Dr. Shawn Tyson, owner of Pure One Outdoors, designs innovative products to help hundreds of hunters control their scent and be more successful in the woods and around water. Shawn quickly developed a passion for the outdoors as he grew hunting and fishing with his father and grandfather. As early as he could hold a shotgun, he was hunting squirrels and rabbits with his father. Growing up in a blue collar family, he learned very early that hunting was not just an activity but a way to provide for his family. This was a lesson that he never forgot and would eventually inspire. Now, his ultimate goal is helping blue-collar hunters make every hunt memorable and every shot count.
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We’re joined by Dr. Shawn Tyson. Dr. Tyson owns Pure One Outdoors and very simply, he has designed innovative products to help hunters control of their scent and UV, making them more successful in the woods or under water. His ultimate goal is helping blue-collar hunters make every hunt memorable and every shot count. Dr. Tyson has thought about developing a product and a brand to help you be more successful in the woods. He’s got a lot of products. His X-Out 360 Control Kit does give you an advantage in the field or in the marsh. Dr. Shawn Tyson’s got a lot of information to share with us. Listeners, don’t forget to text 33444 Food Plot for your free Food Plot eBook.
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No Scent Or UV Glow – Dr. Shawn Tyson
We’re going to talk with Dr. Shawn Tyson, owner of Pure One Outdoors where science meets the outdoors. Dr. Tyson, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
It’s my pleasure and it’s taken us a little while to coordinate our schedules but we finally have put it together. In your bio, you talked about growing up in a blue-collar family. The whole mission of your company and your product is aimed at guys like you and me that worked hard and scratch out living through hard work. We always didn’t have the things that maybe some other people did. We scratched and clawed and gutter done anyway. Let’s open the show starting with your background and basically your life’s philosophy.
I grew up in a lower to middle income class family. I grew up learning that everything that you were given, it was something that you had to cherish. There wasn’t a whole lot of real, a lot of growing up. We didn’t have a whole lot of stuff. If we did get something, then we really appreciate it and use it basically until there’s nothing left. I grew up hunting at an early age. I fell in love with hunting. I can remember, as young as I could carry a gun, I was carrying an 0.410 double barrel shotgun and helping my dad go out and get squirrels and rabbits. My dad always said that I always step on squirrels. You’d have to be running around tree and scare squirrel back to him. That was a life lesson there that I learned at a very early age. I’d run around that tree hoping to get a shot, plucking them off.
I learned pretty fast that that wasn’t going to work anymore. I learned that when we’re out there and we shot these animals. God gave us those, not just to go out and kill these things but to bring them home and provide for your family. Many nights I remember having squirrels stew or rabbit stew or a deer. These are things that are provided for the family. As I got older, I realized I’ve kept these values. It has driven me to be successful. As I got my own company, I really want to get back to that blue-collar crowd and provide products that help those guys. Those guys will have a ton of money to go out and spend on expensive products. I wanted to get products out there that can help hunters at the same time things that they could afford but at a lower price range.
As a doctor of chiropractic, you’re helping people all the time. I’ve been using chiropractic care my whole life and as well as my wife has. When I think about that, I think about you helping people get through their day. It really doesn’t matter who they are or what financial backing but you give back. Is that woven in to Pure One Outdoors?
It definitely is. I’ve realized at an early age that I wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to help people. How I got into chiropractic was just by a freak injury. I got injured and just looking to getting better by any other methods of treatment. I got hit by a chiropractor and was able to go back to playing pretty fast. I changed my outlook on healthcare and went into chiropractic after sixteen years. I could probably say that I helped a lot of people through that surgery and helped people that couldn’t find help somewhere else. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve gotten joy out of. Now that I’m transitioning out of being in full-time practice of chiropractic and throwing more into Pure One Outdoors, it really continues that helping of that blue-collar crowd and trying to help those guys be more successful in the field so that they can bring home some deer meat or squirrel meat or whatever it was and can bring those treats home to the family.
In your bio, you get yourself with a turkey and then Pure One Outdoors, it’s got a whitetail deer as part of your logo. Let’s talk about how hunting helped form you. You said you spent time with your dad and as soon as you could, you went and hunted squirrels and rabbits and brought some food home. As you grew up, what were the lessons learned from the whitetail deer that you carried on to your other hunting endeavors?
The biggest thing is just consistency. Hunting whitetails was one of the hardest that any hunter can do. They’re very smart. They learn very fast about what a hunter can do and can’t do. They will not repeat the same mistake more than once usually. What I learned from chasing those whitetails is just being persistent, not giving up, and consistent to do the same things to get better at this time. Each time I go out there to hunt, it would be more successful than it was before.
