Killing Time with Travis “T-Bone” Turner
Josh Campbell: How did you get your nickname “T-Bone”?
Travis Turner: Well I got the name T-Bone back in 1999. I was doing work for Real Tree and they asked me to be a part of their Monster Bucks DVD series and they wanted me to play a character that was Jeff Foxworthy’s sidekick. Jeff Foxworthy’s character was named Willie and about five minutes before we started filming, we realized they hadn’t given me a name and they didn’t just want to call me Travis, so I recommended T-Bone and it just stuck.
JC: Do you mainly bow hunt or do you do all types of hunting?
TT: I enjoy all kinds of hunting. Archery is my passion and my background but if it’s a legal season, we’re all for it. Whether it’s shotgun, rifle, pistol, muzzle loaders. You name it, we’re fans of all of those. If they made a wrist rocket season, we would probably do that too.
JC: What is your favorite game to hunt?
TT: If I had to choose only one I would probably choose white tail. I like white tail hunting just because being here in North America, you can pretty much hunt white tail in almost all of the states and each area that you hunt, it’s very diverse. Meaning the way you hunt them in Florida is not the way you would do it in Montana. So you have the same species but there are a lot of different ways to hunt them all across the country. A close second though is bowfishing. I’ve really become a big fan of bowfishing because you can do it in the off-season and it crosses both sports fishing and hunting.
JC: How did you bet started hunting?
TT: My dad was a hunter, my granddad was a hunter, and they started taking me with them when I was really young and we would go squirrel or rabbit hunting. So I just acquired a passion for the outdoors at a young age. We all have that instinct in us to be hunters but it takes our friends or family to introduce us to it and let that passion go. The deeper into hunting and into the woods you go, the more interested you become and then you’re off and running on your own before you know it.
JC: What is your favorite bow to use?
TT: My background is a tournament archer. I shot competitively and professionally from the late 80’s until the early 2000’s, and I’ve been with Hoyt ever since 1986. So Hoyt is my bow of choice. If I had to just run one set up it would have a good drop-away rest that has full containment so your arrow won’t rattle around. I like to use a multiple-pin sight so I can have different pins set for different yardages. A stabilizer is just a personal preference depending on what weight you put on it so that it balances to your feel. I also use a shooter release and a quick detach quiver so I can disconnect my quiver while I’m in the tree stand so that it doesn’t add extra weight to the bow.
JC: What do you do when you’re not hunting?
TT: Because we have a TV show, we get labeled as professional hunters, but we don’t really like that because we prefer the term “outdoor entertainers.” We don’t consider ourselves professional hunters, we enjoy hunting and it’s our passion but we don’t like the term “professional hunters.” Half of the fans of the show are equally as good if not better than most of us. It’s really an all year thing. Most people just think we are busy in the fall and then it’s off-season from January to August but there are seasons going on all the time whether it be duck season, bowfishing, turkey hunting, hog hunting, bear hunting. There’s always something to hunt. Not to mention the commercials we have to shoot and we have to go represent our brands at stores. I’m the national spokes person for Whitetails Unlimited so I actually speak at a lot of banquets. I’ve only had 2 weekends off since last December so we have a lot of traveling and promoting. So we’re making hay while the sun is shining so to speak.
If you want to find out more about Travis, check him out on:
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