As I alluded to the other day, here is my most recent interview with Kevin C. Paulson, CEO of HuntingLife.com. You may notice that I revamped the Interview page a little to organize things a little. You can now access interviews via a link to a .pdf link. Maybe someday I’ll get into graphic designing and make it look wicked cool!
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My guess is that Kevin needs no introduction in the blogosphere. He’s the founder and CEO of HuntingLife.com, and a member of the Outdoor Bloggers Summit Steering Committee. Kevin is truly dedicated to protecting the outdoors. He believes wholeheartedly in supporting conservation organizations with time, money, and by raising awareness. If you read the entire interview, I think you’ll agree that Kevin is a man on a mission! Without further ado, here’s the interview (be sure to check-out the links throughout):
deerPhD: Please tell me a little about yourself (where from, how you got into hunting, other activities you like).
Kevin: I caught my first fish off a bridge over the American River in California at the age of three. From then on, I spent every weekend with my father fishing, and hunting in the Forests of California. My father was in the United States Forest Service for 35 years and I grew up with a daily appreciation of the forests, and the wildlife is a part of those forests. My first hunt (tag-along) with my father was at age six for mule deer. My father and I were avid dove hunters on our farm in Tulare County, California. I did my first real deer hunt at the age of 14 and was unsuccessful. I took my first antelope at the age of 17 in Wyoming and my first deer at 21 with a bow. I am an avid photographer, wildlife conservationist, shooter, and hunter, and I enjoy fishing for trout and surf fishing. I am a father of 3 wonderful kids who I am slowly introducing to hunting and fishing.
deerPhD: With whom do you hunt most of the time?
Kevin: I hunt with my good friends Dennis Brauchle and Bob Martin for a good many of my hunts. Both of these gentlemen have more years of hunting experience hunting on the east coast and for whitetails then I do. The rest of my hunting is done alone or with my kids; both experiences are challenges in of themselves. I love hunting with the kids because they are so excited each and every time we see animals. Hunting alone poses a new set of challenges especially in the west or the big open country of Canada. I am always open to taking young hunters out into the world and I spent the last three years mentoring a young man in hunting. I learned more from him than he did from me and we have a great friendship to this day. He is currently in college and I am proud of the opportunities that I was able to put in front of him.
deerPhD: Outside of hunting, what is your favorite thing to do?
Kevin: I love surf fishing and spending time with the family. I am also an avid photographer and love getting out to take pictures of wildlife and landscape. Anytime I can get outside and enjoy nature I feel in my element. I also love to golf.
deerPhD: You seem to have hunted various species from all parts of North America. Do you have any favorites? (favorite game, favorite location, favorite outfitter?)
I am an avid hunter. I was a guide for one season and an outfitter for two years, but I am no longer involved in outfitting and/or guiding. While I did enjoy my time as a guide and getting to know some great hunters and people, I feel I am much better suited to building HuntingLife and keeping my focus on growing awareness then on being a guide in the field.
My favorite game to hunt is without a doubt Elk in the rut during archery season. I do have some favorite locations, and I would prefer to keep those private.
I have hunted with several outfitters and I have enjoyed each and every hunt for the experience that they offer. I have also hunted with some poor quality outfitters and guides, and that is a part of the reason why we created our outfitter review section on our website so people can find reputable outfitters and great places to hunt.
deerPhD: Please give a brief overview of HuntingLife.com
HuntingLife.com is a community for people looking to pursue their passions of Hunting and Conservation. Our site will work hard to bring product reviews, outfitter reviews, photos, stories, tips and conservation news to as many hunters as we can on a daily basis.
deerPhD: From your perspective, what sets HuntingLife.com apart from other outdoor-related websites?
Our site was created with hunters and conservationists in mind. Having been an outfitter, the site was created to highlight outfitters and to be able to provide a tremendous amount of information in an easy to use format that hunters will enjoy coming to on a daily basis for news about great hunts, conservation organizations, and a new forum to interact with hunters from all walks of life. Our photo gallery is there for all hunters to submit photos to and we will soon have a weekly newsletter to keep hunters abreast of hunting opportunities and conservation news across the United States and Canada.
What also sets our site apart is our steadfast commitment to conservation. We will be sharing 10% of our gross revenue with conservation programs across the country. Our site is paid for by advertising from outfitters so hunters can find great places to hunt.
deerPhD: It seems to me that HuntingLife.com takes a bit of a different approach to conservation than most organizations in that it isn’t a conservation organization in and of itself. That is, it’s all about conservation, but it isn’t designed to conserve necessarily. Rather, it’s designed to raise awareness and serve the conservation groups (financially, etc.). Could you please let me know if my thinking is correct, and if it is, could you please expand a little. What led you to this desire, and how do you think it will impact our outdoors?
