Hunting, without doubt, requires knowledge, confidence, and leadership, especially for those who are leading and teaching others to be interested in the industry. Author, survivalist, and DIY hunter Christopher James “CJ” tells us what Be A Lion Outdoors is all about and he chose such an animal to represent aggressiveness in hunting. He offers some advice on how we can be lions out there on the field and become great leaders of the outdoors. CJ also talks about bootstrapping and surviving in the woods, in the mountains, and even in harsh environments while sharing his favorite techniques in hunting.
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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Deer Hunting – Be A Lion Outdoors – CJ James
I’m with Christopher James, also known as CJ. He’s a writer, author, DIY hunter, an extreme wilderness fanatic, a fitness person and he’s an overcomer. He’s faced adversity in his life. He is living proof that no matter what happens, how bad it seems at the time, you can overcome it and move forward. CJ is from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He fishes at the Bow River which, if you’ve never been on the Bow, you should fish in the Bow.
It’s a wonderful water body. Our rainbows and brown trout are Blue Ribbon level. The growth rates are huge. We’ll have a four or five-year-old trout that’s measuring 21 inches. There are thousands of them in any stretch of the Bow. If you get a chance to go into my neck of the woods, let me know and I’ll be happy to take you out. It’s a wonderful water body. I’m lucky to have grown up on it.
CJ, we talked about Be A Lion Outdoors and what does that mean? Let’s start off the show and unpack that a little bit.
It’s usually the first question that people ask me when it comes to sitting down and talking, “Why did you choose a lion and why did you go about with that name and that handle?” It could have been anywhere from “main event” with a play on the word “outdoors.” It could have been “Mufasa Hunting Exploits.” It could have been anything. The way that I landed on Be A Lion Outdoors is, if you look at a lion, whether you’re watching it through Planet Earth or you’re on the Discovery Network or the zoo or you’re in Africa, if you’re fortunate enough to do that, and you go on a safari, you look at a lion. It’s a mysterious animal, but you know what it’s all about. It’s out there. It oversees everything. It leads to its pride. It leads its pack with a quiet, reserved strength.
When you look at a lion, it’s powerful. It’s a force to be reckoned with, but it’s majestic. It’s strong. It’s determined. That resonated with me and it always has. I look at a lion. It’s how I want to represent myself as a human being. It’s always been my favorite animal. The voice of a lion resonates strongly with me. The fact that you don’t mess with it, but it won’t go right out there and hurt you. It’s relentless. That’s how I conduct my own business. That’s how I try and live my day, not only in the woods, but also in my own personal life and in my day-to-day job is you want to be quiet and stoic, but you want to have that determination to go out there and get things done when you need to.
I landed on Be A Lion Outdoors as a motivating reminder for primarily myself to go out there and be that lion, to go out there and be that leader that sometimes people need, to go out there and provide for the people that rely on you. To go out there and teach the young what they need to do to survive in any situation, but to also fight for what you want to achieve and what you want to accomplish. That, to me is how it all wrapped up. I was going back and forth and trying to figure out a name and always kept saying to myself, “Go out there, CJ, be a lion. Come on, James. You know what you’re doing. Be that lion,” and stuck. It rolled into that there. I rebranded. My goal is to try and get as many people out there being lions.
We talked about your early football exploits and living on the ranch and all those types of things. You’ve always been a guy that’s mixed it up and been a leader because ranching, you have to go out and get it done. Nobody’s going to tell you, “You know what needs to be done, you go and do it.” As a linebacker in a football team, a lot of times, you were the safety, calling the plays, calling formations, calling the scheme and all that stuff. Everything in your life has gotten you to now it seems.
It has. I was fortunate enough, as far as the ranching goes, my family is pretty well-documented in the Alberta historical records, for example. My great-great-grandfather came across on the railway. He settled. He started working on a ranch outside of Delacour. Eventually, he expanded and he grew the family. We ended up having over 100,000 acres from Saskatchewan to the BC border. The largest cattle producer in Canada for a while and for a little bit in the northwestern states was the family brand, XL Beef. Throughout the years, our ranch has been cut back, but the lineage is still there. McKinnon Flats in Kananaskis is named after my family. There are books in museums and photos that are named after the family. There are scholarships, through Olds College, through the family. It’s bred into me. When we settled out here, you had to hunt and fish. You had to be a leader. You had to go out there and get things done. Multiple people relied on you, not through your family, but also your community. I was fortunate enough to have that built into me from a young age. My granddad took my dad out fishing. There’s a little spot, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, called Seebe Dam. It’s right in the Rocky Mountains.