Talk to me about some of the lessons learned from the whitetail that you said, “I’m not going to do that again or that worked out really well.” Whitetail school is school me all the time and I’ve been hunting them for over 50 years. I get schooled all the time because I just forget one little component and I’m busted. How about you?
I made every mistake probably known to man. I grew up in a family that weren’t the greatest of whitetail hunters, so I pretty much learned a lot from making those mistakes. I’ve gone out there and going to get in my tree stand and sitting there and a deer comes in and drop the arrow. I’ve been through my tree stand and forgot my rope to pull up. I’ve done pretty much everything. The biggest thing that I’ve learned and what got us into the products that we have now, which is trying to find something that can control not only my scent but also control the glow that came off of my camouflage. I learned early on that it seems down to more than just trying to prevent my odor so that the deer would smell me and there were other factors that I had to learn to be successful in that tree stand. I’ve made them all. I’ve fallen into woods. I’ve dropped a gun before. I’ve made a lot of mistakes but I think that every time that you made a mistake, you definitely learn from it and going forward, it makes you a better hunter.
I was thinking about dropping your gun and unfortunately that has happened to me. It’s pretty ugly when your other guns or your bow is five miles away and you’re right at a great light turn into dawn and you just blew your hunt. That’s painful.
I had a big way come through then. You sit there and watch him stroll by and look at me and I just tip my hat to him and said, “You won this round.” I learned from that and it wasn’t going to happen again and it hasn’t happened again. That’s why I think that’s what life is really about is if you get knocked down or you do something wrong, you learn what you did wrong and then you fix it. That way going forward, you don’t make that same mistake over again.
Do you keep a hunt log?
I don’t. I’m one of the worst about taking photos or taking logs. I really don’t eat those things. I really feel like I get a good experience from it and I’m able to put that into my memory. I don’t keep a lot of logs.
How about checklist? That’s one thing I had to go to especially with the travel I do. I’ve got to have a checklist because I have gotten to some place and gone, “Where is that?” I go, “It’s sitting right on the bench.”
I’m big on checklists just because I’m having, “Did you learn very fast that you always forget something?” I’ve gotten very good at making a checklist of cameras and what gear I need if I’m doing a duck trip or a goose trip or turkey trip or a whitetail, whatever it is. I have a list for each one of those so that I know what I have to bring and maybe what last time I didn’t bring that I would need this time. I already have those set out. If that trip comes up, I pull it out and I had to read down and go, “I need this, this and this.” That works best for me. I don’t do things very well, just going, “I need to grab some stuff and roll out.” I’m pretty bad at that. If I can get a checklist, I’m ready to roll.
Where the heck is Spotsylvania, Virginia? I looked at that and I said, “That’s going to be a title.” Where the heck is that?
Spotsylvania is about an hour and twenty minutes north of Richmond but more west. It’s going to be out in the county, right in the middle of Virginia almost. Growing up there was very country and definitely got more suburbia now. Growing up there was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed getting out there and playing sports and a ton of friends and talking to them. It was a nice town. I really enjoyed that.
You alluded to about your product and before we get there, how do people get in touch with you after they heard the show or during the show they go, “I’m interested in Pure One Outdoors and the products.” How do they get a hold of you?
I’ve got multiple ways. They can reach me by email at [email protected]. They can reach us on Facebook, @PureOneOutdoors. Online we’re XOutHunt.com. We also have a Twitter page. We’ve got Instagram. They can get also find us on @PureOneOutdoors on that as well.
How many followers do you think you have in social media?
We’ve definitely grown a lot. I want to say we started with really getting into the social media. It’s funny, I’m not the oldest guy but I feel like I’m just not into the whole social media thing. One thing I’ve been told by all of my friends is that, “With the modern day age, you really have to dig in to all of this stuff.” I want to say combined with everything we have now, we have probably about 25,000 right now.
I am 70 years old. I had to jump feet first into social media. When AOL started, I was right there but that isn’t anything what we have today in social media. One thing I would say to the listeners, if you’re not connected to social media and you want to be part of the industry, not just a viewer or a consumer, you’ve got to learn how to utilize very effectively your social media message. Your thoughts on that?
