Chad Mendes & Chad Belding: Turning Outdoor Passion Into Business

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 504, featuring Chad Mendes and Chad Belding, covering UFC fighter Chad Mendes's transition into entrepreneurship, Banded founder Chad Belding's business journey, and how the two built a string of outdoor-industry brands together.

Introduction

Tom Rowland: Welcome to the podcast today. Me and Moose are sitting right here in the studio, and we have an awesome show for you. I am really excited to have Chad Mendes, UFC star, on the podcast. I've tried to get him on for a long time, and we have a number of mutual friends. If you don't know, Chad is a UFC fighter who has had an incredible career. He's fought Jose Aldo, he's fought Conor McGregor, and he's fought so many UFC stars. Before that, he was an NCAA runner-up and a two-time All-American in wrestling, and he's an all-around great guy who has been vocal about being a hunter and a fisherman all through his UFC career. If I see a wrestler who likes to hunt and fish, that's absolutely going to be my guy, so Chad Mendes has been the guy I've been rooting for a long time.

We also have Chad Belding. Chad is his business partner and started the brand Banded, and he can tell the story of building that brand and where it is today. These guys have a number of businesses together, and the amount of entrepreneurial knowledge in this podcast is incredible. Whether you're a UFC fighter fan, a hunter, a fisherman, an entrepreneur, or someone who likes to understand what it takes to be successful in business or sport, this is an awesome conversation. Chad Belding and Chad Mendes, coming up right now.

Catching Up: Wildfires and Old Connections

Tom Rowland: Chad and Chad, how are you doing, man?

Chad Mendes: Good, man. It's been good over here outside of the smoke. I'm in California, and the whole state's on fire.

Tom Rowland: Seems like the whole West is on fire. My boys are in Bozeman, Montana, and they said they got a lot of rain recently, which really helped with the fires. And Chad Belding, where are you?

Chad Belding: I'm in Reno-Tahoe. It's smoky as heck here, probably 87 degrees today. We had the Dixie Fire up by Lake Almanor, and then the big one south of Lake Tahoe that's already over almost 150,000 acres. The air quality is terrible, it burns your lungs. Praying for all the firefighters and hotshots trying to save these residents and structures in the forest every day.

Tom Rowland: Well, we've been trying to do this for a while. We've got mutual friends, like your friend Clay Guida, the Carpenter — we had him on the show not too long ago. A lot of people know you as a UFC star, but before that you were a wrestler, and you've always been a deer hunter and fisherman. I remember you being the people's champ right out of deer camp in the early UFC days.

Chad Mendes: Yeah, that's right — that's a Cole Ford song. I love that, man. I heard it for the first time and knew I had to put it somewhere in my life.

Growing Up Hunting and Fishing in California

Tom Rowland: How did you get into hunting so much growing up?

Chad Mendes: It's about my dad and my brothers. I'm from Hanford, California — basically the armpit of California — and we used to go up above Fresno, places like Shaver Lake, Wishon, and Aldenke Creek, and hunt blacktail-mule deer crosses up there every year. That's kind of where I got into it. In the valley where I grew up there was a lot of pheasant and dove hunting, and we'd always go out to the river for catfish and bass, and up to the mountains for trout. That's where my love for all of it came from, doing it with family, and it soon became an obsession. I love everything about the outdoors.

Tom Rowland: You've done a great job transitioning out of your fight career into other things. I've followed you on social media a long time, and I tried to make a list of everything you do — it's incredible. I remember seeing Fins and Feathers pretty early on, where you'll take trips and fans, or other fighters and sports stars, can join you. Tell me about that business.

Building Fins and Feathers

Chad Mendes: That was an idea I put together with a good buddy of mine back in 2013, and we ended up launching it in 2015. The idea was that when I'm done fighting, I don't have retirement — the UFC doesn't pay us once we're done. So I thought, how could we create something with some association to the fight game and the brand I've built, combined with the outdoors, something I love, that could provide for my family. We put together a year-long schedule of hunting and fishing trips all over the world, booked clients, and added different celebrities — UFC fighters, pro ballplayers, actors, snowboarders, PBR guys. You get to hang out with these people you watch fighting in the octagon and really get to know them on a different level, share stories around a campfire, in a way you never would at a meet-and-greet. It's a cool, unique experience for people to go out, get to know these athletes personally, have a great hunting or fishing trip, and take meat home for their family.

