Kevin joined the show to talk about Fieldcraft Survival and all the great courses they have in North Carolina.
About: Kevin Estela is the Director of Survival for Fieldcraft Survival. A lifelong outdoorsman with over 2 decades of teaching in the great outdoors, Kevin is well versed in bushcraft and survival skills. Kevin is the former Lead Survival Instructor of the Wilderness Learning Center under the late Marty Simon. Kevin is the author of 101 Skills You Need to Survive in the Woods and over 150 published magazine titles.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Kevin joined the show to talk about Fieldcraft Survival and all the great courses they have in North Carolina.
About: Kevin Estela is the Director of Survival for Fieldcraft Survival. A lifelong outdoorsman with over 2 decades of teaching in the great outdoors, Kevin is well versed in bushcraft and survival skills. Kevin is the former Lead Survival Instructor of the Wilderness Learning Center under the late Marty Simon. Kevin is the author of 101 Skills You Need to Survive in the Woods and over 150 published magazine titles.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome to the Protectors Podcast. I like being on this side of the mic. Right before we hit record, we were talking about that, about who's in control. The cool thing about it is nobody's in control. This is a cool episode because lately I've been on the road. I think you're my fourth or fifth, sixth episode where I'm on the road. Now I'm in the Fieldcraft Studio on the other side of the mic.
Speaker 2:This is like a Twilight Zone episode, because normally I would be on that side. I feel a little out of body going on right now. We've already done a podcast where you've been my guest. Now I'm your guest. There's all sorts of coins being flipped and being caught on the heads or the tails or whatever. I'm not sure what's happening here, but we'll see how this plays out it's going to go great.
Speaker 1:The first thing is the facility is a lot different than what I expected. I didn't know what to expect Driving out here. I love the Carolinas man. North Carolina is I love it.
Speaker 1:If it was tax free for my federal retirement, I'd probably live in one of the Carolinas Rolling out here it's very peaceful, you have plenty of time to think. But when you've pulled up your facility, my new word is crisp clean. I'm so used to rolling up to a training facility or anywhere else where it's just like, oh man, it's like some dusty warehouse. This is a very professional thing. You pull up, there's food next door, which is perfect. It's like a gift shop, slash pro shop. In the front there's plenty of training facilities. Then I'm like, hey, can we set up the podcast over there? You're like, no, we got a studio. I'm like, ah, this is perfect brother.
Speaker 2:The facility here is what a lot of people say they don't expect to be here. The funny thing is is that I remember the movie Wayne's World and I always give horrible movies references. In Wayne's World, Wayne opens a door and he said I always just wanted to open the door to a bunch of ninja training in a government facility. I want people to have that experience when they come into the gift shop and they buy their mobility bags or their medical kits or copies of my book or whatever. But then they open the door to the playground and we have all of our training gear set up there. We have spaces to pull in vehicles, we have a whole gun wall that was set up by security. I want people to feel like, wow, they just walked into a place that they shouldn't be or a place where not a lot of people get a chance to train. But the reality is we do bring a lot of people through here and we have multiple sort of sold out classes.
