S5, Ep 89: Trevor Hubbs of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Trevor Hubbs - Executive Director of BHA's Armed Forces Initiative at Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (Northern Wisconsin)

In this episode: Veterans advocate Trevor Hubbs shares the mission and impact of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers' Armed Forces Initiative, which uses outdoor recreation to support military members, veterans and their families while creating the next generation of conservationists. Topics include military-to-civilian transition challenges, veteran wellness through outdoor experiences, building conservation-focused communities, the growth of AFI from 18 participants to 2,300 annually and how hunting and fishing provide purpose and mission for service members.

Key fishing techniques covered: • Smallmouth bass fishing with topwater presentations • Fly fishing with 7-8 weight rods for warmwater species • High-elevation westslope cutthroat trout fishing • Multi-day mentored fishing camps with one-on-one instruction • Drift boat fly fishing techniques

Location focus: Northern Wisconsin rivers and lakes, 46 states across the U.S., Alaska for caribou and mountain goat, Florida Keys for tarpon, North Carolina watersheds including Deep River, high-elevation western streams

Target species: Smallmouth bass, westslope cutthroat trout, catfish, bluegill, panfish, tarpon (plus hunting species: mule deer, whitetail deer, turkey, bobwhite quail, caribou, mountain goat)

Equipment discussed: 7-8 weight fly rods for smallmouth bass, fly patterns for matching local hatches, hunting and fishing gear provided at AFI events, drift boats

Key questions answered: • How does outdoor recreation help veterans transition to civilian life? • What is the Armed Forces Initiative and how does it work? • How can veterans get involved in conservation? • What are AFI dual skills camps? • How does hunting and fishing provide purpose for military communities?

Best for: Veterans, active duty military, military families and conservation-minded anglers interested in veteran wellness programs, using outdoor skills to build community and purpose, conservation advocacy and the intersection of military service and environmental stewardship

**Marvin Cash (00:04):**
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by Trevor Hubbs, Executive Director of BHA's Armed Forces Initiative. Trevor shares his experiences in the U.S. Army and in the field and on the stream, and we take a deep dive into the Armed Forces Initiative, how it supports members of the military and their families, and how it creates the next generation of conservationists. I think you're really going to enjoy this one.

But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And folks, save the date. Our friend Landon Mayer is hosting the 8th annual Clean the Dream on August 26th on the South Platte River. If you'll be in the Denver area, you should definitely check it out. It'll be a great day of fellowship and stewardship. Stay tuned to Landon's Instagram, at Landon Mayer Fly Fishing, for more details. Now, on to our interview. Well, Trevor, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

**Trevor Hubbs (01:08):**
Oh, thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

**Marvin Cash (01:10):**
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation. And we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. We like to ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

**Trevor Hubbs (01:18):**
Yeah, I saw that on the show notes, what you sent me. I don't know if I can pick one. I think it's three because I can't remember how old I was. First one would be, I don't know if you're into jugging or not, but essentially like twined old milk jugs with a big old circle hook and a piece of chicken liver, and you drop a bunch of these milk jugs in the river or lake or wherever you're at, and then you just kind of tend them all night, and when one moves, there's a catfish there. Doing that in southern Illinois, the Mississippi and Ohio River, right where those kind of connect there. I was probably about five and I was pulling in a catfish and we had a couple catfish on the bottom of the boat. I slipped and ended up getting spined by a catfish right in my butt. I had to go to the ER, all kinds of stuff, so that was fun. So it's either that one or just getting hooked every other cast, fishing with me, my little brother, and my dad, just to the local lake for bluegills with bobbers and hooks, stuff like that.

**Marvin Cash (02:20):**
Very cool. I haven't thought about trotline in a while.

**Trevor Hubbs (02:25):**
Yeah so it's different. I don't think I've done it in 20 years but that stands out as one of my earliest memories.

**Marvin Cash (02:31):**
Yeah very very neat and so when did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?

**Trevor Hubbs (02:37):**
So my dad's always been a fly fisher. I didn't seriously pick it up until about 2015. So I started buying my own flies, doing a little bit of tying, and yeah 2015 and early 2016 is when I started into it.

**Marvin Cash (02:49):**
Yeah, very, very neat. And who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly fishing journey and what have they taught you?

**Trevor Hubbs (02:54):**
Oh, definitely my dad early, just. He was just more about the stress relief and being outside. And I've definitely picked that up. I mean, a good day for me is not necessarily catching all the fish in the world. It's being in the beautiful places where you tend to be when you're fly fishing, whether that's the flats down in Florida or Laguna Madre or just up in the mountains. That's what I picked up from him. It's not so much about the catching, it's just about being there, being outside.

**Marvin Cash (03:26):**
Yeah got it and do you have a favorite species to chase on the fly?

**Trevor Hubbs (03:34):**
I was thinking about this a lot. I mean it's real hard to beat like westslope cutthroat but that's because they make you feel like you're the greatest fly fisherman in the world because they haven't seen a fly and they're up at 8,000 feet and you just hiked 10 miles so you're a little loopy anyway. But right now it's going to be smallmouth bass. That's just time of year, that's what I'm doing before work, that's what I'm doing after work at the local lake here right right next to me and that's warm water, it's available, so smallmouth bass right now.

