The First Hunt Foundation, one of the nation’s biggest advocates for saving our hunting heritage just announced its newest program to help save our hunting heritage. “Forgotten Rites” a program helping underserved communities get into hunting is the newest program to work alongside the women’s and veteran’s programs already in full swing. First Hunt Foundation President and founder Rick Brazell says, “The Foundation started out in 2015 just wanting to help kids but soon realized if we were to really make a difference we needed to include the entire spectrum of new hunters.” The issue with being successful for any new program is finding the right leader to run it. Being an entirely volunteer organization, makes it harder to recruit leaders as most people want a paycheck and can’t spend the time needed to help manage and grow a national organization.

“When you meet and hang around Ray Livingston, you know you are around someone special,” says Brazell. Ray has been a mentor with First Hunt Foundation for a while but has a unique life when not helping new hunters learn the needed skills. To ensure his safety in the forest Ray began learning wilderness survival skills. This eventually led Ray to being a cast member on season 6 of the "Alone" show on The History Channel, a survivalist on "Called to the Wild" on National Geographic and the co-star of "Mud, Sweat and Beards" on The USA Network. Ray is currently working on another television project that cannot be named at this time as it’s still in production.

“Hunting, to me, is way more than just harvesting animals. It's about having and maintaining a connection with the natural world. As a hunter, to be effective, one must have an understanding of the land being hunted. When one dives in deep enough to gain those insights and that understanding, it's nearly unavoidable to also gain a deeper connection with nature.” says Ray.

In this day and age many think of hunting as something most people do for sport or recreation. All across the country there is proposed legislation and new laws that are aimed at reducing our ability to hunt. Ray finds these movements to be dangerous from cultural, health conscious and conservation points of view.

Ray believes, “The ability to hunt is one of the things that allowed all cultures around the world to survive to this day. If you are alive now, it's because your ancestors were hunters and foragers; therefore, hunting is an important part of all of our cultures and histories, regardless of where you came from.”

Brazell says the First Hunt Foundation can better reach out to underserved communities with Ray as our spokesperson. He really knows his stuff and I can’t wait to see how he connects to others who might think hunting is beyond their abilities. If you want to learn more about the Forgotten Rites program, reach out to Ray Livingston at rayl@firsthuntfoundation.org or go to www.firsthuntfoundation.org.