The tradition of hunting started a very long time ago in New England, where the legendary LL Bean came from. It was an outdoors community of hunters and gatherers. Now, Leon Leonwood Bean or “LL” has passed on the hunting gene to his progeny, Bill Gorman. It’s in his DNA, and Bill proudly remembers LL Bean as someone who truly enjoyed the outdoors. In fact, their company is 103 years old thanks to his passions. Bill Gorman emphasizes the visual, the scents that go along with hunting in the early season: leaves are falling and starting to decompose, and you just get that smell… and it just feels right. Bill’s whole life has been about being outdoors and a humane hunter, understanding that we harvest animals. We kill animals. We do that for sustaining ourselves, our lives. It’s the original organic.
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Bill Gorman Host of LL Bean Guide to the Outdoors
In our episode, we have L.L. Bean’s Guide to the Outdoors host Bill Gorman, who is the great grandson of the legendary outdoorsman and pioneering outdoor retailer, Leon Leonwood Bean, also known as L.L. Bean. Bill, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Bruce. One thing I have to say is I’m just a great grandson, I’m not that old yet.
L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood Bean. Let’s start right there. What did you great grandfather share with you about the hunting tradition?
To tell you the truth, just about every passion of hunting I have comes from L.L. It’s in my DNA. He is someone who truly enjoyed the outdoors. In fact, our company is 103 years old, thanks to his passions. As early as three years old, four years old where we would come up the rickety old stairs, I say that because it was an old building and it was a smaller building than it is now, and once you would press the top of the stairs, there are different mounts on the wall. I remember there were big beaver pelts on a spruce bough roped out to dry. There were traps, there was hunting axes and hatchets and knives and the different stoves and everything you needed for the outdoors, he had. For me, I was like a little kid walking into a candy store. I was just mesmerized and the more I saw it, something’s struck a chord with me, the visual, the sense that go along with it when you go outside the early season and the leaves have fallen and start to decompose and you just get that smell, it just felt right. My whole life has been about being outdoors. I understand that we harvest animals, we kill animals. We do that for sustaining our lives. I always jokingly say it’s the original organic, but it is. Being outdoors and hunting and doing it for the right way and the right reason is what makes it so personal and passionate for me.
The tradition on hunting started in New England where Bean is a long time ago. We were hunters and gatherers. How did your great grandfather have the vision to create such a company as L.L. Bean?
There are two things I remember. One is when he was 38, 39 years old, he just gets to a point where he was sick and tired of having cold wet feet, went into camp, and finally came back and he said, “I’m going to find a way to stitch a rubber bottom footwear. He liked the way it felt, and what that led to was his first trial and error. Out of the first 100 pair he made, 90 were returned because the water wasn’t vulcanized at the time. When you pierced it with a stitching awl, it separated from the boot. The most important part of that for me is it brought on his character. You might have heard this before, “Do onto others or treat people the way you want to be treated.” He said to himself, he told them, “If you’re not satisfied, I want to know about it. I’ll give you a new pair or your money back.” I believe to this day in my heart that treating people the way you want to be treated is a key to success because people knew. I wasn’t just telling a story. He stood behind on what he said and yes, he did have the balls. He paid their money back and word spread like wildfire. Now, you have a gentleman who’s in the outdoors. There was a three-page pamphlet and now it’s grown into a giant corporation. It all started with, and then still to this day is, treating the customer like you want to be treated because the customer is part of our family.
Share with us what you do in the Guide to the Outdoor Show.
I host Guide to the Outdoors with L.L. Bean. The size it’s become, we’re known more for clothing, apparel, travel gear, and such. As you’ve already heard, I’m quite passionate hunting and fishing on the outdoors. A year back, I decided we needed to let people know what our heritage is, where we belong, and what we’re all about. I went into a meeting with our CEO at the time. I said, “This is what I’d like to go on and start a show that takes us back to the roots of who L.L. Bean is and it shows the tourist side of it.” That show allows me to open my world, which hopefully is, to a lot of people, the world of hunting and fishing, the outdoors, and then maybe give people one of those engaging things that draws them in. If they don’t already partake on the sport, it gives them that little nugget that grows into a want and a desire for the natural primal instinct of being outside and being a hunter and gatherer.
Bill, you’ve hunted all over the world. What makes hunting in North America special to you?