**Marvin Cash (04:03):**
Yeah I would imagine too since things, I mean it's hot as blazes here in the south that the topwater action is probably pretty good.

**Trevor Hubbs (04:08):**
Yeah no it's fantastic. We've got a lot of nice rivers up here in northern Wisconsin and yeah there's just, it's tough to beat the pull of a smallmouth on a 7-weight or 8-weight rod. They're fighters.

**Marvin Cash (04:20):**
Yeah absolutely and do you have anything else you'd like to do out in the field?

**Trevor Hubbs (04:24):**
Oh I do a little bit of everything. I mean we'll get into it with my job but I try and be outdoors as much as possible all times of the year. So in November I'm deer hunting and I'm beaver trapping. Right now I'm smallmouth fishing. When September hits, I'm going to be teal and goose hunting. I'm all over.

**Marvin Cash (04:44):**
Have you succumbed to spring turkey hunting as well?

**Trevor Hubbs (04:48):**
I have, yeah. So I actually learned how to spring turkey hunt for this job. I've never spring turkey hunted before four years ago when I started doing this. I have picked it up, and it's a good time.

**Marvin Cash (05:01):**
Yeah, it'll ruin you for sure, right?

**Trevor Hubbs (05:04):**
Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know if it's being this high up, because I grew up in southern Missouri, but being up in northern Wisconsin, you're leaving the house at 3 a.m., and it seems like legal shooting light is at 4:15 sometimes, and you can hunt until 8 or almost 9 o'clock, and those are some long days in the spring turkey woods.

**Marvin Cash (05:23):**
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's funny because we've kind of bumped into this, but we'll kind of really dive into it right now is, you know, you are the executive director for the Armed Forces Initiative at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. And I was kind of curious kind of how you initially got involved, like before you became an executive director, kind of how you initially got connected with the guys at BHA and kind of what attracted you to the organization.

**Trevor Hubbs (05:47):**
Yeah, so I got out of the Army in 2016, and I think that's when I became a BHA member because I was just looking around with all my brand new free time, trying to find places to hunt, places to fish, and it just seemed like public land, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. The shirts were everywhere, the people were everywhere, and they were just so welcoming. Like you could call the BHA person, like the chairman of the board or secretary or somebody who was involved as a volunteer in Kansas and say, hey, I'm looking to come out and do some quail hunting. Don't really know enough about Kansas. Could you give me a place to start? And they'd end up having an hour conversation with you. That's really what first attracted me. It's just like there's not one BHA member that I've ever met that your life isn't improved by having two or three beers with them and just talking. Like you're going to learn something. It's a great group.

**Marvin Cash (06:33):**
Yeah, that's pretty neat. I've always been incredibly impressed with kind of the energy and the breadth of BHA's coalition, because, I mean, they get people from every political persuasion. They get young kids. They get older folks. I mean, it's really kind of, it's really impressive. I think it's pretty unique kind of in the outdoor organization world. And I was kind of curious if you had any thoughts about kind of what's the secret sauce there for BHA.

**Trevor Hubbs (06:59):**
Oh, I think the secret sauce is the same thing that is often the most frustrating when you're a staff member is we allow our local volunteers, our boots on the ground, like we really trust that person. So if you're the chair of the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers chapter of North Carolina, like I trust you to be the North Carolina expert. And if you tell me we need to take action on something, then we're going to. Now, the reverse of that as a staff member is you end up running around all the time because you've given your volunteer leader so much freedom and so much free will to go pursue things they're passionate about. But, I mean, it's not a bad thing, but it does lead to some 80, 100-hour weeks, especially during the fall.

**Marvin Cash (07:38):**
Yeah, I was getting ready to say it's probably a little antithetical to your military background, too.

**Trevor Hubbs (07:45):**
There's different structures of organization I've learned about in the world. The nonprofit space is definitely the least structured. Like, again, there's a lot of good things to that. You can get a lot done very fast, but you got to stay flexible.

**Marvin Cash (07:58):**
Yeah. And we're going to talk a little bit more about your role with the AFI, but you touched briefly on the fact that you got out of the Army in 2016. You want to tell us a little bit about your service experience?

**Trevor Hubbs (08:11):**
Yeah. So, I mean, I was an Army infantryman, airborne 82nd for a while over at Fort Bragg, which is now Fort Liberty down there in North Carolina. And then I finished up in the Illinois National Guard in 2016. And then I was a ROTC instructor while I was in the Illinois National Guard at Eastern Illinois University. It's a great time. Highly recommend everybody go do that if you can. But, yeah, that's about it. I was in for 2008 to 2016. I really enjoyed it. Coming back to, like, the small town where my parents live and where I grew up, I get moms and dads all the time. Like, oh, my son wants to join the Army. Would you mind talking to him? And I always have to preface like, hey, just so you know, I had a great time. And, if you don't want me to tell them that I had a great time, I'm not the person to talk to. Like sometimes they want you to like talk the kid out of it. And I'm like, wasn't my experience. I loved it.

**Marvin Cash (08:59):**
Yeah. Got it. And, were you deployed overseas at all?

**Trevor Hubbs (09:03):**
Yep. I did a couple of training stuff, but I was just a regular infantryman. Like we've got guys on the board and ladies on the board that did real special operations stuff. That's not me. We did some training stuff and nothing too crazy. I think I was fortunate in that regard, but it's also a little underwhelming.

