff for XYZ Company and not get paid something of value, what’s the point? Unless your ego’s so huge that you say, “I’m on Pro Staff for this.” Where’s the benefit?
If you’re reading this, you are a person who likes hunting. You’re like a lot of us. You desire to have a voice in the industry, whatever that is. Make a product. Have a podcast. Have a video. Be on Pursuit Channel, Sportsman Channel, or whatever. You want to be in the industry because you love it so much, but it’s still a business. If you’re so wealthy that you can do it for nothing, God bless you, but most of us can’t. Jeanette Hall is ethical, honest, and a wonderful human being that has represented the hunting world well has been told she can’t post a picture on her website. I don’t know where that’s going, but it doesn’t sound good to me.
The interesting thing is that once I posted this, I had ex-Pro Staff, ex-employees, ex-managers from Cabela’s and Bass Pro contact me. While they’re trying to point the finger at Canada saying that this came out of Canada, most of them were in the US that I spoke with. They said the same thing. They were not allowed to post photos of specific animals, especially down in the States. They weren’t allowed to post photos of wolves, which I found interesting.
I have an investor in my podcast. I do the work. He gives me the money. We talked about Cabela’s because we knew they were going to be there and I said, “What do you think?” He says, “That’s a business decision first. That has nothing to do with anything. We’ll have to make up our mind if they want to sponsor your podcast, then you have to play by the rules.” I said, “What if I don’t like their rules?” Cabela’s Bass Pro is worth $37 billion industry. I don’t know your $5 billion or what your K-1 or your schedule whatever says, but we’re a formidable force. Make sure you know the way you’re going and it’s okay. JC Penney’s going out of business. Blockbuster Video went out of business. A lot of companies go out of business because they don’t treat their customers’ right.
This is 2019 and we haven’t talked a lot about whitetail hunting. Our industry is evolving and changing. If you go and look at the average spend for the deer hunter, it’s $5,000 to $10,000 a year. Mine’s a lot more than that because I travel. I don’t need any more gear, but I do travel so the travel cost and I buy licenses, then I have a choice where I get my stuff. It’s as simple as that. There are only 50 million whitetail hunters in the country plus and minus a million. Jeanette, what are your thoughts about that?
I feel that with me coming public on that, I wanted the public to know what they’re spending their money towards. If you’re unknowingly spending money at an outfit that claims to be for hunters but yet isn’t, it’s important that they know that. If this is the way that they’re going to go and say, “We don’t condone African hunting because it’s bad for business. There are people that don’t like it. We have people that buy camping gears and we don’t wish to offend them. That’s why we’re doing this.” I feel that hunters need to know this and this is another way for us to lose more hunting rights. They’re chipping away constantly. Every angle, we’re getting chipped at. Trappers, hunters, people that predator hunt every day we’re being attacked. To be attacked by a company that says they’re for hunters is sickening to me. That goes against everything that I stand for and I won’t represent a company that is secretly doing something like this and not telling the public, “We represent hunters, but not African hunters or not wolf hunters.” That is wrong. If you’re against one hunting, you’re against all of the hunting. You can’t pick and choose. You either stand with hunters or you don’t stand with them at all. I don’t see it as anything but black and white as that.
A commissioner from Idaho went out to Africa and hunted and posted some pictures that I don’t think you and I would have posted. What are your thoughts on that?
I do agree that the photos that you post have to be tasteful. Any African outfitter that’s worth his salt will make sure that your animals in those photos look immaculate and tasteful because that’s their business. If somebody posts bad photos in Africa of an animal that’s dripping blood, that looks horrible, they realize that the public is going to see that. They’re going to get backlash or they’re going to have other hunters say, “This doesn’t look like a good outfit. I’m going to pass and I’ll go somewhere else.” When I hunted Africa, they show up with gallon jugs of water to wash your animal off. They don’t want any blood showing at all. They make sure that the tongues are inside. They make sure that the animal is set up in an area that looks pleasing to the eye. The animal is set up in a way that it looks natural and respectful.
