(upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music continues) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

The outdoors, how do you describe it besides wonderful?

But if you're gonna enjoy it, well, you're gonna have to enjoy it safely.

Today we're gonna talk with Curt Sinclair.

How you doing, Curt?

- Awesome.

- Okay.

- Glad to be here.

- You ready for this?

You ready for your job title?

- Yeah.

- You're an Extension specialist.

4-H Shooting Sport and Environmental Education.

- Yep.

- Whew.

- Fun stuff!

- That's a big business card you gotta write that on.

- That's fun stuff.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I can't spell it, but.

(Rob and Curt laugh) - Where are you from?

- I am from Central Illinois.

- Uh huh.

- Currently, I live south of Jacksonville, but for many years I was in Piatt County near Monticello, running the 4-H camp there for the University of Illinois.

Had a lot of years there teaching kids how to enjoy the outdoors.

And that's really a passion of mine.

- I didn't even know, is it like, does 4-H have one big camp in the state?

- They have some different camps.

This is the only camp that's owned property by the University of Illinois.

It's in a beautiful place within a park called Robert Allerton Park and just thousands of wooded acres along the Sangamon River there.

And Robert Allerton had ag roots himself and donated the property in 1946 to the university when he retired and moved to Hawaii.

And there's actually, had an estate there too, that he left the University of Illinois, so.

- Wow.

- U of I owns property in Hawaii, did you know that?

- I did not.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- But anyway, they have a gorgeous park and the 4-H camp's 250 acres of that, and it's right in central Illinois.

So it is a very popular destination for camps.

- Can you describe the relationship between 4-H and U of I?

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- Well, University of Illinois Extension, the extent, the Cooperative Extension Service, is in every land grant university in the United States.

And that's, the land grant is your ag school.

So the Land Grant University in Illinois is the University of Illinois.

- Yeah.

- So they are funded with a cooperative thing from federal dollars, state dollars, and then local dollars, 'cause there's a county extension office, or an extension office in every county in Illinois.

- Still?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay.

- And so 4-H is the youth development component of Extension, which is housed in the College of Agriculture.

So all the 4-H ties to agriculture are there.

Been there for over 100 years.

- I wanna say probably one of the most underrated organizations out there, 4-H. - It is a huge organization, but it does still struggle with a stigma a little bit of just being ag.

- Farm kids.

- Yeah.

And it is a lot more.

I brought three leaves here today.

- Tea leaves.

- These are oak trees.

Okay.

Now why I brought these.

- Okay.

- Is that we just got done, we being the state 4-H office, coordinating tree planting project throughout Illinois.

Now there's a red oak.

- Feel like I'm playing poker.

- There's a red oak, a white oak, and a bur oak there.

Can you tell me the difference?

- Yeah.

The bur oak- - Awesome!

- The bur oak is the green one.

- (laughs) The green one.

- This a bur oak, right?

- That is!

Good job.

- Yeah.

The white, uh, what was it?

White oak and what was the other one?

- Well, that's actually, okay.

Did you hold, which one did you hold up?

Anyway, this is the bur.

- Well I don't wanna say now.

- Okay, I'll tell you why.

- That's what I said.

- It's thinner at the bottom.

- Yeah.

- And a little bit stouter at the top, like a big strong guy like you are up here.

- Okay.

- Okay.

Now red oaks, you have a tip, a little pointy tip on the lobe there.

And I learned that long ago when I had my first forestry degree, that red, like, Indians would have an arrow.

So there'd be a point.

- Oh, so that's why the tip.

- So this is the red oak family, these are the white oak family.

Now this is the state tree, the white oak.

But this is the bur oak.

The reason we brought these is that this is the third year that 4-H has had a statewide tree planting program that we have coordinated with the Soil and Water Conservation districts in Illinois.

So we have been planting oak savannas all over the state using 4-H kid labor to get them dirty, planting trees and making oak savannas, which is the number one endangered forestry native ecosystem in Illinois.

- Okay.

- And so we've been doing all this.

- I wanna ask a dumb question.

I don't know what a oak savanna is.

- A savanna is, when this, before the settlement of this state.

- Yeah.

- This was prairie grass and oak savannas.

Oak savannas are a group of oak trees that grow typically on a little bit of a knob or whatever.

But as you would look across Illinois and its native state, you would have these groups of oak trees within the grass.

They are very fire tolerant, but they were a very important part of the ecosystem.

And basically, they're gone.