What I learned from chasing those whitetails is being persistent, not giving up, and consistent to do the same things to get better. Share on XIt’s huge right now. Being a country boy, I really wasn’t into it. I just wanted to hunt, put good products out there and help other hunters. I realized though that as you reach people, people don’t look into paper anymore, they go online for everything. The internet is everything nowadays. If you want to reach people, then you have to reach them by Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. The younger generation is definitely a lot more reaching out that way. I had to change my game up a little bit. I definitely jumped in, let everything out. I jumped in with both feet and I feel like I’ve got it knocked down now and learned a lot. It wasn’t getting based on mistakes but also learn from them.
I think that we definitely are moving in that right direction with all the SEO stuff and the online and get into online stores, reaching out to all these hunters that really get a lot of information and find all the reviews on products and what to buy or not to buy. That’s what I think is the best thing right now about the internet is that you can go to the store and go, “I sell X, Y, Z.” They may not buy it right then, they may go home and they’re going to do a day of research and they’re going to look at all the reviews for how it works, pictures before they make that decision. I think that helps us as well. Being a smaller company, we’ve gotten a lot of great reviews out there and people have been using it and it’s really growing. Even though you might be a smaller company, there is already a ton of stuff out there about you to where they can go online and find you and figure out the products that work for them.
To segue into where science meets the outdoors, how did Pure One start? You alluded to it but let’s unpack that a little bit more.
Basically it just started where having multiple failures at hunting, and one day I just sat down and went, “I’ve got to try all these things that I’ve learned in anatomy and school and trying to figure out how can I be a better hunter.” I began to sit down and try to figure out current products out there, what I used and what I didn’t use and how can I make this better? One of the things is I began to research with looking into the abilities of a whitetail deer; their visions, their smell, their hearing. I wanted to think about a way to where I can increase my odds of having better hunt. I began to look into their senses, which is smell, sight, hearing and began to figure out what products can I make that cannot only help me but then help all other blue-collar hunters.
As I did that, I began to realize that there wasn’t much out there that tried to trick in whitetail deers’ eyes. I think that’s one of the biggest misses right now in hunting is that hunters don’t really appreciate the ability of a whitetail deer’s eyes. They go, “I wear a camouflage. That’s good enough.” They’re so brainwashed into thinking that everything is scent control. There’s so much more to hunting a whitetail deer than just controlling their scent. We began to look into controlling UV glow and how do we stop this low off camouflage that deer see at low light conditions, and begin to look at the deer’s eye and how it’s different than any eyes.
We begin to realize a lot of different things that we needed to try to adjust to to make a better hunter. I came up with these products and putting the science to it was basically coming up with all these patented ideas and whether we can affect a deer’s vision, their scent. We’re also working on some hearing things now too. We’ve got multiple things that we’re putting to play trying to affect the deer’s senses, which ends up helping us in the hunt.
When you talked about the UV, I remember quite a long time ago, I was walking out of the woods and my buddy said, “You’re glowing.” I said, “What?” I don’t know how it works but if you use the bleaches and the bar detergents, actually your clothes will glow. How does that happen and how do we make sure we’re not wearing glow clothing today?
First let’s step back and understand why a deer is able to see you. A deer’s eyes are a little bit different than the human eye. The deer’s eye does not have a UV filter in their eye unlike a human does. A human has that UV filter that blocks about 99% of UV rays. A deer doesn’t have that. They also have more rods and cones in their eyes. They’re able to see better at low light conditions. It gets back to your UV glow, all these modern day camouflage companies, they put these fibers into their camouflage that makes it very visual appealing to a human hunter.
We look at that camouflage and go, “That’s a great camouflage. It looks really nice. I’m going to go ahead and buy that.” The fibers that they use, they have a lot of dyes in them or they use different types of detergents to make these fibers look pretty. Unfortunately, when you’re in a low light situation, that put off a glow that any wildlife especially a whitetail deer can pick up. We came up a product that not only helps the hunters with their odor but also help them with that UV glow. With X-Out Odor & UV, you’re actually able to spray the camouflage. It actually binds through the fibers and not only begins to kill in the odor but also begins to decrease that UV glow at that low light condition.
If I read a tag on blank, blank camouflage, and it doesn’t tell me about a UV glow or the fibers. How do I know that it glows or it doesn’t glow in low light conditions?
Most modern day camouflages are going to have those fibers. There really is no way to look at it other than taking a black light, which will give you a crude way of doing it. If you take a black light to go into a dark room and you could shine that black light on your camouflage and that will give you an idea of how much glow is coming off there. It mimics the eye of a deer. It’s going to be a lot more bright to a deer. That will give you an idea basically on what you’re dealing with. I really haven’t seen too many camouflage copies right now that are doing non-UV stuff. Some of the worst ones are going to be some with new colors that you’re going to find in the UV. Those blue colors really stand out to a deer’s eye. If you’re saying that you want to try to stay away from all those lighter colors, the blue colors, that’s what that deer’s eyes is going to pick up at that low light condition.