By posting disrespectful photos, that fuels the fire. All of my photos are very tasteful. You don’t see blood. You don’t see tongues hanging out. They are very tastefully done that I could show them to anybody and they’re not going to be offended unless they’re hardcore and say, “I won’t look at any picture of any dead animal.” If you go shoot baby animals and posted and think it’s funny, that’s tearing away at us. That’s inviting people to attack us. Those photos were poorly done. Those photos should have been kept under his hat. Those are your photos. You can show those to your buddies, but that’s probably something that shouldn’t have gotten out.
I’m still befuddled. I used to have a seat at the table here in Colorado with the Sportsman Advisory Council. If any of us had done that, you would have had to resign. There wouldn’t have been a question. I’m still trying to wrap my arms around why a person would do that.
I don’t know if he was gloating or I don’t know what his situation was. It’s much the same as the photo that was leaked out of Larysa with the sex toy and the sheep. That should have never ever gotten out. That puts such a black eye on hunting that it’s unbelievable. You shouldn’t have even taken that photo because I hate to say it, but everybody’s got haters. I’ve got haters. You’ve probably got haters. We all have haters. I’m sure Larysa has a few as well. By taking a photo like that, you’re risking someone getting a hold of that photo and putting it out there. You have to pick and choose. Do I want something like that accidentally getting out someday? Am I going to take tasteful photos that I’m proud to show off? You’ve got to make a choice and that’s a moral decision.
It’s simple with the digital world we live in. If you take a picture with your camera, somebody with some skills can get a hold of that picture.
Any photo that you post anywhere that goes online, anyone can take it. I had a customer that was complaining that a photo of his mount that I did was put on an article. I said, “I have no control over what the media takes off my page.” Since he posted that photo and tagged me in it, everyone can see it. I said, “I’m sorry that you’re upset but you’re upset with the wrong person. You posted the photo. Once you posted that photo, anyone can get ahold of it.” Next time think about that.
There's something that happens to you when you get to Africa; something about that red soil gets in your blood and takes over your heart. Share on XTerms and conditions and Facebook and all social media, if you post something there, you have given it away. You don’t have any intellectual property rights. Get over that because you don’t own it anymore. That’s the way it is. That’s where we live in. It’s good and bad in social media, but that’s where we live in. You’re passionate about Africa. Tell me one story about sitting around the campfire just reflecting on the day’s activity. What was your major takeaway?
It was amazing to come in at night. You would hear the lions roaring. When I was in South Africa, it was during the ruts for the Impala. You would hear the males roar, which was an interesting sound. You would hear them right up against the camp fighting. You could bow hunt them right off the camp, but that was frowned upon because we liked to watch the animals from camp. You’re not going to go out there and shoot it because it’s right there. It’s nice to have something to look at. Every night when we would come in from our hunt, we were always greeted by the staff, which was my favorite.
The staff is usually all villagers and it’s great because they have a job. They would always hire husbands, wives, uncles, kids even. The kids were there playing. It was nice because it was like a daycare for them. They could come in and we could see the kids and I enjoyed that a lot. The women that were in camp were the wives of the trackers. I enjoyed coming into camp and they would hand you a glass of your favorite drink. I loved having an Amarula after an evening hunt. We’d sit at the fire and we’d talk about what we saw that day. Whether it is, “I saw this animal and I’ve never seen one of those or I found this.” My favorite story sitting around was I found a broke off warthog tusk. It was found at a waterhole where a lot of bowhunters like to sit. I was like, “That’s the neatest thing here.” I’m holding in my hand a piece of ivory and I am going to try to take this home. They said, “We can do for you is we can make you a necklace out of it and you can wear it home because it’s a finished product.”