So 4-H and Soil and Water are doing a big tree planting program.

We just did 41 counties where the kids would plant a group of 25 oaks on public property as a community service project.

And we've funded it all with grants and donations and volunteer labor.

- These little tiny oaks- - Been fun.

- Or do you get?

- No, they're four foot.

- Okay.

- Four to six foot tall.

- Because there's a- - Potted.

- Mighty tree, but it takes 'em a while, doesn't it?

- It does.

- Okay.

- But that's all part of the lesson of putting, you know, something into the world that's gonna benefit someone else.

- Mm-hmm.

You went to Carbondale?

SIU?

- I did.

- You're a Saluki?

- I am.

- Okay.

- Proud of that.

- We'll leave that one alone.

- Hey, top five forestry schools in the nation.

- It also used to be a top party school in the nation.

- I did okay.

(Rob and Curt laugh) I did my job.

- And then what, you went out to- - Met my beautiful wife there.

So.

- You did?

- It was, oh yeah.

- I met mine at a 4-H dance, so, there you go.

- We got a few things in common.

- Yeah.

- Besides our good looks.

(Rob and Curt laugh) - Where'd you go?

What North Carolina, was it?

- I did, I went to North Carolina to get another forestry degree.

I had so much fun with the first one.

- Yeah.

- And again, I was looking to expand my horizons and they have a tremendous forestry school there at NC State.

And they paid my way and I went, had a good time.

- And a park ranger out there?

- Did, yeah.

When I finished up that, my wife had a good job, so we stayed there in the beautiful state of North Carolina for several years and I was a park ranger and then we started a family and decided to move back home to family roots.

- Kind of get back, it's where she's from too.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

Okay.

Well that's nice.

- Yeah.

- That's nice that you could find what you love back here too.

- Absolutely.

- Because you seem like you're very passionate about your job.

- I love, well, one of the things I wanna communicate to anyone that would listen to me ever is that when you meet a young person and they have a passion, don't ever squash it.

You know, because I had many people tell me, "Hey," and they, "What do you wanna do?"

And I'm like, "I wanna work outside.

I wanna work out in the parks.

I wanna work out where I like to play, I wanna work."

And they're like, "You can't make a living doing that.

Yeah, no, don't do that.

Go into business, go into this and that."

I knew what I wanted to do.

I had a lot of people tell me, "Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Don't do that."

Never listened to 'em.

I'm glad I didn't.

- I don't see you wearing a suit and tie at work.

- I don't.

- Yeah.

- I just, I can tie a tie, but it takes a half a day or so.

- [Rob] Do you have to Google it first?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I will, but I'm not good at it.

(Rob laughs) You're right.

- So you're teaching outdoor safety too?

- Oh yeah.

I'm a big safety proponent.

'Cause I've done some dumb things I don't want other kids to do.

- Yeah.

- I taught myself how to hunt, deer hunt, and I made some awful mistakes and I fell from a tree.

- [Rob] Oh.

From like a tree stand?

- Yeah, I got in an old homemade stand when, you know, back in the day, you'd get up and pound nails- - Put the nail in it.

- With two by fours in the tree.

Yeah, and I was just brand new into the passion of wanting to hunt.

PSE Archery had a shop in Mahomet, Illinois.

- Okay.

- Before they moved their operations to Arizona.

- [Rob] Which is an archery?

- PSE is a big archery company.

Well anyway, I bought a used bow, or not a used one, but a second.

They couldn't sell it.

So I bought it from the factory there, had three arrows that didn't match.

Worked for a forest preserve district.

And I was moving trees out of a nursery for the forest preserve district that had bought trees from the nursery, the big old tree spade.

So anyway, the guy at the nursery was complaining about the deer damage.

And I was like, "Yeah, I'd kind of like to be a deer hunter myself."

And he's like, "Come on in here and have at 'em."

- Yeah.

- Take all of 'em you can take out.

- Field rats.

- So I walk down into his river bottom and I look up and I see this deer stand that somebody else had made.

- 40 years ago.

- So I got my three arrows, Rob, and my bow in my hand, and I'm climbing up in the tree, doing everything wrong.

- Yeah.

- No safety harness.

None of this in a quiver.

Doing all kinds of things wrong because never had to have a hunter safety course back then.

So I'm just out teaching myself.

Very first time I go up in there, I sit there until dark, saw a couple deer, got really excited.

But when I swung my feet over to get down, I heard a crack and I don't remember anything after that.

- How high up were you?

