Spotlight on Jimmy Flatt
/BY CARA SCHAEFER
Hunting has been around for almost as long as humankind, but it’s a practice that many of us aren’t familiar with today. We spoke with Jimmy Flatt, one of the founders of Hunters of Color, about his passion for hunting, the value of mentorship, and bringing more people into the sport.
Photos courtesy of Jimmy Flatt.
OUT THERE: Can you describe your first experience with hunting?
JIMMY FLATT: My dad is ex-military. And so, from an early age, I knew how to shoot. I was always intrigued by hunting, and one of my best friends at the time, his dad knew that I had an interest in getting out, so he invited me and my dad out on my first hunt when I was eight years old. Although I wasn't toting a gun around, or even had my hunting license at the time, I went along for the ride.
I was out in the Central Valley of California, a place called Grizzly Island, where it was super foggy that morning. It was probably somewhere close to freezing. I had a leaky pair of waders, so I was sitting in the water shivering. And I was kind of miserable, until the first set of ducks came in. Watching the dogs work, and being able to see how pretty the birds were up close...that's what hooked me.
OT: What are some of the joys and challenges of hunting?
JF: You go through a roller coaster of emotions while you hunt, because you are really immersing yourself into the circle of life. You get to see animals closer than most do. You see their behaviors. You see how beautiful they are. And at the same time, you're also taking life and making sure that you are putting food on the table for your life to be sustained. It's so fulfilling knowing that if you do eat meat, you're actively immersing yourself into the ecology, and just really having a hands-on approach to putting meat on the table.
OT: Have you ever observed any cool wildlife you weren't expecting on a hunt?
JF: Oh, yeah, all the time. I've seen one mountain lion. I'm sure there's been a lot more who've seen me. The coolest experience that I've had is with a hawk, which is the namesake of Hunters of Color. I was in California, and the night before I'd been walking around, and I saw a bunch of deer, but I just couldn't get close enough.
The next day I went out to the same spot looking for the deer, and this hawk came and landed maybe ten feet above me, and was checking me out. He got even closer and landed right in front of me — it's super rare to see hawks on the ground. As I was sitting there watching the hawk, a deer came into the pasture in front of me. As the hawk flew away, I stood up and was able to take a shot. After I got the deer, the hawk came back and was just watching me process the deer. It was one of the weirdest experiences that I've ever had.
Photos courtesy of Jimmy Flatt.
OT: What made you decide to start Hunters of Color?
JF: Growing up in the Bay Area in California, it’s one of the most diverse regions in the United States. But the second I got out into the hunting woods, that diversity just disappeared. I observed it when I was growing up, but there was no factual evidence to back it until 2016 when a US Fish and Wildlife survey came out that did a demographic study of license holders in the United States. And it showed 97% of all license owners in the United States were white. To me, that was kind of like the “Aha” moment. I kept thinking, “Okay. How am I going to do outreach into communities that would normally not have any access to hunting?”
At first I thought communities that are in cities or detached from rural areas were going to be the most susceptible to being detached from hunting traditions, but then it quickly dawned on me that it was way more nuanced than that. It was not just people that were living in cities, it was people who are a couple generations or just one generation detached from their hunting lineage. That’s how Hunters of Color began to form.
OT: Would you be willing to talk a bit about the three pillars of Hunters of Color and the importance of each?
JF: Yeah, there's education, mentorship, and conservation. Education is twofold. We are educating the general public that it is okay to hunt. That it's innately human to eat meat, and to hunt. Anybody who's alive today, our ancestors hunted. We all share that commonality. And so just to make sure that everybody knows that hunting isn't some bloodlust thing — that we're not all out there trying to kill as many animals as possible. We actually do the opposite. Hunters put more money into conservation efforts than any other group of people that recreate. The second is educating the BIPOC community that hunting is something that we do. We have educational programs where we're working on curriculums for elementary school kids and summer camp stuff, where it does a breakdown of hunting history and the steps that you would take to get into hunting. Even if we don't create hunters, we're going to create people who have an understanding of what hunting is, and who will advocate for hunting in the future.
Then there's mentorship. I like to say that if you remove anybody from anything for one generation, it's really hard for anybody to get back into that thing. So with hunting — if you weren't taught by your father, your grandfather, your mother, your grandmother — it's really hard to get started, especially if you don't have anybody in your immediate circle to teach you. And so that's where the mentorship program comes in. We have people who have learned to hunt who are willing to teach somebody, a new person, how to hunt. The reason I think the mentorship program is so valuable, and so needed, is because it’s rewarding for the mentee, but also extremely fulfilling for the mentor to see somebody come into hunting and fall in love with it.
And there's conservation. At the root of all hunting is conservation. We want to protect the wild resources that we are utilizing. Part of that is putting money into it, and actively pursuing areas where we can improve upon the habitat. We need to make sure that the animals continue to be there, so that we always maintain the resource that we’re using.
OT: How has mentorship continued to play a role in your own experiences with hunting and outdoor sports?
JF: I'm smiling thinking about it right now. Every time I bring a new hunter out, and I see the joy that's in their face from getting their first harvest, or just being outdoors for the first time and seeing animals, it just brings me back to when I was a little kid learning how to hunt for the first time with my dad and friends, side by side. Those are some of the best memories I have in my life. I feel like I'm passing that forward and giving the platform for people to create those memories for themselves.
OT: What advice do you have for new hunters?
JF: Get out of your comfort zone a little bit and learn all you can learn. Don't expect it to come quickly. Hunting takes years to master. I didn't get my first turkey for five years. Then once I switched over to archery later on in life, I didn't get one for another three years. The learning process happens throughout hunting. There's always new obstacles, but it's all part of the process. You’ll remember every single time you go out and hunt, but you won't remember every time you sit home and don't go hunting.
