EP #16 – Where Hunting Meets Heart  |  Curt Yoder, Brian Yoder, Mark Schlabach  |  Plain Values

Mark Schlabach:

We were looking, and the only place was up under the car, onto the frame. So he gets it hooked. And I’m ratcheting, ratcheting, and we get it tight. And it’s the famous one more. One more. And when I went one more, the roof caved in.

Curt Yoder:

The kid was praying for a deer. He was in his blind praying that he could see a deer, and a deer came in. He ends up, he made a shot on this deer that the arrow, when he released it, it hit the side of the blind. It hit the side of the blind first ricocheted, and the deer was standing behind a, there was a log in front of the deer, it hit the side of the blind, ricocheted off the log and into the deer, and

Marlin Miller:

Killed it and killed it. Just a bit ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with old high school classmates, Brian Yoder and Mark Slabaugh, and Seth, who is our production guru, Seth’s father, Kurt Yoder was here as well. And the four of us guys had a little reunion as it were, and it was a great couple hour chance to reconnect and talk about what they are doing as part of the whitetail heritage of Ohio team. Guys. The work that the Whitetail Heritage folks are doing absolutely just blows my mind. As you know, we have a few kids with some special needs. I have many, many friends who have family members with special needs. And oftentimes, those of us that have family or children with special needs, long for an opportunity to have our child or children be included in something and be given an opportunity that they don’t typically have on their own.

And Mark and Brian and Kurt are part of a team that is bringing kids like ours, a chance to hunt deer, be made much of, and be treated like royalty For just a wonderful day, guys, you are going to love this conversation. We laugh. Our back ends off more than once. It is absolutely a joy to introduce you to my friends, mark and Brian and Kurt from now until Christmas. Homestead Living has a wonderful gift guide online. You can find **@*************ng.com. You’ll find the link in the notes below. We have a handful of great companies, great products. Another partner is Irish Eyes. They are a family owned organic seed farm with a focus on high quality non GMO seeds, especially. They’re especially strong in garlic and potatoes. They have a wide selection of veggies and flowers and herbs as well. And right now, if you go to Irish Eyes Garden seeds.com and join their newsletter, they will knock off 15%. Well, guys, you have no idea. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Let me run through a little bit of who we have here, because this is like a stinking, it’s like a reunion in a way for you. For me. It is. Because Brian, you and I were neighbors

Brian Yoder:

And

Marlin Miller:

In the same class in high school.

Brian Yoder:

Absolutely.

Marlin Miller:

Class of 95. And all of your brothers, I mean, you’re the youngest of 35.

Brian Yoder:

Not quite. There was actually nine of us in the family, but only one girl. So

Marlin Miller:

Yeah,

Brian Yoder:

I’m the youngest of the boys, so

Marlin Miller:

That’s so cool. Mark, your dad and my dad, I think worked together for a while out for Holmes’s Limestone, and then we were also in the same class. Same class, same exact class. And I don’t think I’ve seen you for, it’s been a long, long time.

Mark Schlabach:

A few times down at Tourist Trione maybe, but other than that, it’s been, yeah,

Marlin Miller:

That’s right. Yeah, 20,

Mark Schlabach:

30 years.

Marlin Miller:

And then obviously Kurt, you are here all the time, which is awesome. I say all the time, tongue in cheek, but you’re here for porch time a lot, obviously. Yeah. Like your son, Seth is our graphic artist and production guru here. So yeah, I mean, you and I have gotten into each other for,

Curt Yoder:

We have

Marlin Miller:

For a long time

Curt Yoder:

Have, yeah,

Marlin Miller:

We are here because of the whitetail heritage of Ohio, which I think is really, really, it’s a pretty incredible thing that you guys do. How long has the Whitetail Heritage thing actually been going and what do you guys all do?

Curt Yoder:

Yeah, so Whitetail Heritage has only been going, what, five years? Six years? I should probably know this history a little bit better, but it stems back a lot further than that when we were the East Central Ohio branch of the Quality Deer Management Association. And that was back in 2006, seven, somewhere, right around there. And it was a branch that Quality Deer Management, QDMA association, they were out of Georgia, that’s where their headquarters were. They had branches all across the United States, and we were one of those branches. I was not involved in setting up that branch locally. That was a few other guys. I think it was Tim Lame and maybe Eric Long that did that. I came on soon after that. And every year we did with that, the branches were asked to do an annual hunt. And so your hunt was an educational thing you were supposed to do with people with the public or with the community or whatever.

And so Whitetail Heritage, yeah, Whitetail Heritage then blossomed out of that. So Fast Forward had, this is 2025, so it was 2019, I think. And we had got to the point where because of the hunt, the community was getting so involved. And I’ll tell you what, these two guys right here, Brian and Mark, when you guys came on the board, these guys brought a passion and an energy to our board there at, which is now Whitetail Heritage. But you guys brought a passion and energy for this annual hunt of reaching out and providing opportunity to handicaps and first time hunters. Because when we looked at the overall, what all was happening with that chapter, that Quality Deer Management Association chapter, that was the driver. The hunt was the driver. That’s what brought the support. That’s what brought the excitement. That’s what brought the interest and Quality Deer Management Association had a lot.

We focused on educating about managing deer locally with hunting co-ops and some of us, and part of Whitetail Heritage still does that, but there’s all kinds of research a person can do about what the QDMA was. Well, anyhow, a lot of, so most of our money had to go to the headquarters that we raised. Well, as this thing started to grow, and it really started to grow in size, when Mark and Brian came on our board, I mean, you start growing with the size, the money that’s raised becomes all at once. It’s we’re looking at each other as board members and we’re like, what are we doing? What can we do with this money that we’ve raised? Because all once we had money that we didn’t have before. And

Marlin Miller:

Can I pause you for a second? Yeah. Was that money that you guys were raising, was it for the hunt for the kids that were handicapped, or was it just for the organization in general?

Curt Yoder:

Okay, so we got to keep a roughly 10%, I think, of what we raised to decide how we wanted to use it locally, whether it was for educational programs, the hunt that we did, et cetera. The hunt that started, it started with what, five to seven kids? Something maybe even

Mark Schlabach:

Less. When I came on in 2012, we had four,

Curt Yoder:

Four kids, and it started down on Dave Hirschberger, the Hillcrest Lumber Farm. Everybody went on one farm. And so that was happening. And then your educational part of the chapter was happening. So 90% of what we raised went to headquarters, and you never see it again. Now, it wasn’t all a bad mission, what they were doing. They were doing some good stuff, but it’s like when you get locals supporting something and you ship that money out of town and you never hear about it again. And

Mark Schlabach:

I don’t think the public understood either and understood where the money was going. So the giving wasn’t there. And when, I mean giving as far as the support until we formed our own, but

Curt Yoder:

Exactly.

Mark Schlabach:

Nobody knew it was going to that organization, but what we were trying to use it for, I mean, we were left with very, very little to try to do something with.

Curt Yoder:

Yeah. Well, and then as that grew, we came to a deciding point of, okay, we either, what are we going to do with this? And there’s no reason. I mean, we have enough people on our board that have some kind of experience with not-profit organizations that it’s like, why don’t we set up our own thing? And that way we can keep all that money local. And that’s what we did. QDMA went through their own whatever, and they actually merged with another company and don’t do banquets like that anymore. But at that point, we were their second largest, I think Ban we’re the largest, largest, largest banquet in their organization

Mark Schlabach:

In the nation.

Curt Yoder:

But it was growing because of the hunt that was happening, and that was expanding. It was the best thing we ever did was pull out of that and keep the money local. And then that’s what gave us the resources then to grow that hunt. But these two guys right here, you got your questions, but I’m excited today about hearing how that passion came to happen for you guys coming on board.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I know you a lot better than I know them. And if you don’t mind, that’s where I want to go. Oh, absolutely.

Brian Yoder:

Before we go there, I’m going to piggyback off of what Kurt was saying on why we left is a lot of our supporters actually came to us and said, Hey, we don’t know that we can keep supporting you if the money keeps going out of town.

They came to us, said, it’s hard for us to keep supporting you. Yes, we love what you do, but you’re sending all the profits and the proceeds are all going out of town, and they’re not coming back in here. So that’s when we all got together and we said, you know what? We’re going to lose support if we don’t make a change. And now, like he said, we keep that money. It all stays local and it’s used through the local supporters. It gets turned back into what they’re supporting us, and they get a benefit out of

Marlin Miller:

It. Well, so other than going to high school together, which is, I mean, almost 30 years ago, don’t

Brian Yoder:

Give our age away.

Marlin Miller:

So let’s talk about your childhoods. I mean, did you guys, you’ve got one brother? Yep. No sisters? Nope. One brother

Mark Schlabach:

Ryan. Did you guys, sorry,

Marlin Miller:

I said I got a younger brother, Ryan.

Mark Schlabach:

Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

Did you guys live to hunt? Is that all you guys did as kids?

Mark Schlabach:

No, actually, I went along with my dad and my grandpa Sally. He was the one, him and my dad were the one that got me into it, and I’d go out gun season with them. I wasn’t even into bow hunting or any of that. It was the time to spend with them. So I looked forward to that every year, but I didn’t start doing that until I was probably eight or nine, started going with them. And then that passion took off from there. So I mean, it was at a young age, but I went with him. I didn’t hunt myself. I didn’t start hunting, actually. I started bow hunting. I was with him down on his farm. He took me out bow hunting for the first time,

Marlin Miller:

Really.

Mark Schlabach:

But I used to do some gun hunting and stuff, but they got me into it, and then he led me into the bow hunting scene. But yeah, it was one of those infectious things. Once it got into your system, hopefully I can hunt till the day I die. So it’s something that’s always been a passion of mine.

