By: Greg Duncan

Loss is a part of our lives. If you live long enough, you will eventually lose someone you love. For those that lose a loved one to cancer, the experience can be excruciating. Watching them slowly slip away, withering right before their eyes with no to little hope of a reprieve takes a serious toll on the ones left behind, leaving them with nothing but the a hole in their heart and memories of those lost.

Ken Kylberg lost his wife to cancer two years ago. She left behind a broken hearted husband taken to his emotional limit but, in passing, delivered a gift of love, kindness and selflessness from beyond.  

From their first conversation, Ken and Laura immediately felt a connection. Ken knew right away that the two were destined to be together. The relationship quickly progressed and not long after they started seeing each other, Laura was diagnosed with cancer. Despite only knowing each other for a short time – where some would have cut ties and ended a relationship sure to be full of hardships and pain – Ken decided he was not going to leave her side and the couple married.

 “I couldn’t imagine someone who would leave a spouse in that kind of trouble, but it happens all the time,” said Ken. “It damn sure lets you know what you are made of. It tests every inch of you.”

“She never did not smile,” said Ken. “That was one of the most amazing things about Laura. She always smiled.”

Throughout their relationship, the couple went everywhere together, including hunting trips to Ken’s lease. Like many Texans, Ken grew up chasing whitetails and dreamed of one day hunting elk out West or maybe even stag in New Zealand. Laura was too weak to make such a trip. Not wanting to leave her side, Ken abandoned his dream hunts.

“She wasn’t near strong enough,” said Ken. “So we didn’t make it.”

As time passed and trips to the hospital increased in frequency and stay times became longer, Laura was rapidly declining in health. Ken cared for her while she was confined to their bed. One day, Laura called Ken into the bedroom and handed him an envelope. Ken opened it to find a sizeable insurance policy taken out by Laura on herself.

“I was the beneficiary,” said Ken. “I had no idea what it was. We had never much discussed the end details. Death was evident for a couple of years, but you try to avoid those issues at all costs.”

True to her unselfish ways, Laura had taken out the extra insurance policy strictly to fund the two bucket-list hunts.

“It was bittersweet because it’s something I always wanted to do, but for her to die to make it happen was tough,” Ken said. “She told me, ‘don’t you dare use this on your bills and it better be used for hunts or I will come back.’ I guess she knew her time was pretty close, so she decided to give me that envelope.”

Laura lived each day for Ken and he tried to make every day the best it could be for her. Three days after presenting the envelope to Ken, Laura lay in bed resting at their home

“I kissed her on the forehead and told her she could go if she needed to,” said Ken. “About 45 minutes later, she was gone.”

After a long grieving period, Ken stuck to his word and began preparations for his hunts. With so much riding on these two hunts, Ken turned to Greg Ray and his Outdoor Solutions team to find the perfect outfitters to give him the best chance to take an animal of a lifetime.

“You bump your head a lot trying to get into good outfitters,” said Ken. “Relying on Greg and his team was good because they do the legwork for you.”

Greg Ray set up Ken for a trip to New Mexico and after a long discussion enrolled Ken in his long-range shooting school to sharpen his skills before heading to elk camp.

“The outfitter told me I could be shooting at super long ranges,” said Ken. “Growing up in Texas hunting whitetails, I hadn’t really taken a long shot before. Had I rolled into that outfitter without taking the class, I wouldn’t have done too well.”

On the second to last day of Ken’s elk hunt, his guide spied a bull bedded down about a mile away. They broke for lunch and returned with the hope the bull had moved.

“We came back and nothing was moving,” said Ken. “I laid down to take a nap and the guide told me I needed to sit up. The bull walked out into the open at 515 yards across a canyon. I sat down and drop the sticks and was ready in 30 seconds. That’s all it took. I dropped it.”

After Laura passed, Ken had her body cremated and carried some of her ashes with him to the top of that New Mexico mountain. Once arriving at the downed bull, Ken spread some of Laura’s ashes to honor her life.

“There were a lot of tears,” said Ken. “It was the most emotional thing I have ever felt. The guide knew my story and I think he got more emotional than me. He had lost his mother to cancer the previous year.”

