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My goal for Our Time Outdoors, the family hunting blog,

Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon and we’re heading up to Minnesota kind of West of downtown Minneapolis out in a little community called Plymouth and we’re gonna have a great chat this morning with a lady that just has so much passion for the outdoors, Jennifer Cone. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Our Time Outdoors, the family hunting blog

Jennifer: Hi, thanks for having me.

Bruce: Let’s just start right off the bat with an explanation of “Our Time Outdoors: The Family Hunting Blog.”

Jennifer: Yeah. I started, “Our Time Outdoors” last fall. I really started in because I wanted to write about my outdoor adventures and the outdoor adventures of our family and hopefully inspire others to make time for their passion; get out and go hunting or fishing or hiking and do those things that they love to do, because we all live crazy busy lives and my hope is to inspire other people that are like me that really love to do these things but they got pushed to the side.

You know what? I’m gonna write about it. I’m gonna share stories and hopefully it will resonate with people

So I thought, “You know what? I’m gonna write about it. I’m gonna share stories and hopefully it will resonate with people and they’ll want to get outdoors and do those things as well.” So that’s really the mission of it, is to really inspire others, to get back to their passion. I share different things, I share hunting stories from the past, different things that I’ve had from hunting mistakes that I’ve made, my first deer hunt, when I got started, I share hunts that I had with my kids, I share about shed hunting. I also will provide recipes, so we like to eat a lot of different wild game in our house so I’ll provide those as well and hopefully people will try those out. I also give little tips and tricks that I’ve learned along the way.

I am by no means an expert, I’m learning everyday just as everyone else is and I just like to provide what I learned and hopefully people can take and learn from that and provide that when they go out into the field. And I also do guest posting, too, so if anyone’s ever interested in posting a story or providing something to the audience, I would love for people to reach out and provide some guest posts on the website.

Bruce, are you there?

Bruce: Yep, I’m here.

Jennifer: Oh, sorry.

Bruce: I have a bad habit, and that happens every show, because what I do is when you’re talking I put the mic away so you can’t…there’s no way you can hear the breathing, so I just pop it up over my head. And so every single show someone says, “Bruce? Bruce?” Like I said, you can’t make a mistake because I just cut that out. Away we go.

Okay, so I’m on your page and I like guest posting and I’m gonna incorporate it into my page that I just launched because I want to share information with people. Whitetail Rendezvous: Educate, collaborate, and communicate and that’s one of the best ways, to have somebody once a month or whatever just come on and just throw their blog up, and it’s just not a link it’s the actual blog. I’d sure like to have you because women in the outdoors is important. Let’s stay right there for a second. Let’s talk about the role of the mom, you work out of your house, but yet you still have a passion for the outer doors, so let’s camp around that and let’s chat about that a little bit.

Jennifer: So I grew up in the outdoors. My dad…there’s two boys and two girls in our family and he brought my brothers hunting but once my sister and I were of age to go out he said, “Yeah, you definitely can come out.” And he wanted this and encouraged us to get out in the woods. He didn’t care if we were a boy or a girl, it didn’t matter, he wanted everyone to come up to Deer Camp and hang out with everyone. He knew how important it was in his life and he wanted to pass those traditions on to all of his kids. I am really thankful that he did that because it really is a bond that all of us have together. And I have a daughter myself, and so I’ve already started to, she’s two years old, but I’ve already started planting the seed and she loves to look at taxidermy around the house and she talks about the different types of animals.

I brought her out shed hunting. I really want her to feel empowered to go out and do those things as well and not think it’s a guy’s world. It’s really something for everyone and everyone can have fun doing it. I know that as a family we just really bond just being out in nature. You put away all the electronics and you get down to the basics, and you go out and you hike and you get to know one another a little bit more, and it’s a bond that can go on forever. When I started hunting I was 13 and my grandpa was in his 80s and that was a bond that we got to have for many years together, and I’m so grateful that my memories weren’t just sitting in a chair next to him. I was out in the woods hunting with my grandpa. Those are awesome memories I have. So it’s just something that has been part of my life and I hope to pass that down to my kids as well.

Bruce: I want to expand that a little bit because we cover all of North America with our listeners and there’s ladies out there saying, “I just don’t have the time.” And you talk about that. You talk about “Our Time Outdoors,” so can you just give the ladies out there that are listening, or even single dads, some advice on how to get it done? And how to create those memories?

Jennifer: Yeah. This is really why I started this blog was because the outdoors was very present in my life growing up and even through college but once I got married and I had kids, I have three kids, 13, 4, and 2, and they’re very busy and during that time I was starting a family and starting my career and really focusing on that, the outdoors got pushed to the side and then it was last year when my son turned 12 and I said, “You have to get your firearms safety.” And we had been bringing him out in the woods and everything so it wasn’t we had totally disconnected from the outdoors but I thought, “It really needs to be more present,” and I thought, “What can I do to stay more connected?”

We’re all busy but it’s about re-prioritizing and focusing on where you need to focus.

I just really took some time to reflect and say, “How am I spending my time when I do have free time? And is that really what I want to do?” So we, as a family, I talked with my husband and he said, “We just really need to dedicate more weekends up North and really fit it in.” Even if it’s for a day, maybe we can’t get up for the weekend because somebody has practice but we get up for one afternoon and then we go and do something that really brings us back to the outdoors and connecting us to that. And we’ve seen a huge change in the last year. We’ve done so many different things that we wouldn’t have done otherwise. We went shed hunting as a family, I brought my son turkey hunting with me; my four year old came out in the blind with me. I just know we would of never done those things if I didn’t sit down and say, “This is going to be a priority.” You have to make a change. We’re all busy but it’s about re-prioritizing and focusing on where you need to focus.

As far as…I work outside of the home and I work 40 hours a week and I get my time in really when the kids go to bed and early in the morning before the kids get up. Maybe I’ll do some blogging there to just try to connect and get back to my passion or I’ll go shoot my bow and arrow before work. Or I’ll go right after work even just slinging a couple arrows after work is a huge relief and you don’t have to spend hours out there but it really just keeps you connected. It’s just take some time and reflect upon how you want to spend your time and do it now. Don’t wait for that time to be right because I can tell you, it’s gonna be five more years until that happens and then you’ll be thinking, “Why didn’t I start this back then?” So really you can do it, I think you just have to connect with people in your life and say, “How are we gonna make this happen?”

And really have the support. I’m really thankful that my husband is supportive of the crazy life that I want to live and just being busy all the time but we have a lot of fun. I think it’s definitely worth taking the time to really re-prioritize and focus on those things.