Honestly, we had no idea how it was going to do. It was nerve-wracking coming out of the fight game and jumping into that — I thought it was either going to be cool or the biggest flop ever. Thankfully, that first year we sold out of every trip we offered, and every year since 2015 we've added multiple trips and kept growing it.

Tom Rowland: And it wasn't without a lot of work — I used to see you at one sports show after another, the International Sportsman's Expositions and so on.

Chad Mendes: Yeah, they're a lot of work, but a lot of fun — four days straight of eight-to-ten-hour days, set-up and tear-down. It's a grind, but I love going to those shows. So many cool people who share the same passion; you run into the occasional jerk, but most of the time everyone's super cool.

How Chad Mendes and Chad Belding Connected

Tom Rowland: So how do you and Chad know each other?

Chad Mendes: I'm pretty sure the connection was Traeger, right, Belding?

Chad Belding: Yeah, pretty much that and Mountain Ops. And then we hung out in Louisville at the NRA convention.

Chad Mendes: The outdoor industry is both of us sharing the same passions and working with a lot of the same companies, going to the same sports shows. It's been awesome getting to work with Belding — the guy is a business mastermind. I think I'm pretty ADD with businesses, and that guy is a hundred times worse than me. His mind is going a hundred miles an hour with different successful things all day long, so it's pretty cool to say I'm a business partner with this dude.

Tom Rowland: When you have a good business partner, they often complement the things you're not good at. Does that work with this relationship?

Chad Belding: I think we have a good balance. From Mendes's celebrity, his following, and his humility, being so approachable as a superstar from the UFC and now transitioning into the new fight league he'll talk about — he's a great partner. He gets eyeballs on it, and he moves the needle. He's got great insight into what it takes to develop the culture of a business, and people are attracted to that. When you get into partnerships or sponsorships it can get boring and nonstop transactional, but Chad has a lot of partners and sponsors, and now he's taken ownership in our brands with American Almond Beef and the Provider, working with a lot of the same sponsors. You have to be tactful and diligent about that. Chad does a good job of creating a culture people buy into — not just the product, but his lifestyle — and that's contagious. On our side, we've tried to show through national TV, podcasting, our brands, manufacturing, and live events how therapeutic hunting is, and how it's the common denominator that brings all these walks of life together.

Who knew a subpar college baseball player who's still a subpar duck hunter would end up business partners with a badass UFC fighter who lit up Aldo and lit up McGregor? You just never know — you have to go after it and open doors, and some of it sticks and some doesn't. Our friendship and partnership works because we have a lot of mutual respect for each other, and I don't think we've ever really argued. Chad and his wife have that magic of making everybody they talk to feel like the only person in the room, even though they're celebrities. When Chad goes out in public, he's bombarded for photos and autographs — the two best I've ever seen at handling that in my whole life are Chad Mendes and Dan Hendo Henderson. They answer every call, talk to every fan, and their humility is unbelievable. The partnership works because of stuff like that, in my opinion.

From Wrestling to the UFC

Tom Rowland: I want to be more like Chad Mendes in that I don't know how you spread yourself so thin. Just on the list I put together, you've got Fins and Feathers, which led into Gills and Thrills with Clay, the spices and rubs, American Almond Beef, the Peak meal products, and now you've written a cookbook with Chad — that's five or six businesses. I listened to you on Rogan, and it was interesting that you'd wrestled since you were five, went straight from college into mixed martial arts training with Team Alpha Male, and then that career ends and you have to find something else to pour all that energy into. What drove you as an amateur working your way up through the UFC and your whole combat sports career?