Marlin Miller:

Do you have kids?

Mark Schlabach:

I do. I have two kids. I have an 11-year-old and a 11-year-old. 12 and 15-year-old.

Marlin Miller:

Okay. Do you hunt with them too?

Mark Schlabach:

I do. With my oldest, yeah, with my 15-year-old. He’s getting into it. But you know how things are nowadays. Technology and the kids nowadays are maybe not into it as much. I just wish I would’ve, I’m trying to put that into him as far as taking him out and spent some time with him out in the woods. So

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, I have, excuse me. I have heard so many guys talk about, everybody gets the whole quakes and the shivers and the whole deer fever. Everybody gets deer fever. And I had a guy just last week say, he gets deer fever worse when his kid is shooting than when he was shooting.

Mark Schlabach:

I would say there’s a lot of truth to that. I’ve been there, done that, because you’re

Marlin Miller:

So excited. And I don’t have that chance to do that with our kids yet. But there’s got to be something pretty amazing about taking your kid out and watching them shoot a buck or a dough. I mean,

Mark Schlabach:

Whatever it is. I mean, it’s the anticipation of them being successful and it’s riding on you to make things happen. Get the window open in the blind, make sure the shot’s there and the practicing time you’ve had with them shooting a crossbow or whatever, gun or whatever. But you want to see them succeed too. But you as a parent, feel responsible and you’re trying hard and yeah, I would agree a hundred percent. And I don’t know Brian, I’m sure he’s told me stories too, but Oh yeah, if you’re not, there’s something wrong. If you’re not shaking and you don’t have that, what they call buck fever, you’re not a true hunter, I would say. So let’s talk about

Marlin Miller:

You.

Brian Yoder:

Yes.

Marlin Miller:

You grew up with all your brothers.

Brian Yoder:

I did.

Marlin Miller:

I mean, Randy and Bruce, and I mean, my goodness, there’s a whole ton of ’em.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah, there’s quite a few of us. Honestly, I didn’t really hunt with my dad at all. He pretty much was out of the scene as far as hunting wise. He enjoyed it, but he used to tell me how to do it. Even rabbit hunting. We use the 12 gauge and the shells. He said, Nope, use a 22, and you take ’em right in the head. You don’t need all the shell. Anyway. But I started hunting with my brothers, and it’s funny because not all them, all my brothers hunt. There’s a couple of ’em that they have no interest whatsoever to hunt.

But Larry would take me along at a young age, and that’s where I started to, and it was like Mark said, we just did gun hunting. We didn’t do bow hunting. I didn’t know there was such a thing as bow hunting. And I started probably when I was 12 or 13, going with my brother Larry, and we’d go down to Tapon. I remember he had a place down at Tapon that we could go to, and that’s how it started. And he would take some Amish down there. And I’ll never forget at that age, it was like I heard a gunshot. So I’d run through the gunshot. I want to see what happened. What happened. Did you get him? Did you? And they were always making fun of me because they’re like, as soon as a gunshot goes off, you show up. I’m like, yeah, I want to see this.

But anyway, yeah. Then I got into, Kevin Troyer actually introduced me to bow hunting. He’s like, did you ever go bow hunting? I said, bow hunting, what is that? And he’s like, oh, I got this crossbow. And he said, he goes, it’s so much fun. He’s like, it’s more natural. There’s not a lot of people that do it. Well, that was years and years ago. And he kind of got me into it, and I’m like, I’m going to go get me a bow. So you get the Horton, you can barely pull the thing back. And I said, I’m going to start. So I started, and of course didn’t really have very much success, but it was a blast. I’m like, man, you see all kinds of deer compared to when you’re gun hunting. They’re running 80 mile an hour, you’re trying to get to ’em.

But then I kind of introduced Mark to it. I said, you got to try this thing. I said, this is awesome. And I’ll never forget, I think it was the first day of bow season, and you always had to hunt. You had to go out opening day. It didn’t matter if it was 110 degrees or if it was 20 degrees, you had to go the first day. And so I said something to Mark and I’m like, let’s go down to the farm and we’ll hunt. And I think it was me, you and Eric Sheely went down there, who’s also part of the board here. And Eric was in one tree down in through the woods. I was in another. And we had this makeshift, and you should probably never do. This should be very safe

Curt Yoder:

Nowadays, but lemme interrupt here. Most of what these guys have done shouldn’t be tried at home. Yeah.

Mark Schlabach:

Usually you should have a helmet on too when you’re doing this or some type of body armor. But go ahead.

Brian Yoder:

I had got this makeshift tree stand climber thing, and

Mark Schlabach:

It’s made out of plywood.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah, it’s made out of plywood, and it’s got a strap behind it. And you put your feet in and you don’t even have a top to it. You kind of self climb it, hugging the tree. I said, mark, here, try this thing. He’s like, yeah, sweet. I’ll go in this. And I watched him go up it, and I’m literally laughing because this thing’s tilted this way. And he’s barely up. He’s like three feet off the ground. He’s like, I’m done. I can’t go any further. I was shaking. I was

Mark Schlabach:

Out of breath. I said, how are you supposed to work this? And you had just gotten just a little bit. Well, and I might’ve got to the top of his head and I says, I’m cashed out. I’m done. I’m sitting there, I’m standing there and he’s looking. And I said, I looked down. That’s all the higher, I got no safety harnesses back then. And I hunted off of that. I mean, it was like, okay, this is cool. I can see further. But I was maybe foot off the ground. I had no clue what I was doing. I, so

Brian Yoder:

I told him, I said, okay, I’m going up here. So I went up a little further and got in a stand, and the morning goes on and all of a sudden I hear whack like thud. And I’m like, arc just shot. And the funny thing is he’s using his grandpa’s, I don’t know if it was an 1800 crossbow from the

Mark Schlabach:

18 hundreds. It was the PSE Fox Fire and had K-Mart

Curt Yoder:

Straight out of Flintstones,

Mark Schlabach:

Right? Yeah. Aluminum, K-Mart arrows. They said Kmart on ’em. And that’s what I used with the Broadheads. He used Belli back in the seventies.

Brian Yoder:

The old Thunderheads. Yeah. And I see a deer take off, and it’s a buck. And I’m like, he just shot a buck. And I’m watching that thing. It runs down, falls over. I’m like, he just shot a buck. It was so exciting. And then Eric Sheely’s down there. And so we all get together and we’re screaming. This is the first deer that ever got killed with a bow. And it was almost like he used a spear for it, because it’s so ancient. But that’s kind of how it all started, is how we got started on bow hunting. And it just grew from there. And like I said, it didn’t matter. We didn’t look at wind. We didn’t look at nothing was you got out there and you hunted

Mark Schlabach:

If it had antlers. Yeah, we’re going to try to take it down. I mean, it’s so different now, but it was just friendships.

Brian Yoder:

Exactly.

Mark Schlabach:

It was good times. I mean, we went and showed that thing off.

Brian Yoder:

Oh yeah,

Mark Schlabach:

It was like 80 degrees in the back of my pickup truck, just roasting back there. I don’t even know if the meat was good by the end of the day. But we’re going to everywhere, showing people, I

Brian Yoder:

Mean, we can go further down that trail with that same year.

Mark Schlabach:

I’d like to share one quick story, and I know maybe time, but I have to share this because this is something that’ll always be in my head just to start a bow season. I think it might’ve been the next year or something, but we got different tree stands and learned what we were doing wrong. And so we decided one night I decided I’m going to sit above him.

Brian Yoder:

You had killed your buck

Mark Schlabach:

Already. I had killed my deer. Yeah. I’m going to sit above him and just kind of watch. Or at the time, filming wasn’t a thing and filming the hunt. And so I was going to sit above him and we were watching the neighbor’s property was over a ways, but a lot of the deer came from there. So anyways, long story short, a deer comes, and I’m telling him at the time, I’m like whispering that it’s a shooter. I’m yelling down to him. I’m in a climber sitting about five feet above him yet we’re up in this tree. So he kills a steer and it runs out up into the field towards where we were parked, actually up in the building. So at the time, he had a Cadillac sedan, Deville, and he’s like, oh man,

Brian Yoder:

Now go back to that. Because it wasn’t new or anything. It was

Mark Schlabach:

No,

Brian Yoder:

It was

Mark Schlabach:

A beater. Yeah, it was a beater with a heater. So he’s like, man, he’s like, I didn’t really know if we were going to kill a deer tonight. And I said, well, he goes, let’s go up here in the building. And he said, see if there’s a ratchet strap in here. He said, let’s just put this thing on the roof. So we went up there and we found that the big three inch ratches, not the little ones we’re talking, the ones guys are using on flatbeds to strap down lumber.

So we’re getting there. And so we drag this thing up over the trunk onto the roof and just, it looks like a murder scene down over the windows and everything. We drug it up and laid it there. It was a nice buck too at the time. It was a really nice buck. So he’s like, we got to go show this off. But he’s like, I’m afraid it’s going to fly off. So he goes and he puts the windows down in the back and we run the ratchet strap through and up over the buck, and we were looking and the only place was up under the car onto the frame. So he gets it hooked. And I’m ratcheting and ratcheting and we get it tight. And it’s the famous one more. One more. And when I went one more, the roof caved in. And this is how my dad talks about this all the time. We ended up, so we’re riding the millersburg like this in the car. He just left it caved in. Yeah, well, he’s like, oh boy, that’s good enough. But we’re riding, driving into Millersburg with our heads. This the whole roof is caved in. That one more just took it down. So we pulled in, we went into the Speedway. That gas station was there at the time. Then we went through the drive through at McDonald’s,

Brian Yoder:

A picture of this, I think we do. My wife took,

Mark Schlabach:

People were coming to the window. They were going Look at this, but we’re like our chest left out. We went from there to clear up to, at the time, you still checked deer in? Well, we could have checked it in Millersburg, but why not? Let’s go to Homeville. We want people to see this book. So we go, and then we ended up coming into dad’s over in Benton there, and we pulled in and we come up, and Dad will still tell you to this day, he says, there’s Brian and Mark coming in like this riding. We didn’t care. We didn’t care. But we had his buck. But we hauled it all around on a Cadillacs Danville with the roof came in.

