(upbeat country music) (upbeat country music fades) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey, and I've got an antler in my way.

We'll do it this way.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

Yes, I'm also a certified licensed Illinois whitetail deer outfitter, which we don't talk too much here on "A Shot of Ag," but it is one of my passions.

And that brings us to our guest today, Curtis Geier.

How you doing Curtis?

- I'm doing good, man, thanks for having me.

- Yeah, this is quite the, what do you call it?

- Well, it's a little over the top, I know, but it's like the real version replica of our logo.

- Yeah.

- So the guy that- - This doesn't work though, huh?

- No, it'd be cool if it did, but I think I'd poke myself in the eye in studio trying to talk into it, but.

- Really, if you were gonna do this though, why didn't you, yeah you should have wired that up.

- So, this was a surprise from the guys at Classic Racks Co. And they do like printed replicas.

(bell dings) - Unsolicited plug.

- Oh, give 'em credit for the nice gift they gave me.

- Oh yeah, I would, if they wanted to give somebody else a gift.

- I'm trying to help us both out here, man.

But this is a gift from the Illinois Deer Classic that they surprised us with, so pretty- - Not to get too hung up on this, but this is a 3D printed.

- I guess yeah, it's some sort of 3D printed replica, and they do replicas for other people's antlers and stuff like that, so.

- So if you shoot a buck, you take measurements or pictures.

- Or they scan it.

They 3D scan it.

- Really?

- And then they have captured and then they have big printers that print 'em out.

And then custom paint 'em.

- I know you can't see this really too well on TV, but it looks, this looks like something that you would find out in the woods.

- Yeah, it's like if a deer grew our logo, is what it is.

- A very mutated deer that had a microphone.

- A little different.

- Coming outta the brow tine.

- A little different, but it works, right?

- You're from New Windsor?

- New Windsor, Illinois, yeah.

- Tell people where that is at.

- We're between Galesburg, Illinois and the Quad City is just south of Moline, Illinois.

- Okay.

- So, yep.

- [Rob] How long of a drive to here, Peoria?

- A little less than an hour.

- Okay.

- About an hour.

- That's where I met you was at the whatever farm, deer.

- Yeah, Illinois Deer Classic.

- Do you guys go to that every year?

- Yep, yeah we do all, basically all the Midwest deer shows that we can.

We hit back to back consumer shows, during our show season and kind of get brand exposure that way.

- You are a podcaster.

- Yep.

It sounds lame nowadays, I feel like.

- It's embarrassing, really.

- It kind of is, really now.

It's like I gotta think of a better way to tell people what I do for a living.

- I know, it's kinda like it used to be, oh, I have a blog.

- Right, yeah.

No one wants to be called a blogger, really, yeah.

- It's sad, but you've been doing it since 2015.

- Yeah.

- I didn't even know podcasts that was like at the very start.

- Yeah, it was, so I had just got into like, listening to podcasts just before, and I looked up some hunting podcasts and there wasn't really many available that I felt related to me, so I was like, it'd be kind of fun to start one and just dove into it.

- Yeah, you know, originally our podcast was going to be a hunting podcast.

- Oh really?

- We had a hunter come in, Carrie Zylka from Wisconsin, and she was doing the "Hunt, Travel, Fish" "Hunt, Fish, Travel" podcast.

- I think I've done her show actually.

- Have you?

- Yeah.

- And the more she was talking about, I'm like, this is great because I've got a notebook of funny hunting stories, and I pulled in some hunters.

We recorded it.

- Yeah.

- And if you were there when they were hunting and you knew the people, it's the funniest half hour you've ever heard in your life, if you don't know them and you weren't there, it's the biggest waste of time you've ever.

- Yeah.

- How do you do that?

Because it's funny if you know the people, but.

- Yeah, we're just, we're comfortable man with like, everyone, we just have fun conversating, so it's just natural.

- How many people are involved?