Chad Mendes: I never even went amateur — I went straight out of college. Starting out wrestling when I was younger was my dad getting me into it. I was five years old, and I still remember driving to my very first wrestling practice thinking wrestling was what I saw on TV with turnbuckles in a ring. I sprinted into the gym, smelled that stinky old-gym smell, and looked around at these weird foam mats with circles on them — there was no turnbuckle, no ring at all. I was disappointed at first, but I ended up figuring out what wrestling was and loved it. We never took a year off all the way through college. I think wrestling as a kid was probably something I did because my dad wanted me to, but I enjoyed it even though I didn't know any different at the time.

I also did water polo for about four years, right before wrestling season, just to get in shape — even though I sink, I don't float, so it was extremely tough for me. Getting to high school, what motivated me was earning a scholarship to college. I got recruited to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and it was my sophomore year when I finally did a wrestling camp with Urijah Faber. He was training for a fight and kept hurting all the other wrestlers with jiu-jitsu moves nobody else was doing, so I jumped in and rolled with him for an hour. He told me if I finished my college career I could move up to Sacramento, stay in his spare bedroom, and train with the team. That's when I made up my mind: I'd try fighting for a little bit after college, mainly because I didn't want an office job right away, especially if I could jump into something that paid well. I told myself if I sucked at it I'd go get a real job, and if I was good at it, I'd just keep doing it. I ended up being good at it and fighting through the UFC ring. A lot of different steps got me where I am now, but I wouldn't change any of it.

Tom Rowland: I don't know why wrestlers tend to like fishing and hunting so much, but some of my best customers and friends who turn out to be great at it, when I ask how long they've been doing it, say only a few years — and then I ask what they did in high school, and it's wrestling. There's something to that commonality. I always thought it was the mental chess game of both.

Chad Mendes: Definitely could be. For me it was always my disconnect — especially in the fight game, with all the media, weight cutting, and the grind of training every day. My friend Clay does the same thing, taking two or three days mid-camp just to go fish and recover before getting back into training. I've never done that before, but this training camp is going to be the first time — I'm headed to Wyoming at the end of the month to do an archery antelope hunt, and I'll use those days to disconnect, recharge, let my body heal, and get back into it.

A New Fight and New Motivation

Tom Rowland: This thing you've got going on right now is pretty exciting — your training and boxing have been looking great on Instagram.

Chad Mendes: Melvin has been over here training me. We've got a bare-knuckle fight lined up — I'm going bare-knuckle boxing, which I'm excited about. It sounds brutal, but it's basically a boxing match without your MMA gloves on. MMA gloves only have about a quarter to half inch of padding, so it won't be a whole lot different, except now I don't have to worry about head kicks, kicks at all, wrestling, or jiu-jitsu.

Tom Rowland: They seem to be paying out pretty nicely for the people going over and doing that.

Chad Mendes: For sure — and it's definitely more motivating, having an end goal worth what I'm doing every day.

Chad Belding's Entrepreneurial Journey

Tom Rowland: Two businesses isn't twice as much work as one — it's exponentially more, and then you start stacking them on top of each other. What drives you to keep doing this?

Chad Mendes: Honestly, I can't take credit — Belding is the mastermind behind the rubs, the cookbook, and even American Almond Beef. Teaming up with him and hearing his passion for all of it is where that came from. After listening to him talk about where he thought these things could go, I wanted in, so we teamed up. He's the mastermind with that stuff.

Tom Rowland: Where does that come from for you, Chad? What was the first company you started?

Chad Belding: My first company ever was Sierra Restroom Solutions — portable toilets, stormwater pollution and erosion control, and street sweeping, covering the whole Tahoe Basin. Construction and special events were unbelievable at the time, but the recession hit in July 2008 and put construction and roadwork on the back burner. Around then, I was asked to film a TV show about my personality — I'd been out with a film crew shooting a documentary series for Ducks Unlimited, and the production company asked me to do it, which worked out because I'd have the fall and winter to hunt while the toilet business was slower. One thing led to the next, and when the production company owner's mom got ill, I asked if I could take the project on myself. That turned into starting a company in 2008 called Banded Productions.