Brian Yoder:

I shot that on my, well, it would’ve been my wife’s grandpa’s farm or Gerber’s farm. And at that time, I was just dating my wife and I stopped at her place and with her mom’s place and to show off my deer. And she’s like, that’s pretty awesome, but why do you have it on top of your car? And I said, that’s all I had. And I said, I was showing this thing off. And I think to this, I think she’s got a picture of it at home that we printed out then. But

Curt Yoder:

That could maybe be our new logo for White Till Heritage.

Brian Yoder:

One more.

Mark Schlabach:

Yeah. I love that. Oh my goodness. So yeah, that’s a memory that’d always stick with me and And back then

Brian Yoder:

You didn’t have cell cameras. We had the cards, the chips you had to run to Walmart, get

Mark Schlabach:

’em? No, 35

Brian Yoder:

Millimeter. Oh yeah. Was

Mark Schlabach:

35 millimeter.

Brian Yoder:

You had to get the film developed.

Mark Schlabach:

You got 36 pictures out of it

Brian Yoder:

In the trail cameras. Yeah, that’s how it started. The old stealth cams. Oh my goodness. Regular. Remember those

Curt Yoder:

Camera and them things?

Brian Yoder:

And there’s many of trips, me and him. We didn’t know if we’d survive to get to Walmart. The photo place was closing in 15 minutes and we’re coming from down by Stillwell

Mark Schlabach:

Doing a hundred.

Brian Yoder:

I said, you get that film? And I said, we got to know what’s going on. And you had to get to Walmart for the one hour development.

Marlin Miller:

Okay. Okay.

Brian Yoder:

Hold

Marlin Miller:

On. Okay. I get the idea that you’re excited to see what’s on.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

But was it because you were going to go hunt the next morning?

Brian Yoder:

No, not really.

Mark Schlabach:

Just

Marlin Miller:

Always,

Mark Schlabach:

It was the excitement of having a trail. We got one of the first trail cameras. It was like Christmas and then we would buy rolls of film and put it in. And you were doing a hundred to get the Walmart on time. We were flying, the governor was kicking in his Chevy. I remember more than once we’d be going, and he’s like, just watch for cops and across the flats and kill Buck the Deer, a hundred mile an

Brian Yoder:

Hour as fast as we could get to Walmart, the floor, because they were going to close the one hour development, and you had to have it that day.

Curt Yoder:

This is why you wear helmets when you go with these guys.

Brian Yoder:

And then you’d tell ’em, we’d go in and say, just do the ones with the bucks. Don’t develop the other ones. We’d just throw those away.

Mark Schlabach:

We’d sit there and literally stand there in Walmart and just be going

Marlin Miller:

And just

Mark Schlabach:

Chuck ’em into the trash. And they would give us doubles of things too and stuff. But they’d know we’d come in there and we would hit that Walmart and just go running in there and give them their thing and they’d develop it and we’d have our pictures. But

Curt Yoder:

You wanted to hunt that night? Pull your camera.

Mark Schlabach:

Well, we wanted to know what’s there.

Brian Yoder:

We just wanted to know. Okay. Usually what it was is we had pictures of a pretty nice book and we wanted to know if he’s there again. You had to know and

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, that is too funny. So how did the idea for the Hunt that has now become a monstrously huge thing for the whole community? Where did that come from? How did that get started?

Curt Yoder:

Well, I mean, I would want you guys to talk into that more then, but obviously it started back because the branch with quality deer management was required to put on some kind of an educational hunt every year. And so that groundwork got laid there. But where it really was taken off was when you guys came on board. I remember being on the board and we were like, yeah, we’ll do the hunt. When you guys came on board, it was like game on for the hunt.

Marlin Miller:

But hold on. But was Q DMAs hunt also for kids with special needs?

Curt Yoder:

Not necessarily. No,

Marlin Miller:

Necessarily. That’s what I was thinking. That’s what I thought you were kind of,

Curt Yoder:

If you would’ve wanted to, which I don’t have a good answer. How it shifted towards that, I’m not sure.

Brian Yoder:

I think when it started with the branch, it was more getting youth involved with hunting. It was introducing, it was more, Hey, let’s get the youth involved. Every day they say, we’re losing hunters. We’re losing hunters. So it was more, Hey, do a youth hunt and get these kids involved.

It doesn’t matter what kids, let’s get introduced kids. And when we and Mark came on board, we were like, this is awesome. I mean, I got three kids of my own, but I was like, this is amazing that we get a day to go hunt with somebody. That’s what it was. All we were like, Hey, this is a day we get to go hunt and we can be involved. And I don’t know, like you said, I’m not sure how it shifted to special needs and stuff, but that’s probably the best decision we ever made, is you’ve given those kids that don’t even have a chance to get out there. Unless we take ’em, they won’t ever go hunting unless we take ’em out hunting.

Marlin Miller:

Well, I was saving this for later, but that’s the perfect little segue, Brian, you guys just last year and this year’s hunt happened tomorrow.

Curt Yoder:

Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. So this year’s, the 25 hunt just happened in 2024. You took my cousin Martha out from the Glenmont Verden area.

Brian Yoder:

I know Martha, yep.

Marlin Miller:

When she was born, just couple days after she was born, she developed, I think it was just after she was born, might’ve been a year or so later, but she got sick and she got her fever, went up to 106,

And it actually damaged her brain. And if you know Martha, you know that she has a few of struggles communicating. That little gal, she’s just wonderful. She’s awesome. You guys have no idea, and you probably do, but I’m just going to tell you again from Mel and Verna, her mom and dad to Martha, to the siblings, which there’s a bunch, there’s nine, or I think there’s eight or nine there. They were so amazed and so thankful and so blown away by everything you guys do. I didn’t hear the end of it. Martha just kept talking and talking and talking and talking, and she just loved it. So thank you on behalf of Melon, Verna, and Martha. And it just knocked my socks off.

Mark Schlabach:

So by you saying that, I mean, it makes me feel good, and I’m sure them guys, but we did our job. We’re not in this for our benefit or Pat on our back. God’s had his hand in this whole organization and what people are doing, and it comes from the heart. And I think that’s too why we have the support from the community we do.

The minute we left that other organization or formed our own nonprofit, it was like a light switch. I mean, people were all about it. And then so it was always dubbed the youth hunt. It was always W Youth Hunt, and it was for kids with disabilities or special needs or physical life challenges or something like that. We started going and making it more of a broad event that would include people that never hunted before that wanted to try it, that didn’t have a place to go. It blossomed into, we take as young as 9-year-old up to, we’ve had what, an 80-year-old

Curt Yoder:

Close right around there. I think

Mark Schlabach:

This year we had some fifties, sixties, and 70 year olds. So we take nine year olds onto however old, and we’ve just had people, we’ve had disguise that said, we’ve never done it before. We’d like to try it. And our job is to put that spark in that person as far as on the end of helping people get out with disabilities. We’re set up with custom blinds and things that are wheelchair accessible, have handrails that are large enough to get ’em in through the door, a wheelchair. And then we’ve got mechanisms that if they cannot use their hands, they can have someone with them and be able to fire the crossbow with a bite mechanism in their mouth. And we’ve had several people kill deer at our hunts like this. So we are set up to handle, I mean, I would say anything, we’ve had some people come to where you would say, okay, wow, this situation, this is going to maybe be impossible.

But all the guys on the board, the volunteers and stuff, everyone’s come together. We’ve made it possible for every single person that has come to this hunt, and people think of this hunt as maybe a little hunt out in the cornfield, just a small thing. This has been life changing for them, for families. But for me, I’m sure for Brian, for Kurt and the rest of them, I’d live for this every year. I mean, you could tell me, I can go out and kill the biggest buck in the world and it’d be a world record, or I can go do this. I don’t want to do this. So

It’s a passion that burns in my, it burns in me, and I’m sure, I mean just the rest too.

Curt Yoder:

What if we could do this talked, we’ve talked about this several years after the hunt. It happens and it’s over and it’s like, I want to go do it again. If I could do it three, it would be so cool if we could do it three Saturdays in a row.

Mark Schlabach:

Oh man, the anticipation’s there, the fire. It is like, yeah. And then it’s done. And it’s like Saturday night comes, it’s over. But the response we get from these families, there’s people that have been nonverbal, and I’m not telling this, it’s not a story. It’s been the truth that kids that are nonverbal or very, they’ve come. And we had one boy that I can think of myself that his dad said he don’t talk. And at the end, he brought him, he wanted to come over and talk to us, and he thank you. The dad was like, we’re in tears. He said, he don’t talk. He said, this has brought something out in him. And I was just like, oh, the emotions. It’s an adrenaline rush too. Just I love it. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Curt Yoder:

Something I would like to add, you ask about the shift towards there’s, I’ll bring this lady into the conversation. That is Barb Terry with 10 point Crossbows. So early on, she supplied all the crossbows through 10 point. They make crossbows. She would bring ’em out, supply all the crossbows. She played a big part in this shift as well. She has been consistently there year in and year out. Her passion for this, she does other hunts as well as a rep for 10 point. She helped us with equipment wise to be able to do what we’re doing with handicaps and open the door to that. David is blind as a kid. We took him number, has he 104 times with us, something like that. Maybe even more than that. But he hunted several times before he was able to get a deer. But as a blind young man,

Marlin Miller:

Totally blind.