Speaker 2:So it's tucked away in this really quaint community. I mean Pinehurst, North Carolina is right up the road, which is where they do a lot of the PGA golfing events. Western Pines is one of the most highly sought after places to purchase a home. It's one of the safest communities, with one of the highest percentages and populations of tier one guys, old and new. So we're just tucked away and we just do amazing stuff where people don't expect us to be doing it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, in the clean thing I got to give a shout out more to Jerry and more to John. I clean here, but Jerry and John are restless butts and they just constantly are cleaning. Jerry, who's technically retired, he's here cleaning and he doesn't have to clean, but he just does it. So, yeah, we like to keep it professional. We'd like to keep it exciting, for when people walk in and we're at that point now, I'll show you when you walk back out the student training wall is growing because people want to come back to this area and they just love the sense of community that we're building here, Not to mention the survival brew coffee that I kind of came up with that's available, when that's right next door.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm definitely trying that out. I'm going to put up a good point. You know, coming from our backgrounds, from all over the place and a lot of the 90s, early 2000s and everything training is, it's really jumped and it's now it's into like you don't have to be the quote unquote alpha, you know, you don't have to be like the vet, bro, you don't have to be an LEO background, you don't have to be muscular, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean the stereotypical Arnold Schwarzenegger, sylvester Stallone's of the 1980s. Now families want to do it. Now people want to train, but they want to have fun and they want to feel like they're part of a community, and that's the thing I really dig about FieldCraft is the community aspect of it, the coming in here you're going to do courses and you're not just going to do the standard. Okay, this is a basic pistol, this is basic. This You're going to do like these really cool, like you were telling me about edible plant class. Yes, okay, cause. So me, listen, I grew up in Jersey by the Appalachians. I'm not going to go and eat crap, you know, I'm going to go to the. You know McDonald's, a pizza shop, or the one of 3000 pizza shops.
Speaker 2:And get it.
Speaker 1:But I've always been intrigued by that. I've always been intrigued about what can I eat in the wild, what can I do to live off the land and get back to the roots, and I think you know it'd be kind of like what is that, the word, the roots? Quote unquote. But let's talk about that class first, man.
Speaker 2:So shout out to Kate Smith, catherine Smith, kate Smith, she's on Instagram. Her Instagram account is made whole herbs. Now, kate had a number of health problems when she was younger some nutritional problems. You would never know by looking at her today, because she is a power lifter, cross fitter. She could probably bench press both of us. She could probably squat your Jeep.
Speaker 2:Kate is an absolute beast in the nicest way of the word, but she is one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met when it comes to edible medicinal plants. And, keep this in mind, my late mentor, marty Simon, was a Vietnam veteran. Marty was a professional civilian survival instructor as well as a military survival instructor, but he was also the foremost expert of plants in the country, so I learned a lot of edible medicinal plants from him. So whenever I meet someone that says, hey, I know edible medicinal plants, I'll question them a few things and if they can pass that line of scrutiny, that line of questioning, I'm like okay, they're legit. Well, kate, within five minutes of talking to her, I'm like she knows her stuff, she's good.
Speaker 2:And now Kate has this like quasi following. She posts up edible medicinal plant classes four times a year for all the seasons and it's funny because they sell very quickly because people want to come back and learn, like, okay, here's this plant during the summer, when you're probably going to find it, but what does it look like in early spring, when it's, say, you know, in its early form, and it's less wrecked and it's less recognizable because it's not fruiting or flowering or whatever it may be. So Kate has this ridiculous following and the best part is in her classes, the men and women who take her classes. They leave with different tinctures, they leave with different sands, they get a chance to try these different dried fruits and she really, really knows how to bring people together. And you know her classes. Every photo there's someone smiling. Everyone is smiling because Kate is just such a pleasant person.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, one thing I just kind of blew right through my mind is I'm always thinking survival. But when you're thinking about plants I'm thinking and after this little short thing you were telling me about my thing, it gut health. You know, gut health you're thinking when you're getting away from the processed foods and when you're getting away from the chemicals and your body wheel, the adage of your body is a machine, it's an engine. You got to keep it clean, you got to put the 93 octane in there or whatever. You know. If you're not putting the 93 and you're putting 87 in there and maybe it's kind of, your body is a Corvette, it needs that.
Speaker 1:And I always think about gut health and plants and nature and organic and true organic. So this is I'm really dig the idea of taking like an edible plant. It's like because you know that's the other thing I want to talk about today is like you could shoot all day long. You could shoot all day long and I don't know if it was fieldcraft or anyone put up a post the other day. It's like, yeah, you could shoot, but can you survive?