Banded was a word I never thought I could trademark because it's so synonymous with duck and goose hunting, but when my intellectual-property attorney, Brian Hardy, came back and said we got it, I couldn't believe it. That turned into Banded Productions, and we went to air with Fowl Life season one in 2009. Through competition calling — duck and goose calling — I'd met so many people across different walks of life in the industry, and when we launched Fowl Life with my brothers, Toyota, Sportsman's Warehouse, Avery, and Zink were all on board. As soon as we went to air, we got inundated with messages: what call are you blowing, what boat are you driving, what UTV are you in, what gun are you shooting. I realized the money wasn't really in TV — TV was a marketing platform to drive the brand and messaging, but the money was going to be in manufacturing.

At that time in the fight world it was Tapout, then Affliction, then UFC — this was back when UFC was one pay-per-view a month. I was a huge UFC fan and a country boy at heart, so I wanted a clothing line that mixed that UFC and Affliction and Tapout in-your-face attitude with the outdoors, instead of the grandpa-style hunting shirts at Cabela's. Being a huge Guns N' Roses fan, I had my designers make a shirt called Double Cluck and Jive — two Canada geese squaring up like they were about to fight — and orders started coming in. We followed it with one called Red Dawn, mallard ducks flying over a sunset, and people loved the more aggressive approach. We got a call from the national hunting buyer at Cabela's, John O'Rourke, who wanted the shirts in stores, and I told him I was starting my own duck-call company instead. That became Banded Calls, and our first PO from Cabela's — before the Bass Pro acquisition — was for 2,500 duck calls.

Anybody who knows anything about duck calls knows you need material, machinists, CNCs, polishers — we were using three different machinists in three different parts of the country and delivering calls like crazy to direct consumers and retail. Then Mack's Prairie Wings picked us up too. That led to January 2011, when I was doing an appearance at SHOT Show in Vegas and my buddy Christian Curtis ran up and said we needed to talk — he'd just come out of a meeting with Cabela's, and John O'Rourke said Belding's onto something bigger than a duck call or a T-shirt. That's when we went seeking capital. Today, if you look at bandedbrands.com, we have over 4,000 SKUs — men's, women's, and kids' apparel, waders, bibs, jackets, thermals, base layers, mid layers, top layers, bags, and gun cases. In 2015 it came full circle when we acquired Avery Outdoors, Avery Sporting Dog, and Greenhead Gear — the company I cut my teeth with — and put them under the Banded Brands umbrella. That's when the ideas started driving: what else could we get into, since we already had the marketing platform, the team, the sales reps, and the PR? That's where the Provider, American Almond Beef, and other brands came from. It all traces back to that hunting buyer at Cabela's and wanting a Tapout-style brand for the outdoors. That's my story in a nutshell.

Chad Mendes: Now you see why I say he's a mastermind with business — nonstop business up here. Talking to him for the first time about working together, I was just like, let's do it, I don't even need to hear anymore. My handful of things doesn't seem like so much anymore after hanging out with that guy.

Balancing Multiple Businesses

Tom Rowland: How do you balance it, Chad Belding?

Chad Belding: First of all, we have an unbelievable team, but it's nonstop. People always ask when do I sleep, how many miles did I log on a plane last year, how much windshield time in a truck. If you're going to do it, you've got to do it. My daughter comes first — I'm very transparent that I messed up my marriage, I was an idiot, but life is about maturity, learning, and picking yourself up when you fall down, and I had the family and friends to support me through that. I was on the road nonstop, building the brand through every calling contest, every parking-lot show, every dealer show and buying-group show — ISE Worldwide, Sports Inc., Fort Worth to Fort Lauderdale to Nashville to New York. My focus the whole time was that nobody was bigger than the brand. Banded was going to be the Nike of duck and goose hunters — I wanted people to see that Banded logo and feel like they were part of a band of brothers, part of Banded Nation, whether they had an urban attitude or an outdoor lifestyle.