My dad took me out there fishing quite a bit and took me to his old spot that he used to go with his granddad, but he always had me pack my own things in and out. I could be three, four or five years old. He beat it into me because what three-year-old wants to be walking around with rods, lunch kits and tackle boxes? I was that three-year-old. I ate it up and loved it. I’ve always had that ability to lead people. That transferred into football. I started playing football at a pretty young age. They wanted me to get into baseball first and for some reason, I kept sliding into every base, even if I didn’t have to. They tried me in a bunch of different sports. Hockey wasn’t being Canadian, ironically, that was one that’s blasphemous, that I didn’t play. I got into football and initially right away led the teams. I won coaches award my first year, as being recognized by the coaches and the team. I’ve won Rookies of the Year. I’ve won all-star awards. I’ve been scholarship-offered. I wasn’t the best football player by any stretch of the imagination. I was not pro-level, but it was the ability to motivate and inspire. That’s something that I take very much pride and the ability that I could listen to a person and get them amped up about something.
I can get a person’s problem and I’ll be darned if I don’t try and fix it. I’ll lead the masses. Even in my day job, I lead a very large team and it’s rewarding to hear people come up to me and say, “You’re the best that I’ve ever had. If you go anywhere, I’m following you.” It comes naturally to me. I know that some people have to work at it. I definitely do, as well, but the leadership side of it is something that as outdoorsmen and women, we need to reflect upon. There are a lot of sheep that are in the world. The social media frenzy, which is ironic that we did a Facebook Live. We met through Instagram, social media, but everybody’s connected to their phones and connected to their devices that they’re afraid to look up. They follow the masses. There need to be more outdoor leaders out there, Bruce Hutcheon, Cam Hanes, Brandon Waddell and Britt Jills. We need more advocates and more spokesmen. I hope that I’m able to do that through my stories, through my ability to be real and still help people get excited about things. It doesn’t have to be hunting. It doesn’t have to be fishing. It could be going outside and sitting in your backyard. I want to motivate people to be excited about the outdoors again and that’s my platform.
The thing I know in my own life, the best lessons I’ve learned are out of doors. When you leave your truck that you’re going to get back to your truck. You don’t know what shape you’re going to be in, what day it’s going to be, whether you got game with you or not. You have that confidence in you and a lot of people don’t. I don’t know how they’re going to get that except go out, get mentored, spend the time and get up against it. Let’s talk a little bit now about adversity and how you overcame the adversity in your life. We’re going to talk about hunting, but this is important too because without people like CJ sharing things, you won’t grasp what the outdoors is all about, in my opinion.
You touched on confidence there and I was not a confident kid. I was that weird kid that nobody wanted to spend time with and that nobody looked twice at. There are not a lot of people out there hunting and fishing when I was growing up. In the ranch area, but in high school and junior high, there was not a lot of people that were out there doing it. Football was my outlet. It was my way to fit in, having played for many years and poured my everything into it. It broke my heart when it was taken away during one game and I fractured my C2 vertebrae. It went misdiagnosed for about a season, but it was my senior year and that was the year that I was getting blue-chipped to go down. In Canada, playing in the States was a big deal, especially if you got pulled down as a scholarship offer.
I went down and I had scholarship opportunities. I had scouts coming out and talking to me and talking to my family. I initially thought I tweaked my neck a little bit and it wasn’t that big of a deal. When I started going through my medicals, I found out that I got a C2 or a hangman’s fracture because it’s the same one that a noose breaks when you’re executing somebody. That was it. Everything disappeared for me from a football standpoint and everything crumbled around me. That was my voice for many years because I didn’t have one that people took seriously. It was my outlet. I’ve always that outcast, eclectic kid that’s out there hunting and fishing and making knives out of things and opening locks with beer cans. Football is the one that I fit in. It crashed down on me. It all disappeared and I felt like I lost my voice.
I went into the woods. The woods are relentless. They didn’t know what I’ve been through. They didn’t know who I was. They didn’t know anything about me. I’ve always been out in the woods. I’ve always been a hunter and a fisherman and always camped, but the first time that I went out after my injury, something changed and something clicked. It was more therapeutic for me at that point, as opposed to going out. I got to get a buck. I got to go out there and catch as many walleye as I can. I got to go fish that Bow River. For me, now it was more meditative. I was still going out there. I was still hunting whitetail, elk, moose and bear. I was still going out there and tracing trout, carp and sturgeon, but it was more about being, at that point. I felt like I found my voice again through the outdoors.
