Mike Unruh, president of The Fallen Outdoors joins us in-studio to talk about how the organization is helping Veterans reconnect through hunting, fishing and outdoor adventures. From camaraderie to mental reset, we dig into why these experiences matter.
This episode of The Fort NOT Lost in the Woods Podcast is sponsored by TK’s Pizza in St. Robert, Nexthome Team Ellis, Security Bank of Pulaski County and Sugar Creek Farms.
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**Interview**
Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Fort Not Lost in the Woods podcast. I absolutely love it when I get to learn about new things, probably one of my favorite things about doing this podcast actually. And I I keep hearing about The Fallen Outdoors, which I kind of know about the premise of it, seems like a super cool organization. And then I keep hearing your name, Mike Anru, you’re the president of The Fallen Outdoors. Is that like a Pulaski County chapter or how like president of The Fallen Outdoors, a local chapter? How does that work?
Mike: So I’m the national president. We literally have teams in every.
Beth: You’re like the big guy.
Mike: The big wig.
Beth: You’re the dude. You’re not just like the stout one. You’re like the big guy. All right. Well, we’re going to talk all about The Fallen Outdoors. I can’t wait to hear more about it. But first I want to find out about you. Where do you come from? Tell me about you.
Mike: Sure. So I hail from the great flat state of Kansas, one of the only places where they say you can see your dog run away for a week at a time. But I kind of grew up in the you know, living in the outdoors. I think from the time I was like six or seven, my stepmother’s dad, my grandpa, was the mayor of a small town out in Western Kansas and he’s kind of introduced me to upland bird hunting. And my father and my brother weren’t very big outdoorsmen, so I kind of just took it upon myself and live the outdoors.
Beth: Oh, that’s awesome. So, okay. So Kansas, obviously a whole different terrain, everything’s different than Missouri, right? How long, well let me back up. How long have you been in Missouri?
Mike: Uh, so I was in the military, PCS’d here in 2015.
Beth: Oh, wow.
Mike: And uh, we made it home.
Beth: Oh, that’s awesome. So that that leads me to my next question. What what do you so you have the two different I love Colorado, right? So we we used to when I had more time, we would sometimes just say, you know what, let’s go to Colorado this weekend and we just take off.
Mike: Absolutely.
Beth: And I hated going through I I I’m sure everyone that I’ve ever met from Kansas are very nice people like very nice people. Man, that’s a boring state though. Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong.
Mike: Oh, no, I I-70 is one of the most boring drives you will ever take in your life. Absolutely.
Beth: So worse. So what about the you so you came here. Had you been to an area that had, you know, a lot of hills and valleys and rivers and caves and all the things we have here or no?
Mike: Yeah, so like I said, you know, my stepmother introduced me to her dad. So obviously my mother kind of left Kansas and lived in North uh, west Arkansas.
Beth: Oh, okay.
Mike: So uh, we’d go down to Rogers, Arkansas in the summertime, my brother and I and visit my mother and I love that kind of country.
Beth: I do too.
Mike: That’s kind of what drew me to to Missouri.
Beth: Arkansas and Missouri are very similar. Uh, we we’d go to Arkansas a lot and I sometimes feel like I’m in another world but kind of like also at home. It’s just a it’s kind of different. So you fell in love with the outdoors and then you joined the military at some point?
Mike: Yeah, so uh, in my high school days, uh, I did a program they call School to Career. So I’d go to school half a day and then half the day. I chose ride around with the sheriff’s department police department. Uh, so I kind of had engrained for me since I was a little kid watching cops and stuff that I wanted to be in law enforcement and just kind of be a first responder and help those in need. Uh, and so got out of high school and I was 18 and uh, you really can’t be involved in law enforcement till you’re 21. So I said, you know, let me go the military route and uh, so I signed up to be a military police officer and led me to my first experience here at Fort Leonard Wood.
Beth: Oh, really? So did you do basic here?
Mike: Basic and AIT is here. Um, so I got here in June of 2001.
Beth: And then you were here how long?
