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Blood & Bone Outdoors was formed in 2015 for the purpose of providing mentorship to Veterans
Blood and bones Outdoors Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. I’m privileged to have Andy Cochran, founder and CEO of Blood & Bone Outdoors. Andy is a veteran of the United States Army, and he’s doing a great work to assist veterans to integrate in the community but more important than that he’s helping them get back into the hunting community.
Andy, welcome to the show.
Andy: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Bruce: Hey, let’s just kick it off right from the top. Share with the listeners what you’re doing at Blood & Bone Outdoors.
Andy: All right. Well, basically what we’re doing is we’re taking combat veterans and creating staff positions in my organization. Everybody that’s on staff all the way from myself down to guides, they’re all veterans. Either that or they’re Gold Star Families members and what that is is family members of deceased veterans. And we’re just creating networks, and we’re educating communities around our area, and spreading out to a lot of other areas in those [inaudible 0:01:32] bases, and just trying to teach people it’s okay that these guys are changed when they come back, and just trying to put a positive spin on it and also just trying to reach out to the veterans, too, to just let them know, “Hey, there are people out here that care.”
“Hey, there are people out here that care.”
And it’s kind of a good niche, because it’s veterans helping veterans. And as a veteran myself, I understand that sometimes there’s things that a civilian may not understand. And they tend to be more apt to talk to another veteran about problems. Our hope is that we limit some of these bad things like suicide. There’s 22 veterans a day that kill themselves every year in America, and there’s a big initiative on that. We’re trying to limit the suicide, and the substance abuse and different things. If I can just take a guy just right down the road and fish for 30 minutes or take a guy over to Canada to bear hunt, [inaudible 0:02:37] because it’s about the hunting but it’s also about the mentorship and the bond that we have together.
Bruce: Let’s just jump right into the hunting aspect and how you see that being a tool to help these men and ladies become part of our community again.
Blood and bones Outdoors Andy: Well, I can tell you that there a lot of people in our country that really care about our veterans, and there are a lot of communities that really want to get involved. But it’s like some people just don’t know how to go about doing it or people have preconceived notions of how a veteran is supposed to be based on trends of previous wars and rumors and hearsay or whatever. But when you get a guy maybe together with their civilian counterpart, you get them out, you get them hunting, whether they want to or not, over the hunt, they’re going to create some sort of a bond and they’re going to talk.
For me, how this whole thing started is I was in a real bad place. I had some issues. I had a lot of things going on. I was wounded and then I got out. And then I was facing an identity crisis because I was in the Army for 15 years. I joined it when I was 18, so it’s pretty much my whole adult life minus two years. And it always just made me feel really good. It made me feel at peace and it gave me a purpose. And in the Army, we say that it gave us a mission. And even in my darkest times, I still wanted to get up and go hunting and fishing and stuff like that. I still wanted to be around that community. And the outpour of love and support for veterans in the hunter community is just remarkable.
this whole thing started is I was in a real bad place. I had some issues. I had a lot of things going on. I was wounded and then I got out
So I thought to myself, “Hey, if this makes me feel the way that I feel, if it gives me a moment of peace, even if it’s only for a moment, then why couldn’t I help other veterans?” And the cool thing is that it is. Not only do they get to hunt, whether they’ve been hunting their whole lives or that’s their first trip. You know as well as I do. Every time you go hunting, you’re going to learn something new and you’re going to have a new experience.
I’m a big bow hunter. So every time I draw back on a Whitetail or a pig or whatever, I still get those shaky, sweaty hands and pounding heart. You’ve just got something to look forward to, and I know there are a lot of different hunts that we’re doing. There’s a lot of different ways that they can get involved with, whether they’re staff or whether they just want to come out and try it out and go on a trip or whatever. Butit seems to be making a positive impact on a lot of folks. A lot of times, I know it’s making a huge impact on a lot of my staff and I and in our families as well. Blood and bones Outdoors
Bruce: Let’s go back to the [inaudible 0:06:26] that you just said. When you’re Whitetail hunting, you get excited and your heartrate increases. Let’s talk about where that hunting tradition or the love for hunting came from.