ORIGINAL: nick_bleuer76
ORIGINAL: SwampCollie
Most people now would rather learn it on TV, on the net, or at a seminar. There is nothing wrong with seminars, they can be full of great advice and useful tips... you just have to take them for what they are... opinionated, experience based knowledge, with an underlying sales pitch.
lol...that is funny, because isn't that why most are on this site, to learn about hunting, I think besides going outdoors and learning hands on, learning from other people is the best way to learn, expetually on the net, I don't need to go to seminars, because I have people like you to teach me, and you won't sell me some $100 decoy, so thanks!
Thats exactly my point.... kind of.....
The way I conduct my seminars is just like I was talking to you one on one. I'm not selling anything... I don't care if you buy something or not.
I did a seminar today on how to kill turkeys with $50. $10 for shells, $10 for cushion, $20 for box call/slate call, $10 for gloves and facemask. As far as I'm concerned as long as you own a shotgun and camo shirt and earth-tone pants... you don't NEED anything else (toilet paper is a nice luxury though). The point of that talk, was just to get deer hunters to try out turkey hunting...the license is combined in VA.... the thought process of course is that once they try it, they are hooked... you cannot deny the underlying motivation of any seminar is to generate either sales or at least foot traffic (which is tied to sales directly). But everything is....
Take this website for example... you think it runs itself? They sell advertising to generate funds.... and they do that by having a lot of hits on the internet so they can show their potential customers that their ad will be exposed to several million viewers. Everytime you log-in to hunting.net... Justin Zarr's cash register rings ... or at least it used to... I know the site was sold.. I don't know the specifics.... but the point here is that money makes the industry go around. If it wasn't for license dollars, and taxes claimed on sales of goods, hunting would have vanished decades ago.
I have always maintained that an educated customer is a customer that will keep coming back. I frequently tell folks outright that a product is just snake oil, if it is uneccessary for what they want it for. People remember that. There is nothing better you can do customer service wise than save someone money just for the sake of doing it. At the same time, the second best thing you can do, is show them ALL of the options that are avavilable to them......Thats the point of seminars. Someone may not even know that turkey hunting was an option for them. Oh.... thats what those three tags on the other half of my license are....
Do I think you should go to a seminar... hell yes I do.... you might learn something. Just because it might seem like a sales pitch doesn't mean you can't learn something from it. Or heck, maybe you'll strike up a conversation with someone in the audience and learn something that way. I don't structure my seminars around sales... I structure them around education. My reward is a picture of someone I met with a bird, and them telling me that a tip I gave them worked just like a charm, and that because I told them how to go about patterning their gun, the bird went down like he'd been electrocuted.... and that they can't wait til next Saturday to go at 'em again.
If someone asks me about what call I use... and I sell them a $70 Woodhaven... then thats good for Mike Pentecost.... and if he decides to ever HAVE a pro-staff... they are a company I'd glady put my name next to. Ironically, the company I was a prostaffer for, I decided to dis-align myself with due to some rather shady business dealings and in what was my opinion some alliences that I saw were not good for the sport of hunting or its image. I'm more of a freelance writer now than I was when I got onboard with them, and I am requested for seminars locally because I have a good reputation, can relate to people and have a lot of experience. Mr. Longbeard, on the other hand, doesn't do that so well it seems. So he decides to throw stones at people he has never met before... just an example of what it takes and what is considered undesireable. You'll get folks like this in the audience... people who think that folks that bother to take the time to help others learn are just show boating for someone, or don't really know anything. And thats fine, they can think what they want... the cream always rises... and if you do know your game and have any amount of candor.... you'll have their attention pretty quick.