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah. My late mentor used to say he's never seen a plant run away, versus like a fish that can that can swim away, a gay man, or like a spooked, a bird that could flush and fly away. And it's more about living off the land and living with the land as opposed to just surviving on the land. And a lot of people think like, oh, I have to get into edible medicinal plants If I get stuck in the middle of nowhere and I have nothing to eat. Well, it's like, how about you just walk into your backyard and, with a better understanding you want, you start recognizing like, ok, that plant that everyone calls a weed, that's actually really good for cleansing the blood. It's called dandelion. People pick them, they want to destroy them, but meanwhile dandelion is found in more Chinese and in Eastern medicine. It's found in more of the teas than anything else.
Speaker 2:And it's dandelion, most people call it a weed. I mean, you could look in your front yard and you could find plantain, broadleaf and leafy plantain. You can find sheep's soil, you can find clover. Most people would say, oh, that's, it's ruining my grass. Well, meanwhile, like, every one of those has some type of edible medicinal purpose. And as far as, like the healthy gut thing, oh, you're spot on. I mean, I went many years just doing strict keto, keto, keto, keto, keto and for a while I was getting pretty yoked and I was pretty happy with the results. Well, I just went to a doctor recently and he's like dude, your blood pressure is actually a little high, oh, and your cholesterol might be a little high. So like that was an eye-opening experience, because here I am.
Speaker 2:Like I can go rock, I can go run. I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm good, but internally I'm not. I wasn't listening to myself. So my doctor was like you got to cut back on this, this, this, and you know, I want to be here for the long run. I don't want to. Who was it? Was it James Dean?
Speaker 1:who said live fast, die young live with a corpse Like who wants that, who wants that shit?
Speaker 2:I want as much time on this earth as possible, because every day is a blessing.
Speaker 1:Don't wait till you're 50, like me. The other thing, too, is like when you when you start thinking about plants in natural, getting your vitamins from a natural source.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was a kid and vitamins were huge, like everybody's, like oh, there's like a vitamin for this is in that my mom would take, I don't know 20 different vitamins a day.
Speaker 1:And when you're taking vitamins and hey look, a good multi vitamins, perfect for you. You want to take whatever this, that you want to take some powdered vitamins. But people don't realize, when you're taking like 60 or 50 million things, you can go toxic. Oh, my mom started going toxic. And a lot of people think well, you know, the daily recommendation is this 1000 blah, blah, blah. And you're taking 20,000 blah blah, blah plus all the other shit going through here. You know you might want to start looking at the natural ways to do it, you know.
Speaker 2:I remember 15, maybe 16 years old, like I was just getting into lifting right, and I was all about benching and shoulder pressing and curls, right. I remember I had a gym teacher that used to say the curls, get the girls, you know that type of thing right. And I remember there are kids that left the high school that came back a year later and they're on like their college lifting program and they're like, oh, I'm taking creatine, right, and all these kids were on the all these supplements.
Speaker 1:I did like the whole weight protein thing.
Speaker 2:But I remember some of my buddies were doing the creatine and you know the whole idea that you can just you can cheat the gym by just eating Well. Your body gets a lot of nutrition just from eating well already, but you can tax your body by putting in these supplements at higher percentages and dosages that you're not getting naturally. So I get it Like in the short term, yeah, maybe you do look better, maybe you do have more strength or more capability, but what does that do long term to your liver? What does it do long term to your system that's trying to clean all this out in unnatural concentrations? And now I mean God, it was creatine in high school and college. I don't know if you remember. Do you remember Zenadrin?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh yeah.
Speaker 2:I tried that because my roommate tried it, and then I find out that it's a fedora and they're like yeah, by the way, it's kind of legalized speed, yeah. And I remember waking up at 2 30 in the morning doing like, oh okay, let's go, let's go, let's go, and like I was fired up and then I was like I have to get off this stuff, like it was basically it kills your heart.
Speaker 2:Yeah so so I mean anyone can come out and say at any time, hey, this is the greatest thing ever, it's been tested. Well, who tested it?
Speaker 1:Well, look at it now. I mean, those are the diet pills that all these stars and all these Hollywood, yeah, doing. It's killing their body. They look like they're, they have no muscle at all because it kills the muscles to a. They're losing weight, mm. Hmm. Natural is the way to go, because and things change people don't realize that things change, but the basics don't Right.
