God's Great Outdoors

On this week's Trail to Adventure! Gerry is with a guest, who on being asked to help a woman load a road kill deer into the trunk of her car so that she could feed her hungry family, had an incredible and moving impact on him. Rick Wilson was that man and visits with the listeners to tell the story on this God’s Great Outdoors broadcast production. Challenged by this event, Rick felt God was calling him to in some way help people who were struggling with hunger issues when it comes to meat and was led to start the ministry Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry. From this little incident and the beginning of this ministry in the Hagerstown, MD area, FHFH has expanded across the nation, seeing numerous people fed by deer harvested by hunters in the fall each year.

On this week's Trail to Adventure! Gerry‘s in Bemidji, Minnesota to speak at a men’s ministry event hosted by the radio station, Your QFM and BAMM. (Bemidji Area Men’s Ministry) While there in the area he connected with Kent Fraser. He’d met Kent at a mission’s conference in Ohio in the mid 90s. Kent and his wife Kim had come to speak at Gerry’s church as they’d just starting to minister to Native Americans in Edmonton, Alberta. During that encounter the two men somehow discovered they’d both lived in Maryland and had another connection too. Gerry’s high school photography teacher later became Kent’s principal, when Mr. Bill Russell changed schools. The connections continued as Kent now travels to capture radio interviews across North America for a radio program like Gerry does. Kent works with a ministry called “Without Reservation.” The ministries radio show is titled, THE STORY TELLER, as Native Americans share their life’s story on the program of how Jesus Christ saved them by HIS blood on the cross! Kent also relates the mercy and grace God showed his family in a plane crash on their travels!

Now on this week's Trail to Adventure! Gerry‘s with a very old friend, back to his high school days. He and guest Rick Merkel graduated from Laurel High in Maryland in 1973. Gerry, Rick and another Laurel grad from “73” Mark Horton, rendezvoused in Palaski, New York to fish Lake Ontario. The three were there to try and hook into Brown Trout and Steelhead, plus King and Coho Salmon. Despite the many predictions of server weather, their Captain launched just as the sun peeked above the horizon before being swallowed by the dark clouds moving in. God provide the group with a hole in the weather and a great catch of fish too. Afterward, they bunked in a lighthouse built in 1838. Later, with his microphone uncased, Rick Merkel shared with Gerry on his years of raising champion AKC beagle hounds and how he hunted rabbits in a number of states across the USA. Rick talks about the various rabbit species and how the live. He also relates on acquiring a good dog and the electronics used today when running hounds.

On this week's Trail to Adventure! Gerry visits with Mike Peters who is vice president of Christian Bowhunters of America and the Chapter Chairman of The Lord of the Harvest Archery Club, one of CBA’s chapters. The two talk about how men and women are using this archery & bowhunting ministry to build relationships in the lives of people they know who need Jesus Christ. Mike discusses numerous events that take place across the USA that opens doors for those who love archery and have an impact on lives. One of these events is the Trophies of Grace Whitetail Deer Hunt that happens every year in the fall in southeast Ohio. Mike also, shares how Christ Jesus got a hold of his life!

Now this week’s Trail To Adventure! radio program has us at one of the Trail To Adventure! conferences that GGO conducts across the USA. The location is Stanley, Wisconsin at Maple Grove Bible Church. The guest Chris Smith was one of the speakers from the conference’s lineup of pro’s and ministry leaders who joined Gerry. Chris is from Victory Deer Recovery (www.facebook.com/VictoryDeerRecovery) and he shares how he and his wife Meghan founded the ministry. It started with their love of training dogs as the two went to a seminar on using dogs to hunt and find the shed antlers of deer. The methods of teaching canines to use their noses even in snow covered country sounded simple enough. From there they moved to using their pets to helping others find deer lost while hunting. This lets them build relationships and share Jesus Christ too!

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! Gerry is at Game Dinner in Pennsylvania with an old friend, Dick Hribar. Through the years as a fishing and hunting guide, Dick Hribar has put a lot of miles on his body. At the time of this interview he was about to undergo his fourth knee transplant on both legs; he is quite an outdoorsmen, always on the go. Dick shares how as a Special Education teacher in Pennsylvania for 30 years he was able to connect with his students by way of the bow and arrow, connecting with them using archery and hunting, turning many of their lives around as they lacked fathers at home. Dick also talks of his guiding elk hunters who draw the limited and coveted tags in Pennsylvania each fall to pursue the monsters that roam the mountains near his home.

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! treestand safety is the topic as Jay Everett from Hunter Safety Systems is this week’s guest. Gerry and Jay spend part of this interview talking treestand safety to help the listeners understand the importance of the topic and seriously consider their need to wear safety harnesses while hunting from an elevated platform. Statistics show that one out of three people that hunt out of a treestand will have an accident at some time in their life, with a number of these incidents being fatal. Jay relates facts on the safety harness and how their research reveals that most falls take place going up, getting into, coming out of and then descending to the earth. The goal of this program is to be sure that none of the listeners will become a part of the tragic statistic, on the negative side.

On this The Trail To Adventure! Gerry’s guest is the founder of Christian Bowhunters of America, David Roose. The two are together near the home office of God’s Great Outdoors in Ohio, talking about how archery and one's love of bow hunting can be used to exalt Jesus Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior. Dave was a tent making pastor and while working on a construction job, near his Cadillac, Michigan home, God began to give him ideas about the CBA ministry. The fact is, over the course of that day in the early 1980’s, the Lord laid out the concept for the ministry as Dave jotted down the ideas that came to him as he worked. And the ministry came to be, just as God shared for this evangelistic ministry.

This week’s interview is with Mark Looy as he shares about the Answers in Genesis ministry and Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. A great way to evangelize those who come to visit and Mark relates about this apologetic ministry focusing on the importance of the first book of the Bible. The two also talk about the Ark Encounter located 40 miles away from the Museum in Williamstown, Kentucky. This life size exhibit’s having a fantastic draw of visitors, with a high number of attendees needing a relationship with their Creator God. These attractions are an hour’s drive from God’s Great Outdoors Family Fun Fossil Hunt’s in August. This happens in Ohio and Dr. John Whitmore, who teaches young earth geology at Cedarville University, comes and shares with the fossil hunters, discussing the proof Noah’s flood.

Gerry visits with one of the legends in the outdoor world, Harold Knight of Knight & Hale Game calls on this Trail To Adventure! Listeners will discover that David Hale who was a farmer, and Harold Knight a barber, got together to design, develop and market turkey calls. Giving one of these calls to an outdoor writer way back when there weren’t many turkeys to start with, created quite a stir. His article in an outdoor magazine drove in hundreds of phone calls to get one of their “turkey tubes” and it just went on from there. Both these men give all the glory to God for what has happened in their lives and they continue to praise Him as the years roll by. Harold also relates as a youngster he had a desire to shoot a goose. When that did happened, he found it had a Jack Miner band with a scripture verse on it!