Ken followed up his elk hunt with a trip to New Zealand. Laura was a traveler by nature and the couple had always discussed going overseas to hunt a stag. Joined by his son and brother, Ken boarded the international flight to wrap up his commitment to Laura.

Ken downed an impressive stag in New Zealand. As Ken spread Laura’s ashes, he felt a sense of closure as his journey concluded.

“It was real bittersweet when it was over,” said Ken. “It wasn’t about the stag. The whole journey was over. I am sure she was looking down very proud. I love her more today than I did back then.”

Ken’s story is one of heartbreak, anguish and sorrow but also one of unbridled displays of selflessness from Laura. The end of her life brought sadness and an overwhelming feeling of loss. From her ashes and beyond, Laura’s legacy lives on in the memories of those who loved her.

Shooting Tips: Trigger Squeeze 
By Steve Aryan  
Whether you are a seasoned shooter or just starting out, going back to the basics or starting with the basics, is sometimes what it takes to get us on target. At some point in our shooting/hunting experiences, we can develop bad habits. Something as simple as your cheek weld on the butt stock, breathing or follow through on your shot. In our first Outdoor Solutions Minute, Steve Aryan talks about proper finger placement and trigger squeeze for a more accurate shot, especially when we are talking about extended distances.

A few of the things to consider are…

•  What part of the finger to use to prevent you from pulling your shot Left or Right.
• Proper grip to allow you to pull straight back and not up at an angle.
• What part of the trigger to actually use for a clean, crisp break.
• How thumb placement can make you a more accurate shooter.

The video below is the first of many in a series put on by the Outdoor Solutions instructor team. We hope you enjoy them and feel free to reach out to us anytime with questions. 

Shooting Positions and the Shooting “Budget”
By Ryan Long
So you’ve dreamed of attending a long range shooting school with the aspirations of hitting the magic 1000-yard mark….with repeatable results. You conducted your research, vetted the instructors, saved your hard-earned money, arranged and taken vacation from work and are now at your school.

Most long range schools can get you to 1000 yards consistently. Most of these schools start that process from a prone shooting position. This is good and bad. Good due to the fact that it is a very stable position and bad because it sets you up for failure in most of the real-world hunting positions that you are going to have available to you. The Outdoor Solutions Long Range Shooting Schools start their 1000 yard engagements from a sitting position and teach you how to mitigate positional awareness from the beginning of the class, and this gets to the nuts and bolts of this article…..your shooting position “budget.”

Imagine that you are on a fixed budget…a shooting “budget.” The distance you’re shooting eats away at some of that budget The vital size of the critter your hunting eats away at another portion of that budget. The environmental conditions, shooter fitness and fatigue, and then the unexpected…call it the flash sale of the hunting world takes up the rest.

Most all of the time, in a shooting school static “square” range scenario, the budget comes out to an even amount. Let’s use $100 for this scenario. You have $100 worth of shooting budget to spend and the most targets presented at these schools cost roughly $100. In a real world hunting scenario, the cost to the hunter, which is presented by the environment, is most always in excess of that budget. So what do you do? You will always have to give up something in order to gain something in this world. You may have to put some stability of your shooting position back on the shelve in order to purchase a less expensive shooting position that is still within an acceptable accuracy window. In other words, you may have to get out a rock solid prone position and into a slightly less stable sitting position with sticks because your desired animals walks left out of the field, instead of your expected right departure.

Being able to be fluid in the hunting environment means the difference between taking that trophy home and watching it walk away because you weren’t able to flex that shooting “budget”. This is where the Outdoor Solutions Long Range Schools stands out amongst the rest. The second day on the range will force you to take into account your shooters “budget” and make adjustments accordingly. They will force you into situations where you may feel like you are rock steady and prepared for your shot and then your target choice will be taken away and you will be forced to engage a different target from the same position in the next 10 seconds.

For a hunter, learning to flex that “budget” and knowing how to be fluid in the hunting environment is a skill that will set you up for success in your next adventure. Let the Outdoor Solutions Team show you how.

We Do It All For You

Sounds kind of cheesy, but it’s true. When it comes to adding new outfitters to the Outdoor Solutions line up, we do it for you, the client, to ensure that you are getting the experience you are expecting. We admit our inspection trips and checking out new destinations is the fun part of our job but we take it seriously and believe it has been the key to our success. Here is a brief summary of what our inspections entail.