Hunting in North America is special to me basically for whitetail. I love hunting in general. I love hunting all over the world. For the longest time, one of my biggest passions was Cape Buffalo in Africa. I’ve done it in a bow hunt and that was a coup de grâce. With whitetails, it’s affordable. They’re almost present in every state, not all states, but most. It’s an affordable hunt. It’s an open house where the ability to go out and go hunting and pursue the animal is there. Then to have an animal that’s with the eyes, the ears, the nose, all the senses of a deer, you’re matching your wits against an opponent that we have equal to. They are well above us. We do rely on tree stands, optics, cattle flies and all that just so we can get in the same ballpark. When you consider that set up to a chess game, you’re playing a more than worthy opponent and you’re outside doing the right thing. At the end of the day, it doesn’t come down to the till. It’s the time spent in the woods that will let you see and do.
At the end of the day, it doesn't come down to the till. It’s the time spent in the woods that will let you see and do. Share on XLet’s talk about youth in the outdoors and specifically hunting. What can we do, you as a company, me as a grandfather, and everyone, the guys and gals, how can we have the youth of today in this nation embrace hunting?
The natural instinct is to want to be outside. I have a four-year-old grandson who loves being outdoors and my kids grew up being in the outdoors. What we have to do is the reinforcement that hunting is a true form of conservation. It’s a responsible use of renewable resource. We need to take the kids out, show the experience, but let them know that it’s not down to a shot. You’re on the woods show when the sun comes up and look at the colors in sky, smell the air, feel the breeze blowing by. I go out early morning. You hear the crickets and the bugs start first. First it’s dead quite, then the bugs will start to make noises, then the birds pick up, and then you might see raccoons, porcupines, just different birds. That experience right there engages the youth because they’re thinking now this is just being involved in the outdoors. Then when you have the opportunity, you harvest the animal.
My son at seven was not ready to go on a deer hunt. I took him and he wants to be with me and I followed his lead. As a dad or just an adult with a youth, follow what the kids want. When we had a doe out in front of us, his first thought was, “If I shoot her, what about her family?” He thinks a thought process for a deer at the time. A seven-year-old would equate it to a human being. I sat his rifle down. I said, “Let’s just talk about this,” and I made it acceptable to sit and watch. Now, years went on that he decided it was so much being in the outdoors that the obvious next step for him now is hunting. We pay attention to our youth. First of all, just think of introducing them to the outdoors. The next is to introduce them to shooting. Introduce them to the animal species and how they interact. In general, it’s taking care of the kids and getting them outdoors.
It doesn’t take a lot to engage a young person, whether or not they’re your biological kids. It might be the neighbor’s kid that dad just isn’t around anymore. Go out to him, meet him and ask permission just to take them out for walking in the woods. Here, it would be to walk in the mountains. Just do it and you’d be surprised how you gain tremendous insight into another person and the joy of helping somebody else uncover the joy of the hunt. Bill, talk to me about that one and buck from Iowa. Unpack that for a while, will you?
I hope I don’t embellish too much. I was hunting with folks from Knight Rifles and my friend Gordy was one of the technicians there. We’re hunting on his property and I have a cameraman with me because we’re going to be filming this hunt. The gentleman that was filming, his name is Bear. We strike out early in the morning. I get to this spot that the depression in the land is right. There’s enough snow coverage. I want to set up there. He get his tripod set, the camera’s good to go. My friend Eric is hunting just up a little bit higher level than we are. Everything’s going on perfect. Bear turns to me and he said, “I want to be up on that hillside because the view, the sunrise, everything’s going to be perfect, and when the deer comes in and it’ll be great.” As a hunter, I just said no. Part of your job as the person with the camera means you have to listen to the cameraman once in a while. I took his lead. We started going up the hill. I hadn’t gone more than 50 steps where I hear a booming voice from my buddy Eric saying, “Bill, turn around.” I turned around quick enough to see this incredible rack. His head was lifted at hearing Eric’s voice and this racks stands up out of nowhere. I just felt like a pile of jelly right there.
I remember picking up my muzzleloader. I put the sights on it and I said to the cameraman, “Are you on it?” He said, “Shoot the deer.” It sounds funny, but for me it was like being in a dream and watching myself do this. I took the shot and I didn’t think I hit the deer. My cameraman said, “You’re good. He was facing away from you because that deer, as soon as you pulled the trigger, pulled a 180.” I said, “I’ll take your word for it.” We took off into the woods and my buddy Gordy was there before me and I heard a bang. I was like, “I must have hit the deer.” Initially, I didn’t see any blood. The way the muzzloader bullet has passed in, there wasn’t an exit wound. We got up to the spot and sure enough, Gordy is holding the deer and he says, “Congratulations.” I said, “There’s one hole in it. Obviously, I didn’t shoot it, you did.” He said, “Absolutely not.” He pulls out the doe that he had taken. From then on, I was just about to pass out.