- So me, Eric and Doug Schmidt are the main three, and we have two extras, Ross Bigger, Austin Chandler.

They're not on as often, but it's always me, Eric Hamann and Doug Schmidt, we're the main crew of "Working Class Bow Hunter".

- And is this your main gig?

- Yeah, I do this full-time.

I've done it full-time for just over a year.

- Isn't that something?

- It's amazing, actually.

- What did you do?

- So before this I worked at John Deere actually, I worked at product development for Deere.

(bell dings) - It's a fine company.

Make fine equipment.

- Yeah.

(Rob laughs) - It's no Gleaner, but.

- Oh God, okay.

This interview just got a lot more fun.

- I'm getting him fired up.

Yeah, the blue glass.

- Did you think when you started this thing that it could be eventually my main source of income?

- No.

No.

I didn't really.

It was more just like a fun side project thing to do, 'cause I loved hunting so much, and then after doing a couple hundred episodes, it started to gain some traction and some interest from companies and partnerships.

And so I started to realize after a few years of how there could be something here, there's a way to make money.

So, but not at first, definitely not.

- Yeah but you, you had no playbook.

- No.

- Really when you talk to a company, it was like, how much do I charge for podcast advertising?

How'd you figure that all out?

- So I was fortunate enough to meet a guy named Chase Rosson, who owns a big marketing company in the outdoor industry, and he contacted me first.

He was like our first big like, he gave us our chance in the outdoor industry.

He's like, "Hey man, I have some ideas, some brands I work with, how do you guys structure it?"

And at the time, we didn't have a structure, so I'm like, "I don't know, can you help me put something together?"

So he's kind of been like my main mentor and help structure like how we do our ad pricing, and our partnership deals, and how to monetize it.

really in the best official way of possible.

And we've kind of just molded our own program for it.

And it's done well for us.

- The name of the podcast?

- "Working Class Bow Hunter" podcast.

- Okay, and that's, you do two, right?

- So we do "Working Class Bow Hunter" podcast, which launches every Thursday.

And we do do "Working Class" on DeerCast, which is a clean version of our show.

And that launches on everywhere, all podcast platforms, but also launches on Drury Outdoors DeerCast.

- How did you line that?

That's a big name in hunting.

- So I think where the Drury Outdoor connection started for us, Chase is good friends with the Drurys, and they did a farm giveaway to promote DeerCast.

When DeerCast launched.

- They gave away a farm?

- They gave away a farm to promote DeerCast and get it kicked off the ground.

- How big of a farm?

- A 40 acre farm.

- Holy cow!

- In Missouri.

- Woo.

- So we were the first show when they announced their giveaway to promote the farm giveaway, we're the first like media coverage.

And we got to meet Drury on another level by doing that, helping promote the farm giveaway and DeerCast.

And it kind of just rolled into a friendship with me and Mark Drury, and we got to talking and he's like, "Hey, why aren't we not doing something in a partnership way for DeerCast?"

- It's because you're naughty.

- We're naughty.

- You cuss.

- We cuss, but the the cool thing is like, it'd be weird if they started cussing on their show.

- Yeah.

- So it's a way for them, from my perspective, for them to tap into like the working class listener, which I think is the majority of people that listen to podcasts.

- So basically the one you do with Drury though, it's tamed down.

- It's clean, yeah.

- Is it PG or PG-13?

- It can be PG-13.

We're pretty good about it.

- Okay.

- It's hard to go, like, it's complete opposite of what our normal show is.

- Is it hard to be laying f-bombs everywhere and all of a sudden you can't?

- I've slipped up for sure.

- Well, you can beep it out.

It's not live is it?

- No, I put Turkey gobbles over the other cuss words, which makes it more fun, you know?

(both laughing) I guess it works.

- That had to be, I mean, because all of a sudden, and I can kind of relate, I hope I can relate.

It's like you're doing this thing, you don't really even know if it's making a difference, and all of a sudden someone that you respect says, "Hey, I wanna work with you."