Hunting gives you the confidence to be out there and teach the younger generation what they need for outdoor survival. Share on XThe minute I stepped out of my truck, I felt at peace. I was so frantic for a while and I didn’t know if I was ever going to find that voice again or find that sense of being until I got back out there and walked. I didn’t carry anything. I had a little collapsible five-and-a-half foot fishing pole with a jig on it. I went and walked. I didn’t even wet out a line. It brought me back to what’s important. Nobody cares about my football background. Nobody cares about who I was in high school. Nobody cares about that, but the woods are something that we always care about and something that I was born and raised in. I was raised in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains.
That, to me, was home. That is something that I want people to remember me by is not only did I face that adversity and I could have been in a wheelchair. I could have lost my sense of voice. I could have died. I want people to realize that it’s bigger than you are. The woods being nondescript. The woods will never pick on you, but they will beat you down. The woods don’t care what you look like, who you are, what your background is. You’re just another person to them, able to experience it, and able to touch, feel, smell and harvest bounty. You’ve got to be prepared. You’ve got to be humble. You’ve got to be able to go out there and respect it. That’s something that the woods can only teach you. For those of us that spend a lot of our days, especially in winters, going out there and chasing an animal, especially in the Rocky Mountains. I don’t know where you’re at, Bruce, but my winters are brutal. This winter alone, I had about four feet of snow in my front driveway that melted. You need to have that toughness. I thought I had that with football, but I didn’t. I owe a lot of my strength and my backbone to the woods.
I’ve lived on and off in Colorado since 1985, the mountains, they don’t care who you are. I agree exactly what you said about the woods. The mountain could care less. They’ll take the best you’ve got. If that’s all you’ve got, that’s all you’ve got. The mountains, it’s like the first time I flew into Alaska to get dropped off on a sandbar, I said, “This place can kill me, literally,” flat-out kill you. That puts your respect level up and it changes who you are in relative to the whole scheme of things. All of a sudden, you realize, “I better have my A-game or they might be flying me out of here in pieces.”
It’s not the animals that could kill you in a lot of these mountains. It’s not a moose. It’s not a black bear that’s going to take you. It’s going to be the mountain. If anything that’s going to beat you first, it is going to be that chunk of rock that you’re climbing on or the water that you’re walking on. It’s going to be the actual environment way before the animals will.
In Colorado, we get a lot of dead trees because of beetle bark and every year, people, this time of year, will come back and they’ll post deer, elk, game, their neck’s been snapped by a tree falling over there. They were in the wrong place and wrong time. There were wind and boom. People don’t realize that danger in high winds. “Lodgepole pine, let’s go,” you better not be under it or you’re no more.
The big elm cracks or we’ve got a lot of poppers out here and those things have roots that are absolutely horrible, but they’ll bust your ankle up. If you’re not able to get out there, you better start praying or start hobbling.
Let’s talk about bushcraft a little bit. People have lost that ability of bushcraft, so let’s jump right into that right now and let’s talk about surviving, being in the woods on a mountain and what you need to know as far as bushcraft. We could put a course together about bushcraft, but let’s hit some things that people need to have on them or in their brain before they leave the truck.
Right off the get-go, you’ve got to have that confidence. You could have all the survival training in the world. If you don’t have that confidence, you’re not going to make it. I was a self-taught survivalist. There was no wilderness school. I did Scouts for about three weeks and got tired of selling popcorn. I got out of that and went out, got lost and tried to figure things out myself. I had my old grandfather’s books and his readings. I read as much as I can. I went out there and did it. The first time I went out there and said, “I’m going to go walk and not carry anything. I’ll have the Flintstone and a knife and see what happens,” I probably got about 200 yards out and went, “I can’t do this.” I froze up. We circle back to that adversity and you had to tell yourself, “You can’t let this beat you or else it’s going to continue to beat you.” I could be sitting on a herd of elk and that could give out my treestand. I could fall and I need to find a way to get out of there. I needed that confidence builder.
The most important thing for your audience would be to be confident in your abilities. If you’re not, fake it until you make it. You’ll be amazed at what your own willpower will do if you’re forced into that situation, whether it’s a fight, flight or freeze. Your body will try and tell you to get out of there. It’s having that wherewithal and a common sense to go out there. Don’t sleep near a riverbed. If you find a bear den, don’t crawl into it. There are a lot of common sense items, but there are a lot of skills, for sure. Right off the get-go, the one that I preach the most would be the rule of three when it comes to survival. For example, rule three is anything in survival could be broken down into three pieces.