Speaker 1:Good food, good food and hydration.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid, when we did football, if you drank water was like, oh, you don't need water.
Speaker 1:Seriously, I mean, nowadays it's like by kids have, like you know, seven different water bottles were or drinking a water all day long.
Speaker 1:And trying to get people to drink water and hydrate and keep their body fluids and everything else going and keeping that machine going is really what's going to set you apart when any kind of situation does come, when maybe you do have to survive, maybe you do have to rely back on one of these courses you teach or some of the training you've had. Because when you're stressed out and your heart rate starts elevating and your body is like it's just starting to tax on everything it has and you know you start getting toxicity and your muscles are seasoned up because maybe, hey, you're out in the woods and doesn't necessarily have to be like a fight or flight like you against man, it could be you against nature. So one of those things courses you guys have are like the land naves and live off the lands and all that other stuff. But if you're not putting them all together, your body could break down when it needs to be able to get the point C in order to get to a safe environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we always tell people, like, think of your body, your muscles, like an old, dirty rubber band right, and if you pull that rubber band you're going to break it. But a brand new fresh rubber band you can stretch and stretch and stretch over and over and it's not going to break, it's going to work as it's intended to. So even when I'm teaching a land nav class and it is eight hours of straight land nav training, the first five minutes I say guys, before you go in the woods practicing how not to get lost, don't get lost by accident and be unprepared to spend the emergency night out. So carry basic gear with you as you're training and guess what? You get a little bit of cross training in there because you're now carrying a water bottle and some spare clothing, a meal and the basic shelter, components of something to sleep inside of, over and under. But you can practice with that reassurance that, hey, if you did get lost or something did happen along the way, you can heat water, introduce warm fluids. You'll probably be able to make your way out the next day. So you don't have to worry so much about food.
Speaker 2:But food's a great booster for morale and there are people out there, especially coming into this time of the year when things are getting colder. They don't want to drink water because they're like oh, it hurts my throat. Well, guess what's going to hurt a lot more, right, that could be constipation, because you don't have the juices flowing to make everything go smoothly, or you're going to get a headache because your brain is rattling around inside your head like a pee in a can. People don't want to drink water in cold weather, dry weather, but they need to, and the vast majority of people walk around every single day dehydrated, and it blows my mind. It's like you're drinking three cups of coffee in the morning and there's not one cup of water in between those three. So you're just getting more and more dehydrated every single day and you're fighting this losing battle with dehydration and people who no-transcript drink a beer, drink a water.
Speaker 1:Drink a beer, drink a water. Hey, you know, it's a thing. One thing I do want to talk about is the laynav. Okay, so at one time I was an illicit guy and I was eventually part of the E4 mafia, so I kind of knew where I was going. But then I became an officer and I kind of lost all sense of bearing and I'm thinking to myself laynav courses should be like standard for everybody, because nowadays we rely so much on GPS, and I was. I also say you know, when I first started working in law enforcement, we had beepers, we had what they call Thomas guides, where we have to, like, read a grid square in order to get to an address. But now everybody relies on these things, these phones, these computers. You have to understand basic navigation. Now, when you're teaching these courses, what are the types of audiences that are coming in there?