Bryan, you are correct. HuntingLife.com is a for profit business and we are looking to make a living out of the work that we do on our site. We charge outfitters $895.00 per year for advertising on our site, and we only allow 15 outfitters per state to advertise on our site(10 big game outfitters and 5 wildfowl/Upland Game outfitters). Of that $895.00 that we charge $90.00 will be donated back to conservation organizations. We document the donations on our website on a quarterly basis. We are creating an open and honest approach so everyone will know exactly what we are doing and where the money will go. Most of the money will be donated directly to organizations, and some of it will be used to buy products to be donated to conservation auctions in attempts to exponentially build the amount of money that an organization can gain while increasing awareness of HuntingLife.com in a win/win situation for everyone.
HuntingLife.com is built to keep an eye on conservation organizations as well. We will report the news about what the organizations are doing, and we will be providing our opinion about what they are doing as well. We will always try to be fair, but it is our opinions we are sharing and there will be times I will call out things that I see that are just plain wrong. I won’t apologize for my opinions and every person is free to comment on our site and in our forums and contribute to our site. We welcome your opinions, your pictures and your participation in making this one of the greatest sites on the internet.
deerPhD: Where do you see HuntingLife.com in the future (let’s say 10 years)?
My hopes and dreams are to create a hunting magazine and a television show to augment the site and to create a true national community that is dedicated to hunters and conservationists. We will also be sponsoring TV shows and the Nation’s Outdoor Sportsmen’s Show for years to come.
deerPhD: HuntingLife.com is sponsoring the upcoming “Nation’s Outdoor Sportsmen’s Show”. What about this event attracted your attention as a sponsor, and why should the average sportsperson attend?
This show was one of the first shows that I ever attended to actually work in. For the last two years the show was dormant and our sponsorship helped to bring it back to the Washington, DC market. This year will be our first year, and we have a very strong line up of great speakers from Ken Penrod to Jim Zumbo and Jay Houston. We have one of the strongest line ups of speakers and our seminar schedule is chalk full of informative speakers. What I liked about our sponsorship of this show was we have had direct recruiting ability to bring in over 20 conservation organizations and we are giving them free booths to build membership and create awareness about the great work they are doing. For more information on this show, please see www.nationsoutdoorshow.com.
deerPhD: Here are some questions I ask everyone I interview. They are very open-ended, so go wherever you would like to with them: How would you define the outdoors?
I define the outdoors as open country that is not developed. This can be woodlots, open farms and our National Forests, parks and wilderness areas. It is my belief that we are slowly losing these open country areas and we are slowly developing it to death with 5 to 35 acre ranches that is destroying the open country that we used to have in the west. Here in Virginia I am seeing farm after farm being turned into subdivisions and that is hurting our wildlife and our open country.
What does “conservation” mean to you?
Conservation to me means that we are working to create sustainable use of Gods Country and the wildlife that lives their. We must work together to protect habitat and wildlife for sustainable use. I will have a post in the next month with more about this topic. (see Kevin’s Blog)
In your opinion, what are the most effective methods of conservation?
First and foremost we must protect habitat because God is not making any more land - what we have is all that we are going to get. So first and foremost we must spend the next 20 years buying as much land as we can, and the organizations that are out their need to work hard to put every dollar they can towards those land acquisitions as a part of their mission. Second, we must open that land to hunters, especially youth hunters, and work hard to bring those youth hunters into our way of thinking about conservation. We must work hard to get out the message of the North American Wildlife Conservation Model and educate hunters and non-hunters alike.
deerPhD: What is the best way to get hunters involved in conservation?
Volunteer for an organization that you believe in and donate your time first and your money second. Be active in recruiting youth and women into hunting, and take a kid hunting or fishing and share what you love about the outdoors. The great thing in volunteering is that it is not a hard thing to do, it’s a very simple thing, and it is something that we can all do. Imagine a world where over a million or more hunters volunteered for conservation to help with recruitment and fundraising for groups like Ducks Unlimited, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, National Wild Turkey Foundation, Pheasants Forever, Conservation Force and others. We would double our members and the amount of money going into these organizations very quickly, and we could protect some key pieces of American land that would then be open to hunters to enjoy and for our children to have open land to enjoy. If you’re going to mentor youth hunters, have them volunteer for your favorite conservation organization as well, and have them assist in learning how these organizations work. Remember to keep it fun and they will keep coming back.
Conservation Force, Ducks Unlimted, HuntingLife, HuntingLife.com, Kevin Paulson, Nationial Wild Turkey Foundation, Pheasants Forever, Rocky Mountain Elk FoundationIf you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
