[upbeat music]
- I'm Ralston Dorn and I work as a paramedic for
Adeptus Health in the ER.
It's a small community ER.
We have anywhere from six to nine beds.
- WOMAN: Hello Skully.
- Estelle, ready to come back?
I help out the physician, nurse and the radiology technologist
with various tasks that they may need.
Can you bring your hands above your head?
When I'm not on the clock,
I do the typical things that guys my age do.
Hang out with the girlfriend, go to the movies,
hang out with friends, that sort of thing.
But most recently, I've gotten into hunting.
[upbeat music]
I come from a family line of hunters...
and I'm the only one that hasn't been hunting.
[laughs]
Hey good morning!
- Hey, Ralston?
- Yes, sir, are you Justin?
And my middle name is Hunter, ironically enough.
- JUSTIN: Welcome to Inks Lake.
- My dad used to hunt but when I was about 10-years-old,
he quit.
So, for the last 21 years,
no one in my immediate family has ever hunted.
So, I said, I want to finally break that cycle,
so I found this through the Parks and Wildlife
and signed up for it.
- JUSTIN: This mentor hunting program is for adults.
We have lots of youth hunting programs around the state.
Our own Texas Youth Hunting program takes lots of kids
hunting but there just aren't many opportunities for adults.
So, this is an opportunity for them to come out,
take part in a hunt, learn from experienced hunters
and be able to take those skills back to their
friends and families so they can go hunting.
- RALSTON: Prior to today, no one had ever shot a deer.
We're all newbies.
One guy is an electrical engineer.
I work in health care, obviously, as a paramedic.
Another guy, can't remember what he does, he's from Egypt.
So, I think it's a wide range of backgrounds and applications.
- KRISTIN RODGERS: What a beautiful tree.
Wow!
- RALSTON: Yea, we had Kristin out here.
She went out on a hunt with a guide and, from what
I understand, she doesn't even come from a hunting background.
But it was pretty cool to see her get out here
and try something new.
[Kristin laughs]
- MENTOR: We are hot on the right!
[shot fired]
- We just took the participants through some hunter education
activities including live firing exercises.
They all sighted in their firearms which is one of those
things that every hunter needs to do responsibly before a hunt.
We had some fun just shooting .22s and getting familiar
with other types of firearms.
[shot]
- RALSTON: The first day we went over kind of the
ethics of hunting.
When to shoot, when not to shoot.
- MENTOR: We wouldn't want to shoot at that,
that's a ricochet shot.
- RALSTON: You know the actual shooting or harvesting of the
deer is probably one percent of the hunt.
- If all the teeth were worn out, of course, it'd be
seven and half, eight and a half in the wild.
- RALSTON: What you do afterwards, aging it,
feeling their teeth, kind of, figuring out how old the deer is
and then the process of cleaning it and processing it.
[bubbling]
- JESSE: It's real fatty.
I think it was eating some pecans.
- JUSTIN: Jesse Griffiths is a very well-known Austin
wild game chef and volunteered his time
and came out, cooked dinner for us,
then gave us a butchery demo yesterday.
- JESSE: It's fat.
It has very little flavor
and you can just use it to wrap things in.
And then when you grill it,
that thing just shrinks up around it and gets crispy.
- JESSE: So, we've got some wild boar carnitas, some beans,
tortillas and there's two different salsas over there,
both of them are probably pretty spicy.
- KRISTIN: Did he get a buck?
- I'm very excited.
Very proud.
Got my first deer and it was great.
[owl hoots]
[deer feeder throwing feed]
- RALSTON: The biggest thing before taking the shot
was my adrenaline started pumping and at one point,
I looked over and I told Justin,
"My heart is racing," and he goes,
"Alright, we'll just hang out for a second, slow down."
- Ok, she's broadside.
Whenever you got a good shot, go ahead and take it.
[shot]
- Got her.
- Good shot man, great shot.
- Had I gone hunting with my uncle or cousin,
I'm sure I could have maybe gotten a deer,
but I don't think I would have learned nearly as much
after the shot or before the shot as I did here.
[uplifting music]
Who should take a mentored hunt?
People who are self-reliant, resourceful, and want to know
where their meat comes from.
And not just trust an FDA stamp at a supermarket.
- BRYAN JONES: The organic food movement, I mean there's
nothing more organic than harvesting your own animal
out in the wild on public property.
There's a large group of people,
especially in that millennial age group,
somewhere between 25 to 40 that in an increasingly
urbanized United States and Texas especially,
that just doesn't have that ability to go out somewhere,
they don't know people.
There's a huge market for it and it's a necessary market
to help get them involved because they can be the
next set of volunteers and just renew that cycle over.
- After completing hunter education,
getting a hunting license,
it's time to show up here.
The only other piece of paper they have to have
is a mentored hunting permit.
- So, you went down this way?
- JUSTIN: I consider this a pretty great life skill to be
able to go and provide meat for your family
and now they've got that skill
and they can take that and teach it to their kid
and pass it on.
- I'm going to take my kids.
My daughter really wants to.
She would be,
she would probably push me out of the way to do all of this.
She's 15.
[laughs]
- MAN: Mentors, if you could stand behind.
- CECILIA: Or the Dementors if you're a Harry Potter fan.
- KAREN: One, two, three...
- GROUP: Backstrap.
[laughter]
- RALSTON: I just sent my father a picture saying "Hey,"
because I used his gun
to kind of keep the family tradition alive.
He's really happy.
He told me, he said,
"Alright, I'm expect deer meat for Christmas presents."
[laughs]
- It was great.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a deer on my side
but had an amazing mentor who just basically walked me
through every step of it, the staff here was great.
It was quite an experience.
It was something that you know if anybody else out there
really wanted to do, I would highly recommend it.
It took the scary away from hunting.
It took kind of, the unknown.
Sometimes we fear things that we don't know
and we aren't really too knowledgeable about
and, for me, it kind of gave me that knowledge
to make me a little more comfortable, I guess.
[uplifting music]
- JUSTIN: That's the best part of it, right there.
- Thank you very much.
- You bet, it was a pleasure.
The pleasure is mine.
I'll see you back one day.
- JUSTIN: Yea, definitely.
- Yea!
Awesome!
- RALSTON: I've gone back and done deer hunting.
I harvested a deer this past hunting season with a bow.
And then, I've also gotten big into duck hunting.
I've made deer chili for her in the crock pot
and she said it was amazing.
Said it was the best chili she's ever had.
- NARRATOR: This project was funded in part by a grant
from the Wildlife Restoration Program.