Mike: Uh, we graduated basic and AIT in November of ’01. Obviously that was shortly after the events of 9/11 and it kind of switched things up for military people. But I wasn’t one that signed up for college, you know, I wanted to go and do my service and so I did it.
Beth: You made it.
Mike: I had a plan. Absolutely.
Beth: That’s awesome. I love that having that focus and that plan at a young age. So then tell me what happened after that? So you you come here and how are things moving forward? What happens?
Mike: Yeah, so I came here. I I I personally think I excelled in basic and AIT. You know, I was a platoon leader for most of the time. I was not the distinguished honor grad, but I was runner up to distinguished honor grad. It just is it felt like being athletic. I grew up playing sports my whole life and just being able to listen and take note and follow instruction, it was easy for me. So, yeah, I came here at Fort Leonard Wood for 16 weeks, basic and AIT, excelled and uh, that kind of threw me a curveball with my first duty station, which was Hawaii.
Beth: Oh, wow.
Mike: Yeah.
Beth: Wow, and had you ever been anywhere that far away from Missouri?
Mike: Oh, no. No. Grown up in Kansas, I pretty much stayed in Kansas and Arkansas, so.
Beth: Not in Kansas anymore.
Mike: Nope. Toto was correct. Not in Kansas anymore.
Beth: How long were you in Hawaii?
Mike: I was there a lot longer than anticipated. Normally it’s a two to three year tour. Uh, around my two and a half year mark, the military term stop loss, uh, comes out and uh, the war in Iraq was kicking off. So I did a nice 14 stent to Iraq in ’04 ’05. And then I got back to Hawaii and I said, you know, this is this was cool and all, but I want to do something different. And uh, I wanted to go play with dogs.
Beth: So you wanted to go? Oh, I always want to go play with dogs. But somehow I think you’re talking about something different.
Mike: Yeah, so uh, they said, well, if you want to be a military working dog handler, we’d love to have you. Uh, but you got to stay here for three more years. I said, oh, I got to stay in Hawaii three more years.
Beth: Terrible.
Mike: So the first thing I said was where do I sign? So, I did.
Beth: Were you always um, a fan of dogs? I mean, did you did you like dogs? Was that one of, you know? Am I am I is that a weird question? I know that’s I want to say that like I want to say who doesn’t love dogs, but there are some of those people that you can’t trust out there.
Mike: Well, you’ve never heard a cat call him a man’s best friend, so.
Beth: But they’re jerks. It seems like you have like a really clear direction. When you’re young, you know, and then when you’re ready to start, as you say playing with dogs, do you just know it or do you start thinking, okay, you know, what where do I want to go? What and then and then and then it comes to you? Because I’ve had that happen both ways in my life. You know, where literally something pops in my head and I’m like, okay, this is the answer. Or something I’ve had to think about for a long time. I mean, you seem kind of driven, you seem pretty insightful. Do you just know this is what you want to do?
Mike: So uh, what led me to that is, I mean, obviously I always love dogs and stuff.
Beth: You say obviously, but I have met people that don’t like dogs. Now, I don’t trust those people. But there are people out there that don’t.
Mike: Yeah, and I had a couple friends working at the military working dog kennels there on Scofield barracks and it looked like they were having a blast, you know, and so I was like, that’s something I want to try. Uh, and I just kind of set my my soul to it and and I went for it.
Beth: What kind of dogs?
Mike: Uh, so in Hawaii I worked a Belgium Malinois, which is the typical police looking like dog a little bit different than a shepherd.
Beth: Intense.
Mike: Yeah, and I had a uh patrol and narcotics detection dog. His name was Bastar. And uh, he was a cool dog.
Beth: Sounds kind of badass.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah, he was a cool dog. Me and him won a lot of competitions. Uh, I mean, he was just a great narcotics dog and an awesome patrol dog, very aggressive. But also would, you know, lick the person next to him, you know, when you let him so it was a he was a great dog to work.
Beth: I have Dobermans. I’ve always had Dobermans and they’re so intense and I really forget that all dogs are not like that until like recently we uh adopted a dog a shelter dog. And she’s so happy-go-lucky and she doesn’t she’s just wee everything’s fun and my my I have two Dobermans and they’re just always intense, always watching and you know, it it’s so funny how the different breeds offer different things.
