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Mike is the president of Pass It On – Outdoors Mentor program

Welcome to another edition of Whitetail Rendezvous. Today we’re heading over to Kansas, and we’re going to talk with Mike Christensen. Mike is the president of Pass It On – Outdoors Mentor program. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike: Bruce, thank you for having me on today.

Bruce: Well, how’s the weather over there in Wichita today?

Mike: We’ve got a beautiful day today. Its going to be in the 50s, a little slight overcast, a great, beautiful day to be outdoors.

Bruce: Well, that’s great and Kansas is a great state. It’s a got a lot of great bucks, and I want to jump right into Pass It On – Outdoor Mentors program, the hows and the whys and why you got this rolling.

Mike: You know, I got started working with Big Brothers and Big Sisters back in ’99. A neighbor of mine worked at Big Brothers and Big Sisters. And when Kansas had their first youth upland season, he knew that I was involved with Quail Unlimited at the time. And he asked if I could round up some guys to take some kids out on that first youth upland season. Well, it was a chance for us to take the dogs out a week before the season opened and see how the birds were looking. So we jumped at it. And I really had no idea what Big Brothers and Big Sisters was all about, but a chance to get outdoors a week early sounded good to me, so away we went.

A couple of years later, we got to where we were doing a couple of hunts a year with these kids, and it was really interesting. The first time we did, I figured we’d take these 14, 15-year-old kids out, and they were going to be walking our tails off. But after the first couple of fields, they were physically exhausted. They couldn’t keep up with us old guys. It was really amazing. And the program grew from there.

In 2002, I was hired by Big Brothers and Big Sisters to start up an outdoor-mentoring program for them here in Kansas, and it’s been really, really tremendous. We’re able to give kids who won’t have a chance to go hunting or fishing that opportunity. And we do that by recruiting mentors, men and women, who love the outdoors and want to share those experiences with a kid. And it’s really been a tremendously rewarding experience for me.

Bruce: What type of challenges are you having finding mentors, men and women, who want to take an hour or two on a Saturday, or even more time than that, and getting involved in a kid’s life?

You know, that’s our biggest challenge, Bruce, is finding more mentors

Mike: You know, that’s our biggest challenge, Bruce, is finding more mentors. We have literally thousands of kids at Big Brothers and Big Sisters agencies across the country on the waiting list, and 75% of those kids are boys. I’m not going to say that all those boys want to go outdoors and go hunting and fishing, but I’d wager that the [inaudible 00:02:59] and there are a lot of these kids that will never get off the waiting list. They’ll never get matched with a mentor. And that was one of the reasons why Big Brothers and Big Sisters here in Kansas was interested in starting an outdoor-mentoring program, because they realized that the demographics of hunters and fishermen are male. And they were willing to try and reach out to that demographic and get them involved with these kids, and it’s a win-win situation for everybody.

Those of us who love the outdoors get to expose kids to the outdoors and maybe have future hunters and fishermen. The kids win because now they have a mentor and they get to go outdoors, and the outdoors community wins. It’s just a win for everybody, and we just really need to encourage more men and women to step up and help ensure that our outdoor traditions are carried on by these kids.

Bruce: Now when you’re looking for mentors, are you branched out throughout the country and have state directors? Tell us about your structure.

Mike: Well, right now we’re just really in Kansas. We’ve been trying to expand, but as you can imagine, trying to get state directors hired in other states is an expensive proposition. But anybody can go to their local Big Brothers and Big Sisters agency and say that, “I want to mentor a child, and I’m going to spend time outdoors with them.” And that’s all it takes. Anybody can do this. They don’t have to have a formal program there like we have here in Kansas. Anybody can go and become a mentor and take a kid outdoors and go hunt and fish, and that’s all we’re really asking these folks to do is, when you go, take a kid with you whether you’re going to the range, whether you’re going scouting or working on your food plots or going out fishing. Whatever you’re doing outdoors, take a kid with you. It’s that simple.

Bruce: Now you mentioned Big Brothers and Sisters. Are you like an offshoot or an ad hoc group for that organization?

Mike: Well, in ’02, I hired on as the Director of Outdoor Mentoring for Kansas Big Brothers and Big Sisters. In ’06, we actually spun off as a separate non-profit from Big Brothers and Big Sisters, although I continue to work very, very closely with them. In fact, my office is in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters building here in Wichita. So we have a very close relationship with them.

We don’t want to get into the mentoring business like Big Brothers and Big Sisters is, where we do all the background checks and manage the matches and all that kind of thing. What we’re wanting to do is focus on recruiting mentors, and then let Big Brothers and Big Sisters do what they do best. And we’ll focus on recruiting mentors and getting the kids outdoors.

Bruce: So ladies and gentlemen, no matter where you’re at, Mike, at the end of the show, is going to have a couple of minutes just to give you his URL, phone numbers or the best way to get in touch with him. But think about the kids, because we are challenged today because kids are not spending any time in the outdoors, simply because nobody will say, “Hey, let’s go. Why don’t you come with me and we’re going to…” like Mike said, “…go to the archery range, go to the shooting range,” or just spend time with them in the outdoors.

Mike: Yeah, taking the kids hiking, taking them canoeing, bird-watching. Any outdoor experience is great. Bruce, a couple of years ago, we were doing a shooting clinic out in Dodge City, Kansas. Now, Dodge City is out in Southwest Kansas. It’s pretty rural. It’s a community of about 20,000 people. And one of the young boys that came out, he was a 12-year-old, Hispanic boy. He got to the gun range, and he got there, and he said that driving to the gun range that day was the first time in his life that he’d been on a dirt road.