**Marvin Cash (09:28):**
Yeah. And so, you know, what's the most significant thing you've taken away from your time in the Army?

**Trevor Hubbs (09:36):**
The most significant, I think, is the gap culturally. I guess that's really getting out of the Army, but just the gap between the standard U.S. citizen and the standard U.S. military member. The U.S. Army is just so wildly impressive. I'm just so impressed by everybody I served with and everybody I meet in my current job. And I just, you don't necessarily have that on the civilian side. It's just a different level of language, of commitment to things, of just ability to get stuff done, I guess.

**Marvin Cash (10:09):**
Yeah, I know you and I talked about that kind of when we did a kind of a research introductory call for the interview, and you really were talking a lot about the difference between the we culture and the me culture.

**Trevor Hubbs (10:21):**
Yeah, it's real, and I still don't have the best ways to explain it, but it is definitely something to look at for someone smarter than me.

**Marvin Cash (10:30):**
Yeah, but can you elaborate on that a little bit for folks kind of about what you, what we mean when we talk about we culture versus me culture? Because I know you talked a lot about like the job was like there were some calls greater than everybody. And that's what we were doing today, this week, next month, all year.

**Trevor Hubbs (10:44):**
At no point do you ever doubt that you're making a difference in the world when you're in the Army. Right. Like, I mean, everybody has a job and everybody just jabs each other like in good fun. But everybody is like, you're not going to eat until your guys have food. You're not going to sleep until all your guys have had sleep. And that's just the culture. Like if you had a leader who wasn't going to sacrifice for their team like that, that leader is going to get fired. They're going to get kicked out. If you had a member of the team that's not going to put out as much as the rest of the members, then they're not, it's not going to last very long. We'll find a reason to kick them out. I mean one of the earliest things is we had a guy who had pneumonia, like real pneumonia. He wasn't faking or anything. Like he was sick. But because he was sick, the medic said he can't do this ruck march one time. Just training, like just let's put some heavy stuff on our backs and go for a walk. And he was so, I don't know if you'd call it an embarrassment or shame or whatever, he was so embarrassed that he missed it that for the next month in the barracks at night, like even though he was still sick, like he put on his rucksack and just walked laps around the building until he got 15 miles or 12 miles, whichever one it was. He just refused. He did not, his fear or whatever it was, he did not want to be the person who wasn't pulling their weight in the unit. And when you have a whole group of 40 people that are all like that, it's, I mean it's intoxicating in a way, right? Like everybody wants to be better all the time. Like you finish your mandatory physical fitness and then you go work out again in the evening because at the end of the day you never want to be the person that is the weakest link. You never want to, like I mean, and it makes sense especially in infantry and some of the special operations groups. Like something happens, like you don't ever want to have to say like, yeah, I probably could have pulled them out of that burning Humvee if I had done PT harder. If I was better, something would have been different. You never want to have to think about that. So you always make sure you're at your best. And it's, it's different. I mean, again, stakes aren't as high in the civilian world. So you just don't run into that attitude as much.

**Marvin Cash (12:42):**
Yeah. Interesting. And I mean, we talked about there being other challenges kind of reintegrating back into civilian life, even if you didn't suffer a combat injury? You want to elaborate on some of those?

**Trevor Hubbs (12:56):**
Yeah, I think the biggest one, and I've run into it a lot, I've actually been thinking a lot about, oh man, how long, about seven or six or seven years now. But I've been interviewing a lot of candidates for our Skills Bridge positions where we hire someone straight out of the active duty military to come help us out. And just in interviewing them, I'm like, man, did I make these mistakes in interviews? Like, was I this kind of like clueless? And I don't mean to offend anybody, but you learn just it's a whole different language that you speak in the military. And there's things that like you get asked to say in interviews that you have no idea what the right answer is. Like, it's tough. I didn't have a great transition. Like I went from running a team of 24 people to being a security guard at an entertainment company. Like one of the rental security guards for Taylor Swift and Dierks Bentley who would come to town and I was just $11 an hour Trevor. I did that for a year before I got into the business consulting world and was able to finish my degree and get a more grown-up job or a more responsibility-appropriate job. It's just a whole different language. The only thing I can say is if you're interviewing somebody from the military, you've got to give them the benefit of the doubt. They'll learn how to talk your talk. They have all the skills. They're just not great at expressing it because I never had to.

**Marvin Cash (14:20):**
Yeah. It's interesting because I've, you know, helped people teach classes in fly fishing and been involved with like Project Healing Waters. And, you know, you can see that willingness to be trained, right, to learn, right, and a very deliberate posture from all the guys I've worked with in terms of like wanting to learn and get it right.

**Trevor Hubbs (14:52):**
Yeah. Yeah. And so kind of we put all that stuff sort of in a stew. Are those some of the things that kind of led you to the decision to form the Armed Forces Initiative?