Curt Yoder:

Totally blind.

Marlin Miller:

So tell me how that works

Curt Yoder:

Better? Go for it, Brian.

Brian Yoder:

Well, the way that that works is there’s, the technology we use is, so there’s a scope there usually for kids, whoever the hunter is, doesn’t have to be a kid to look through. Well, the way that Barb has it set up is there’s a scope there, and then there’s a tube with another scope that comes above that scope that you can see exactly what that hunter could see.

Marlin Miller:

So it’s a mirror down in there.

Brian Yoder:

It is. And basically how that works is David would sit and he can’t see it all, and Barb would sit behind him and she would do the aiming and everything. And then she would look through the scope that comes up over and she’d say, okay, David, go ahead and pull the trigger. And he pull the trigger. He’s running the

Mark Schlabach:

Business,

Brian Yoder:

He’s running it, but he, she’s telling him when. And I got to tell a little story on that because I just talked to Kyle Miller the other day, and he was with David on one of his hunts. And he said they got out and they got in the blind and everything. They got all set up, and they’re sitting there for a while. And all of a sudden David said, and Colin, everybody’s like, what? And he’s like, I see a deer coming. And they were like, where? And all of a sudden David started laughing. He goes, I can’t even see. And to this day, Kyle just, every time I see him, he just loses it because just to show you David, he’s like, Hey, I can’t see. But he said, I can have fun is

Marlin Miller:

Now the thing that excuse me came to mind was when you’re blind, you probably hear very

Brian Yoder:

Well. Oh yeah, they do. Absolutely.

Marlin Miller:

That’s what I thought you were going to say is that he heard

Mark Schlabach:

A buck James. We took one and we were the guiding cameramen sitting in there. And he would sit there and just, I asked him, can you see? And we were hunting over bay pile with corn, and he was looking, he was not totally blind, but he was legally blind. He said, I can see yellow, kind of just a light color. But we would sit there and the past time we were listening, and he would sit there and just be like, blue Jay Robin, like he was talking. He could hear the birds and we weren’t even listening. We didn’t hear it. He’s sitting there talking to himself and talking about a squirrel, and he was sitting there listening and he was named. So finally we were like, are you listening for birds? He goes, yeah. He said, I’ve heard, and he’d started naming birds. So we sat there with him and we would just be like, then we were listening, what was that? And he nailed it every time. And David, back to David, he was totally blind from birth. So we would see David once or twice a year if that. He’d come to the hunt. I’d walk up to him and just put my hand on him and be like, Hey, David. Hey Mark.

He knew Kurt would walk up to him, Kurt, and he’d just stop and go, Kurt Yoder or Brian Yoder, and was like, he knew. And when he shot his deer, when they tried to get him to shoot one of the first times, he was shaking so bad. He never got the shot off. He has never seen a deer. He’s been blind since birth. He has never seen a deer. But everything happening, he had that buck fever in him, and they had to trick him and just tell him, let’s take a practice. Shot a do came in, they were going to shoot it. They opened the door. There was so much commotion. He starts hyperventilating, breathing, hard shaking, and he can’t pull the

Brian Yoder:

Trigger. They had to trick him.

Mark Schlabach:

So the deer runs off and all of a sudden they were like, here comes the deer again. And they were looking winking at each other going, Hey, let’s take a practice shot. There’s a groundhog out there. He’s okay, cool. As a cucumber. They open the window up, they open the window up and say, Barb Terry with 10 points. She was the guy. And she goes, we’re going to take a practice shot. We’ll shoot at this groundhog. Everything’s cool. There were Stan do broadside. She’d come back in and with that assisted scope and stuff, and they harvested that deer after that. They gave him time. He was sitting there and he even brought it back to the hunt. He couldn’t see it, but he felt that the face, the ears, nose, he was taking his time and they gave him time just to be with it and just feel, and that was special for him and everyone that got to see it. But can you imagine? You never saw that in your life and you experienced that buck fever piece. That’s amazing. It is. It gives you chills to think about. That’s amazing.

Curt Yoder:

Another story that I think of that exemplifies what we’re talking about here. So we live in the middle of Amish country and Amish, this community, not just Amish, but this community has been what supported us. We also have a relationship with the Division of Wildlife here in the state of Ohio. And because of that, there was a connection made with a man from Columbus. This was, I don’t know how many years ago this, it was when we had the lease down there at Warsaw. So eight years ago, maybe a man contacted the division of Wildlife and wanted to know how he could get into hunting something of the sort, because they had a relationship with us. They referred him to us and our president, I don’t know if he was president at the time, but K ended up taking that man with him, sat in the blind most of the day down on that lease. And the man ends up, it’s the first time he’s ever hunted, man, ends up shooting a deer who was a buck, I think.

And he’s like, I’d like to know how to butcher this thing. Now here we have a man that I don’t know how much he knew about the Amish culture, probably nothing. He maybe knew of it, but everybody’s new to everybody. And we ended up, there was three of us guys, four of us maybe that showed it. We were like, Hey, he just got on his phone last minute, Mo did. And it’s like, can anybody meet me up in my shop? We’re going to but skin and butcher this deer and help show this guy. What happened? So we showed up at Moses shop that evening and skinned the thing. I think did we deone it and everything? That guy went home grinning. I’ve never seen him since. I am sure we might have his name somewhere, but that is a story that encapsulates this message of conservation. There was a man that, I don’t know how he decided he’s going to do this, but he reached out and thankfully we were able to meet that need. And I don’t know if he’s in hunting today now or not, but somebody that knew nothing about it was able to get a taste for, okay, it’s not just about shooting a trophy buck, but there’s so much more involved with it

Marlin Miller:

From now until Christmas. Homestead Living has a wonderful gift guide online. You can find **@*************ng.com. You’ll find the link in the notes below. We have a handful of great companies, great products. One of our partners is a company called Rustic Strength. They are focused on zero carcinogens in the laundry detergents and the cleaning supplies. My own wife was looking at them just recently because she learned that they are as pure as it gets right now. You can use the code Homestead 25, and they will knock a quarter off of your order, 25%. So how many different hunters did you take out this year?

Mark Schlabach:

We took 36, and it’s in an afternoon. A lot of people ask us, do you do multiple days? No, it was in an afternoon. It started at 9:00 AM back up, I guess the night before on a Friday night. We usually have the landowners and the volunteers, cameramen, guides, anyone that’s part of the event. We put on a feed for them the evening before and have a big time of fellowship. So there was 200 at that that came to that. And then Saturday it starts nine o’clock, hunters start rolling in. We had a hunter from Long Island, New York that drove, what was it, nine and a half

Curt Yoder:

Hours? Yeah, something like that.

Mark Schlabach:

Yeah. This has started to really expand and she was selected. And so they come in and we start, give a rundown of the days events and everything. But then we have crossbows that we own now that we’ve purchased from 10 point, and we have stations set up to where they go with their guide and their cameramen, and they sit out there and they practice and they shoot to make sure that they can use the scope. Or if we also have little, I guess, for lack of a better word, little TV screens or screens that go on, those scopes that have a camera built in, and it looks through the scope

That way. If, because there’s some that due to eyesight or just physical ability could not down and look, could not get and look in or it could not maybe pick up the concept of the cross hairs and stuff like that. So they’re able to, the guide is there to help assist with these little screens on there. And then we start out and we go and shoot and we have lunch. We give them clothing boots, backpacks, backpacks, binoculars for them to keep. Yes, for them to keep. It’s their gift. Yes. Yes. No kidding. So they’re there that day. They’re a hunter. And that’s what we try to really stress this day is about you meaning the hunter. It’s not about us. It’s not about your family, it’s about you. We try to make them feel like a hunter and forget maybe any other problems they might have.

So everyone’s suiting up in camo and I mean, they’re decked out and they look like hunters, and that’s the goal. And that’s what happens. And we go out, we take them after they’re practiced up. We have a big lunch feed. Everybody that lunch, we had over 300 show up public. We want the public to come and see this. So then after mid-afternoon, well, we had the game warden come and give a talk to them as well. Jared, Allison Ka, Shockton County game warden came in, and then they head out with their guides and cameramen to different properties. I had 32 different landowners that gave their property up for the day. They made sure the spots were baited. They had blinds, whether they were ground blinds or elevated blinds set up ready for ’em. And the hunter is allowed to shoot any deer they want. There’s no restrictions. Some of these guys are, they have huge deer

Curt Yoder:

That needs to be pointed out.

Mark Schlabach:

They have huge deer. We’re talking in the world of a hundred eighty, a hundred seventy, a hundred eighty, a hundred ninety inch deer, deer. Those are giants that they’ve been watching for 2, 3, 4 years that they’re after. But one of the stipulations on this is if the hunter’s in there, there’s no restrictions. This is their day to do what they want. If they want to shoot the first deer, which a lot of them do, because they’re always, we’re going to shoot a big buck, big buck, the first thing that’s brown that walks in, they’re like, we want it. Let’s do it. It’s up to them. We’re not going to, if they have time to wait and they want to wait longer, some of those mower, mature deer come in. So they go out and they go in, hit the blinds, hit the woods, and then we had people set up in groups to where these first 12, you’re calling this guy or texting. And then Kurt, he was our drone coordinator. We had seven drones there. We had seven drones. And that helps with the retrieval of deer as far as tracking them. If there’s any marginal hits to where we can’t find

Curt Yoder:

’em, it makes sure that we can get home at 11 o’clock instead of two or three in the

Mark Schlabach:

Morning. That used to be, we’ve retrieved many of deer. Middle of the morning Sunday morning yet, and

Marlin Miller:

I’m going to pause you again. You had seven thermal drones.