Now, Dodge City, you don’t have to go very far to find a dirt road, but this young man was 12 years old and had never been on a dirt road. I can’t tell you how many kids that we’ve taken out here in the Wichita area. And Wichita is a community of about 350,000, I suppose, but a lot of these kids have never seen a cow. Kids are not getting outdoors.

there was a great book that came out in ’05 called “Last Child in the Woods.” And if any of your listeners haven’t read that, I would certainly recommend it.

And there was a great book that came out in ’05 called “Last Child in the Woods.” And if any of your listeners haven’t read that, I would certainly recommend it. It talks about the societal impact of a generation growing up with little or no connection to the outdoors. And none of it’s good. None of it is good. It means that those of us who love the outdoors should really step up and make it happen for these kids.

Bruce: Now, do you work with the Kansas DNR?

Mike: Oh, absolutely. Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism is a great partner of ours. Here in Kansas, Wildlife and Parks has a number of shooting trailers. So when we’re putting on shooting clinics, shotgun-shooting friends, I can call them up and say, “Hey, we were doing a clinic here or there,” and they show up with a trailer and it’s got traps and targets and ammo and guns and everything and a certified instructor that will work with the kids and get them up to speed on their shooting skills.

Wildlife and Parks has been a tremendous partner. They’ve helped us out with hunting locations. We’ve gotten to hunt some of the refuges here in Kansas, special hunting privileges for some of these kids. They’ve been a tremendous partner. And the DNRs that we’ve talk to in other states are more than willing to step up and help make this kind of a program happen.

Bruce: Yeah, I know that Colorado has something, a program called Hunt Master, and they take intercity kids. Not 100%, but I would say most of the kids are intercity kids along the front range that, as you said, never had that outdoor experience. And they take them, match them up with mentors, and then provide everything they need to have a day in the field, be it bird-watching or shooting at a duck or a pheasant or just learning how to trail a deer. So it’s a great program that we have here in Colorado.

In the warm-up, we were talking about some of the stories. So why don’t you share some of the stories that you feel will impact with our listeners, but had a great impact on the kids?

Mike: I’m going to tell one story. We call it the Hamburger Helper story, and I’m going to try to do it without breaking up, because I did this Sunday for an interview, and I got a little emotional.

A few years ago, I was contacted by a guy. He had heard me on a radio show, Scott Linden’s radio show, and he said, “Mike, I heard you on the radio, and I want to get involved.” And he said, “I felt God speaking to me.” And I’ve got some guy calling me out of the blue saying God is speaking to him. I was a little leery about calling him back. But he called me again the second day and said, “Mike, I really need to talk to you about this.” And so I gave him a call back, and he sounded like a really genuine guy. And I said, “Okay, what you need to do is go talk to your local Big Brothers and get matched with a kid there.” He lived up near Kansas City.

And so he did. He went and got matched with this young man. We had him out on several of our pheasant hunts and things like that. Bruce was just a great guy, loved the outdoors, loved spending time outdoors. And he and the young boy he got matched to just had a great time.

Well, deer season comes around, and Bruce is a member of a club. And they’ve got this property, and they’ve got this big nine-point buck on film. And all the guys in the club go to archery season and muzzleloader season, and they’re all trying to get this buck, and nobody gets it. So rifle season comes around, and Bruce says, “Well, would you guys mind if I take my little brother out on this and see if we can do any good?” I said, “Yeah, you go ahead. Good luck doing it.” Well, sure enough, the young man goes out that day and ends up shooting that big buck. And he’s just beside himself, all excited about it.

They get down, and they’re going to go to Bruce’s house and hang the deer in the garage and process it into burger and steaks for the kid and his family. And while they were grinding the burger up, the kid asked Bruce, he said, “Would this be good in Hamburger Helper?” And Bruce said, “Well, yeah, it’d be great in Hamburger Helper.” And the young man says, “Well, that’s good.” He said, “We’ve been eating Hamburger Helper for the last six months, and we haven’t had any meat to put in it.”

he’s struggling to tell me the story. It just really broke him up and hit him emotionally,

Bruce called me Monday morning after that, and he’s struggling to tell me the story. It just really broke him up and hit him emotionally, because he was just beside himself. Who knows that the young man that you’re out spending time with has these kinds of problems at home?

Taking that buck and providing that food, his family was able to eat well for a year. And I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve got like that where some of these kids…and the kids being served by organizations like Big Brothers and Big Sisters, most of them come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. They come from single-parent homes. A lot of them live with grandparents, they’re on welfare, and that kind of thing. They don’t have any extras. And when a young child brings home a deer like that, that they can put in the freezer, that makes a huge difference for them, you know? And the sense of accomplishment and the sense of self-worth and self-esteem that these kids build from that kind of an experience, it’s just huge, the impact that an experience like that makes on the kids and makes on the adults too. Bruce was just overwhelmed with that experience with that young man.

Bruce: It’s just reaching out and…it isn’t “just,” but it is reaching out and extending a hand and saying, “Let’s go do this.” And the ramifications, we have no idea, absolutely none. But it’s priceless when it comes full circle and you realize what impacts we do make when we take time and take kids in the outdoors. How about another story?

Mike: We’ve got one story to kind of give you a feeling for what it’s like as a mentor. We had a gentleman, he was a member of the Safari Club. He was a retired dentist. As a member of Safari Club, he had been all over the world, hunted all kinds of critters, had a trophy room full of mounds. He’d been everywhere, shot everything, done it all. And we were doing a deer hunt. And one of the neat places we got to go deer hunting is Ted Turner owns a ranch here in Kansas. And we got to know the ranch manager there, and they invited us to bring the kids down on a hunt, so we did. And he owns about 42,000 acres on this particular ranch, and it’s pretty impressive.

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