Speaker 1:Oh, my God and tell me, get me some lieutenants in our two because I need to go before they go to overseas. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I really teach laynav from multiple different perspectives and we have a laynav class coming up at Winkler Knives this Sunday and in any given laynav class, especially here in North Carolina, you're going to have people who are training up for the Q course for special forces. You're going to have scout leaders, den mothers who are training up because they don't want to look like a fool in front of their kid who's probably going to do it better. You have people that are hiking, say, like the Long Trail, pacific Crest Trail, appalachian Trail, and even though they're following the trail, they want to know how to navigate. You have people who are hunters. You have fishermen, back country explorers. You have so many different walks of life I can't really say that they all fit into a given box. But the fun thing is I always tell people it doesn't matter what perspective you come from with land nav, by the end of the day you're all going to be speaking land nav language, because there are many people when they show up they say, well, to the left side of the map I'm like oh, you mean the west. Oh, well, it's above that. Do you mean higher altitude or do you mean north? But by the end of the day, all these different students. They start speaking, land navigation, and whether they're communicating their position with MGRS or UTM, they are able to translate what the other one is saying and now they're able to relay data which is so important. And by the end of the day, two class, which is falls in the middle of what we teach, we teach loss proofing, basic land nav, and then we do field exercises. By that mid level end of the day, these students are able to fill out a complete route card with position, distance, direction, description, terrain, and they're able to navigate around obstacles. They're able to terrain associate. They're able to do so much and most people don't know how to do that today.
Speaker 2:Now, when they show up, they're like I can't believe that I relied on a GPS and I'm like, by the way, your GPS isn't going to work under heavy cover. Your GPS is probably going to fail in the cold. Your GPS could crack your Jeep like and I go through all these details and they're like, well, I'm just going to carry a compass and I'm like, by the way, your compass might not work if, like you go to Ampersand Mountain in the Adirondacks, you put your compass down. The compass it was going to spin around like a top because there's so much natural, you know, metal in the rocks. So when people realize like, okay, I've got, fail safe, to fail safe, to fail safe, that's when they start realizing, wow, I can stay found. And that's really the goal. But the funny thing is we just taught a class with Aaron Snyder from kafaro. He was out here and Aaron you know without argument.
Speaker 2:He is probably the best hunter in North America right now. Well, he and I co taught the navigation section and he was like you're such a geek when it comes to nav, because I'm very specific to the point where I want someone to be able to find a beer can as a marker in the woods, and he's more concerned with hey, travel through the valley, get to that lake and you can look at your map and find the lake and figure out how to navigate from there. So he's doing more terrain, terrain association, general directions and I'm being so specific down to you know a 10 digit grid and you know it's. It's wild, the differences, but the same, you know, the end goal that we both have. So Aaron came here and he was saying how you know land navigation is something that is one of those critical factors of the success of a backcountry hunter.
Speaker 2:Like if you get lost, guess what? Your hunt's over, if you try to go to one bowl and you go to a different bowl, your hunt is over. Like it's such an important skill set and, like I said, if you start stacking your knowledge of land nav, you are going to be ready for when one of those items your cell phone, your GPS your compass. You lose your map, you're going to be able to find your way back, which is ultimately your. Your end destination is back where you started.
Speaker 1:You know. The other thing about skill set I've noticed is when we're talking in here, the pre show, the pre talk is the trainers. You have different types of trainers, different types of skill sets. So you know, we're talking about edible plants, we're talking about land nav. What other type of courses do you have here?
Speaker 2:Well, we have the whole slew of your typical tactical courses pistol. We have carbine Jerry Young and I teach defensive shotgun Our pistol and carbine instructor, rick Lofton. Rick isn't very forthcoming what he did in the military, but let's just say he was one of the most elite of the elite guys that were there and in a field where most will wash out after five years, rick did 12. So Rick is one of the best of the best and even though he has that pedigree of doing something that very few people can say that they've done, rick is one of the most approachable and humble guys you can talk to and Rick will tell you here are five different ways to do something.