Mike: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, they’re called working dogs for a reason. They have to be worked or they go crazy.
Beth: Yeah, the one I just adopted is not a working dog. She’s a play dog. That’s all which is you know, they have their place too. My Dobermans, they’re always on guard. What’s that noise? What’s that smell? What’s the you know, just constantly. They never let down their guard. And I guess that’s why they’re also throughout the years have been considered, you know, it go yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Mike: Absolutely.
Beth: All right. So you’re playing with dogs in Hawaii. Sounds fantastic. How do you end up here?
Mike: So I did a couple more duty stations. Uh, I went to DC for a little while. Uh, I worked a patrol and explosive detection dog there in DC. That’s primarily what you do in DC area, working all the presidential missions and and things of that nature and all the all the politicking that goes on in DC is not for me. Uh, so that’s kind of what led me here to Missouri, but.
Beth: Is that stressful? I mean, that kind of I I would think the the weight that would be on your shoulders would just be so stressful. I mean, what if I missed something or what if I screw up or yeah.
Mike: Oh my gosh. So in the military working dog world, you have a percentage you have to maintain um of finds versus falses and not finds and stuff like that. And if you fall below that that percentage, you know, you get taken off your dog or you get put on training status and you know, and it really focuses in DC, as you know, you’re working the high priority missions here. Uh, I got a cool mission to work the um the inauguration of President Obama. And so thousands of VIPs are in the area and knowing every search you do all day long for like a week period. You know, it’s it’s all important. So it was pretty neat.
Beth: I can’t imagine the pressure of that. That would be crazy.
Mike: There’s more stress stress than driving around in DC because I mean, I lived like 15 minutes from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where I was stationed, and it would literally take you two to three hours to get to work. The traffic’s the stressful part.
Beth: Yeah, that sounds terrible.
Mike: We love Missouri now.
Beth: I bet I bet. All right. Well, I know that when we were scheduling this interview, you said you and your wife workout. So there’s a wife in the picture. Tell me when you met her.
Mike: Yeah, so I met her at Fort Belvoir. Uh, I was a military working dog handler and I’d go to the gate, do explosive sweeps, and my wife at the time was a DoD gate guard. And so that’s where I kind of met her. We talked about fishing a little bit and and uh, I call her The Hamburglar. So I would, funny story, but um, I would get off shift and I’d go home, grill some hamburgers and bring them to her at work and uh, she loves hamburgers. I hope she’s not listening.
Beth: She loves hamburgers.
Mike: So I always called her The Hamburglar.
Beth: Oh, that’s great. Did she like cheese on her hamburgers?
Mike: Uh, yeah, she does.
Beth: Okay, so we’re we can trust her then.
Mike: Absolutely.
Beth: People that say I want a hamburger with no cheese. My mom does that. I’m like, what?
Mike: That makes no sense.
Beth: No, stop it. Why? I mean I get it if you can’t have dairy, but otherwise I don’t get it.
Mike: Yeah, so we met and it’s been 17 and some years now. So we’ve been married. So we actually PCS’d from uh, Fort Belvoir to Leavenworth, Kansas, which is a pretty cool little hidden gem, you know, in uh Northeast Kansas. Shortly after I got there, I deployed again to Afghanistan and uh kind of left her there. We weren’t married at the time and then uh.
Beth: You left her in Kansas?
Mike: I did, yeah.
Beth: And she still married you later?
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. She actually spent a lot of time and I got her a dog actually.
Beth: Oh, okay, well that’s.
Mike: So yeah. I bought her a a little husky puppy and that puppy has actually just passed away. She was 14 not too long ago, so.
Beth: Was she really vocal? I that the one I just mentioned that I bought I adopted a shelter dog, she’s a husky. And I’ve never had a dog so vocal that has to tell me every thought in her head.
Mike: Oh, yeah.
Beth: All the time. I’m not used to that.
Mike: They love to talk and she talks back. It was just a perfect fit. So.
Beth: Oh.