I was in love with this idea that, “I don’t even have to worry about anything. I can bring it right home.” It’s a piece of ivory. What they did was they dipped it in bleach and they made sure to put it in some salt to make sure it was disinfected as it is a bone. The wives, a lot of them would do beading. They take the beading and they sell it in stores in Johannesburg. These ladies are incredible beaders. I went into the little room that they were beading and I watched them intricately bead a design on this necklace. They put it over my head with a string of leather. For me, it was like, “This is something I’m going to keep forever. This means so much to me. I am bringing home a piece of Africa that’s tangible, that can take me back to that exact piece of time. I can look at that and anytime I want, when I’m sitting at home I can grab that piece of ivory and I’m right back at that waterhole with that sun beating down. I can smell the smells of Africa after rain and listen to the Guinea hens. That brings back so much happiness.
You had no problems going through custom with the ivory?
Not at all because it was a finished piece of artwork. It was a finished piece of jewelry.
Take that to heart because there are specific regulations about ivory, importing them into the United States or exporting them from Africa, or ivory any place. If you’re going to do that, even walrus tusk up in the Arctic. Check the rights before you do that because you might not come home with it.
You’ve got to be careful. Since it was a finished piece, if it was unfinished, if it was just a warthog tusk then I wouldn’t have been able to bring it back. I would have had to put it in with my crate with the rest of my trophies when they shipped it back. Since it was a finished piece of jewelry, then it was okay.
Africa is always with you. I know it’s in your mind anyway, but now you have a touchstone.
Always and I do plan on going back. I’ve got to get back there. There’s something that happens to you when you get to Africa. Something about that red soil gets in your blood and it takes over your heart. When you leave, you leave a part of your heart in Africa. I feel it’s important I’ve got to get back and get back in touch with that piece of heart that I left and visit. I hope that I can continue to visit for many years.
Jeanette Hall, it’s been an absolute joy to have some conversation about hunting and sharing some stories and then touching on where we are now in the hunting industry. Which you’re well aware of and well read up on. The thought about igniting that desire. Africa is highly affordable.
It is so much cheaper than say, for instance, going to Alaska. You can get fifteen animals as opposed to three in Africa. It’s such a neat place to hunt. You’re not hunting high fence. Go to Namibia, it’s all wide open. You’re not hunting fences. The same thing with South Africa, some of these places you’re looking at are 6,500 hectares. They’re massive places. You don’t see a fence. To go there, you don’t even have to hunt. While I was there, I had so much fun doing a pickup safari, which is where you pick up deadheads. I picked up an absolute monster of an impala and a huge hartebeest and I brought them with my crate. I had them put in and it costs an extra $150 to get it dipped and packed, but completely worth it. It’s like shed hunting in a way except you’re getting a whole skull.
With that, we’re going to end this episode. When Jeanette’s book comes out, we’re going to be doing a promo Facebook Live for her on her book. We’ll be staying close and doing more things down the road. Thank you so much. I wish you all the best.
Thank you so much, Bruce. This has been a real pleasure. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.
Important Links:
- Jeanette Hall
- Prois Hunting Apparel
- Adventures In Hunting With Jeanette Hall – Facebook group
- @AlbertaHuntress – Instagram
- https://www.Facebook.com/groups/1475619806021049/
- https://www.Facebook.com/Jeanettel.Hall
- https://www.Instagram.com/AlbertaHuntress/?hl=en
About Jeanette Hall
I got into hunting again at the age of 26. I was originally given a foundation at the age of 9 but horses took over my interests. When I got back into it, hunting became an unstoppable passion. I became active in all aspects, from rifle hunting to bow hunting. This passion took me to Africa and all over North America.
While I seriously enjoy hunting and fishing I also discovered a passion for teaching along the way. I am a volunteer for Alberta Hunters Education Instructors Assn and each year I teach at their Outdoor Women’s Program. I also mentor first-time hunters.
This has also lead me to write books. I have one headed to press that is a cookbook and one still in a process which accounts my hunting adventures.
Sponsors:
- Prois
- Scentlok Enforcer
- Leaders Elite Lures
- Wolf Paw Archery