- Probably 18 feet or so.

- Oh, okay.

- I was up there pretty high.

- You were up there.

- Yeah and I was hurt pretty bad.

Had a major concussion and some other problems with the, and I'm lucky that I lived through that.

- Yeah.

- Or I'm not, you know, paralyzed or something awful.

And so I am a big proponent of tree stand safety.

So I've made a whole series of videos, pretty.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Before we get away from it.

I mean, how long were you out there before somebody found you?

- Well (laughs) I had one of those deals where I was in and out of consciousness.

- Yeah.

- I do remember being in my car or getting back to my car before I just kind of have a blank again.

- Oh, you were in la la land.

- But I forgot my equipment was in the woods.

So I went back to get my equipment, walked back to the car, and I remember waking up at a stop sign out in the rural countryside.

- Oh no.

- I had been driving home.

- Yeah.

- But I remember waking up and then not knowing where I was.

Couldn't remember which way to turn to get home.

- Yeah.

- And then the next thing I remember is my wife getting home from work and she, I was on the couch, don't remember how I got there or anything, but she came home and she looked at me and she said, "Oh my, what is the matter with you?

What happened to you?"

And my jaw was all swollen up 'cause I'd ran my shoulder up into my jaw.

And so my face was all swollen and had some problems.

And so she got me to the doctor and you know, I'm okay.

But it was not a good thing to fall that far.

- But, you know, I was a young hunter too.

Nowadays, I have the ladder stand, safety harness.

- Right.

- I put a rubber raft down there, if I fall down.

But back in the day, you'd get in these little, they call 'em teardrop stands, these little things.

You'd be up there, no safety harness, hanging on it like this.

And just, I think back to how stupid it was.

But again, nobody ever told me.

- No.

No.

We know better now and I do like to preach how to do it and hope that people don't do what I did.

No homemade deer stands, wear a safety harness, all those things.

So again, 4-H teaches a lot about the outdoors and as a shooting sports coordinator for the state of Illinois' 4-H program, I do a lot of educational stuff on safety, yeah.

- What do you recommend for safety harnesses?

- Full body harness.

- Yeah.

- Not something, and every manufacturer has to put out a harness with the purchase of a stand, but you get those things out of the box.

- They're so cheap.

- And you're like, "I can't figure this out for anything."

- Yeah.

- I, don't.

If you're gonna be a hunter, invest in one of those harnesses that's kind of built into a vest so you don't have to figure out in the dark all those straps and everything like that.

Just put the vest on, buckle in, and.

- And most of 'em you can put 'em on before and walk out to your blind with 'em on.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- And you've got the thing already hooked up in your tree or you should and that.

- Yep.

- So if you have a young hunter that you wanna buy something for, I'd say that's.

- And I have on YouTube, if anybody wants to see how to do it, you would just Google or go to YouTube and say 4-H tree stand safety.

And you're gonna see my ugly mug with the, I have videos on each kind of deer stand 'cause they're all different.

- Mm-hmm.

- Climbing, fixed, ladder, all the different kinds.

And we did a concerted effort to make good videos.

The DNR is using them now.

So I'm pretty proud of those.

- So falling out of a tree stand, obviously bad.

Is there another pitfall that you think people kind of overlook for safety?

- I can tell you another dumb thing I've done in my life, yeah, because I don't want anybody else to do this.

- Here he is, he's leading by example.

- Yeah.

Don't do what I do.

(Rob and Curt laugh) You ever had your uncle or dad tell you that?

Don't do what I do, do what I say.

When I did work for the Forest Preserve district in Champaign County, Illinois, a buddy of mine and I were working there and it was after Christmas and our job was to put Christmas trees that people come and donate to the park.

- Yeah.

- Out on the ice for fish habitat.

When the ice would melt, we'd already put concrete blocks around a big group of Christmas trees and they would sink and go to the bottom.

- Yeah.

- So we'd been doing that all week.

And then we're dragging trees out there with two pallets and an old eight end Ford tractor.

- Okay.

Yeah.

- And I'm driving and my buddy Dale was riding on the back, you know, holding the trees.

And we'd get out there and we'd been doing this all week.

The ice, Rob, the ice was literally three feet thick.

It was back when it used to get cold.

- That's not that heavy of a tractor.

- No.

- Yeah.

- Three feet of ice is a lot of ice.

- Yeah.

- And we'd been out there working safely all week.