Mike: Uh, I got back from Afghanistan. We met back up in Leavenworth and they said, all right, you got to PCS again. So I’m like, oh my gosh. Come on, man. Uh, and I got sent back to DC.
Beth: Did she go with you?
Mike: She did. Yep. She went with me. And I had switched from working dogs at that point to becoming a criminal investigator.
Beth: Oh.
Mike: So uh, I came back down here Fort Leonard Wood for another 16 weeks of criminal investigation school. Pass that with flying colors and then I went to DC. After a two and a half year stent there doing protective services, uh, I left there as the protective service or the personal security officer for the Secretary of the Army. And then I got selected to come down here to be an instructor for the protective services training course. And then uh, we came down here and said, all right, I think it’s time we’ve been together like eight years at this point.
Beth: Yeah.
Mike: So uh, we ended up getting married here in Missouri and been married ever since and we got three little girls.
Beth: You’re a girl dad. Did you ever think you’d be a girl dad?
Mike: No, because I have an 18-year-old son now with my previous wife and he’s getting ready to graduate high school. So boys are so much easier. And you can probably feel how I feel about that being as a criminal investigator, working all the army stuff you see in the news.
Beth: Oh.
Mike: You know, that stuff scares me. So it’s it’s tough being a girl dad.
Beth: Are you overprotective?
Mike: Uh, no, my girls can they can handle their own, you know, I I try to look out for them using some, you know, things but they’re 12, nine and eight. Uh, and you know, they they pretty much like the same things I do. My 12-year-old’s kind of in that real emotional phase right now. So we’re working through that. But uh, my 8-year-old, this is her third year wrestling. I’m a youth wrestling coach here in the area. We got a lot of girl wrestlers. She fits in and she’s a little tough cookie.
Beth: You know, when I was in school, which was a million years ago, we didn’t girls, I think they there might have been one or two that were just kind of starting to get into the whole wrestling thing, but I think that’s super cool. I think that is so cool.
Mike: Yeah, and I wrestled my whole from like third grade through high school. I think I wrestled maybe two girls. It just wasn’t that popular, but now it’s booming. Uh, we have girl wrestlers.
Beth: Wait, girl girls wrestle the boys?
Mike: Oh, yeah.
Beth: Really? Do they ever win?
Mike: They do. There’s some good girls out there.
Beth: That is so cool. I thought I figured the girls just wrestle girls and boys wrestle boys, but they actually wrestle each other.
Mike: Yeah, so you have options. You have an open division, which means, you know, the girls can wrestle within their weight class and or you have, you know, uh girls specifics. So, my my daughter, she’s roughed up some little boy and and she loves that. Then last year, she chose to kind of wrestle all girls.
Beth: I bet Dad loves it too.
Mike: Yeah. It’s funny seeing the heartbreak in the dad’s faces. But I’m like.
Beth: You ain’t gotta wear yeah. Oh my gosh. Did your wife like Missouri as well? I mean, I guess so. She stayed here with you, right? Or no, not as much.
Mike: My wife, uh she’s from Colorado originally.
Beth: Oh, okay. That’s right.
Mike: Uh, and she’s a big gamer. Like she loves tabletop games. She’s prior military as well. So she’s very particular on who she allows into her friend group. So she has, you know, a few friends here, kind of in the gaming community and stuff like that. But yeah, she’s I think she’s doing okay with it. The cost of living’s great here.
Beth: Yeah.
Mike: If you’ve never lived here. Yeah.
Beth: And if you’re an outdoorsy person, it’s it’s wonderful here.
Mike: That’s why I keep saying, I said, you know, the hunting and fishing is absolutely phenomenal. She’s like, well, I don’t eat it. So what’s in it for me?
Beth: You’re like, do you want another dog?
Mike: Yeah, for sure. We’ve actually been looking. So.
Beth: Yeah.
Mike: Like I said, I’m from Central Kansas. So that’s a six hour drive. And then from my home to her home is only six more hours. So it’s kind of like a halfway point.
Beth: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: And it gives us some distance from our in-laws.
Beth: Just nice. Yeah.