To balance it, I compartmentalize every day — scheduling out things like this podcast, an hour and a half for social media, time for sales and maintenance calls to dealers, checking on our bottling company and labels, sponsor maintenance for the Fowl Life TV show, and our hunt schedule, since we're filming in seventeen different states over ninety-five to a hundred and twenty days each fall. It looks impossible, but with our team of producers, animators, photographers, videographers, and my business manager Sherry Carey — who's a genius with taxes, write-offs, receipts, and budgets, because I'm a mess with money — it works. I had to stop micromanaging and let people do what they're good at. Mendes isn't my employee, he's one of my best friends and a business partner, and I never have to worry about him because he's always working and always thinking about the endgame. Same with Clay, Tom, Tyson, Jake, and Jen — I don't have to be over their shoulder, because you lose creativity and structure if you micromanage. I value never micromanaging anybody; if something's not getting done right, I'll put in input, but not-micromanaging combined with complete transparency, communication, structure, and organization are the keys to success.

You have to keep driving it, because having the entrepreneurial spirit means knowing you don't get to eat if you don't make your own money — no clocking in or out, no IRA or retirement like Mendes said, it's on us. We chose this lifestyle, and I mean this with every ounce of my soul: I have not worked one day since January 2004. It's been a roller coaster of emotions, excitement, friendships, camaraderie, campfires, mallard ducks, wet dogs, UFC fights, concerts, and the military people I've gotten to meet — they drive me. I have a burning desire to succeed and to build brands that somebody like Chad Mendes would stand by. When you taste these rubs or our beef, you can tell we didn't just mix something up quickly — these are legit. I want to be contagious through passion and create a snowball effect where people take ownership in these brands and drive them to become legendary, the way Phil Knight did with Nike or what's been done with Under Armour. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Building Brand Culture Through Hard Work

Tom Rowland: That's a great story — I know the story behind other brands that have become kind of iconic, like Yeti. We hooked up with Yeti in its very early stages, and their team was at every single sports show, just like what you're describing. A lot of these companies seem like an overnight success twenty years in the making.

Chad Belding: If you think about roto-molding and how long it's been used in whitewater canoeing, Yeti probably wasn't the first company to try it in a cooler, but they mastered it. They came to market with not just a product but a story and a culture — the way they presented themselves, looked you in the eye, shook your hand — and everybody wanted to be part of that family. There are a lot of good cooler companies out there, but even their CEOs would admit they're driven by Yeti, because you can't better that product, and Yeti isn't cheap — you have to make good money to afford one, kind of like a Benelli shotgun. People want a Yeti because it's a status symbol, it works, and they want to be part of that culture. That happens every day when a brand is driven the right way.

Tom Rowland: If you have a brand like Yeti, a competitor can make a better product and charge half the price, and people still won't want it because of the culture that's been built. That's what you guys are doing with Banded and on your way to doing with these other products. It's not enough to have an idea, or even a better idea — you have to devote yourself to it and build a culture around it, be the guy who goes to every parking-lot show.

Chad Mendes: That's one thing I started doing locally in Northern California, and it really snowballed with social media — with our Provider rubs, I'd walk into different Ace Hardwares, basically door-to-door pitching these rubs myself, and now those stores are selling our products. Taking pictures and showing everybody that follows me that I'm out there putting the groundwork in personally, not just hiring people to do it. Belding's been doing the same thing, and I think that's what's contagious — people see that you're actually in there doing it yourself. Now we've got five or six companies reaching out because they saw us selling in a store and want us in theirs too, and we've got some big retail deals in the works from all that grinding. If I see someone out there grinding, it makes me want to buy from them over someone who isn't.

Chad Belding: That goes with what we touched on — Chad's humility and personality let him do exactly that. In business you have to figure out influence and inspiration; even the Yeti guys will say they got their idea somewhere, maybe on a fishing trip with a canoe. A big part of success is knowing who your trailblazers and inspirations are. Our goal is always to pay homage first to military and first responders, and then to people like Chad Ward, Matt Pittman, Tuffy, and others we met through Traeger, along with the Jack Daniel's team in Lynchburg, the Houston Rodeo, Memphis in May, and the Kansas City Royal barbecue circuit — celebrity pitmasters who took us under their wing. I'll text Chad Ward about a twenty-one-pound brisket and he'll text me right back. We didn't invent the dry rub, but we wanted a different flavor profile built around living off the land, food to fork. My dad always taught me that you were put on earth to work, and none of your family or friends matter if you can't provide for them — that's where the name Provider came from. Whether you grow a garden, grow a pig, kill a deer, or catch a fish, as long as you know where your food comes from and do it with passion, dignity, and respect, you're a provider.