I think that's one of the main reasons I worked for the Armed Forces Initiative. But no, the forming was much more technical. And it came down to members of the North American Board of Directors for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, two of which were veterans. And they've always had like a high veteran or military presence at BHA. They just didn't quite realize it until 2018. So like a lot of nonprofits or even for-profit companies, there's an annual survey. And I mean, it's what are you passionate about? Are you more of an elk hunter? Are you more of a waterfowl hunter? Do you enjoy fly fishing, traditional fishing? What's your bailiwick? Where do you think the organization should spend their time? How much time do you spend outdoors? Just all these kind of general questions that people want to know about their membership and their demographics. But in 2018, for the first time, BHA asked, are you a U.S. military veteran? And at that point, we were 12.5% veteran out of our 40,000 members at that time, maybe 50. Don't quote me on the numbers. Somebody can look that up later. But 12% is extremely significant because depending on which survey you look at for the general U.S. population, it's between 3% and 7% have ever served at any point, right? So somehow, BHA is doubling the national average without really trying. That was in 2018. So in 2019, they started really researching this, they being the current, the staff then at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, figuring out, okay, well, how do we play into more to this key demographic? Because following up on that research is when I got involved in what would become the Armed Forces Initiative, and actually four of the members of my board got involved as well. They're like, wait, well, why do you like BHA? What do you like about it? What do you do for BHA? And the most fascinating thing about that research is not only did we have more veterans than the general U.S. population, but the veterans that we did have were the ones running each state chapter. Like they were organizing the river cleanups. They were organizing trail, native plant restoration projects, all this stuff. They were our most active volunteers. So now we really needed to figure out, okay, how do we engage? Like how do we make this military population more a part of BHA? And that's what formed the Armed Forces Initiative. They were just like Trevor. And again, I started as a volunteer, so it's just Trevor, Ryan, Andy, all of us, the main guys we still have and girls, go figure out a way to increase our military members. So I kind of stumbled into it. I mean, it was like seven people and we're all taking a few hundred out a year just on our free times, teaching them to hunt, teaching them to fish, just wherever we were locally. Man, we were just so disorganized because we didn't know what we were doing, just kind of trying to build a plane while we were flying it. And yeah, today we're like a whole organization with insurance and everything.

**Marvin Cash (17:49):**
Yeah. So how did you make that jump from, you know, building the race car while you were driving it to being an official organization with insurance and all that kind of good stuff?

**Trevor Hubbs (17:58):**
I think we're still going through the process. I mean, we went from our first year, so 2020, we did our first event in eastern Montana, and that was with 18 participants, and we're just, all right, let me teach you how to spot and stalk mule deer hunt. Like, this is the gear you would need. This is how you get a hunting license, how you pass your hunter's safety. This is, you know, firearm safety, what an ethical shooting range is, how to make sure you do make the most with the meat, how do you break a big game animal down. Like we went from that where we learned a lot. We learned a lot at each of these events. And then we did turkey events. We started doing smallmouth fly fishing events and salmon fishing events. And like we went our first year, we went from 18 participants in 2020 to 2021. We had 700. And then in 2022, last year, we had 1,700. And then this year, we're taking 2,300 people out. And it's the growth. I guess we've had to kind of formalize. Otherwise, we'd never keep up with the growth. So we have 14,000 AFI members within BHA that are all just super excited about what we're doing. And with seven people managing it, you have to come up with a way to strategize and to build a budget.

**Marvin Cash (19:12):**
Yeah, you might need a few systems and some processes, right?

**Trevor Hubbs (19:17):**
Yeah, it's not just me. I like smallmouth fishing. Let me grab four guys and take them out.

**Marvin Cash (19:20):**
Yeah. And so tell me a little bit more specifically about AFI's goals.

**Trevor Hubbs (19:26):**
Yeah it's, the goals have been challenging just because we keep meeting them, we keep exceeding them dramatically. Like when we did 2021 is when I came in and we had 700 participants total from that year and I was like all right well, so before AFI I did, I was like a business consultant. I ended up getting my master's degree in business and tried to apply those kind of skills to managing a nonprofit as a staff member. And I was like, all right, well, let's shoot for 20%. 20% more participants, 20% more events, 20% across the board, and we'll see where we're at because we never measured it before. And we went from whatever it was, 700 participants to 1,700. And it's like, okay, well, that's dramatically more than we could have ever hoped to do. And we expanded from six states to 46 states in 18 months. And it's, so goals, like right now, where do I want to be in five years? I think realistically, we're going to hit a cap. We'll hit a plateau where we either run out of funding or run out of just capacity. But I think a solid number to shoot for is going to be 20,000 people a year.

**Marvin Cash (20:35):**
Got it. And, you know, maybe some of the softer goals about kind of the purpose and what you're trying to kind of achieve with the participants.