Mike: Very nice.
Beth: Nice. And so you are retired military?
Mike: I am, yeah. I did 20 years.
Beth: Wow. You don’t look old enough to have done 20 years. How old are you? I know they said it’s a rude question, but I always ask it because I’m curious.
Mike: No, I’m so I joined at 17 and did 20. So that puts me 37-ish when I retired. I think I was 38 when I retired. And uh, I am 43. I think.
Beth: Okay. You think I know there’s some you have to go back and for you do the math and figure it out.
Mike: No, I’m an 82, maybe. 82, so.
Beth: Okay. All right. Well, we’re going to we’re going to take a really quick break. And when we come back, I want to hear all about The Fallen Outdoors. How you got involved with that. How the community can help, those listening to this podcast. How we can get involved and all that kind of stuff. So we’ll be right back with Mike Anru next.
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**Interview**
Beth: Back with Mike Anru, president of The Fallen Outdoors. How did you get involved with The Fallen Outdoors? Were you aware of it before and how that come about?
Mike: No, so I really didn’t get involved until until 2015 when I was an instructor here. Uh, I had a student come through my class and uh, he was pretty open and said, hey, have you heard about this? I know you you’re and when I was an instructor, I always talked about, hey, Missouri’s great for hunting and fishing and and he would borrow my stands and stuff while he was in class cuz I could not obviously go. Uh, so he’s like, have you heard about The Fallen Outdoors? I said, no, but you have my attention. What’s up? He’s like, well, you know, it’s a a national non-for-profit. We provide free therapeutic outdoor adventures to the veteran community. As long as you currently serve, served honorably in the past, or are Gold Star family. You know, we provide trips to you. Uh, and we we have a Facebook page we operate on. We post trips almost, you know, across the the nation and it’s something you should look into. And I said, let me do that. Uh, so I I looked into it and uh, kind of met the Team Missouri folk.
Beth: So there’s like different teams in different states or how does that work?
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. So we have chapters and and right now we have chapters in just about every state. Uh, back when I was getting involved, we pretty much had like one Facebook page we kind of operated on and and it was kind of across the country, but, you know, we maybe had like um 50 or 60 volunteers in a few states. Uh, and it’s really compounded over the years and it’s it it’s something that’s it’s pretty cool.
Beth: So how did you go from hearing about this cool thing to being the president of the whole freaking thing?
Mike: All right, that’s a big step. Yeah.
Beth: That’s a huge step. How did that happen?
Mike: Uh, so I I played around with Team Missouri for a while as just a normal staffer. Uh, and then in the state of Missouri, their team leader, uh had a PCS. You know, military community. Uh, so he moved and and then the team kind of voted and said, hey, you know, we would like you to take over the team. Uh, I would like to say it’s because my expert leadership, but I think it’s just because I had time at the time to to do things.
Beth: That can be it’s in short supply sometimes like, you know.
Mike: Yeah, for sure. Uh, and so I I became the Missouri team lead and kind of ran Team Missouri for roughly a year. And uh, we kind of progressed the organization as a whole and broke it down into four different regions at that point cuz it was just one kind of organization. Uh, so we broke down to a West Coast page, an East Coast page, a Midwest and a Southern page. And they said, well, we need to hire uh regional directors to run the states. And so uh, the national board of directors voted me in as the the Midwest regional director. So I ran 12 states within the Midwest. Uh, just making sure, you know, that they were legally binding to each state, registered with the Secretary of States, and doing things right and and uh, kind of just providing some mentorship in the outdoors for them. Um, did that for a couple years and then a uh seat came open on the board of directors uh as the National Pro Staff director. Um, and at that time, I think we had like four or 500 staffers now. Uh, and when I say staffers, these are all veterans, all volunteers. Nobody in the organization gets paid. So it’s it’s all about, you know, giving back to your community and and providing these trips. It’s pretty neat. Um, and then uh, I was the National Staff Director for a while. And then they said, well, hey our vice president’s leaving. Would you like to step up to that role? So I did that as well. Uh, which leads me to this year when the president had to step out and so I was voted in as the national president for the organization.