Speaker 2:There is no one way, there are many ways. Find your way right, which that is a characteristic. It doesn't matter if you take Kate's plant class, my land nav class or survival class, jerry's, you know, trauma class, whatever, if an instructor shows you multiple ways unless you decide how to do it. That's really something you want to be careful of and I always tell people like, regardless of training at Fieldcraft or training with Knowles or training with, say, like SC knives or another company that others would say, oh, they're your competitors, start realizing that we don't view one another as competitors. We view our competitors as long as say you don't need training, you know. So we have the pistol carbine classes, we have Kate's edible plant class, we have Jerry's med class, we have the emergency or I should say the personal defense class, where you're working with a role player or against a role player, deciding shoot, no shoot scenarios where you're not starting the drill, or the scenario with the pistol in your hand you have to access it from concealment, which that's an eye opener.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of fun pressure testing people and watching where their plan falls apart. And then we have some classes that we don't do as frequently but we can't because there just isn't a student pool to draw from as frequently. So, like my advanced survival experience has done over three days, two nights in a primitive shelter, limited food and the students have a gear list which is very restrictive. Then we have courses like breakout. We have courses like rewilding, which we're going to be offering fairly soon on the East Coast at Soran X in South Carolina. So we have a lot of these classes. And what's rewilding? So rewilding, as the name implies, sounds like getting back to your roots, getting back. So the whole idea is you're not going to be on your phone.
Speaker 2:So, you're kind of getting away from that instant gratification of turning on IG, twitter, whatever you have.
Speaker 2:You're getting away from the comforts of sleeping in your bed and you're sleeping on the ground. Some people in their adult years they've never gone camping. It's like how about we reconnect around a fire? We share hardship that we've experienced around a fire and we just talk like grown adults.
Speaker 2:I was there for the first class that was held. It was 110 degrees in Utah, to the point where I was supposed to teach a like an eight hour block. Well, one of those hours I was like guys, I need this is not a want, I need to get you to the river to cool off. But they have that shared hardship, that shared experience that they can talk about. And it's not going into a climate controlled room, it's going back and living in the wild, dealing with the wild. So that's coming up at some point this spring and we have all these other classes.
Speaker 2:But the commonality, the common goal, is to make people more resilient, make them better and more capable versions of themselves so they can be there to protect their families, to protect themselves, to protect their loved ones, their coworkers and so forth. All of it is just so much fun to train and I think something. Getting back to the whole question about the trainers, all of our trainers love training and you know. In addition to you know, considering training part of their job, they also like training because it's continuing ed for them and there's always something to learn. So if you ever bump into someone who says I know it all, no, please, and you brought up a lot of good things.
Speaker 1:The shared experience is one thing I want to talk to you about and I mean you've already brought it up, but that's how you learn when you're in. You know the whole Navy SEAL embrace the suck thing but it's really the embrace of sucks been around well before Navy SEALs and everybody else. It's just when you're in that suck with other people and you're sharing that experience, you're going to remember that forever. Now imagine you're doing that with your kids and you're sharing these experiences. They're going to remember that before they're going to remember Disney World. You know Disney World. They're going to remember, oh, their line was really long and you know what? It sucked. The line was long and it sucked and you remember it. It's the suck, it's the embracing that, that that natural thing of its competitive to. Because when you can always tell people the type of people they are when they're really in a crap, are they gonna win, are they gonna survive, are they gonna be like just leave me alone, I'm gonna go back to the campsite, I'm gonna go into the AC and do this at that right?
Speaker 1:The other thing is that, trainers, when you come from a sterile environment. When you come from like the law enforcement, you come from some of the military world. A lot of times in law enforcement I'm not throwing anybody or bus, but I am, a lot of times the people in these academies and stuff for, like the read, they were retired years ago and A job popped open. Like you know, I go back to teach at the academy. They're not. They don't love training, right, they love to paycheck, they love the hey, I can go to the range and she whenever I want.
Speaker 1:Training is different and being as a trainer, like you said before, people should take as much training. Quality training is a can does not necessarily have to be with one company, but learn what's good for you. And when you're a trainer teaching fundamental firearms, basic academy classes, you really need to love training. You need to be able to get these people to not only pass but that Embrace that they're gonna be carrying this tool for the next, whether it's one year, five years, twenty years or twenty five years, and to embrace training. And when you hire a cadre that loves training, I think that's key. It's absolutely key, and not only for that but for a company success.