Curt Yoder:

Yeah, yeah. Different drone operators. These guys come in and donate their time, and they’re just there

Mark Schlabach:

And just loving it.

Curt Yoder:

Oh my word. Yeah.

Mark Schlabach:

They’re bringing their $15,000 drone setups in. That’s what I thought. And they don’t don’t want money. They won’t take money. And they’ve supported us, and it keeps getting, we started with one and then two, and then pretty soon this year we had seven. And we still had people knocking on the door, and we used to have people with dogs come in. Well, this is just a lot more, it’s more efficient. It’s quick it, it’s ethical in case if a deer needs to be tracked down. And so the outpouring of people that want to volunteer is insane.

So anyways, they’re out there hunting, and then they call or text whatever, if they shot one or whatever, or if they need a drone. And so we had everything mapped out. He was able to just send guys, and I was on the text thread that night. It was crazy. He stayed busy just sending drones to places and they’d call in, found it two minutes in the air, found it onto the next one. Well, people started rolling in Why these hunters are out. We had a big 15 foot TV screen that we rented from a fun flicks up in Norton, I think it was. And this thing’s up in the air. And we’ve got a live feed going in the past. All these people come and they want to see where it’s at. We’re at Pilgrim Hills mentoring camp down there in Brink Haven.

So it’s a perfect setting. They come down this long driveway, and everyone’s just anticipating, there’s a lot of parents, guardians, family that are there and public. And in years past, it was okay, but the crowds kept getting bigger and bigger to where finally everyone’s there and the people in the back can’t see. So we got this live feed, this tv, everybody was sitting in lawn chairs didn’t come beyond where they were supposed to. They were just relaxed. We had 700 people there. Marlon, you had 700 people come to this thing. They fed and Butler’s barbecue was keeping track of all the, they fed over 700 for dinner. Yeah. Wow. But yeah, we haven’t paid him yet.

He’s donating it, and we were hoping he’ll donate that yet. But he goes, you’re not going to believe this. We just figured last year we fed 509. This year it was over 700, and it just keeps growing so unbelievable. And so they start coming back and we’ve got live feed set up so they can just sit there, relax, watch, and then if the family members themselves can come up and be right there if they want to get pictures too. But everybody, the day was perfect. The evening was perfect. It was a little warm, but we harvested 27 out of 36 hunters harvested deer. And I mean, it’s unheard of. On a day like that, I was hoping we’d get 10 just because of the day that we had, I mean, the good Lord had his hand in this because every year our success rate is so high and Well,

Marlin Miller:

You’ve had years where every hunter

Mark Schlabach:

Gets a deer. Oh, yeah,

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Schlabach:

That’s insanity. It is it. And the area we’re at, yeah, we’re blessed with a great area full of deer, but we’re blessed with a lot of landowners that there’s a lot of people in Ohio or in the areas that would say, you’re not going on my property.

Marlin Miller:

Well, let’s talk about that for a second. You said you had 32 landowners.

Mark Schlabach:

Yes. We have our own lease that’s 580 acres, and we put four kids on that lease. 32 other

Marlin Miller:

People. Well, that’s kind of where I was going, mark, is you’ve got 36 hunters this year. You don’t jam 10 and 20 hunters on a piece of ground. You are driving them to multiple farms.

Curt Yoder:

So about these farms, there’s something that I’d like to go back in time to the QDMA time. So this is a key that helped us develop this hunt. At the time when that hunt started through QDMA, it was on one farm on, I think it was a 700 acre farm, right? Something somewhere. The hirschberger farm there, like you said, you’re not going to pack too many hunters on. You can mess it up with a lot of pressure. When it shifted, we started being like, okay, this is not going to work. As it starts growing, we need more places to put these hunters. And we had QDMA promoted local like hunting co-ops throughout the nation actually,

And to help manage the deer herd, because you might own a hundred acres, want to manage the deer herd. Well guess what? The deer or not your deer, they go all over the place. And so when you get a group, a community of neighbors that work together in managing the deer herd, you get a better age structure. You get typically more bigger bucks, but there’s more to it than just the big buck. And so this is something back in 2005 in that community, this was before I knew you guys. My dad had purchased a property there in the Titon area, and through the help of some other guys, I had started knocking on some neighbor’s doors and saying, Hey, can we work together here? So we started one of those, what ended up being A-Q-D-M-A hunting co-op or a QDM hunting, and that was up and had been up and running. And these guys, Brian, your in-laws farm is in that community as well.

And that’s how I met you guys, was at a co-op meeting. One evening was where I met you guys first. And so over time, this co-op thing has grown well. When it came time, the whitetail heritage, this before Whitetail Heritage started, this would’ve been with the QDM days, yet when it shifted, we’re like, we need more places. And we started talking, what if we would bring it into our community? We know so many landowners in a 16 square mile pocket that might just be interested. We knew there was some that were interested and we got it. We introduced it at one of our co-op meetings, and that’s where it took ground. So this is not just a Amish community effort. This is true. All types of people community effort, and it’s a beautiful thing. It is a beautiful, we got people that grew up there their whole life in that community that if we wouldn’t even dream of not sending a kid onto their property, they’re like, we, ,

You must come here. Somebody’s coming here.

It is meant that much. It’s changed hard for me to imagine if I didn’t grow up in a family that has a handicapped person in it. Now I have a close relative that was handicapped, and I actually got to live at their place for several months and experience that. She was about my age if it was a first cousin. So I knew a little bit about that. But to grow up in a family where there’s a handicapped person and then to get an opportunity to do something like this, it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how much it means to these families and these landowners that have opened their, mark has been talking about the landowners. That’s something I just wanted to reiterate. We couldn’t do it without all the landowners. We just couldn’t. And to see their hearts open up and be like, I got a property. I can do this. And that has been,

Mark Schlabach:

And we’ve got a waiting list. I mean, I got people that were texting me up the day before, Hey, we’ve got another piece or so-and-so has it. And I’m like, I appreciate it. That’s why I wish we could hold multiple hunts because it would be cool we got the people that want to give the land. Yeah. Wow. So it is, it’s amazing. How far are you, so

Marlin Miller:

You’re at the Pilgrim Hills camp as the headquarters of the day,

Mark Schlabach:

Right? Right,

Marlin Miller:

Yep. How far is furthest guy going to

Mark Schlabach:

Get into a stand? We had one property that was 34 minutes south of there. No kidding. Yeah. We typically don’t go that far. But this guy has been part of this and he’s passionate about it, and it’s just what you said, I can’t take it away. We can’t take it away, because that’s a joy for him every year to be part of this and give what he has. I mean,

Curt Yoder:

We wouldn’t add a bunch more of that far away because the person, they need to come back to camp afterwards or Yeah, they’re going to come

Mark Schlabach:

Back. Typically probably five to, there’s some that are a mile, half a mile down the road. There’s some that are probably, I’d say the average would be probably what, five to 10 mile radius? Something like that.

Curt Yoder:

So anywhere from a five to 20 minute drive.

Mark Schlabach:

Yeah. Yeah. Boy, that’s cool. And they’re leaving there in pickups side, and they’re coming in that way too. And it’s just,

Curt Yoder:

It’s like a shotgun start at a golf outing and then it’s like a bass tournament When they come in. It’s

Mark Schlabach:

Horns are honking people, and I’ve said it before, we’ve had kids that come in and I’m up there greeting ’em as they’re coming in and What did you do? I killed a big bock. Big bock. I’m like, I know what’s coming. And they’re like, drop that tailgate. And that kid’s back there and he drops the tailgate and there’s a spike laying there. He feels he killed a world record deer and the crowd’s there making him feel like he did too. I mean, it’s just Does it get any better than that? I don’t think so. I mean,

Brian Yoder:

No. I always say it’s the red carpet. I mean, they pull in there, they feel like rock stars, like this is, I’m serious. I mean, they get out of the back and they’re hoo. It could be. Some of ’em have, it’s a little dough, 10 pound fawns that you can pick up. In one hand. You’d think they shot the biggest deer ever in the world, and they love it and it’s awesome. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about the size of the horns, it’s about the joy they get.

Mark Schlabach:

It’s the experience. And they’ve might not been ever shown that. I mean, they’re upfront center stage. Like I said, it’s not about us. It focuses on them. They had 5, 6, 700 people through eyes on them, and they’re just like, they’re starstruck when they get there as much as, but it is,

Brian Yoder:

It’s amazing. I pulled in there after being done hunting, I pulled in with my hunter and I’m like, holy cow, look at this. It’s all lit up. We got light towers everywhere and it’s all lit up. And I’m like, this is unreal. I mean, there was people in lawn chairs, just rows and rows and rows of ’em. It’s pretty awesome.

Curt Yoder:

Wow. So this year, something that added to it as well was Yoder meets Yoder, custom meets out of Fredericksburg, came and set up a tent and a whole skinning station and had several of their butchers there that they skinned the deer right there. They put it in a cooler so they get the best meat possible, and then they’re de-boning meat. And you can stand around and watch that as well, the whole process. Right on. That was cool. That was so neat to have Yoder meats out there doing that.

Mark Schlabach:

Man. So you No, go ahead. Just to give you a little quick perspective of where this has started and where it’s come to back when it was 2000, I think it was 2012 was our first one. I still got that picture of I was a guide that year. He was a guide that year. We had four kids and we were talking about this, if we had 20 people there, we were lucky. And we thought this the cat’s meal, this is unreal. Back in 2012 to 2025 and there’s 700 people and it just keeps growing. That is unbelievable. Yeah. I mean it is. It’s amazing. Yeah.