I’m thinking again back to my blue jeans, that’s what I was wearing and I just washed them or whatever. If I wash them in the correct detergent these days, whoever makes it, does that help retard that glow?
We have a detergent that actually does UV glow on camouflage as part of our X-Out 360 line-up. The bad thing though is that will it decrease some of that glow? Yes but unfortunately anything blue is like a red light to a deer. It’s just going to stand out and they’re really going to see it. If you use my detergent, it’s definitely going to bring down the glow but because it is a blue color, it’s really going to stand out. That’s part of the short-wave of the visual spectrum that deers see on.
There’s red and orange on the other end of the spectrum, which is called a long-wave. Then you have the short spectrum which is going to be the blue ones. They really pick up that blue and that ultraviolet size. I really wouldn’t wear anything blue. I don’t care if they were granddaddy’s who wears the blue jeans and he’d go out and kill a deer out of the tape. You don’t have to wear blue jeans out in the woods and you definitely want to try to avoid that.
You’ve gotten technical on this. There’s a color spectrum out there, folks, go on and just Google it. What I heard is short-wave is a blue and the shorter the wave, the more you’ll be a reflection or a glow that’s provided. Then on the long range of the color spectrum are the oranges and your reds. How about browns and blacks?
It falls right in the middle. The deer really won’t pick up to that. It’s going to be a grayish to them. It’s actually not going to be affecting them too much. It’s going to be everything that falls on that side with the blues and the ultraviolet. They don’t really see reds and oranges very well until they can get into the blacks and the browns. It’s not going to be a big issue. If you wear blue jeans and then you wore a brown shirt, they’re going to have two different visual spectrums there and that really will definitely stand out to a whitetail deer.
“Where science meets the outdoors,” that’s their buy line. Dr. Tyson, tell people how to get a hold of you because we’re going to generate a lot of questions and some people are going, “I’ve been using the same stuff and I never get busted. I bought this best stuff in the world off the rack at a big box store and I never tested it.” I’m hearing that we better take the black light and go into the dark room and see really what we got.
One of the biggest reasons how I came up with this stuff is that I’ve sat in a tree stand and had a deer look right up at me and Angela I was there. I had the best camouflage on. I was using all the big names of this stuff and all the blocking stuff and he looked right at me. I knew that had to do something that had to give him a visual cue. As I kept looking into it, I realized that I was putting off a UV glow. There are still many hunters that will tell me the same thing. They could definitely reach me with any questions. They can contact me at [email protected].
They can reach me on the internet at XOutHunt.com. They could call me off of there and we can always get the questions answered for them. I’ve got so many hunters that are beginning to realize why some of these hunts did not work out for them. You can go and you could spend all the time and money into food plots and get camouflage. There are so many things that they would spend time and money on, but they’re going to go cheap on the UV control or the scent control, and that sometimes can be the simplest thing that can ruin their hunt.
We put together a great system where we have products that deal with that and UV combined so that we’re saving that blue-collar hunter money. Instead of having to buy multiple products, they could buy one detergent and it comes with a UV and a scent product or they can get a spray that has a scent and UV product combined. One of our newest ones that we’re really excited about is called Carbon Defence. It’s a product where they can now take their odor fit blocker, set lock camouflage that after a season has lost a lot of its ability to block scent. They can now take this product of mine.
They can soak their camouflage into it and they can add new carbon back into the camouflage and basically bring that old camouflage back to life again. They don’t have to go spend a ton of more money on more camouflage. We’ve got so many different products there. A lot of it aims towards that blue-collar hunter to give them the best product line without having to spend a ton of money and allow them to have a better hunt and know that they’re being protected. If it’s scent, if it’s UV, whatever it is, they have enough protection to get them to that and to bring some meat home.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about Ozonics. That is a mechanical device. How does that really work and how does it compete with a myriad of covered up sense or some eliminators you can’t eliminate? Every time you breathe, your scent goes out there. How does that work? I want to inform the people the difference of an Ozonic-type of product versus what you have.
Ozonics is great. It’s an expensive product though. That’s out of the range of some of the hunters that can’t afford to spend $300 on a machine that is basically affecting the scent of them in a tree. They have a machine above their head or beside them and any odor that’s coming off with them, this machine is breaking down that oxygen in those fit articles and destroy them. It’s a great technology. Unfortunately there are a lot of hunters out there that can’t afford that. They’ve got families, they have kids. Come through our products, it’s basically a way for hunters to control their scent.