Speaker 2:I think that's such an important aspect to is to find trainers who are okay, still being students. And you know, jerry and I have sat in on rick loften when he's taught and we picked something up from rick loften and you know I get it. You know there are a lot of people out there that want to train with someone who was, you know, at the tip of the spear Thirty years ago, whatever in and I get it like I love training from the legacy trainers, so to speak, the ones who did things. But in those thirty years what kind of gear has changed? What kind of tactics have changed? What is no longer relevant because the gear is obsolete? I like learning different tactics, like before the podcast, we're talking about nineteen eleven. I've gone through different phases in my adulthood run, like you know what, this is my year of the nineteen eleven, I'm gonna put five thousand rounds from my nineteen eleven. I'm gonna. This is my year of the, the stire scout rifle, right, the whole scout rifle concept. You know I'm still a fan of.
Speaker 1:Bring me back to the early nineties. I stire scout rifle, yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 2:So I went through. I went through multiple phases where I was like I'm doing it back to basics this year. I haven't started it because I just got my pistol squared away for it, but I'm going back to the essay training because there's always someone that shows up to a class with like a sick to six or a brand ninety two fs and I'm like I used to have a bread in ninety two I just bought one and I started modifying with a bunch of lane and tackle parts.
Speaker 2:It's nothing like the old one I had. But it's also holiday season, so you can't watch die hard or you can't watch lethal weapon. Both are christmas movies, by the way. You can't watch either those without a nineteen eleven or a night without a ninety two fs next to you. So you know, I think it's important to go train with trainers who are still seeking out the best information, who then pass it on. And here's the other thing. It's really cool when you meet trainers and I make it a point to do this to I always share with my students where I got this information from around like hey, this is how it. Here's a trick, how you can get your optic up to your eye. Make a, make a peck muscle, make a, pull your elbow in and watch how that Optic moves up to your eye. I learned that from rick lofton. You know I'm in like always give credit where credit is due and you gotta watch out for the instructors.
Speaker 2:Like I came up with this, like I actually came from world war two, you know so I agree, watch out for ego.
Speaker 1:It's huge. Yeah, brother, I'm coming back soon because I need to take shotgun class cuz the shotgun is not dead. I wrote an article about that a while back. For skill set, I'm like look man, the shotgun. So I love the shotgun. I want to. I really. I love my semi-auto shotgun. I really need to come. I need to put together a really good pump. My remington, a seventy, is a great guy, but I've had this since I was a kid man so.
Speaker 1:So I'm fifty, so is a kid a long time ago. So, yeah, we stand, upgrade that sucker and I'm really looking forward to coming back. Man, I really appreciate you come on the show as well you are welcome here anytime, as are any of the listeners.
Speaker 2:We like people coming in here. We don't want to talk about that like so, if you're gonna.
Speaker 1:Let's see a lot of people travel for training. What's the best way for air, land and see what we're not gonna go see but air and land?
Speaker 2:so I, we're here on the east coast and I grew up on the east coast, so you can travel to our location, train and drive home Pretty good distance away. We're here in north carolina, so take i-95, you'll get here in no time. If you're gonna fly in, fly into raleigh Durham. It's only an hour fifteen from raleigh Durham and there are plenty of places to stay locally good hotels, good air bnbs and so forth. Now, as far as the boat, I can't help you there.
Speaker 2:A we're gonna we're gonna figure that sucker out but there is a train that you can take, the train I forgot planes, trains and all the other shit is said that's right, so you can't set up hello brother, and if you guys need to purchase ammo, because flying with ammo?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah we have ed's gun shop up in vast and they love us, they're good friends and all you have to do is call them and say, hey, I'm taking this class of field craft. They'll put together an ammo bundle to have it waiting for you. Or I mean we go up there all the time. We buy, sell, trade, we do all the stuff. So they'll be like, hey, you got a student, come and take this box and we'll give it to him and I'll hand over to you guys.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, for the last thing, I'm gonna try to get out of here without buying something. So appreciate, cuz this. I love the gift shop and it sucks. I'm looking at all the stuff and I'm like, let me just get back in your pockets. I don't spend any money, but I appreciate your brother you got it.