That had to feel really well.

- Well, yeah I mean, the Drurys are like my childhood heroes, you know what I mean?

I looked up to them growing up.

That's how I got motivated to go hunting when I was a kid, is I watched all their videos and was just, you know, the biggest fan ever of 'em.

And then once I started to become friends with Mark, like Mark would call me or FaceTime me, and my wife always used to be like, "12 year old Curt is freaking out right now."

And I'm like, yeah, for sure.

I still freak out about it, honestly.

So it's pretty crazy.

- Yeah, were you all into hunting before you started this?

- Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I've hunted since I was a kid.

And that's really, you know, I went through the phase, I think where most kids that are passionate, like, do I want to film hunts?

What do I want to do to like, make it more, take the hobby a step further, I guess.

And I was fortunate enough to fall into podcasting, I think, at the right time for our industry.

- Well, don't you think that helps?

I mean, you gotta be passionate about what you're talking about or else people can tell.

- Yeah, I think, you know, especially with our show, some of our episodes are 3 hours long and it's hard to like fake it for that long, you know what I mean?

- It's hard to do anything for 3 hours.

- It's hard, yeah.

(both laughing) - What's the biggest buck you've shot?

- I shot a 167, 2 years ago.

- Yeah.

It's funny, I've shot a 168.

- You gotta one up me, don't you?

(Rob laughs) I got eyes on a bigger one, then I'll come back and one up you back next time.

I'll have you on my show and then I'll talk about all the stuff that I've killed that you haven't, and we'll go from there.

- No, I'm an outfitter.

I've never claimed to be a good hunter.

But for real quick if people don't understand what you just said, most people look at this and go, well it's an eight point buck, what are they talking about 160?

Give the quick rundown.

- Yeah, so another fun, I guess this would be a fun fact I should have given you, I am an official measurer, so I forget about it though, you know, it's just part of my, it's what I do, I don't know.

So yeah, you measure, you basically measure the G1, the G2, G3, the main beams, four mass measurements, inside spread, and that comes out to a score.

- Yeah.

- So.

- And there's a lot of other goofy rules too.

Like if it's too close together or what all this stuff.

- Yeah different like, you know, your spread can't be longer than your beams.

and stuff like that, so.

- Do you just go green score?

That's what we do.

- Yeah because nets are for fishing, like everybody says, you know?

- Yeah, oh, that's funny, I've never heard that.

- You never heard?

Yeah you have.

- No actually I haven't.

- You've never heard nets are for fishing?

- No.

- Oh man.

Well yeah, that's how we operate.

- Now I feel silly.

- (laughs) Sorry.

- You guys are doing good, you've actually won an award.

Tell me about the Golden Arrow.

- Yeah, so the Golden Arrow Awards is like a fan voted outdoor industry podcast award.

And yeah, we won.

They voted and we won the Golden Arrow Award, which the award is not a golden arrow, like you pointed out, you know?

- Oh, it's not.

- No.

Which is weird, right?

- What is it?

- It's like a, they gave us like a glass engraved thing, which it's cool, but it could be better.

- Yeah, but that doesn't bring much when you go to sell it on eBay.

- Right, yeah.

How am I supposed to?

Yeah.

Nothing going on there.

- I mean, it's gotta feel good though that that isn't like an award, a lot of times these awards are given by whatever the association of Outdoor Broadcasters.

And it's voted by like a few people that are gonna give it to their friends.

You guys actually won from your fans.

- Yeah and you know, if it was like an industry, like an outdoor industry inside thing, like picked by the industry, I really don't know how much traction we would have.

Even though we have a lot of listeners and a lot of backing behind our show, we don't fit the industry norm.

Because of how we talk.

And we're just who we are, we're not putting anything on when we hit the record button, so.

And I think that's uncomfortable for a lot of the industry.

- Yeah, you guys have your own studio?

- Yeah we were fortunate enough to buy a building in downtown New Windsor.