**Trevor Hubbs (20:42):**
Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, that's simple. So there's like the U.S. people, I guess the humans have always kind of known that there is a value to being outside, right? Like and you could look at that from just Teddy Roosevelt helping to form the National Park Service in part to help the people that he was in the Spanish-American War with find a place he saw value for himself, hunting, angling, being in these wild places. So when he became president, he started to really work on making that his mission, as these kind of wild places. Everybody read Hemingway in high school, Old Man and the Sea or something like that, For Whom the Bell Tolls. If you look at Hemingway's life like that is a story of a man who's seen some things, whether as a reporter or during a war or just losing children and anyway, dude had some demons but he always found peace through being outdoors and fishing, whether it's deep sea fishing in the keys or fly fishing over in Idaho. Like even if you want to go back farther than that, what's called, I think it was the Cherokee, the Cherokee Nation had like a mandatory 14-day wilderness period for braves returning from battle. So before you could rejoin the tribe and come into the community, you had to spend 14 days hunting and fishing after you came home from battle. Like we've always seen that there's a benefit to this. Right now as far as like what does that mean scientifically, like with endorphins, measuring dopamine, I would recommend everybody go check out Dr. Keith Tidball at the University of Cornell. His work has been amazing. He's got a doctorate degree. He can speak that scientific language. But he's done some amazing stuff with us and with some other organizations in the space where he measures like, he does hair samples, blood samples, spit samples before an event and after event and the dopamine, the endorphins, like just the overall feeling of happiness is so much higher and measurable after an event. It's incredible. But so as far as a goal for each one of the events we do is I like to, it's threefold, right? And again, I don't have a doctorate degree. I'm not a doctor. But the first one we just call like short-term medicine or wilderness medicine or just being outside. And that's just take participants into the backcountry, pull them away from their cell phone, their email, all these kind of small everyday distractions that happen in life and just put them into the natural world in some of these amazing, beautiful places and try and teach them a new skill, teach them how to interact in that natural cycle, whether that's hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, trapping. Depending on what part of the country, we have different events all the time, but just let me pull you out for two, three days and just let you decompress, right?

Now, the second thing I want everybody to take away, all our participants from each event, is building a tribe. We're building a community. So we try to make our events, and it's getting easier now that we have more chapters, but extremely local, right? Like I want everybody from South Florida at the same event in South Florida or everybody from Western North Carolina versus East North Carolina or Montana. Like the goal is I want to pull people with similar life experiences that all have an interest in being outside and hunting and angling. And I want them to kind of form their own community, the military community around this. So that time at the campfire just, I don't really like the word safe space, but it is a safe space. It's pretty interesting, just the honesty and the types of conversations you can have with people that have gone through all the same stuff you have. Everybody's struggling the same ways. Everybody's looking to succeed, not sure how. But that's the second thing is this tribe or this community. So if I can teach you how to hunt and fish and I can give you a group of people to go hunting and fishing with, the odds are pretty good that you're going to go hunting and fishing again. And that plays into the last part, which is just a mission. So like we would like to say we want to give the military community a new mission and that mission is conservation. And that's really like the key to this. Like if I just wanted to put people outside with another group of veterans, like you could do that through, I don't know, outdoor goat yoga or bike riding or a running group or something like that. Like that's, everybody has that. And those are valuable. But the mission is something unique to the angling community, unique to the hunting community, because conservation just is already there. And we already have this amazing recipe in the North American model of wildlife conservation that if I can teach people like, hey, this is how to hunt. This is how to fish. This is a group to go hunting and fishing with. And this is why you should hunt and fish as a veteran, as a member of this military community, as an active service member. Right. This is what you get out of it. This is a uniquely American pursuit. And this is another way for you to continue to serve your country. Like, and it doesn't really matter to me whether they get super involved in like, let's say I take six veterans smallmouth fishing in northern Wisconsin. And one of them just gets so incredibly excited about smallmouth like that just ignites a passion in them that they want to go start. They don't want to be involved in BHA at all. They want to go start the Smallmouth Alliance or Smallmouth Unlimited, whatever is small specific or even a watershed specific charity, because that's what ignites that passion. That's what gets them up in the morning. And that's a good way for them to serve their community, to serve their country by making sure there's always smallmouth in this body of water for everyone. Like, that's great. I don't need you to come back to BHA and be a BHA leader. Like, I'd like that. But as long as we get you into the conservation conversation somewhere, like, that's really the goal. Like, we like to say we don't do once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We give you the tool for a lifetime of experiences. Like, we want you to go do this again. And again and again, we want you to introduce other people to it. Like, ideally, if you go to one of our events and, let's see, we've got a tarpon fishing event in the Florida Keys next year that I've been planning recently. We're going to take 12 people. If you go home from that to Tampa or somewhere in, like, middle Florida, I want you to take the skills you learned and let's get six months down the road, take four of your buddies fly fishing. Right? Or just go to the local bass lake and be like, hey, man, this works for me. Maybe it works for you too. Like, let's introduce it to some more people. Does that make sense? I kind of ramble when I get into talking about this.

**Marvin Cash (27:02):**
No, no, it's all good. I can tell you're excited and you're passionate about it. So clearly, you know, the outing is the main outreach mechanism. Are there other things that you do to support people in AFI outside of the outings?