What will happen is spend a bunch of money like Ozonics but I’ve got friends that use it and they loved it. I have friends that can’t afford it so they don’t use it. I think it seems like a toolbox. It all depends on how many tools you have in your toolbox to what you can use. If you can afford to have the expensive tools, then you use those. If you can’t afford that then you use the things that you can afford. We’ve made our products affordable for everybody. Not just the upper echelon hunters but everybody that could afford to go into Walmart and buy something and they want to have our products to each of those guys.
Thanks for sharing that. How long has Pure One products been up? Tell us about some of your successes and share some of your failures because it’s all about hard work. It doesn’t come easy for any of us in what we’re doing here. Dr. Tyson, share a little bit about that.
I started the company in 2010 with the idea of how I could make products better. I started off with some of the products that were inside-based scent control products. I began to realize that those just weren’t going to be successful long-term. We had multiple failures in trying to figure out how to combine these different products and be successful. There were a lot of times when I would bring a product out and it just did not test well with the market, so we would have to start back over again. We kept at it and we realized that as we kept making these products that we were becoming better at figuring out how to do it, how to market it, how to bottle it. It started off in 2010 with these ideas. The first year that we’ve gone across the US, we faced small market just here in Virginia and down South. We definitely has some mailed out to some other states but recently we signed up with Walmart.com, so we’re going to be online with Walmart, which is a really big step for us.
We’re in several stores throughout the US. We’re in Wisconsin. We’re in Texas. We’re in Idaho. We’re throughout the south. We’ve definitely grown very fast and that just came from perseverance. I’ve had people tell me years ago that the market was too big and that a small person like us couldn’t come in here with a great product like we have and grow. I just didn’t accept that as the truth. I knew that we had a great product. I knew that there was nothing else out there. The ultimate goal was to help people. I think we just kept at it and we’ve grown tremendously. The season is just starting for most people and we had been grinding already for six months getting to this point. We just signed on with Red Arrow TV. Kip Campbell has a great show. I don’t know if you know who he is but he’s an awesome guy. He’s also a Virginia guy.
One of the biggest misses right now in hunting is that hunters don't appreciate the ability of a whitetail deer’s eyes. Share on XWe connected and he’s using all our products. We’re doing a movie with him. I think that really helped push our company. Kip and the Red Arrow, they’re just awesome people. Not just great hunters but good people. That’s really what I surround myself around. I have great people around me. I would not be who I am if it wasn’t the people that are around me. Having hunters that will give me feedback even if it’s back feedback that’s okay. As a company, you could only learn from your failures and to begin to keep improving so eventually you have a rock solid product and that you’re able to help people. We’re really excited. This year’s going to be a great year. Next year’s going to be even a better year. Continuing every single year we’ve grown and we’re looking for big and better things.
Please give shout-outs to whomever you choose.
I will not be who I am today without several people and first is I’ve got a great family. I’ve got an amazing wife that has supported this dream. I’ve got my kids, they’re big-time into this as well. I’m thankful to everybody, all the blue-collar hunters that have really supported us, helped push us to where we are today. I can’t say thank you enough. If I could help you, please let me know.
Dr. Shawn Tyson, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. I know hunting season is upon us and you’re cranking out products so continue on. On behalf of all the listeners throughout North America, thank you for being a great guest on our show.
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I hope we could do it again.
Make sure you listen to the next episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. Visit we’re to visit with Evan Gersper. Evan is the Pro-Staff and editor of CountryCamo Outdoors. He’s a Board member of Sportsmen for Heroes Foundation. He’s a wounded veteran, spent about twelve years in the US army. He was medically retired after spending some time over Afghanistan. He’s passionate about the outdoors not only for the hunting part of it but the therapeutic part of it. He’s able to sit in a tree stand and enjoy some peace. Make sure you tune in.
Links Mentioned:
- Pure One Outdoors
- X-Out 360 Control Kit
- [email protected]
- @PureOneOutdoors – Facebook
- XOutHunt.com
- Pure One Outdoors’ Twitter page
- @PureOneOutdoors – Instagram
- X-Out 360
- Carbon Defence
- Ozonics
- Walmart.com
- Kip Campbell
- Red Arrow TV
- Evan Gersper – next episode
- CountryCamo Outdoors
- Sportsmen for Heroes Foundation