It was a hair salon and we renovated it to make it into a recording studio.

- Is that so you could have Wi-Fi?

- Well, yeah, yeah, you need Wi-Fi, but we actually had to frame in a studio in the building because the ceilings were so high.

- Does it still smell like perms in there and that?

- No, it don't, we took everything out.

Where the wet, like the wash bowls were, we put a wet bar there and then we put all natural, like cedar and stuff in it.

So it smells like a hamster cage and whiskey.

That's pretty much- - Do the people in New Windsor know what you're doing?

- So at first we, I was kind of like, I wanted to make, I don't know.

I was worried that I didn't want anyone really knowing.

I was like sort of, not bashful about it, but didn't want anybody in our business.

So we had no sign, we tinted out the window so he couldn't see.

And then I kind of, the mayor is actually a listener, and so he kind of heard about it in some like, City Hall meetings that people were excited about it.

So then I kind of got more comfortable after about a year being there, we put a sign up, and now we're pretty open about it.

- Do you bring people in, Skype?

How do you do it?

- We try to do every guest in studio.

We have, I'm pretty sure we have more in studio guests than any other outdoor industry podcast.

- That's tough.

- It's tough.

- Get people there.

- We have a bedroom there, when people come in, we try to make like a camp feel out of it, you know, where you can come and stay and it's comfortable and nice.

- Do you give massages?

- Not yet, we're working, we're gonna hire somebody for that.

(Rob laughs) We're working on that part of it.

- Yeah, I mean, do you get people from all over the country though?

- Yeah, we had guys fly in from Oregon.

We had our PH from South Africa, he flew in.

- The PH?

- Yeah, professional hunter.

So they're, it's the guide over there, but they like to be called PHs.

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah, so he flew in, did a podcast with us to talk about Africa, and why you hunt and where the meat goes and stuff like that.

- That's a touchy one.

I mean, you talk about hunting in Africa, you talk about people getting.

- They get weird fast.

- They get a little upset.

- They get weird fast.

But, you know, it's just a misunderstanding of how it works over there.

- Why is that?

- Well, people think that it's just like, you know, people they think just trophy hunting, and people don't understand that trophy hunting is selective hunting.

And selective hunting is shooting mature animals, animals that have lived the majority of their life, that are as big as they're gonna be.

And then over there you donate all the meat.

So you donate to schools, to orphanages, to tribes.

It all goes to a good cause, all of it gets donated.

And I think people just think the meat goes to waste.

'Cause they know you can't ship all the meat back.

So I think it's hard for people to wrap their head around that it's actually, you know, South Africa needs hunting.

It's really, it's one of the few things that keeps things operating over there.

It's what keeps the animals there.

- Well let's talk about Illinois.

I mean, do you eat what you shoot here?

- Oh, everything.

I've never bought a pound of ground beef in my life.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- A restaurant, you know, is different but you know, for home, I've never bought a pound of ground beef.

- Do you eat the heart too?

- Yeah we do actually.

- We eat one a year, 'cause it's- - It's like a treat.

- That's about enough.

- Really, you don't like it?

- It's good, but it's like, okay, we ate one already.

- Oh, I love it.

Salt, garlic salt, fried with onions.

- We do it with, we heavily pepper.

- Oh yeah, okay.

- Yeah, but like I said, about one a year.

- I love it, yeah.

And the kids like it too surprisingly, but.

- You and I have both been outdoors, we know what happens when you don't hunt.

I mean it's, nature's gonna take care of itself.

- Oh yeah, for sure.

- I know there's, don't email me on this, 'cause I really don't care.

You get too much population, we've seen what happened with bluetongue.

I know there's no correlation scientifically, whatever, nature takes care of itself.

- Yeah.

- I mean it's hard to explain that to someone who really just likes to watch deer.

- Yeah, I mean, it's hard for people to wrap their head around that.

Most hunters, I think most hunters that are in it, the way we're into it, where we really care about like not a deer, but deer.