You look at SOS, it’s three. If you have a boat that’s in distress, you blast the horn three times. If you’re in the woods and you have a whistle, it’s three blows of the whistle. If you have a reflective mirror, it’s three flashes. It gets more encompassing than that. You could survive three minutes without air or oxygen. There’s that component, three minutes. Three hours without shelter, if you’re in a harsh environment unless you’re something along those lines. In three hours, you definitely need to make sure that you have a shelter built. It’s three days without water, but the water that you’re drinking, make sure that it’s clean. You’ve got to learn to filter it out, whether it’s through desalination, charcoal, whether you’re boiling it. You’ve got to make sure that the water you drink is clean. It’s only three days or it’s three weeks without food if you have the water and shelter. You circle it all in. You’re looking at three. When you’re building your survival fires, your signal fires are three big fires.
If you’re looking at any other signaling, three-rock formations or something, you’ve always got to factor in three. If you remember the three minutes, three hours, three days, three weeks, as well as three fires or three blasts of a horn or something, you’re going to get along fine. Stay calm. Spend the energy that you need to, whether it’s building a shelter or a fire, remain that calm, because the minute you start panicking, you’re going to be burning a lot more calories. If you start freezing, then how to keep yourself warm and building a fire. Fire is very important, but it’s building the right fire. Your signal fire has to be different from your campfire. Making sure that you have the different skills to be able to start that fire if your lighter fails or if you don’t have any matches or anything along those lines and being able to start a fire. Be comfortable and build the right shelter for the right condition. The biggest thing is to remain calm but remain confident and you’ll make it through a lot. You’ll surprise yourself.
Thanks for that. When you think about going out hunting and let’s switch it to the whitetail, what makes them such an exciting hunt?
I love whitetail hunting. Mule deer and blacktail are definitely always fun, but the whitetails you see a big booner coming to the clearing. He measures out let’s say 170. He comes out through the brush. You see him standing there and it’s that sense of pride to have that cottontail. For me, it’s cool seeing that bound. It’s like a big rabbit that could kill you. It’s something beautiful about a whitetail. To me, that’s the prototypical deer. You have that nice white rump and with the big wide rack. The meat is delicious. It looks great hanging on your wall, but to a whitetail hunter, it’s exciting. You can gauge.
I break down my hunt seasons into phases. I take those phases and adapt them into real life. It’s funny watching a deer when they’re in a rut and remembering me when I was dating, breaking through a lot of those phases within the rut. You see the exact same thing when you were that young buck and that young stud trying to get out there and meet a doe. It’s fascinating to me. I’ve always been a whitetail hunter. We have them on our ranch. Alberta is known for a lot of good whitetails. To me, it’s a symbol of what hunting is. You can get them with a bow. You can get them with a crossbow, muzzleloader rifle. It’s a good guarding hunt, but it’s also a great finishing hunt as well.
You could have all this survival training in the world, but if you don't have that confidence, you're not going to make it. Share on XWhat’s your favorite technique hunting whitetails?
To me, it all depends on the season. Earlier on in the season, I try and look a little bit more with a rifle. Bucks are a little bit more aggressive at that point. The last thing I want to do is be sneaking up fifteen yards on a buck and drawing a bow. I tend to stick with a lot more rifle leading up to that point. Later on, the season where I get that secondary breeding with the fawns or a couple of the older, mature, maybe not as randy bucks, I like getting out there with the bow and getting up in the stand or spot-and-stalk. For me, it all depends on the season and when in the season it is.
How many tags can you get? Can you get multiple tags?
Yeah. You can get your trophy deer. You can get a trophy whitetail. You can get a trophy mule, trophy ox, sheep or whatever you want. You have to draw for that or you can get your general deer. That’s three tags that you could fill, your general mule or general whitetail. You’ve got three that you could fill if you go with general.
As a resident, you can get three whitetail tags?
Yeah, as well as a trophy tag. If you’ve got a trophy whitetail buck, you can do your general, as well.
Trophy, is that for a specific area up there or why do you designate it as a trophy?
It’s pretty much anything that you would hang on a wall over 140, whereas, general, you can go after a doe or a buck. You have to apply for your tag in certain wildlife management areas or units. You’ve got to apply for that trophy in 314. If you don’t get drawn for that trophy out of that WMU, you’re not going out and hunting for a trophy in that one.
The general license is under 140 plus dear.