And Friday afternoon come around and it was about an hour from quitting time and it was just time to, "Oh, let's just go ride around, do some joy riding."

So we're out on the lake and I take off up the lake, this is Homer Lake outside of Homer, Illinois.

Head up the lake to an area we hadn't been all week.

- Mm-hmm.

- And this is up in the upper end where it gets shallower.

Dale's riding on the pallets, like a surfer dude, like a beach boy.

- [Rob] That's a horrible idea that I would've- - Yeah and I'm towing him.

- That I would've never done in my youth.

(laughs) - And I'm towing him on the tractor and I'm standing up on the tractor and we're just flying down a frozen lake, having a great time as two young guys would do.

- Does sound kind of fun.

- It's Friday afternoon.

We're headed, we're just gonna end up back at the shop and go home, right?

- Yeah.

- And I look and I see something a little bit different ahead of me.

And I'm like, "What is that?"

So I look closer and I can see waves.

- Open water.

Huh?

- Open water.

I had no clue that it would be that different on a different part of the lake.

- Yeah.

- So ice safety was not on my brain that day.

Well I did get that thing turned towards the bank, you know, by hitting one of the brakes.

- Yeah.

- Got it turned.

Dale doesn't know anything yet.

Dale ended up being a conservation police officer for his whole career.

Thank goodness he made it through this day as well as I did.

But we got over within about 20 yards of the bank and the tractor went through.

- How deep?

- The tractor went through to where probably only about four foot deep of water right there.

- Okay.

- We'd almost made it to the bank, but the front end went first.

Then the steering wheel hits me in the gut, like by my diaphragm.

So all the air's knocked out of me and I'm in the seat and I'm, you know, doing that with the cold water and then the thing.

And then Dale, of course, he slides up underneath with the pallets 'cause he's on like a sled.

- Underneath what?

The ice?

- Underneath the tractor.

- The tractor.

Ooh.

- Like the back end of the tractor 'cause the front end is in the mud.

- Yeah.

- The back end's up here.

So I hear Dale crash into the back, like the tires.

- Oh yeah.

- But I can't do anything about it yet 'cause I can't catch my breath.

Anyway, God got us out of that one too, man, because I finally got my breath.

He crawled up out of there.

We kind of rolled out onto the ice and it crashed through a little bit, but we kind of helped drug each other over to the bank and laid there on the bank going, "We're in trouble.

Boss ain't gonna like this."

- Not to mention you're freezing.

- We're all right but yeah, so we ended up walking back to the shop about a half a mile.

Got there and he, our boss was smart enough guy, you know, that we had a shower back and everything in the shop area, the workshop area.

Got out of our wet clothes, got a hot shower.

And then he was like, "Well get the backhoe and go get that tractor out."

So I had to walk back out into the lake again and hook a chain on it while Dale drove the backhoe.

And this is just dumb things you shouldn't do.

- It's what young males do.

Stupid, stupid stuff.

- Well, so now that I'm in my mid 60s, I'm like, "Don't do this stuff."

(Rob laughs) It's just like, you may not live to be as old as I am if you behave like I did.

- Was this your thing to bring on the desk or did you have something?

- No, I have a little something for you today.

- Well, all right.

- I brought you a gift, but it's one of two.

You have to pick one of two.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- All right.

- You're not gonna be able, I want you to have one of these.

- This is fun.

- I want you to have one of these, but I'm gonna make you pick one.

- Is it a puppy?

- Because I have other friends too.

- Oh.

- So anyway, you get to just randomly pick a box out of it.

You know, it's like Christmas when you don't know how to wrap.

- After hearing your stories, I'm not sure I wanna- - Here, here.

- Stick my hand in there.

- Get in there.

Yes you do.

- Am I supposed to look or just?

- No, it don't matter 'cause you're gonna see both of 'em anyway.

- Oh.

- Okay, now that one is the Don't Shoot Deer.

You know how- - Oh, he goes on a- - He goes on your bump, the trailer hitch of your truck.

- Yeah.

Goes, yeah.

- And then you plug it in where you plug your trailer lights in.

- Yeah.

- He's got the same little four pin hook up.

You put him in there and when you hit your brakes, he goes, "Don't shoot!"

And he throws his arms up.

Take a look at that.

- It's not just entertainment for you, it's entertainment for the people behind you.

- Absolutely.

- Yes.

- Yes, so.

- You're making the world a better place.

- Thank you.

So that's one of your choices.

- Okay.

- This is the second one.