It's hard for them to really understand that, I guarantee I care about deer, more than a non-hunter cares about deer.

Like there's no question.

My life is surrounded and dedicated to the whitetail deer.

- Yeah.

- So, and it might not make sense to some people, but you know, there's a structure and you have to, you know, we're not trying to shoot all the deer.

Typically we're trying to shoot one deer.

- Yeah, and there's, I mean believe me there's, for people at home there's a whole argument within the hunting community what you do shoot, what you don't shoot.

- Yeah.

- It's hard to pass up a deer like this because he'll be bigger next year and then he goes over to the neighbor and this is a trophy of a lifetime for a neighbor.

I mean, what do you say?

- It's just part of it man, you know?

In our community, a lot of us shoot what makes you happy.

But I think it's the trend of trying to shoot more mature animals is catching on more and more.

Bigger deer are usually more interesting.

It's better to shoot bigger deer than to shoot fawns, obviously not shooting fawns, but younger deer.

2-year-old deer.

It's just cooler to see antlers grow too, and that's always part of that.

- There is that desire to like kind of be in the club and sometimes a person has to maybe go through some 120s before they realize what a 120 is and what it can become.

- Yeah, I call that climbing the ladder of bow hunting.

You know.

- Oh you're good.

You got all the- - Well yeah 'cause I went through it.

- Yeah, so did I.

- You know when I was a kid, you know I shot a couple 120s, for a kid, that's great.

You know, it's a great thing to get somebody younger into it.

But as I got older, I got more into the chase and the fun of putting the puzzle together, than I am just shooting deer just for the sake of shooting deer.

- Yeah, and I don't think a lot of people understand too, there are target bucks.

- Yeah.

- They're the ones you were definitely after and you're gonna let a very nice buck walk, because you know there's a bigger one.

The cameras help quite a bit with that?

- Yeah they help, they help 'cause you can monitor the deer.

You can study like what the age class is of a certain deer, you know, and that's really my big thing.

Antlers are always a bonus, but age class, you know, if you can shoot, you know, a buck can be 5, 6 and 1/2, but have 120 inch rack still.

And you can just tell I mean that's a perfect deer to shoot, I think, you know.

- Well and the people that think that you have these satellite cameras, cellular cameras.

Oh you see the deer out there, they send you a picture on your phone, you can go out and shoot it.

That is not how it works.

- Well it's weird, I'm not just sitting at home in my living room fully dressed in camo with bow in hand waiting for my phone to go off so I can hurry up and run out and shoot one, it never works out that way.

- Yeah.

- You know, I think the benefit for a cell cam more than that is getting the data in real time for what the conditions are and why the deer's doing that when he is doing it.

- Exactly, plus you can see the poachers.

- That helps, I mean it's great for trespassing too.

- It literally is.

I mean it probably, I mean I've been an outfitter for 24 years.

I think the cellular cameras have deterred the trespassers more than anything.

- Well yeah, I mean, who wants to go walk on a property, or even like mushroom hunting on a property when you know there's cell cams on every corner of the piece and you're gonna get outed, so.

- You can put that stuff up on Facebook too, really.

- You can call somebody up pretty easily nowadays.

(Rob laughs) - Well, what are you hoping this podcast evolves into?

- I'm loving the way it's going.

I mean, we got a bunch of ideas.

We just acquired a firearm podcast that we started to kind of tap into that side of things.

'Cause we're mostly just bow hunting.

- You like bought one?

- Well, we started it, yeah.

So we have a host that runs it for us.

But yeah, "Working Class Bow Hunter" owns it.

It's called "The Victory Drive".

- [Rob] Really?

Yeah.

We have a host Jacob Johnson.

He's a army vet who runs it.

- So you're getting to be like a podcasting admiral.

- I'll take that.

Yeah I like that.

- Well, I mean, you are, you're gonna have, I don't know, it is it like a whole network?

- Kinda yeah, just kinda like shows that it's like, we own 'em, it's like it's got our stamp of approval on 'em.

