Why I Mentor: Eric Brown
Outdoor Mentors has provided me an avenue to be the person I needed for myself growing up. When I was a kid, I didn’t have any adult role models to teach me hunting and take fishing. Instead, I had my brother, a self-taught teen who loved bass fishing and hunting. His passion was basketball and being in the outdoors. Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of playing in the creek, catching tadpoles and crawdads by hand, digging up earthworms as bait hooked to the end of line that was attached to an incredibly long cane pole. I don’t think he always chose to take his annoying younger brother and was probably coerced or forced at times to do so, but those times spent together were some of the best. I took my hunter education course when I was in the third or fourth grade, because my brother hunted, and I wanted to be like him. We hunted the field edges for quail occasionally kicking up a covey or two. I will always remember the first time I shot a quail with him and how excited I was. To be honest, looking back, he was the one who probably hit it, but he was gracious enough to let me have the credit. I always looked forward to hunting and fishing with my brother and would go whenever he would tolerate it.
In February of 2000 that was all gone. My brother was murdered at the age of 17, I was 11 and my main connection to be able to access the outdoors was gone. His death marked the end of my hunting for quite some time. I still was able to go bass fishing as we had some nearby ponds that I was able to get on and enjoyed doing that with friends as much as possible. Summer mornings spent fishing the neighbor’s backyard pond or the local golf course ponds were never wasted. I still connected with the outdoors, but it never was quite the same without my brother.
When I finally got my driver’s license I started hunting again and continued through high school. When I say I was hunting, it was more like attempting to hunt. I could probably count on one hand the number of successful harvests I had in that time, but I needed the outdoors and just being in it, close to the natural world was enough. I was going at it from a place of passion, but without any knowledge as to how to be successful in my pursuits.
In High School I had a guidance counselor that I really looked up to. He loved the outdoors and I connected with him and his passion for the outdoors. He loved to hunt, and I would say coyotes was probably at the top of his list. He took me out a couple times, we never really had any success when we hunted, but I still remember how much fun it was to share that experience. The fact that he went beyond his responsibilities as a counselor and took the time to take me hunting isn’t lost on me and it certainly remains as one of my fondest memories of my high school years.
Fast forward a couple of years and I am at community college playing football. I met my best friend, Blake. His grandpa had some land not far from where we went to school, and we bonded over hunting. We hunted a lot, and I learned a lot from him. I absorbed a lot from him and because of him I became even more obsessed with hunting. We would hunt whenever we had the chance. We made a lot of mistakes in the field that kept us from success at time, but we always learned and got better every season. Over the years we have hunted together a ton and have a ton of great and even funny memories of the times we shared in the field. Hunting is always better when you can share it with someone else, I’m thankful he thought the same way.
I have spent the years since Blake and I first started hunting together, growing and learning more each year. I started a group on Facebook with Blake called Kansas Hunting and Fishing which served as a place to connect with other hunters across the state. We started hosting hunts for youth each year and it began to grow to a point where we decided to seek out getting a 501c3 designation and to continue to take youth outdoors. This is where I crossed paths with Mike Christensen and Outdoor Mentors. He took us under his umbrella as a chapter. This gave us insurance protections and helped us establish a legitimate entity under which we could continue our youth programming. With this, Mike invited us to both become mentors in his program. Since then, I have been able to mentor many youth and share with them the bit of knowledge I hold for myself and have helped many new hunters take the field on successful hunts. My volunteering and mentoring transitioned after a few years into my now full-time position as a Program Coordinator for Outdoor Mentors.
If Outdoor Mentors was around when I was a kid, I would have jumped at the plethora of hunting and fishing opportunities they provide. I lacked a steady presence in my youth of a person who wanted nothing more but to give me valuable and memorable experiences in the field hunting and fishing. This was something that young Eric Brown could have used to grow as a youth. My journey in life has led me to where I am now and I wouldn’t change that for anything, but I know who I needed when I was younger and the person I could have used is the person that I have become. By signing up to be a mentor, perhaps you could be the person that a youth needs to inspire their own outdoor journey.