Brian Yoder:

We used to run to Subway and that was supper. You’d get, oh, we’re going to get a big plate of subs and pizzas and pizzas. We need about 10 pizzas now. We got Biers down there all day. And the thing, he can’t keep up. The thing about Biers is you never run out of food. He does phenomenal.

Mark Schlabach:

He’s awesome. We do a light breakfast, we do a lunch, all the trimmings and we do supper. We also do that meal Friday night for all the small thank you to the community

Curt Yoder:

In a 24 7 nonstop ice cream flow of soft serve ice cream all you want. That’s amazing.

Mark Schlabach:

The dads are telling the kids, because the kids are there, they’re making Sundays like this that are just, and the dads are telling ’em, you don’t do that. Well, then later on in the afternoon, they’re out hunting and stuff and you see the dad over there and he’s got a Sunday. It’s like, practice what you preach. But it is, and it’s just this year I was asking Freeman from Bayer’s barbecue, I said, how many bags of ice? He goes, I don’t even know. He had two deliveries. Why? They were down there. He had two deliveries come in with more bags of ice cream. He said, I’ve never seen the likes of it. Well, it was pretty warm. It was warm, but I don’t know. It was just continuous flow of people. It’s awesome. It’s good. It’s just, but yeah,

Curt Yoder:

You mentioned something earlier, mark, about God’s hand in it and a story that I think about that maybe exemplifies that about as good as any, I don’t know who our guide was. It might’ve been Tommy, Tommy Augh it. It was right towards dark. They’re sitting in a ground blind. I think this was just a regular ground blind. It wasn’t actually like a, I think

Brian Yoder:

Derek Beaver was the cameraman. Was he?

Curt Yoder:

Yeah. And this deer, I don’t know how it all went, but this deer came in right at dark. The kid was praying for a deer. He was in his blind praying that he could see a deer and a deer came in. He ends up, he made a shot on this deer that the arrow, when he released it, it hit the side of the blind. It hit the side of the blind first ricocheted. And the deer was standing behind a, there was a log in front of the deer. It hit the side of the blind, ricocheted off the log and into the deer

Mark Schlabach:

And killed it and killed it. And that was 13 for 13 that night. So yeah.

Curt Yoder:

Oh my goodness. So this was like an arrow, I mean around the corner and down

Mark Schlabach:

The block. Oh man. You watched the video. The arrow went and still killed the deer, and that made a hundred percent. Every hunter

Curt Yoder:

Killed a deer that year. We 13.

Mark Schlabach:

13 for 13 that year. Unbelievable.

Marlin Miller:

Yep.

Curt Yoder:

Oh man.

Marlin Miller:

So I mean, Brian, you’re running all the leases, right?

Brian Yoder:

Yeah. We have one lease that we have 580 acre lease. And what we use that for is everybody hears that, oh, they got a lease. That’s what they’re doing with their money. No, no board members are allowed to hunt it. It’s strictly used for our hunt for that day. And then what we do is we take those that don’t get selected. We had 48 applications and we took 36 hunters. So you got 12 people that didn’t get selected.

We let them come in. We let them come in after, and they can use that lease to hunt on. We let first time hunters, if you’re a first time hunter and you’ve never hunted and you don’t have a place to go and you don’t have equipment or nothing, you want to try it, get ahold of me. We get you on the lease. We have people that, there’s so many deer down there that the landowner that owns it is actually they’re wanting us to harvest as many as we can because of crops and everything. So we actually, if you’re struggling and you don’t have a place to go and you want meat in the freezer, come down, we’ll let you kill a dough. We work that way. It’s not, that lease has nothing to do with us here, sitting here or the board. We don’t allow ourselves, it’s not for us. It’s for the community and for all the people that don’t have the opportunity.

Mark Schlabach:

We just manage it. We

Brian Yoder:

Still just, yeah, we got five blinds on there. I think they’re almost all DNM, hunting, blinds, wheelchair accessible. We have feeders set up. It’s pretty awesome. We have a storage unit with a mule there that you get to use while you’re there hunting to get your deer out. Everything. Usually what I do is I meet the people, show ’em around, show ’em where everything’s at, and if they need a guide, I try to talk to the board if someone’s interested. Sometimes we have board members that say, Hey, I’ll go down and take him out. It’s all for the community. It’s not for us. That’s what we do with, and it’s located in Brenthaven,

Curt Yoder:

And each blind is equipped. You’re going to have fully equipped chairs shooting rest. We don’t, maybe not heat or ac. All

Mark Schlabach:

Right. Some people bring a heater along, that’s fine. Bring a heater. Yeah.

Curt Yoder:

But yeah, that has been the least thing has just taken us, that’s just been a different level of what would you say? Yeah, of the vision. And we’ve been able to do it because of the community support. I mean, we’re having a banquet of, and I can get into this later maybe, but 1700 people. So you got to figure out somehow to what are we going to do with that? And it’s been amazing.

Brian Yoder:

And all I do with the lease there is I kind of do the scheduling, so they contact me. I have a little scheduling book that I, and we let multiple, we have five blinds, so it’s not strictly, okay, we have one person. You get to hunt. No, you pick your blind. I’ll put another person in. We can do three, four people at a time. And what I think is awesome about that is we have a board member, and I am going to give a shout out to Matti. Last year, he took, I don’t know how many of the hunters that did not get selected. He would round up a van load and he’d take ’em down there and he’d get help to help him. But he initiated and took charge and he took ’em down there and they’d harvest deer. It was awesome.

Curt Yoder:

So how many did we harvest last or were harvested by those hunters all

Brian Yoder:

Combined? I think with the ones Matt took, I think they were all successful. But

Curt Yoder:

Overall for the whole year, was there 40 some deer? I think there was 44 that were harvested off of that lease. That is pretty cool. And it didn’t put a

Marlin Miller:

Dent in them. I was going to say that the herd is massive down there. There’s so many

Curt Yoder:

Deer. The whole community, I mean, KA, Shockton County, Holmes County, you’re talking one of the highest deer per square mile in the state almost. I would say that it goes a little bigger than Ka Shockton County, but

Mark Schlabach:

We try to manage it too. So a new hunter, it’s their first time. So first impressions, everything. We want to make it so they see deer because what fun is it for a new person to go out, sit there and look at the same scenery for how many hours? So we try, and that’s what Brian, he manages a lot of that too on his own and just making sure there’s feed there. And we’ve got those couple side-by-side that people can use and stuff. So we want to make that a good first experience and get that spark started. And

Brian Yoder:

Yeah, that’s something, I don’t know. I want to kind of address it, but I know a lot of people are like, oh, they feed deer. They feed deer. They’re dumping corn, and that’s not how you hunt. And I get it. I understand it to the fullest, not going to raise a big fuss on feeding, not feeding. But what we’re trying to do is give kids and first timers an opportunity. So that’s why we do what we do. It’s not the way I was taught to hunt. It’s not the way we were taught to hunt, to put a pile of corn out and shoot a deer off of it. But if you take a guy out there that’s never hunted in his life and say, okay, you got to look at this sign. You got to look at this. This is where their cross, and this is where the, he’s going to go, this is stupid. I ain’t hunting. If he doesn’t see a deer,

Mark Schlabach:

That stuff will come down. That’ll come down the line once he gets into it. But

Brian Yoder:

He’s going to go, this is stupid. Why am I even out

Marlin Miller:

Here? It’s boring. Yeah. I’ve sat there all day, bring freezing, bring a little, don’t see a deer

Curt Yoder:

Even to bring a little reality to our hunt that we do. So not everybody always sees a deer just because you have a corn pile. There was a couple this year that didn’t see a deer and they were on farms. It’s like, you got to be kidding me. They didn’t see a deer on that farm. Hey, that’s the way hunting is sometimes. It doesn’t always happen. And I always hate to see that. But the cool thing is, here’s another thing that’s happened that I’ve seen over the years with these landowners. So a hunter goes out with us that hunt and doesn’t harvest something or maybe they miss something. We had a kid one year who had downs that missed a buck out in a cornfield. He was so dejected. He sat in the cornfield and he didn’t want to leave. Were you along on that? Tommy? Tommy wasn’t. He wasn’t. He was so dejected.

Brian Yoder:

He said, I’m not going.

Curt Yoder:

And these landowners that are taking them are saying, Hey, you didn’t get a deer. Come back next week. Come back and let’s make an appointment. Come back to my farm. We’re going to get you a deer. And so we’ve already got several pictures on our whitetail heritage chat, our board chat of board members saying, Hey, check this out. We got our kid a deer.

To me, that has been a huge blessing to see, okay, this isn’t just about the one day and one and done and forget about guys are in it for the right reasons.

Marlin Miller:

And you guys have talked multiple times about the cameraman. I’m assuming that the hunter gets something to take home to keep footage

Mark Schlabach:

Of his or her hunt, right? Yeah, we have. So everybody’s the cameraman and their trust me, we’re grabbing home videos, phones, there’s nothing professional about it, but they try to capture the day. And we’ve got John Rayer with Hornet Drone and Media. He’s doing our editing and putting together a hunt. So we take all these hunts and all the footage and we put it into one. We’re talking like an hour and 50 minute long video from start to finish of all this and just kind of snippets of the day. So each kid gets that too. And they also get footage of just their hunt themselves that they get, and we give them to ’em at the banquet then at the end of the year. So is the banquet before or after the

Marlin Miller:

Hunt

Curt Yoder:

Banquets coming up here in first weekend of March? It had been later. It’s gotten changed now to the first weekend of March. It’s over at the Event center, the big event center in Mount Hope. And that banquet, again, back to the QDMA days, we were required to hold a banquet every year to raise funds. And that banquet now has grown. I said a little earlier, just last year, what do we have 1700 people there and

Mark Schlabach:

Turning down a bunch

Curt Yoder:

Too. Yeah. Well we got to the point, it’s like, okay, you got to say no somewhere. You got to stop somewhere. Wait,

Marlin Miller:

I’m confused. You’re out of space at the Mount Hope Event Center? No,

Brian Yoder:

Thurman added more now, but we had to, it’s funny because when we’ve started this, we were crammed, not really even crammed. It was plenty of room in the basement down at Dur Dutchman in the banquet room. We had plenty of room, right?