**Trevor Hubbs (27:18):**
I mean, we have all kinds of stuff. I like the outings, we call them dual skills camps. We're going to teach you how to hunt. We're going to teach you why to hunt, right? That's the dual skills there. A little bit about the hunting, a little bit about the conservation. So everything we do as AFI is to support these dual skills camps. How do I have more of them or how do I make the ones that I have better? Right. So any funding event, any of that stuff, any habitat work, like it all goes toward the dual skilled camp. Like we're out here building conservation. Now we do have all over the place. Like I said, we're in 46 states. We have 26 active duty installation chapters for people that are currently serving on post where you can get involved. But we do like habitat restoration. We do watershed management. We just finished like a $50,000 access project. Actually, right near Raleigh in North Carolina, the Deep River. Ended up just opening that river up for like 12 additional miles of recreation for fishing, hunting, trapping, all that stuff that was kind of closed. It was a public waterway, but you had no public access to it unless you wanted to kind of jump off an overpass. So we do a lot of conservation work, right? We do that. We do, again, in North Carolina, Fort Bragg, we have some native bobwhite quail restoration work we're doing on the base, which is really, really cool. I like this project a lot. And it's ongoing. The problem, the only problem with it is that you'll never be finished, but that's not the worst thing in the world. So, like, Fort Bragg is home of the 82nd Airborne. So you have these big drop zones which are basically just these huge open fields where they drop paratroopers for training jumps, for just mission prep, things like that. But what happens with any open fields, you have to manage this or it won't stay open. Like trees will start to grow there. So one of the things we've had with a lot of these drop zones is all of a sudden they're 100, 200 yards smaller than they should be because trees are encroaching from the sides. So our Fort Bragg, I'm sorry, Fort Liberty now, our Fort Liberty AFI team goes in with chainsaws, with fire and they just manage that drop zone. They take back the trees, replant native wildlife seeds, creating habitat for native bobwhite quail, right? So the Army wins because there's less paratroopers landing in trees and getting hurt. Bobwhite quail win because there's more habitat there. And BHA, the Armed Forces Initiative wins because now there's more places that these active duty soldiers can go recreate and go hunt on Fort, on Bragg, on Fort, Fort Liberty. Sorry. It's going to take me a while to wrap my head around that.

**Marvin Cash (29:57):**
Yeah, it's a relatively new change. And so, you know, you know, the outing is the main thing. And so why don't you kind of give folks an idea, kind of what a typical AFI outing looks like?

**Trevor Hubbs (30:10):**
Sure. I mean, we do one-day outings but we try to stick to this three-day kind of, four-day including travel but like a four-day really experience and I like that because it gives you that time to decompress and really do that, we call it wilderness medicine or just kind of disconnect from the regular world. But essentially you show up, leave work at 5 o'clock on a Thursday. You've taken off work Friday and Monday. So Thursday evening you pull into camp. You have your local leader who's running the camp. They're going to do dinner, introductions, talk about where you served, how you learned about AFI, why you're into hunting or fishing or whatever the task at hand is. And then they'll talk a little bit about what's going to happen the next day, whether it's hunting or fishing or whatever you're going to do. The next day, you get paired up with your mentor. And depending on the activity, we like to do a one-to-one mentor. But there's some activities like, for example, if you're fly fishing out of a drift boat, the mentor can be the person rowing the boat and he has two mentees with him because you have two spaces. So it just depends on what you're doing for what the mentor to mentee ratio is. But traditionally, it's never more than three mentees to one mentor. So you're going to wake up in the morning, going to grab a breakfast burrito, cup of coffee, and you're going to go do the day's activity. All right. So while you're doing that, your mentor is teaching you the tactical skills about the how. Right. Like, oh, that's what a riffle looks like. That's why you're going to want to find trout here. Let's flip over this rock and say, all right, these are the bugs that are here. How does that translate to what I have in my fly box? And why do I want to tie this on? What's hatching at normal times of the year? Just all that stuff, like those kind of the technical skills that you need to go down to Cabela's, get yourself a fly rod set up and go do this again the next weekend. So then you get back to camp at night for dinner. Dinner's always prepared for you. You get back to camp at night, and then we'll either, event leader or a guest speaker or something will come in. We'll talk a little bit about the conservation. All right, everybody had fun on the river today. Everybody caught fish or you didn't catch fish. Why didn't you catch fish? Now, this is what's interesting about this river. And they talk about conservation. We talk public lands 101 or access projects. We can talk about history of the watershed. And it just depends, again, what the camp is based on. My favorite kind of recipe and what we've seen really work is bringing in a biologist, whether that's a Trout Unlimited biologist or one of the state fisheries biologists to talk about. It's not a college level biology course. It's very kind of open, but it goes for about an hour. And just explain what you saw your first day, right? What experiences you had, why you had them. Just in a more technical manner than somebody who doesn't do it for a living. Next day, wake up, same schedule. Going to do it again. We may switch up mentors, switch up teams to make sure everybody knows each other. But going to do the same thing again. We're going to do something a little different. Like if we fished out of a boat the first day, we're going to try walking and wading around the second day, maybe doing a little smaller creek stuff, trying to give you a wide breadth of experiences. If we're hunting, we'll try a day of stand hunting, a day of still hunting, a day of spot and stalk. Trying to give you as much experience as we can. But then when you get back to camp later that night, we're going to be talking about kind of like a policy 101, is the best class for civics, or basically how to use your voice as a veteran to make sure these places, these wild environments still exist. And all that hinges on just the fact that right now politically you can't necessarily go against veteran interests in a public way. So if you stand up at a, or anybody stands up at a natural DNR meeting and says, as a tax attorney, I think you should do this with the deer population versus, hey, as a veteran of the U.S. Army, I think you should do this with the deer population. It's more impactful for the veteran to say that because politicians don't like to go against the military community. So we teach them kind of how to engage there, how to, and it doesn't have to be a policy meeting. It can be just a local Department of Natural Resources meeting. Like talk about the Menominee River in northern Wisconsin. Hey, this is what we're doing. This is our population goals. And just how to weigh in as a citizen conservationist and make your voice heard and be a part of the conversation. Next day, going to do the same thing, just getting them out fishing, getting them out hunting, coming back, wrapping it up. And then the last night is always what, what's the next step? We like everybody to leave with a mission, like with a solid next step, whether that's connecting with the local BHA chapter or hosting a fundraiser or writing your congressman or whatever it is, it depends. What it normally is, though, we found about 73% of the time, what the participants want to do is they want to come back to an event. They want to take their buddies. They want to, hey, how do I do this in my own community? Because, again, when we started, we were in six states. And that's how we spread to 46 states because we used to invite people from wherever. We pay for everything except your travel to get to the event, and you have to buy your own hunting license or fishing license. But people go home and they go, hey, how do I do this for my friends in Michigan? How do I do this in Wisconsin, Arkansas, wherever? So that's how we ended up growing. That's what most people want to do is the value they see in the natural world and as conservation is, oh my God, I feel amazing out here. I know a lot of veterans that are hurting. How do I get them out here?