Identify Your Needs

One of the things the Outdoor Solutions team does NOT do, is add additional outfitters just to add them. We add our new outfitters as the demand from you, our customer, dictates. We take a different approach from other booking services and intentionally keep our database of outfitters manageable and personable. By not adding hundreds and hundreds of outfitters that we know very little about, we are able to maintain a personal relationship with all of our outfitters, instead of just a list of places to send clients. These personal relationships benefit everyone. We know exactly who we are sending our clients to, and our outfitters know they can expect a well prepared client and the client has no surprises during or after the trip.

How We Find Our Outfitters

We do not just find outfitters at a trade show and then start sending our clients there; that would pretty much defeat the purpose of our service. With that being said, we have found some of our best outfitters at tradeshows. In fact, some of them have been with us for nearly 15 years. We have found outfitters online via forums and websites, outdoor publications and even from our current outfitters. By far, the majority of our outfitters come to us by way of referral or a high recommendation from industry friends or even clients that have hunted with a specific outfitter.

What We Look For

No matter how we find our outfitters our process is always the same. As previously mentioned there has to be a need or a demand from you, our client. Next, either in person (generally a trade show) or over the phone we have general questions we ask, review their website if they have one and determine if an onsite visit is warranted. We then set a date to visit their property and hunt/fish for an in-season species they offer. Yea, this is the fun part, and it’s hard to get people to understand that it is still work. It just happens to be work that we love!
Our main goal of the inspection trips is to make sure the outfitter is exactly what they say they are. If they market themselves as a five-star facility, we want to make sure that it is truly a five-star experience for our clients. If it’s a backcountry, pack-in hunt, we look for condition of gear, guides’ knowledge of the area, quality and quantity of game for the area, toughness of terrain, quality of food, and much more. We want to experience everything you would experience so we can not only pass it along to you, but help determine if that specific outfitter is even a good fit for you.

What This Means For You

These inspection trips along with our consultation with our clients give us the ability to customize our recommendations for you. We feel the inspections are just one of the things that set Outdoor Solutions apart from other services. We pride ourselves on our customer service, which is apparent by the number of clients that rebook year after year with our team. We don’t just sell you a hunt and then leave you to fend for yourself; in fact our service is quite the opposite. Our other services that clients have mentioned they really appreciate include…

• Help with proper licenses and tags
• Driving directions and contact information for the outfitter you are hunting with.
• Arrangements for airport pick up at your outfitters destination (If offered by outfitter)
• Detailed “What to expect” sheet that will offer a day-by-day overview of what to expect on your trip, including average temperatures for the time of year you are hunting/fishing, how to get there, detailed gear list with proven gear from our partners that we personally use ourselves in the field (Most of the time at discounted rates) and even sample menus of what will be prepared while in camp. A phone call seven to 10 days prior to your trip to make sure you have everything you need and answer any last-minute questions you might have.• Follow-up phone call and email after every trip to hear all the details and hopefully about the one that did not get away. We want to hear your feedback about what you liked and if anything could have been better.

What Our Outfitters Say About Us

“I have been working with the Team at Outdoor solutions for many years now and have enjoyed a very effective and professional relationship. Always prompt with replies and ” Solutions” should any arise , they have saved me countless days, if not weeks, during the year booking hunters and covering correspondence with clientele in my absence, which is a lot due to other activities and obligations. Being in the outfitting business over 40 years teaches you a lot about people. The people at Outdoor Solutions are some of the best and I would recommend their services to everyone – hunters and outfitters alike!”
Colorado Buck ~ New Mexico

“We just can’t say enough good about our partners at Outdoor Solutions. It’s not everyday you become really good friends with a customer or vendor, but that is what happened with TCO and Deborah, Greg, and Lindsey. This has only been possible because the three of them are the most trustworthy, honest and genuine people you will ever meet. They do what the say they will do and follow up with all customers each and every hunt. There is no detail missing. We have been working with Greg and his team for the last six-plus years and I can honestly say we have never had an issue. I have been associated with other “booking agents” in the past and one of the key factors with OSC, is that they will stand behind and support their outfitters.
Charles Coker~ Texas

What Our Clients Say About Us