Curt Yoder:

Well, the very first one I attended, I had nothing. I was just like, what’s the QDMA? I was at the gymnasium, which is now Legacy School down in Sugar Creek. There was a gymnasium. There was like a hundred guys there. Ballue Church. Ballue Church, there you go. And there was a hundred guys there and I didn’t know much about it. And guys were winning stuff like crazy. And so it’s a raffle event. And so now this thing has blown up.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah. What

Curt Yoder:

Were you going to say

Brian Yoder:

About that? Well, we went from down. Then the first one basement of the hotel, me and him ever attended was at the Carlisle in the banquet room. And we were like, this is awesome. I think I won a gun that night. I’m like, this is what I’m talking about. Well, then when we got involved with it and we had it there again, then we were like, Hey, this is getting crammed in here. We need a bigger, so what did we do?

Mark Schlabach:

Like the fire inspector would’ve had a heyday there because we’re maxing it out. We went to Winesburg to the Heritage Center.

Curt Yoder:

Yeah, it’s something you need to know too. This guy right here, mark, he’s always like, oh, we can do more. We can do more. And the board’s sitting there, I don’t know about this guy. And Mark’s like, I’m telling you, we can do more.

Mark Schlabach:

We deal with, we’ll deal with

Brian Yoder:

The fire inspector later. So we ended up going to the Heritage Center and I think we were what, two years there for

Curt Yoder:

Sure. For sure. If not

Brian Yoder:

Three.

Mark Schlabach:

We were up to like 600 and something. And then we went to 900. And then the limit was way over there

Brian Yoder:

Too. We were like, dude, we don’t want to go to the event center. That’s too huge.

Curt Yoder:

Yeah, how are you going to fill

Brian Yoder:

That out? We’re like, this is big enough. We don’t want to get bigger. We always said, if it gets bigger than this, we’re done. Well, now we’re at the event center and we’re packing that thing out. Now, Thurman, like he said, Thurman makes it bigger so now we can get more people.

Mark Schlabach:

And you know how it is getting in up there. You don’t, I mean they, they’re maxed out. And we met with them and explained and provisions were made and there was a show that actually left and had an opening and we happened to be there. Timing was everything and explained what we did. And they were like, we want to be part of this. So shout out to Thurman and those guys at the sale barn, they wanted to be part of this and they said, we see where you’re going with it. So it couldn’t have been any better. It’s just grown.

Curt Yoder:

Oh yeah. It’s been amazing. So we have a team of the 18 guys that show up at our board meetings to talk everything that needs to be talked plus some. And so as a banquet coordinator, these guys are all divided up into certain responsibilities that they have that they oversee and the day anymore. So we come in, it used to, we would come in on Saturday in the four noon to set up for the banquet in the evening. Now we show up pretty much seven to nine o’clock Friday morning, set up everything on Friday so that we’re ready to go on Saturday because of the large crowd. And then the raffles have just been a big deal.

Marlin Miller:

Can you talk about some of the biggest things you’ve given away?

Curt Yoder:

Like trucks, it’s the mule every year right now we’re giving away a mule,

Mark Schlabach:

Right? Kawasaki Mule or

Curt Yoder:

Yeah, 50

Mark Schlabach:

50.

Curt Yoder:

The 50 50 is a big one. And then obviously the gun blitzes are massively popular. Everybody wants to win a gun. But the other thing about the banquet though, that happens there, yes, we’re looking to raise funds. That’s what funds us. But all the hunters from this previous hunt, they’re going to be invited to be there and their families.

So they’re given, we go all out for them as well that night. They come, anybody that shot a buck this year at the hunt, it’s getting mounted. It’s going to get given to them that evening. And if you shot a dough, that hide gets tanned and they get the tanned hide. And so we recognize all those hunters that evening. That’s a huge part of it that has become, continues to become more of a focal point of the evening, is the hunters that were there the previous evening, getting maybe one of them up to share their story. We had that last year. It was really powerful. So the banquet is very closely interwoven with our vision of what we’re doing. The hunt and the lease as well. Yeah, but that’s March 1st. Saturday in March is when it is. I don’t have that exact day though. March 7th. Is that

Mark Schlabach:

March 7th, 2026. Yes sir. 2020 in Mount Hope at Mount Hope. And we start selling tables at the Sportsman’s show up there in January

Curt Yoder:

This year. It’s a little different

Mark Schlabach:

Though. Well, yeah, it’s going to be.

Curt Yoder:

So we got people knocking on the doors to get these tables. So we’re giving last year’s table sponsors first choice. They’re going to get a letter. Anything that doesn’t get sold through that will be available at the Sportsman’s show. So I don’t know how that’s going to turn out. This is the first year we’re doing that.

Mark Schlabach:

We might have to utilize some more space that Thurman’s

Curt Yoder:

Provided maybe. So I don’t know. The thing that has grown this is every year we have different hunters. Now we have some repeat hunters that we bring on. But every year as you get more and more people that experience the hunt, they’re like, we want to be a part of this. We want to support it. And so then you have at the hunt itself, you have families that maybe a family member has hunted there before that’s not hunting there this year. They love it so much. We just want to show up this day to support. We just want to be here. And so this thing just keeps going like this. And you know what? It blows my mind to see what God’s done with it. And really it is been a God thing.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. Do you guys have one last story? And if not, that’s okay, but I got to give you one last chance for a good, your favorite story.

Curt Yoder:

I got stories, but when I think about it, some of ’em have Brian in them and might not be okay to share.

Brian Yoder:

I do. I have several that I could share, but one that, I’m going to go down a few rabbit trails here with different stories, but just over the years of doing this and being involved, and I always take my kids and I get emotional about this because I take my kids there to see not everybody has it the way you guys have it as and meaning my kids. Some things in life are different for other people, and you guys sometimes feel like you got it hard. But when you come here and you see and you witness my girls, I have three girls and they’re 12, 16, and 21. And over the years that they’ve been coming, they ask, when’s that youth hunt? When’s the hunt? When’s the hunt? We want to be there. Really? They love seeing it. They know some of the kids that they go to school with, some of them.

And it’s just like they want to be involved and they see, and I think it’s a great thing for them to see that, Hey, we have it pretty nice here. Not everybody can say that, but going away from that now we’ve taken several kids from, it’s called the Special Hearts out towards, they used to be out towards Walnut Creek, but they’re over towards Charm now. And we’ve taken, what, five, six of them from there probably. And they do some work for me at Previa. I work for Previa at Walnut Creek and they do some work that I take them supplies and they do the work and then I go pick ’em up. And I’ve gotten to know in a lot of the, I call ’em kids, but they’re not all kids. They’re some, I think Marcus just had his 30th birthday.

But the relationship that we’ve built, other than them doing work for me through this hunt, it’s incredible. I’ll go out there to drop stuff off and I should video at some time with my phone and show everybody. But the one day I pulled in there and they’re all out front in the yard playing cornhole. And I pulled in and by the time I walked inside the door, every single one of them was standing at the door waiting on me with smiles and just ready to tear me apart. And I’m like, you guys we’re just playing. Nope. You’re here. We want to talk to you. And it’s always like, when are we hunting? When are we hunting? And they’ll come up, give me a hug. There’s Jason that works out, there comes, he’s down syndrome guy. He comes up and he’ll just hang on me and hug me.

And he’s like, some of you might not understand it because it’s Dutch. And he’s like, and that means hunt, hunt. He said he can’t wait. And it brings a tear to my eye to see it because they are so pumped to do this. And the life changing event that has happened for ’em. And there’s one more story that I’m done. Steve and Raver works out there, and I was his guide last year and his brother was along as the cameraman. And it’s hot last year too, but not as hot as this year. But it’s hot. So we get out there and we get into my blind on our property and we’re sitting there and it’s hot and we have the windows shut. And I’m thinking, man, sweat’s starting to beat up. All of a sudden Steven’s head just, and I’m like, I looked at his brother and I said, is he okay?

Oh yeah, he’ll be fine. Just leave him go. And I’m like, he just passed out. I said, he just passed out. Oh yeah, don’t worry about it. He’ll be fine. Literally, I took a picture and sent it to him and he’s literally got his head on the crossbow just, and I’m thinking, we probably ought to call the squad here. I’m a nervous wreck. And his brother’s back there. Nah, don’t worry about him. He’ll come back too. And I’m going, okay, well you know him. He’s like, then five minutes passes. And he’s like, eh, maybe crack that window of hair back there, get him a little air. And I’m thinking, we let five minutes go by. Now you’re saying. So I rip that thing open. I’m like, get some air in here. Another five minutes. Steven’s head pops up and he goes, I was out for a little bit, like nothing happened.

And I’m like, okay, here we go. And so we kind of shut the window again. Deer was starting to move in and I didn’t have the window slid open in the front because the wind was kind of going wrong. And a fawn comes in and he’s like, just chomping at the bit. And I said That thing’s too little. I said, let’s not do that. And he’s like, oh, I want it. I said, the mom, I can see the mom in the back. I said, wait until the big dough comes and then we will, she’ll come. Well, he about could not wait, and his brother’s the same way. Wait on the big one, wait on. So finally she works her way in. She’s nervous, she’s on alert. The two fawns could care less. She’s on high alert and he’s up on the bow right now. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I said, the window’s not even open yet.