You’ve got a pretty good trophy. You’re out of it. It’s always nice buck for sure, but I’d much rather be able to put food in the freezer and that’s why you use that animal. I’ll do my own and using all that animal. For me, I don’t care about the trophy. It’s nice to have a couple of wall hangers for sure, but I’d much rather eat backstraps.
Of all the animals that you can hunt in Alberta, what’s your favorite?
I love hunting elk. Just to hear that and seeing that huge herd, the thing is an absolute monster and there are tons of them. When you look at a herd of elk, to me there’s nothing better. It’s great to go out there and freezer filling. If I’m able to get up onto an elk and draw down on my bow through a spot and stalk or look through my Leopold right at them, its beautiful big broad shoulders on them and backstraps are some of the best you’ll ever eat. I love going after elk, but I’m pretty nondescript. I’ll do a pack hunt in the Rocky Mountain, upland game birds and we’ve got a bunch of ducks. Our area alone is in Alberta, but 85% you’re able to hunt on within Alberta. You nailed it there. We’re able to explore a lot of options. We’ve got turkeys, boar, grizzly, black bear, brown bear. We’ve got whitetail and antelope. We’re fortunate in Alberta for sure.
You’ve got buffalo too, don’t you?
We’re starting to reintroduce it in the north. The left tag right now for sure is the buffalo. We do have buffalo for sure. They’re wild right now. They are protected, but they’re starting to release all the tags.
In hunting, you need to have determination to get things done when you need it. Share on XIt sounds like it’s hard to fit and work with your hunting schedule because you can start probably in August and finish up in January.
They released their tag draws now in Alberta. Hunting seasons are not as long as a lot of people think. It’s general ungulates for your deer, your elk and your antelope. That ends the end of November. We can’t go into December when it comes to that. Predator hunting, bird and everything along those lines is taking a little bit longer. When it comes to deer season, it’s very short. We only got a small window. You’ve got to cram in as much as you can if you have that trophy and you have your general. Once it’s November 30th, it’s very much over for us.
Don’t people hunt moose in December or is that over?
That’s another one. Any four-legged animal, it’s done at the end of November. It goes into the bear, the cougar and your bird. It expands a little bit more, boar hunting as well. When it comes to anything with a rack, it’s pretty much hooped at the end of November.
In some places, we have elk hunting in January for the kids here in Colorado. A lot of people ask me, they’ll send me emails or place a phone call saying, “Bruce, how did you get into podcasting?” I’d share with them. I’ve done some writing as you have. You’re doing some work and sending some work over to the UK. Let’s talk about that part of your career and how that helped share by you sharing stories, helps people get involved in the outdoors.
This whole path where we are started over a year ago. I started on a website called National Pro Staff. It was the premier social media page for sole fishermen. I thought, “There’s not a whole lot that’s out there geared.” It’s typically for like-minded individuals. There are tons of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but this is based for an outdoorsman. I joined up on that. I didn’t think anything of it. I’ll post here, pictures here, but a lot of interests started coming into play based off of that. I put together a content schedule with recipes, different fish profiles, try to get as much information out there as I can. It’s explored it for me. Within the first three, four months, I had over 30,000 views and then sponsorship opportunities rolled in. I had an opportunity with Ardent, which I’m still with to this day, Elite Catch Baits. This is all started rolling in based on what I’ve been getting out there. They saw the ability to promote properly and get people interested in it. There were 30,000 views.
I thought, “I’m going somewhere.” I want to diversify because I was more than just an angler. I was the woodsman. I was out there making my own knives or romping around and eating mushrooms that I found. I wanted to build upon that. I took it quiet there for a little bit and shut down while I was going through the rebranding phase. We launched the Be A Lion Outdoors with the hunting component, with the fishing area, the bushcraft and survival as well as the fitness. It took off. I got in touch with this website magazine publication. It’s fledgling right now. It’s called Outlook EXL. They wanted me to help them out with a series about getting youth interested in the outdoors, but we want it to gauge the interest in it.
I invited them to go to the website and check it out. That’s where you’ll find two of the articles that they want to promote. One of them was called the next generation. It was a homage to my dad. It’s all about getting kids more interested in the outdoors, raising that next crop because you and I, Bruce, we’re not getting any younger. We’re not going to be here to do it forever. Instilling that feeling of conservation and that responsibility into the youth, the importance upon it, building that Aztec and that ethos of the woods into kids. That one got published and the second one was the rule of three or three’s company. That one’s all about the rules of three with survival.