- Gotcha.

- We have a fishing one, coming, actually we haven't really announced that anywhere.

So this is like an exclusive drop.

(bell sings) There it is.

And that's called "Tackling Tacos".

So they're gonna eat a taco.

- It is not.

- Yeah.

A new taco every week, and a new fishing conversation every week.

- Oh, I thought you were being naughty again.

- No, come on.

(Rob laughs) I'm not naughty, man.

I'm a good guy.

- I've listened to your podcast.

I mean, it honestly, it's like I'm sitting in my hunting lodge listening to the guys.

- That's the goal.

- Yeah.

- And it's not like we have to be like, all right, hit the button.

All right, now turn on your hunting camp voice.

It's just, we're just doing what we're doing.

- But that, it annoys me a little bit.

I know it shouldn't, but it annoys me a little bit when people say, oh, you know, if we just set up a microphone in our lodge or our camp, then it'd be the best podcast, it doesn't, it takes work.

- You still have a job to do.

Like, you still have to navigate it.

So it's not just like reckless abandon on every, sometimes it is, and that's kind of fun every now and again, but you still have a job to do.

You still have to navigate conversation and do it like there's actually gonna be people listening.

'Cause if you didn't, no one would know what was going on.

- Yeah, any venture into the video side of it?

- That's a question that keeps coming up when we do the consumer shows and we're- - And unfortunately you have that whole thing to deal with.

- My face.

This is tough.

- Yeah.

- It's a tough look.

But you know what- - I overcame it.

- We can put the camera behind me and just film the back of my head and then that's it.

That's why we have, what do they say?

Face for radio.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

(Rob laughs) - But it seems these days it's kind of the next logical step.

- There's just so much of it.

- Yeah.

- Like we hit podcasts at the right time, like we were one of the first, I feel like we pioneered the modern hunting podcast now.

Like I feel confident in saying that.

If you jump into video now, everyone's trying to do it.

- If people wanna find you, where do they go?

Social media, Internet?

- Yeah, WorkingClassBowHunter.com, "Working Class Bow Hunter" podcast.

Anywhere you find podcasts and Drury Outdoors DeerCast.

- For the youngins, they probably want the Drury, right?

- Yeah, and that series is still available on our normal, like Spotify feed, you can still find that there, but everything else is there as well.

But every Monday on Drury Outdoors DeerCast we're there.

- Again, that's super cool that you were able to- - It's a dream come true.

It really is.

- Is it?

- Yeah, it is.

- We all grew up watching the TV shows and the videos.

That was the one you watched?

- Oh yeah.

I mean, you know, Mark is my hero.

Mark and Terry.

- Yeah.

- And to be able to just have a normal phone conversation with Mark just about, "Hey, how's the show doing?"

I think about it every day, how lucky we are.

- Do you?

- I really do.

- Well, for one of our advertisers, Ag Leader, (bell dings) we interviewed Lee Lukowski, and after an hour talking to him, I'm like, I would never work that hard.

The amount of work you guys put into hunting and that is unreal.

- It's crazy.

You know, and Mark's the same way, like those guys never stop.

- Yeah.

- You know what they think that they hunt for a living.

And I always say nobody hunts for a living.

- Do you have a hard time finding a spot to hunt?

- I was just lucky enough to buy a 40 acre farm, my wife did.

- Whew that podcasting.

- Yeah, it's taken off.

(Rob laughs) But yeah, so I'm fortunate there, but I do a lot of work for farmers to gain permission peace, like a permission access, or trespass fee or whatever you call it.

- Okay that could be a whole new show.

Unfortunately, we do not have enough time.

Curtis Geier, go check him out.

Congratulations on all your success.

- Thank you.

- It is not easy to do what you guys have done, and I can tell you firsthand, I truly understand the success that you have and well deserved.

- Thank you.

- So Curtis, thank you very much, everybody else, we'll catch you next time.