**Marvin Cash (35:47):**
Yeah, got it. And so, you know, what are the requirements to participate in an outing and how do you screen candidates?

**Trevor Hubbs (35:54):**
Yeah, so that's something we're working through right now. We don't have a solid answer because there's just so many people that want help, that want to attend. Like we have just tens of thousands of people on waiting lists. And again, it depends on the event. Like in 40 days, I'm taking 10 people on an Alaska caribou hunt. Right. So, you know, hundreds of applicants for something like that versus in Georgia doing a learn to fly fishing event for panfish, bluegill, bass, maybe 50 applicants for 10 spots. Again it's different. But what we're looking at, all you need to attend is you need to be interested in hunting and fishing and be active duty, National Guard, Reserves, veteran, affiliated with the military community, Gold Star family, any of that would work. Space Force, Coast Guard, we have everybody. And that's really the only requirement. You can already know how to hunt and fish and you just want to come for fun or to get better. You could have hunted and fished before but you haven't in a long time. You could be brand new and not know anything about it. Like there's plenty of spaces for you. We do a lot of educational classes. So if you tell me you want to come to our whitetail event in Ohio in October, all right, well it's July so we got to get you into a hunter's safety course. We've got to get you into this and we can do all that work pre-event with your mentor, with your local leader to make sure you're ready. But yeah, we like to say you could show up in jeans and a t-shirt to any of our events and we'll make sure you have everything you need. The caveat to that being you have to tell us in advance that you're going to show up in jeans and a t-shirt. Like we can get you all the stuff but don't, I mean don't sign up to go on like an Alaska mountain goat hunt and then show up in jeans and a t-shirt without talking to anybody.

**Marvin Cash (37:37):**
Yeah, that probably won't work very well. And if someone wanted to get more information about AFI, whether it was, you know, they were interested in being a participant, they wanted to be a volunteer, or they wanted to be a donor, where should they go?

**Trevor Hubbs (37:53):**
Well, donors can call me directly at any time of day, but that was a joke. It was a bad one. No, just go to backcountryhunters.org. You look at programs, you see all the programs BHA has. One, you can learn what we do, value statement, mission statement. There's some videos on there, some articles from interviews with people who've been on the events and what they take away from it. There's a donation page. You can see our corporate sponsors, everybody who's on the board, get their bio, all that kind of stuff. And if you need more information, you want more than that, email Armed Forces Initiative all together there at backcountryhunters.org. Or you can just email Hubbs, H-U-B-B-S, at backcountryhunters.org. That's my personal email address, but I monitor both addresses. So either way, it'll get to me. You could Google it. You can hit the Contact Us button at BHA. You can email the admin team, give the office in Missoula there a call. Like, the benefit is that we have one staff member, and that's me. So anybody else at BHA, you ask about the Armed Forces Initiative, you'll get to me pretty quick.

**Marvin Cash (39:05):**
There you go. And, you know, AFI is a relatively new program at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. And I was kind of curious, you know, what's been the biggest surprise or challenge so far?

**Trevor Hubbs (39:16):**
The biggest surprise so far has just been the growth. We try to do, it's not really an audit. Like I just, I try and keep tabs on other organizations in the industry, like Project Healing Waters, Warriors and Quiet Waters, just other Freedom Hunters groups that take the military into the field and teach them to hunt or take them hunting, fishing, whatever. Just try and judge how we're doing. And I didn't realize like Warriors and Quiet Waters, I kind of put at the top and they do amazing things but they're taking out 256 people last year. Like last year we took out 1,700. So when I look at that like the biggest surprise, like oh my God we grew fast. Now we have the benefit of being part of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers which is a huge membership and we already have a lot of structure built in but yeah that's the biggest surprise is to pick the job up at six states and hope to be in 10 states by the end of the year and all of a sudden you're at 40-something. It's, yeah, the growth has been nuts.

**Marvin Cash (40:17):**
Yeah and you mentioned earlier in the interview kind of the five-year goal about kind of how many outings you wanted to do but are there any other goals that you would like to see you know fulfilled in the next five years?