Those got published and took off. I had the opportunity to get onto the podcast, Wilderness Attitude. I had a good chat with a Colorado native there and had a good chat with him. My whole message was to get people excited and preserving the woods and understanding that those of us that go out there and take animals aren’t the monsters that you’re being portrayed to be. He had Cecil, the lion for example, and that was huge overall. That was a CNN top story for a long time. The battles of guns right now, everybody is going after firearm and that if you own a gun, you’re going to be that guy that’s going to go up there and shoot up a public space.
We need more of that voice. I fell into that niche and fell into that ability that I had that voice and people were receptive of it. For me, it built upon telling people how to make different trout recipes or how to fish for Barracuda or we’re going to the Dominican. This is how you take care of your rods and reels, salt versus spring water for example or river water. It took me by surprise. I’m pretty humbled to be out there and do it and learn from gentlemen such as yourself and through a lot of my own media and reaching out and talking to people. It flabbergasted me in how quickly it’s taken off, but how humbling it is. I didn’t get into this fame. I didn’t get into it for anything other than to get people excited about the outdoors. I’m happy that I’m able to do that.
I’m sure as happy that we connected because listening to your voice, a lot of people I’ve had on the show, I said, “You’ve got to find your voice.” Obviously, you found your voice. Every single person that’s reading this to find their voice, whatever that is because everybody’s not going to be the headliner or the A-lister in theirs. They were all out there. Everybody knows their name. CJ’s voice is going to reach the exact people that need to reach. That’s what I believe that the big thing about our podcast, my voice is going to touch the people.
They’re going to hear what they need to hear from my guests. I’m like a conduit. I’m like the guy that flips the switch. We’ll get so many on it because there are a lot more eloquent than funny guys doing podcasts in the world because there are millions of podcasts, but that doesn’t matter. Spending time, spending an hour with you, it makes me think and reflect to know that there’s another person out there that was like-minded, that run common ground and we’re going to make a difference.
I’ve never done a podcast. I’ve listened to them. I’ve heard that conduit. We’ve all heard about Joe Rogan and all the different hunting podcasts and everything that’s out there, but I never thought it would happen me. You call yourself conduit but you’re the catalyst. It’s that conduit I think and without guys like you that are going out there, getting voices out there and sharing their own stories as well as those and their audience that’s incredibly important. Whether it is a podcast, whether it is writing, whether you have a TV show and it doesn’t have to be about the outdoors, you need to be able to find your voice. It could be music. It could be words. It could be art. It could be whatever it is. We were fortunate enough to have our voice being okay in the wild and connected. It’s amazing what happens once you’re able to link up with like-minded people. I don’t want people to think that what Bruce is saying is the gospel. What I am saying is it’s the law. I’ve been stung more times, I’m willing to do admit.
There are seasons where I never filled tags. We see Instagram pages and hunting and outdoors. You’re seeing all these trophy wall hangers that are out there or guys pulling out pound bass and everything. I’m trying to be real and tell you that doesn’t always happen. I’ve had a lot of good seasons. I’ve had somewhere I just go home and go, “What?” I could not grunt. I could not lock it in. I still knew that my voice was there and I still knew that I was passionate. Those are the most important thing that I want to share is, it doesn’t matter if you’re not a hunter. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a fisherman. What matters is that you identify who you truly are. I was pretty fortunate as a kid to know that I was destined to do work in the outdoors. I was destined to go out there. Once people identify who they truly are, they’re able to do that too. That is the message of Be A Lion is go out there and be relentless, be fearless and take that chance. You never know where it might lead you. It could lead you onto a podcast. It could lead you on to something bigger, but you don’t know unless you try.
Tell people how to reach out to you and get in touch with you.
You can find me on Facebook. It’s Be A Lion Outdoors. You’ll see a big lion head. My logo is a deer head with two fish hooks coming out through the antlers and CJ Outdoors. You can find me on Instagram @BeALionOutdoors or on the website if you want to follow my reading. It’s BeALionOutdoors.Wordpress.com. All my links are all on my social media pages. If you’re interested, give me a message. I’m pretty easy to talk to and I want to hear from you. I’m excited to hear from you. I’m sure Bruce is excited to hear from you as well.
You can reach me [email protected] or on my website on WhitetailRendezvous.com. It’s easy. We’re out there. I don’t want this even to end. I wish I was up there in Calgary and we’ve got to fish the Bow in the morning. There are great places in the world and Calgary is a fine city. There’s so much recreation within hours of that. Thank you for reading.