Beth: Tell me about the mission for The Fallen Outdoors. I’ve never been in the military, but I know for me, two things have always been healing in my life, well, three if you include ice cream, but that’s a whole another story. It creates its own problems. Um, the outdoors and animals. Those two things have always been healing for me. So I would assume that it’s kind of built on that same premise. I mean, there’s just something about the great outdoors.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. So our organization was founded in 2009. Our founder, Eric Bock and his battle buddies were deployed to Afghanistan. And unfortunately, Eric was the only one that came home from that trip. And uh, you know, why they were there. They kept talking, like, hey, when we get home, we’re going to do something for the veterans. And they grew up duck hunting. So the kind of the premise of the organization once he got back was, hey, let’s let’s provide these therapeutic outdoor adventures in the duck hunting, you know, to our veteran community. Uh, and then it evolved into so much more. Uh, we have a kayak group, a bike riding group. Uh, we have guys that, yeah, they go hunting, fishing, camping, hiking. It’s outdoor focused obviously, but when we say outdoors, it’s whatever you can do to get yourself around like-minded outdoorsmen and women across the nation. Uh, if you like to work on cars, you know, we got guys that love working on cars together. Just something to connect with to, you know, like-minded guys and gals and and get out of the house.
Beth: So how do they get involved? A lot of times it’ll be a spouse that says, you know, my husband or my wife needs something. where do they go from there?
Mike: Yeah, so you can find us at thefallenoutdoors.org. And there’s a couple dropdown menus. You can click on to get in touch with us. One of those dropdown menus also says how to get involved. Uh, and you can click on your region. You can make face with your regional director, or you can contact your local team via that page. Uh, we do operate mainly off Facebook. That’s where we’ll post all of our trips and all of our AARs after action reviews. Um, so our our Facebook pages are open strictly to just veterans. But we do have a couple pages, one for our support page. Uh, you can type in The Fallen Outdoors support page and see that that’s open to anybody. A lot of our sponsors jump on that page just so we they can see, you know, where their hard earned dollars they’re donating to the organization go. Um, or you can just follow The Fallen Outdoors Facebook page. But we also have that Midwest, the Southern, the East Coast and the West Coast Facebook page. Uh, so that’s where we post trips more local to those folks. So.
Beth: When you say trip, give me an example.
Mike: Yeah, so uh, it’s turkey season. Just opened up last weekend for youth in Missouri. So we’ll post on there. Hey, we can take two youth, you know, out turkey hunting for this weekend. If you have your own shotgun, that’s cool. We can provide as well. Um, just comment with gobble gobble to enter. And uh, we’ll have a whole bunch of entries and we just randomly select two to go on that trip. It’s also spoonbill season right now. So those are some pretty cool trips we get on. Our teams are posting a lot of spoonbill trips. And then they can take usually two to five at a time.
Beth: Do you take these trips on private land, conservation land? Do you need folks in the area that are land owners to say, hey, you’re welcome to use my. I mean, how does that work?
Mike: Yeah, so obviously we’re all veterans that run this organization and members of the organization, but we can’t do it alone. Uh, we definitely need the helps from family, friends, fellow land owners and things like that to help us out. We do have a great community here at Fort Leonard Wood area and we have a lot of land owners that say, hey, absolutely come out, you know, take somebody hunting. They they feel they feel good giving back to somebody and it’s an organization that’s been vetted in the area. We’re actually 2024 is Pulaski County’s number one non-for-profit. So that’s pretty neat. CD Story, he’s a huge figure here in the area and uh, he’s helped us out over the past six or seven years, you know, hunting on his properties and helping us do things. We used his property a couple times to help veterans get into trapping and stuff because that’s a huge skill that people want to learn. Thank you, CD. Uh, but we have like Gary Homer, who’s a realtor here for Humble Farms and Homes and he allows us to go out there and turkey hunt all the time. We’ve got many veterans through his property uh shooting their first turkeys, a bunch of youths out there shooting turkeys and and things like that. So we definitely rely on our local land owners. Uh, we’re fortunate here in Missouri that we’re surrounded by Mark Twain National Forest too. We have a lot of property available to just the general public. Not so much like the state of Texas. The state of Texas is like privately owned, you know. And so those guys really have to do knock and talks and meet land owners and and big outfitters to gain access to their properties. Uh, so like I said, we’re fortunate here in Missouri, but yeah, we still need help of our local land owners. And it doesn’t have to be us running a trip. You know, we have guys that reach out saying, hey, I have a boat. I would love to take a veteran with me fishing. So we’re like, heck yeah, man, let’s post a trip and let’s get you a veteran. We always say you’re one trip away from your new best friend, veteran or not. So it’s pretty neat. Just building those, we call it hope connection and healing through the great outdoors.