**Trevor Hubbs (40:22):**
Yeah I mean we do like a once a year we do a transition class but we're in the process, like we're part of the Skills Bridge program so we hire an active duty soldier, sailor, airman, we give them an internship with civilian skills. We try and hire them if we can. We try and get them hired somewhere if they'd rather go work somewhere else in conservation space. Once a year we do like a transition course on hey if you'd like to work in conservation or in the outdoor space and you're in the military, come to this online seminar. We're going to teach you everything we know. But it just plays into our vision. And our vision, I'm just going to read it off the website, is a military community actively engaged in a conservation conversation in the field, on the water, and active participants in the legislative process. I truly think just with the basic ingredients of most members of the military community that I've met, like that selfless service, that we attitude, they could be incredibly impactful in the outdoor industry, right? Whether they go into manufacturing or legislation or come work at a nonprofit like Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Like my goal is looking 10 years, I think we should have 10% veterans in the outdoor industry across the board. I think it's realistic. I think they have the skill set. They have everything that'll make it possible. It's just helping put the right people in the right seats on the bus.

**Marvin Cash (41:42):**
Yeah, got it. And you mentioned also that you got kind of a team of folks that you work with. Like you're the paid guy, but you got some other volunteer folks working with you. You want to tell us a little bit about the other folks on your team?

**Trevor Hubbs (41:54):**
None of it happens without the team. We have an amazing team here from the first, myself, Ryan Burkhart, Andy Ruskowitz. Those are the three kind of main that we've always been like the tripod there since the inception of the Armed Forces Initiative. And even those two guys were around for six or seven months before I was. One is active duty. One is a veteran. He got out of the Army a few years ago, but they're just incredible. They serve on our AFI National Board. We've got Navy guys, Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen. We've got everybody on this board represented, and they just do some amazing work. Plus the 46 state leaders we have, the 26 installation leaders. I mean, it's almost too many to list, but everybody's just doing an amazing job. And the most incredible part is nobody has any experience. Nobody knows what we're doing. If that makes sense, like this is not, you can't go to college and get a degree in veterans outdoor therapy, right? But then all of a sudden, three years in, we're all part of this organization that's being asked by the Department of Interior and the VA and the Department of Defense to, hey, can you come to Washington and brief this task force on how to use federal public lands for veterans outdoor therapy? It's wild. It's amazing. And none of it could happen without the volunteers. They do. Like in reality, my job is to support them. That's what I do.

**Marvin Cash (43:20):**
Yeah. Very neat to see people kind of align around the mission, right?

**Trevor Hubbs (43:24):**
Yeah, absolutely.

**Marvin Cash (43:25):**
Yeah. And before I let you go this evening, Trevor, is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?

**Trevor Hubbs (43:33):**
The biggest thing that, not just for BHA, not just for the Armed Forces Initiative is the thing for me is there are so many veterans that need help right now. I'm not, I don't, I'm not arrogant enough to say that I think hunting and fishing is the answer for everyone but the answer is somewhere. So just do what you can whether it's a financial donation to a local organization or a veteran's home or a veteran's job placement or something. Get out and volunteer and help that community. If you look at the VA veteran suicide studies, I guess I mean they just released a new one. I'm not ultra familiar with it. But the shocking statistic for me is a male veteran age 18 to 35 is 63% more likely to commit suicide than his civilian counterpart of the same age. And that's an insane stat. For female veterans it's like 27% more likely. It's, yeah, there's some real problems here that, I mean, we're not going to solve them all at the Armed Forces Initiative. We're going to try, but just whether you're into hunting, whether you're into fishing or anything like that, like find an organization that can help the veteran community and try and get involved.

**Marvin Cash (44:42):**
Got it. And if folks want to get in touch with you, learn more about BHA, AFI, what's the best way for them to keep track of all those adventures on and off the water?

**Trevor Hubbs (44:53):**
Best way is probably Instagram and I'm not a huge social media guy, but I do have some people that are real good at social media on the team here. So just follow BHA underscore AFI. Honestly if you type that in, I bet there's 46 state versions of the Instagram that'll pop up. Follow your state, follow the main one. You can set up there at backcountryhunters.org just go to the blog, post pictures, videos, YouTube channel. Like we're all over the place. We've got an article in Fly Fisherman magazine coming out next month, article in Shooting Sportsmen. I mean keep your ear to the ground but the BHA AFI, those six letters, we're getting out there. Things are happening.

**Marvin Cash (45:41):**
Yeah so I'll drop all those Instagram links not to all the states but the main ones and then I'll also drop a link to the page because it's got a ton of resources, you know, on base clubs. I mean there's, I think that one link will kind of set you free, right?

**Trevor Hubbs (45:55):**
I mean that's the goal. And if anybody has any like website design experience and they don't want to charge me any money for it, I would love it because I have never set a website up before. So if you look at it and you're like well this is ridiculous, Trevor, let me know and then come help me.

**Marvin Cash (46:10):**
Well there you go. Well Trevor I really appreciate you taking some time out of your evening and not fishing for smallmouth bass this evening to come talk to me.

**Trevor Hubbs (46:17):**
No thank you for having me. Anything I can do to further the mission is good with me.

**Marvin Cash (46:23):**
Well, listen, have a great evening. Take care and be well.

**Trevor Hubbs (46:26):**
Yeah, you too, sir.

**Marvin Cash (46:28):**
Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcast of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.