I said, you don’t want to shoot now. He’s like, well, we got, I said, no, she’s looking right at us. I said, just calm him down. So I’m talking him through, talking him through. Finally she turns and I’m like, okay, I’m going to open that window. But I said, do not shoot. And his brother’s telling him too, Steven, hands off. So I reached up and I slid the window open and got back and he, he’s up. And I said, not yet. Not yet. And I just clicked the safety off and he thinks it’s go time. I clicked it off and I said, not boom. I didn’t even get not yet out. And I’m like, it scared me. It scared me and his brother so bad. His brother’s the camera man. And all you see is on the video is the camera going straight up and you hear us yelling and we’re like, oh.

And Steven’s like, what? And I’m like, I said, I have no clue where that arrow went. And I said, do you have it on video? And he’s like, no, he scared me so bad I got the ceiling. And I’m like, oh boy. And he’s like, what did I do? What did I do? And I said, hang tight here. And well, he got emotional because he thought he did something bad and he started to cry. And I said, Steven, there’s nothing to cry about. I said, you did nothing wrong. I said, you were ready, you were focused. I said, let’s just settle down. We’ll go out and see what happened here. I said, we just weren’t prepared. Ready, didn’t watch. So I told his brother, I said, let me get out. I got out, I walk up blood all over the arrow and I yelled up to him at the blind. I said, covered in blood. I said, you hit it. But I said, I’m not sure where, but you hit it.

And that made his tone change a little bit where he started smiling. And so we got him out of the blind and we got down and we’re kind of following blood. And I knew right where she went in. So I just went over there. Her and he can’t walk very good at all. And he just kind of plopped down and he half started crying again. He’s like, I messed up. I shouldn’t have shot. I said, Steven, we’re okay. And me and his brother are standing there. I said, she went this way. And his brother goes, do you have your binoculars on you? And I said, no, they’re up in the blind. He ran up, got ’em. And he’s like, I think she’s laying right out there. And I’m like, what are you talking about? He gets the ox and he comes down beside me and he’s looking there and he’s like, yep, there she is. I said, there is no way I grabbed the manx. Yep. Didn’t even go 50 yards.

Marlin Miller:

Get out,

Brian Yoder:

Walked up there right through the heart

Marlin Miller:

And drilled her perfectly.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah, he knew all along

Marlin Miller:

What he was doing.

Brian Yoder:

I said, Steven, I said, you knew when to shoot. I said, good thing I didn’t tell you when because I mean, he was right on her.

Marlin Miller:

How far was she?

Brian Yoder:

She was only 18 yards when he shot, but

Marlin Miller:

Yeah.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah. That’s amazing. He right away wanted to call his other brother, his sister, and he’s like, we got meat. We got meat. It was awesome. But yeah, it’ss so rewarding to see that. So yeah,

Mark Schlabach:

I’ve got just a real quick one. Mine’s not real funny or anything, but I guess wraps up kind of what our goal is and our mission is as far as the organization itself. So we’ve got a dad or a guy and his son, both grown men and they’re now a guide and a cameraman together through conversation out in the community. They’re a brother also. He’s, I dunno, probably in late thirties or so. He said, Hey, he said, my dad and my brother help at your hunt. I said, oh really? I said, okay. Told me who? And I was like, oh, alright. And he said, I’ve always heard about it and everything, but he says, I just want to tell you guys something. He said when we were kids, he said, my dad was so serious about deer hunting. He owned property and he never took us ever. We weren’t allowed to go with him. I said, wow. He goes, he hunts other things now and he’s started getting into hunting more. But he said, I was just never a deer hunter because dad never took us. He said he was so serious about it that we would mess up his hunt. He never did it. I was like, wow. But he said, now he said, since he came and volunteered to be a guide and go on there, this is awesome. He said, he takes my kids hunting. And he said he would never want a kid in his blinder on the property. And he said last year he took mom, he took his wife and he goes, that would never have happened. He says, his whole demeanor has changed since being in this hunt. And he goes, you don’t understand. And the guy welled up and he was teary-eyed about it and he goes, you don’t realize it. And that guy brought his whole family down. They were like, ah, well, he goes, no, we’re going. You’re coming to the hunt. We’re going to go see this. And they got to watch his dad and his brother come in, but he just says, I just want to let you know. And I was like, man, we’ve done our job. So that’s my story, man. That is amazing. It is. It is. It’s life changing. That’s the only thing I can say.

Marlin Miller:

Kurt,

Mark Schlabach:

Final thought.

Curt Yoder:

Yeah. Well I guess I’ll leave it at this, but if you want to know more about white tail heritage of Ohio, so these guys, I’m not on social media much at all, but you can follow us on Facebook. Are we on Instagram?

Mark Schlabach:

We do have an

Curt Yoder:

Instagram

Mark Schlabach:

Account,

Curt Yoder:

But Facebook is the main place. You can look us up there. We also have a website, whitetail heritage of ohio.net and you can follow get our application on there. You can find out about our banquet.

Brian Yoder:

I think we have the lease thing with the, do we have that turned back on where they can fill out an app to hunt the lease if they

Curt Yoder:

That’s on there as well.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah.

Curt Yoder:

If it’s not turned back on, it should be we’ll be

Mark Schlabach:

Turned back. You can make donations, which we have to have support of the community and we always hate to bring it up, but people that feel led, they can give donations there too or get ahold of us. But

Curt Yoder:

It’s been a journey of something that I’ve been on that I don’t want to let go of it. You know how they say you got to take some things off of your plate sometimes because this is one of ’em that I’m just like, and there’s been seasons where I’ve had to take it off of my plate. I think most of us have been there and the board’s very supportive of that. But it’s like, you know what? I’ve gotten the relationships that have been built with this and it goes far beyond hunting. I mean I’ve seen out of whitetail heritage and our local hunting co-op out there, I’ve seen Bible studies start out of it because of relationships. The hunting is kind of like the side thing that has become and treasuring the relationships has been incredible. As you were talking there, mark and Brian, your stories, I can’t help but end on this I guess, but the power of making an impact in somebody’s life and particularly somebody that’s handicapped and then I’m sitting here thinking as I’m listening to those stories, I’m like in a lot of ways we get impacted more than they, I wonder. I think we need to choose to put ourselves somehow in those people’s world.

It doesn’t have, if you don’t have the chance to whitetail heritage somehow somebody that’s dealing with a handicap experiences a world that is so different than ours, probably more than any of us sitting here, but yeah,

Mark Schlabach:

Well mental, physical, both struggles. You don’t know what people are going through. Sometimes it takes something as simple as this to change a life and form that relationship.

Marlin Miller:

And I would hasten to add, and I think you touched on it, Brian, when a person gets to spend time with not just a quick awkward handshake, but when you get to spend time with someone that sees and deals and handles the world a little differently, it is good for everybody. It makes everybody better.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah, absolutely.

Marlin Miller:

It’s just great. Last question, how can we pray for Whitetail heritage for you guys?

Curt Yoder:

One thing that comes to my mind is that we can effectively pass this vision onto the next generation. So our board, we have a few younger guys on the board as well, but to be able to pass this passion on and a lot of it has to do with as opportunities open up for us to be able to find those people that are passionate about it. And obviously you can’t add everybody, but there are opportunities for sure. And that we would be able as a board of directors to recognize those and get other people involved at that level. That’s one way that I think of.

Mark Schlabach:

Yep, absolutely.

Brian Yoder:

Yeah. I mean I’ll just add to that, that maybe pray for us to keep for us board members and those that are involved to keep that passion and to not try to do things for us. We don’t want to be recognized. It’s not us. We don’t want the glory or nothing. It’s all glory to God and it’s all the whole day and event and everything. What we do is not because of I’m not doing this because I want someone to go, man, what you do is awesome. No, I don’t care. I care about the people that are involved in the lives that we’re affecting and I think every one of us involved does. And I would say just pray that we continue to have that attitude that it’s not about us, it’s about what we are giving

Mark Schlabach:

To keep the focus. We can be a good witness through this program to families too that need it be in the hands and feet of Jesus is what we’re called to do. And we do it through hunting and there’s work involved, but it’s a of ours, so it’s not really work when it comes down to it, we enjoy it. Well

Marlin Miller:

Brian, you just said it. You’re not in it to get thanked.

Brian Yoder:

No,

Marlin Miller:

But I’m going to thank you anyway because yeah, we, my family, our kids, we understand what it’s like a bit to be on the fringe at times and what you guys are doing is making much of the least and that is wonderful. So for the little bit that it’s worth for you very much, thanks for doing it. Thanks for coming here. Thanks for spending nearly close to two hours guys. Thank you. This is so good. We appreciate it, Marlon.

Curt Yoder:

Anytime we get to hang out and talk about this, it’s like amazing. We’ll go out for lunch every so often just to talk about it. I love

Marlin Miller:

It guys. Thanks a ton.

Curt Yoder:

Absolutely. Thank you Marlon. See you at the banquet

Marlin Miller:

Done deal.

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In his book, Rembrandt is in the Wind, Russ Ramsey says that the Bible is the story of the God of the universe telling his people to care for the sojourner, the poor, the orphan, and the widow. And it’s the story of his people struggling to find the humility to carry out that holy calling guys, that is what plain values is all about. If you got anything out of this podcast, you will probably love plain values in print. You can go to plain values.com to learn more and check it out. Please like, subscribe and leave us a review. Guys. Love y’all. Thanks so much.