The Provider wasn't something we jumped into overnight — it took about ten and a half months of tasting and reworking shipments until we got the flavor right. One of our blends, Spawn, smells like a sushi bar and is incredible on redfish, salmon, or yellowtail. We wanted to pay homage to all the people who helped us have the guts to say we're going to do it, even if we fail.

The Story Behind American Almond Beef

Tom Rowland: It's one thing to go from clothing to spices to events, but operating with land and live animals seems like a much different business. What's the story with finishing cattle on almonds?

Chad Belding: Growing up watching the Lone Ranger and John Wayne, I always wanted to be a cowboy, and I started thinking about how much we take for granted where our food comes from. I did a deep dive with a good friend, Roc Merlot, in Durham, California, who told me about his Italian family feeding their cattle the almond byproduct from their orchards — they call it mammon. His childhood friend Brandon Birney owns Burn Farms, and along with his partner Tim they built a commodity company buying byproduct from farms and ranches to turn into horse feed and wildlife feed, and eventually started feeding it to steers. Because of Roc's family history of the beef tasting different, they started finishing steers on a proprietary almond blend for the last hundred and twenty days of their lives, from about 900 to 1,300 pounds — every meal is that almond flex, almond seed, and almond meal blend along with alfalfa.

What they saw was that the marbling, texture, and taste were all there, plus the cattle's well-being was excellent — the feedlot is immaculate and the animals are treated ethically, which matters because we want to educate consumers that this is a happy life for a cow. When I saw the operation and got the chance to take it national, we cooked a New York strip, a filet, a rib eye, and a burger with no salt, no pepper, no rub, nothing, and it was the best meat I've ever had — great marbling without being too rich, and no hormones, antibiotics, soy, or corn. After watching what Chad Mendes was doing with brands like Peak Refuel and dehydrated meals for hunters and hikers, I realized this guy has an unbelievable knack for telling a story and taking a product to market, so we brought him in. Since then, the brand has taken off — we were literally sold out of every cut of meat after his Joe Rogan appearance.

Chad Mendes: It was such an honor being brought into this company. Hearing Belding's passion for it, I had to taste the beef myself, and it really is different — hands down. I get hit up all the time by people who've never hunted asking how they can get meat like what I post from my hunts, and since I can't legally sell wild game, hearing this story about the beef — the well-being of the animals, how clean everything is, no hormones, no antibiotics, no soy, no corn — it's the closest thing to wild game you're going to find in the beef world. It's tender, has great marbling without being over the top like some Wagyu, and it's something people can eat more of and feel good about. I had to be part of it and help grow the brand.

The Joe Rogan Effect

Tom Rowland: I've had a dozen or so people I know go on Joe Rogan, and that's legitimately the largest platform on the planet. What's it like going from two days before to two days after an episode like that?

Chad Mendes: We kept it pretty quiet beforehand — we mainly used it as a platform to announce my signing for bare-knuckle boxing coming out of retirement. Afterward, for about a week and a half to two weeks, every business we talked about on there went nuts. Our Fins and Feathers email is still blowing up with people wanting to book for next year. We sold out four tuna trips this year alone — up until this year we'd only ever done one — and we've already sold out four boats for next year, plus locked in and half-sold a fifth before even announcing it. We didn't even get to talk about the rubs much on the show, but people find that stuff eventually through social media.

It was so cool getting to finally sit down with Joe — we'd talked about doing it for three or four years. We have a lot in common, and it was great swapping hunting stories, even off the podcast, looking through his trophies and hearing about the bulls he's killed the last few years. Joe's a phenomenal guy.