I’m a big guy. I’ve been through a lot and I’ve shot animals before but for 183-inch deer, I just couldn’t fathom that. It was such a beautiful animal that it took me the full day to actually comprehend what I had done. We’ve gone through all the kudos of everybody at night. The other gentleman we are hunting with, I finally sat there by myself with that deer. I’m a religious person and I just had to give my thanks to God. It just sunk in. It’s one of those things to this day that the whole scene, the way it unfolded, will never leave my memory.
That’s priceless and, unless you’re a hunter, it doesn’t have to be a 180-deer. It’s just priceless when you connect all the dots and give thanks for the opportunities we have and the critters that we harvest. It’s pretty special. Thank you for sharing that.
My pleasure. It was wonderful.
Let’s talk about why that deer was pretty close to you before you took the steps to go walk up the hill. Unpack that for me.
The only way I can think this whole thing was there was a fence post and a hedge row almost side-by-side. When we had decided to hike up the mountain a little bit, he hadn’t come and seen us with wind blowing from our back forward. He never winded us. The most important thing for me is wind and knowing where the wind’s coming from and where it’s going. I can attribute that deer to never locating me or seeing me and bolting because once he came out, his head was down. He was sniffing but he’s not smelling me. I was fortunate to be probably 40 feet above him and 70 yards away with wind blowing totally away from him to me.
If you had stayed where you were, he would have bumped right into you.
Exactly. As I’m going to say, you don’t have listen to your camera man, but if you want to make a decent show, if I had followed my instincts, which is one of those a-ha moments, that’s the most important one. My instinct said, “Stay there,” but I let someone get the better of my judgment and I followed their lead and thank God, it’s still unraveled the way it did. Who knows what would have happened at that point? At the end of the day, things worked out beautifully.
Everyone, if you have one day or 1,000 days, listen to that innate voice within you because it’s telling you something, and there’s a reason it’s telling you something. I can’t explain it, but it happens. Bill gave you a perfect example. He knew what he was supposed to do and other forces and responsibilities came in, but listen to that voice. Bill, let’s talk about the Hunting Heritage Conservation and what it means to the L.L. Bean family?
L.L. Bean is founded on the principles of the outdoors. With L.L., it did start with hunting and fishing. As most of the sports we’re in, everything you can follow or track the roots, they go down to hunting and fishing and the outdoors. We sell canoes and kayaks. L.L. had to use canoes to get different hunting areas. We have tents, we have camping gear, we have cars, and we have access because that’s what a hunter or a fisherman would use. A lot of the active sports we’re in now, the bike, boat and ski, a lot of it is directly attributed to hunting, fishing, and the outdoors. Just with that, it shows that our company stems from the actual outdoors, a heritage and conservation. It’s grown into something where we appreciate the outdoors and we just want to inspire more people to be involved in the outdoors.
We’ve started within the past two decades outdoor discovery schools where we teach people how to find fish. We teach people how to shoot bows and arrows. We teach them about hunting. We teach them about canoeing, kayaking, camping, hiking, and how you use your GPS. What our goal is the same as all the big outlets, let’s get people into the outdoors. For me hunting drives me outdoors. For some, hunting doesn’t play an aspect as they’re in the outdoors, I’m happy and if you can appreciate my passion, my love, my need to be in the woods hunting season, and then even just walking through looking for sheds and enjoying the outdoors on hikes, it all stems from, for me, my great grandfather and passing on his passion for the outdoors through his sports which has transcended into all outdoor activities now.
Bill, on the warm up, we talked about my illustrious career. I survived in coast guard and search and rescue. Sometimes, you just had to go out the door. You said that you were smarter than I was because you were a pilot of a helicopter. Let’s just take a moment here and think the men and women of this country that go all in so we have our freedoms. I want to spend a couple minutes here. Bill, just go ahead and share some things.
My thoughts are the men and women in uniform are the reason we’re allowed to be who we are. There are those of us who respect the United States and love it with all our heart, soul, mind, body and strength, and there are some who take it for granted. Everyone has a right to, I hate to put a bluntly, openly react and disagree with things. That’s fine. As long as you remember you have the right to do that because somebody sacrificed their lives and their livelihood so that your rights are protected. The soldiers we have this day are the most wonderful thing on Earth. I’m trying to personally get involved with some gentlemen right now that are starting a program called Discover Courage. That is helping some of the Seal teams in some of the things they have to deal with, whether it be Wounded Warriors, Discover Courage, or multiple other organizations helping the Armed Forces. They allow us to be who we are. They are the reason we are America. I give my thanks and support to them every day.
Let’s talk about lessons learned from a gentleman that had the ability, the opportunity, and the blessings to travel worldwide. What are a couple of lessons learned that you’d like to share with our listeners?