I'm thinking, well, I'm not gonna make a prediction on which way you're gonna go here.

Try again.

(laughs) - It's like a surprise every time.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Oh, the Chia.

- Oh, I'll bet you don't have one of those.

- I grew my own.

Oh, this is Uncle Si.

- Yeah.

- The Chia Si.

- The "Duck Dynasty" dude.

- Gosh, I don't.

- Well, I mean, there is a resemblance, a little.

- There is a little.

Yeah.

- You know, I looked at that, I thought, "Yeah, it's kind Sharkey looking, kind of like, well I like, ooh, I don't know."

- But you have more than, you have more friends than just me.

- I have several.

- Man.

- But this kind of stuff just ends up in my workshop and stuff.

It comes into my life.

- So you've gone from- - I don't actively.

- I'm just getting this for my friends to, I'm re-gifting.

(Rob laughs) - They .

.

.

We go to a lot of like, resale shops and stupid places to have a little fun.

So you ought to have one of those as a gift for inviting me today.

- Okay.

Can I ask my wife?

Can I get her?

- Yeah.

Oh, I think you probably should.

Yeah.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, so it's not an immediate decision, but there will be a decision in your future about which one of those is gonna stay with you.

(bell dings) (Rob and Curt laugh) - On a serious note.

- All right, I'll be, Emily said I could have fun.

- She could, but you know, she doesn't always tell the truth.

Do you feel a really, like a sense of obligation and responsibility when you're teaching this hunter safety, this outdoor safety?

Because I mean, like you said, you did a lot of stupid stuff.

I did a lot of stupid stuff.

'Cause we didn't know, 'cause we were young and that.

- Yep.

- The only voice of reason that some of these people might hear is yours.

That's a pretty big responsibility.

- It is and I try to make lessons for youth fun, which is why I love 4-H so much.

It's a learn by doing organization, where you get out and you do things, running a camp, we'd run hunter safety camps, where we, you know, we wouldn't do the 10 hour classroom session to get your hunter safety card.

We did it outside doing activities and made weekend family events out of it and such.

So anytime you can do it with fun, action, and all that, I think it sticks better.

But I also just think that you just never pass up an opportunity to make an impact on a young person.

Because my dad wasn't a hunter, but one of his brothers was.

And I was like, "Uncle Vern, can I go out with you?"

You know, 'cause I always was curious about it.

And I'm nine years old and I watch him shoot a pheasant in Macon County out near Decatur, where we were that time, and there were pheasants everywhere.

This was back in the, if I'm nine, this is 1969.

- Okay.

- It was a long time ago.

- Long time ago.

(whistles) - There was a lot of birds.

And after he passed away, his daughter pulled this pheasant off the wall and she said, "That's your pheasant, he always used to say.

Vern used to say that was your pheasant."

I said, "I remember that day."

And she said, "He mounted that pheasant 'cause he said that you wanted to be like him."

- Aw.

- And she said, "So he'd shot thousands of pheasants," she said, "But he mounted that one that day and we want you to have it."

- Yeah.

- So I was gonna bring that in today, but it's so fragile.

It's like, you've been in places and establishments before, seeing an old deer up on the wall, it's been there so long, looks like- - Two hours of driving would, yeah.

- And I was like, yeah.

So it's not a pretty taxidermy thing, but it means a lot.

- Yeah.

I'm biased because I love the outdoors.

I love hunting, fishing, and all that stuff.

But there is a bond and a connection, and it's not for everybody, I get it.

There's a bond and a connection that comes from the outdoors that I find hard to beat.

- It is, it's what keeps a lot of families together, bonded together.

And it doesn't have to be that, like you said, it's not for everybody.

- Yeah.

- But boy, it's a strong pull.

When the passion hits you, it's a strong one.

- If people wanna find you, ask you questions, anything, where would they go?

- The Illinois 4-H website has all the state staff on it.

There's about 14 of us that work at the state 4-H office and I do everything that has to do with the outdoors.

So if it's shooting sports.

We're headed to Nebraska here with families at the end of this month to go to the national shoot in Grand Island, Nebraska with kids.

- That's, see, we don't have enough time for that stuff.

- Recurve archery.

- I wish we could talk about that.

- Yeah and the shotgun team and all, yeah.

We're gonna go out there and have a good time.

Hopefully we're gonna beat Texas.

- Curt Sinclair from Jacksonville.

Thank you for all you do for outdoors and the youth.

Really, really appreciate it.

- Enjoy it.

- Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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