Conservation, Ethics, and the Future of Hunting

Tom Rowland: There's a bigger field-to-table movement happening, with more people wanting to provide for their family and know where their food comes from, but also plenty of people who don't care at all where their meat comes from. How do you walk that line?

Chad Belding: I don't think we're ever going to slow down the fast-food craze in America — we're a go-go-go society and people are addicted to it, and food scientists engineer it that way on purpose. You see the health issues that come from it, and nobody actually enjoys being out of shape; it doesn't feel right. Over the last year and a half of this pandemic, I've seen my texts and calls fill up with non-hunters coming out of the woodwork wanting to borrow wild game, asking questions like where'd you catch this fish or what's this cut called. I think the pandemic showed people what it would mean if stores shut down and they couldn't get their usual groceries. With 1.4 million new hunters in America and a huge increase in fishing license sales, our job now as hunters, fishers, conservationists, and providers is to keep them engaged, to fly the flag the right way, respect the resource, and have compassion for the animals we pursue.

I had Ted Nugent on my podcast recently, and I told him hunting's a privilege — he stopped me right there and said it's actually our God-given right, that these animals were put on earth for our protein and we have a right to manage these herds and predators with dignity, class, and respect, the same way we have a right to defend our families under the Second Amendment. More and more people, from hippies to rednecks, are realizing how good this lifestyle is — living off the land, growing a garden, catching a fish, calling in and harvesting a duck ethically, and knowing exactly where your food came from. Being a hunter, fisher, and provider is the coolest lifestyle known to man.

Tom Rowland: I'm with you all the way. There are a lot of people completely out of touch with it, and as more people get into hunting and fishing, it's our job to keep them here and teach them the ethics and etiquette that go with it, the same way we're trying to do at Waypoint — figuring out how to educate people without talking down to them.

Chad Belding: Keep doing that, please — it's a challenge, but we're trying. We don't need to see an animal suffering or mishandled, and we don't need to show disrespect by leaving animals in a truck bed. These animals gave themselves up for our sustenance, for our families, for food banks and soup kitchens, so as hunters we need to show it in the right light. If it wasn't for hunters, there would be no turkeys, no geese on the flyways, no elk in the Rocky Mountains, no wetlands at all. In the era where we're all influencers with a following and credibility, we have to be more diligent than ever, because we're under attack every day. Where I'm sitting right now in California, you can't buy ammunition without a background check, and I've had fifty calls from Californians who can't buy ammo for dove season. It starts in California and moves eastward, so we have to stay diligent about keeping this lifestyle and culture alive. We all need to drop the egos and stop the infighting between hunters, and between fly fishermen, spin fishermen, and commercial fishermen — if it's legal and ethical, do it with dignity and respect, and support each other, because we're all on the same team.

Tom Rowland: I'm with you a hundred percent — the infighting between different styles makes our voice weak, when together there are millions of us who could be a real force instead of small factions.

Closing Thoughts

Tom Rowland: You guys have so much cool stuff going on, and it's been really cool to talk to you both — I've been a fan for a long time and watched all your fights. What's next for you, Chad Mendes? When's the fight?

Chad Mendes: October twenty-second. I'm sneaking away at the end of this month for a couple of days on a Wyoming antelope archery hunt, then it's back to training. Most of my big August and September hunts got postponed to next year, but I've got a couple of California tags I'm hoping to fill here and there.

Chad Belding: Tom, you've got to meet us in Chandler, Arizona on October twenty-second for Chad's fight. Let's put together a good after-party too, maybe get Traeger involved for some grilling.

Tom Rowland: I'll go, man — just make sure Guida shows up. If you invite me, I'll come.

Tom Rowland: If people want to follow you and check out everything you've got going on, where should they go?

Chad Mendes: For me, just at Chad Mendes — spelled M-E-N-D-E-S — and at Fins and Feathers Guides.

Chad Belding: We're on Instagram and Facebook at The Fowl Life TV, our websites are thefowllife.com and theproviderlife.com, and you can find all the Provider rubs on Instagram at The Provider Life. We appreciate it, Tom — this has been awesome.

Tom Rowland: Thanks, guys.