. Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host Bruce Hutcheon, and folks we're in for a treat today. We're heading north of the border and we're heading to the Canadian Operations Outreach Coordinator, Rob Argue. Rob, welcome to the show.

Rob: Hi Bruce, pleasure to be here.

Bruce: Say Rob, I heard in Canada they speak both in English and French, so why don't you give a warm welcome to the Whitetail Rendezvous nation in French?

Rob: Sure, happy to be on the show and great to talk with all the listeners. [French 00:00:48].

Bruce: So Rob, what entails what you're doing for QDMA in Canada?

Rob: My position, it's a new position in Canada. I only started a couple of months ago. So it's an exciting time in Canada, this is the first time that QDMA has made sort of a real conscious or focused effort by hiring an employee in Canada, where my job basically is simply to spread the word about who we are, what we do, and try to create some branches up in Canada so that we can get more people involved with Quality Deer Management and just youth involvement. You know, all the good things that go along with what QDMA promotes in the States we're hoping to expand north of the border.

Bruce: Explain branches and explain the Rat Pack?

Rob: Sure, like many other not-for-profit [inaudible 00:02:00] organizations, we operate at basically a grass roots level, so depending on the size of the area or your community whatever, there will be individual branches that will represent a certain geographic area. Each branch will have an executive, usually somewhere between 5 and 10 guys, people I should say, guys, women, whoever. And they have to hold a minimum of one fundraising event per year and one educational event. Educational events can be anything from sportsman shows to field days where people are learning about food plots or timber stand improvement, it could be trapping, anything like that. And the Rat Pack program is a youth program that the QDMA has, which is a great starting program for young hunters or people that are interested in deer or deer hunting. There are all sorts of resources that are focused at younger kids.

Bruce: And Hank Forrester is in charge of the Rat Pack and who's in charge of the fundraising down at headquarters?

Rob: There are a few people. Tory Andrews is our membership coordinator. The fundraising kind of falls on a few different people. I mean, really that's left to the regional directors, so in Canada my position is sort of a jack-of-all-trades. I do the job of regional director and then I also sort of do the work for some advocacy and some other roles that most regional directors wouldn't be responsible for. But in the States, the United States is separated into separate regions and there's a regional director for each of those regions who then is the go-between between the head office and the individual branches, so really most of the fundraising falls onto the regional directors who will then work with the individual branches to try to raise some money to support the program.

Bruce: Right now, I'm giving a shout out to Gary Gillett. Gary's up in Calgary and he's CEO and founder of Hunting Film Tour, which travels around both Canada and the States and shares 10 to 15 minute clips about hunting in North America. I just want to say that Gary raised his hand as soon as he knew more about QDMA and has got in touch with Rob to be involved and get involved, not only in the branches program, but on his land. He's purchased some great whitetail habitat, but like a lot of people in Canada, and some people down in the States, we have predation problems, we have the timber hasn't been managed correctly and the food sources in some places need to be supported or enhanced. So a shout out to Gary Gillett, Calgary, Alberta, and his company is Hunting Film Tour.

So having said that, Rob let's talk your background and how you got this job and ...