Beth: Oh, man, I love that so much. What is the best way for people to get a hold of you if they want to find out more about, you know, maybe actually taking a trip? Maybe it’s a veteran or a land owner that says, hey, I’ve got this property.
Mike: You can go to thefallenoutdoors.org. There’s a a button there where you can email us support@thefallenoutdoors.org or you can shoot me a direct message. Email is mike.unruh@thefallenoutdoors.org. Or if you want to reach out directly to your team lead within the state you are or a state you’re going to. Our email addresses are pretty generic. It’s just the abbreviation of the state.lead. So Missouri’s would be mo.lead@thefallenoutdoors.org. And that’s the same for every state. So you can reach out to the state near you and say, hey, you know, I’d like to get involved or I am a veteran, I want to go on a trip or how can I help. So.
Beth: Wow. That’s awesome.
Mike: It’s pretty neat.
Beth: All right. Well, thank you for everything you do. Thank you for your service, first of all, but also for giving back after you are retired. I mean, you’re just still giving back. That’s amazing. What would this country be without people like you? All right, so now I’m going to put you on the spot, make you.
Mike: Spin the wheel of death.
Beth: Spin that wheel. Spin that wheel. Let’s see what you land.
Mike: Drum roll please. Favorite way to relax. Oh, that’s an easy me.
Beth: Answer that, but then you have to do it again.
Mike: We’ll spin again for a third cause.
Beth: It’s easy obviously.
Mike: Um, being in this location right here where we’re at, doing this podcast right next door to the cigar lounge. The cigar social every Tuesday. Devon’s been a great he doesn’t know it, but he’s been a great person to relax with, you know, having cigars and stuff. But obviously my number one would be the great outdoors. Uh, I just I love being out there, especially turkey season. You know, you’re sitting down on the ground before the sun even comes up and just listening to the world come alive. That’s therapy. The outdoors is just it’s so therapeutic. It’s it’s simply amazing. So.
Beth: That was too easy of one though. You have to spin again.
Mike: Okay. Oh, I was so close.
Beth: Okay, what is this one?
Mike: Uh, Desert Island.
Beth: Oh, yeah, so if you were stranded on a desert island, you can only bring three things. Obviously, you know, people you’re going to be like, oh my girls or what not. You have to things. You’re stranded there, you’re going to be there. Let’s just say six months. That way you know you’re going to get back home to family eventually. So what are you taking with you?
Mike: Yeah, so.
Beth: Nice.
Mike: A fishing pole.
Beth: Oh, yeah, good. Yeah. And hopefully it has all the equip We’ll just say it comes all.
Mike: It has all the stuff.
Beth: Uh, I guess I’m stranded so I can’t have my phone. Nah, do you want to? No. Right? Yeah.
Mike: Man.
Beth: You have fishing pole, you’ve got food.
Mike: I got two. I was going to say a nice chocolate bar or a Snickers or something.
Beth: That would be good. Right? Yeah.
Mike: What if it came between that and actual water that you could actually drink? Or are you one of those survival people that know how to take salt water and turn it into potable water?
Beth: Oh, I’d find a way.
Mike: Strain it through your sock or something. Hopefully I’m not wearing crocs that day. I get stranded, but.
Beth: Pretty sure it doesn’t work like.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. Um, man, Desert Island, things.
Beth: Fishin’ pole, no phone.
Mike: I guess a woobie. Because it does get chilly out there. You know, so everybody loves their woobies.