The most important one is don’t forget what’s in your backdoors. For the longest time, I’ve been a whitetail hunter and I do that because they’re just about everywhere. It’s an affordable hunt. You need access to public land and it’s an incredible hunt. With my travel, I’ve been afforded the opportunity to hunt all over the world, whether it’s Australia, New Zealand, Africa. In fact, I just got back from Romania on a brown bear hunt, which was fantastic. When the day is done, there’s so much that we have easy access to. You don’t have to have somebody bankrolling your hunts. You don’t have to have the latest data. You have to have the desire. You can learn to get outdoors. If you don’t hunt now, seek out somebody who has hunted and have them teach you. That’s honestly how I taught myself. My dad and mom were into hunting, but not at the level that I am because I am overly done for about hunting. I just enjoy being in the outdoors. When I was fifteen years old, I sought out another freshman in high school. George has been known for successful hunting that year, so I made sure to become friends with him. We’ve had an ongoing friendship for the past 40 years. I knew he was someone who knew the outdoors and he got me into it to that next level.
You have to have the desire. You can learn to get outdoors. Share on XBill, you got a couple of minutes to tell us more about L.L. Bean and what you do and how you do it there with Guide to the Outdoors and about the retail store, and then people that you want to give a shout out.
First and foremost, L.L. Bean’s Guide to the Outdoors is very important. It gives people a chance to learn who L.L. Bean as the man and as a company is. It helps them understand our appreciation for the outdoors. For me, Guide to the Outdoors is no outlet to invite people into my world of hunting and fishing and just playing outdoors, to enjoy everything that it involves. I love your comments. I love when people write in and talk about their first hunt. I love to see their pictures because I get to live and I get just as much joy out of seeing somebody else’s success and happiness. It drives me on to be better. L.L. Bean is all about that. Our retail store, I helped redesign a 35,000-square foot addition approximately seven years ago now. It’s a true hunting and fishing lodge. It’s a just beautiful setup. We offer firearms, archery equipment, long bow, recurves and compound crossbows. We do the rifles, shotguns, muzzleloaders, all the apparel. We make the finest apparel in the world. You could say I’m a little jaded, but, I have one outfit I wear, the Soft Shell Gore-Tex jacket and pants. I’ve been wearing this outfit for fifteen years now. I won’t trade it into another jacket or another pair of pants. It’s just that good.
Shout outs to Peter Cosby because he was a great author on Africa on general. It wasn’t whitetail-specific, obviously, it’s Africa, but he was one of the authors who could actually grab me and pull me into a story and a true appreciation of the outdoors. It’s the folks like Ted Nugent who is definitely a proud American, a well outspoken gentleman, and a true hunter. I talked with Ted many times about his hunts in Africa in the early ‘70s. Other TV shows out there, the Brunsons, Jon and Gina, Addicted to the Outdoors, Lee and Tiffany with the Crush, they are shows that I can watch. People who get it do the science. They are so to the nth-degree true hunters and outdoors people that it just makes my heart fall. I don’t mean to sound corny there, but it does, and most importantly, too, are my viewers. Without them, we wouldn’t have a TV show. They’re our customers as well. If we don’t have the customers and we can support them, then we aren’t doing the job as L.L. Bean. I can’t say enough for all the people in my life, my mom, my dad, and our Lord Jesus. If it wasn’t for him, none of this would be possible.
At the end of the day, anyone who enjoys the outdoors is my hero. I’ve been doing this for 40 years now. It never gets old and I’m always learning. I learn from the youth that haven’t even started hunting. They’ll ask questions and when I was flying helicopters as flight instructor, the most information I ever learned was from students asking me why something happens this way. Why does a helicopter blade spin one way and the anti-torque rotors spin the opposite way? Why does this happen? That transcends over to the hunting world. Why do deer do this, why do they do that? When you’re hunting, you just know it. When you start to figure that out and define what makes it, that changes it. It makes you a better hunter because now you have to think, more focused and more just fine. It’s not just food, it’s not just a bedding, what else comes into play? What about the wind? What about the amount of light? What about the time of year and all that? Questions from new hunters as well as old, and I apologize because a lot of times, I won’t know the answer.
Bill Gorman, it’s been a privilege and a pleasure to have you on the show. L.L. Bean is iconic. L.L. Bean stands for hunting in most America and throughout the world. Thank you so much for joining Whitetail Rendezvous.
Bruce, thank you so much. This was an honor to me. I look forward to catching you up here in Freeport.
As your host at Whitetail Rendezvous, I want to thank each and every one of you for spending your time with us. I look forward to sharing with you in the next episode more whitetail hunting tips, techniques, and storage. Until then, keep the sun at your back, the wind in your face, and always be patient.