Why I Left Business for the Outdoor Life
Twenty-five years ago I dreamed of an outdoor brand called Lyman Outdoors. I even made hats for it. I never had the courage to go for it. Maybe I worried about what family and friends would say, or about being on camera.
Instead I went the business route. I worked at the mill and became a millwright, helped my dad get going in the car business, and over the years ended up with nine partners, five or six businesses and sometimes 40 to 60 employees. Business opened a lot of doors and I met great people. But every single payday I was thinking about making sure the money was there for the guys, and over the years it wore me out. I sacrificed a lot of family time to late nights, travel and work trips.
I became a weekend warrior, and sometimes not even that. Work got in the way of hunting trips, and when it was cold out I'd stay in my warm, comfortable spot. I got out of shape. I started living a life of quiet desperation, knowing my most capable years for this kind of thing were half over.
COVID was the eye-opener. The lockdowns, the business closures and not being able to watch my kid practise at the rink pushed me to a breaking point. At the end of the day I want to make the best decisions for my family. It takes a day to open a business and a long time to get out of one. I started that process about two years ago, and it was hard on the mind as much as anything.
Now the job is figuring out how to make a living outdoors. There's no paycheque every second Friday. I want to eat what I kill: build things myself, do the work, and keep what they earn.
The revenue streams I'm working on
Trapping, using the whole animal: fur, castors, skulls and the carcass.
Writing, starting on Substack to get my feet wet again.
Trapline tours, bringing people out to experience the line.
Foraging, mushrooms, chaga and fiddleheads in season.
Outdoor education, for youth whose parents want them learning survival, trapping and fishing.
Videos and this podcast, documenting all of it.
Money per hour doesn't mean much in this life. It's about how many revenue streams I can get going in things that actually resonate with me. My focus is hunting, fishing, trapping, exploring and seeking truth. Over the last five years my faith has come back too, which is a wonderful thing.
I also opened this episode with the string of grizzly attacks around BC this fall, including two hikers mauled about an hour from me. In my opinion, closing the grizzly hunt wasn't based on science. Now conservation officers are killing problem bears that hunters would pay to harvest.
New episodes drop every Tuesday on the Wild Ways Podcast. Want the story from the trapline every week? The Trapline Report is one email a week from the bush.
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