Beth: Oh yeah, yeah.
Mike: Yeah, that’s true. And you can make a shelter with that, cut it with it at night, things like that. So.
Beth: That’s true.
Mike: Yeah, that’s what it would be. And probably a pot. So you could boil that water, you know, and get the salt out of it and have potable drinking water.
Beth: Yeah. There you go.
Mike: That that’d be my three things.
Beth: All right. Mike Anru with The Fallen Outdoors. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate your time.
Mike: Yeah. So I do have, you know, in the military we call it alibis. You know, so I do have a couple alibis. Okay. Uh, we do have two awesome things going on right now in the organization. Uh, we have a campaign called the 22 for 22. Obviously, if you know if you’ve been around the military, you hear the number 22. You know that that’s the number of veterans that commit suicide on a daily basis. That number does fluctuate. It goes up and down and it goes quite a bit up at some points. So with the 22 for 22 campaign that we have and you can find this at thefallenoutdoors.org. It’s $22 a month monthly subscription. It goes into a huge account and then every January we distribute all those funds out to our teams equally. So they have a nice strong foothold for beginning of the year to host on these trips because all these trips aren’t free. Obviously, we somebody has to pay for them. So the vets can go on these trips free. So that’s an awesome campaign. We’ve partnered with Grizzly Tobacco and Kolleg Racing over the last couple years. And so on Memorial Day in Charlotte at the race, we’re launching a kickstarter to our 22 for 22 campaign. And for everybody entered in our 22 campaign, that’s pretty much an entry into our sweepstakes program. Uh, they’ll be getting something close to like $100,000. Once you see the footage of this partnered with Kolleg Racing and Grizzly and RAM. If you catch my hint, somebody’s going to be winning something close to a $100,000 value. So it’s going to be pretty sweet. So that was now’s the time to get in on the 22 for 22 program. And again, it’s is hope connection and healing, getting those veterans outdoors.
Beth: And all of this information can be found out on your Facebook or your website or is there a.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Beth: better than the other to find out.
Mike: Uh, you can follow The Fallen Outdoors on Facebook. Most of us use Facebook. I know there’s some generations that don’t like Facebook, but that’s where we have a lot of our info. You can check us out at the dot org as well. And then here local, August 8th, St. Robert Community Center, our third annual Fallen Outdoors Sportsman’s Banquet.
Beth: Oh, okay.
Mike: Yeah, so last year we were able to get close to 300 people packed in the St. Robert Community Center and we raised uh close to $50,000 for our veterans here in Missouri. And all those funds stay here in Missouri and help veterans get out on these therapeutic outdoor adventures. If you go to Facebook, type in The Fallen Outdoors Sportsman’s, it’ll probably pop up. There’s a an event page there. There’s ticket prices on there posted. We have some great sponsorships this year. Our event’s sponsored by United Veterans Benefits Agency, Seger Toyota, Baker’s Carpet Cleaning, uh Bowen Barrel Sports. Uh and things like that nature. So we’re always looking for more sponsorships. We do have corporate tables available. And then tickets from individual tickets to couples tickets. 15 and under is free. And there’s also an option on there that says uh, give a veteran a ticket. So what we do is we have a table or two set aside just for the better opportunities for single soldiers on Fort Leonard Wood. And so people can purchase a ticket if they’re not local and that’ll pay for one of those veterans to come and enjoy the event. Get a prize and some raffle tickets and things like that. So they can come stress-free.
Beth: That’s awesome. So much information. You’ll have to come back for sure.
Mike: Absolutely.
Beth: A lot more to talk about. All right, Mike Anru with The Fallen Outdoors. Great organization to get involved with. Thank you so much for doing this.
Mike: Absolutely. Love it. Thank you.
**Outro**
This episode of The Fort Not Lost in the Woods podcast is sponsored by Security Bank of Pulaski County. Next Home Team Ellis, TK’s Pizza and St. Robert, and Sugar Creek Farms, your home for farm fresh pork products. The views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Awkwen Media, its hosts, affiliates, or sponsors. Content is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Thank you for listening.