God's Great Outdoors

Announcer: God puts a calling on the lives of all His children. Life is way better when we follow His calling. Sometimes God directs us to a change of course. Whatever direction God sends us in life, we can rest assured that He is always preparing us for the future plans He has for us. There's an old saying that goes, "If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it."

On today's program, we'll hear from someone that has spent nearly half his life living out his calling as the host of a hunting show on national TV. We'll hear of his calling and his struggles and how God continues to use him in a very unique ministry. So come along now as we head out to God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure in central Oklahoma.

Dean Hulce: Welcome to God's Great Outdoors. We are today on the Trail to Adventure in Guthrie, Oklahoma, just north of Oklahoma City. A little-known fact: Guthrie is the first capital of Oklahoma, and in the middle of the night it was stolen, the seal and moved to Oklahoma City.

Brad Clay: Really? Now we know why we're here. We did a little history lesson.

Dean Hulce: And we are with Brad Clay. And Brad, you and I met actually through the ATA show originally at the prayer breakfast. Chris Hamm introduced us and it was started by Howard and Julie Trip with Real Avid and then Scott Schultz.

Brad Clay: I remember being at the first one and gosh, it was somewhere around, I can't even remember, 2013-ish. There were about 40 of us in a room. God just has done incredible things through that. Every year we see people come to know the Lord through the prayer breakfast.

So I do appreciate you obviously with God's Great Outdoors being a partner this year and helping us do it because it's expensive to put it on, but you know what? It's worth it. I mean when one person comes to know the Lord, obviously it's worth it.

But it's a great event. It went away obviously through COVID and Real Avid stopped coming, and our ministry ended up contacting them saying, "Hey, can we pick this up and start it back?" and Chris has been a big help in helping us pull that off.

Dean Hulce: Chris doesn't have any fear in asking others to jump in. And you know what happened and I told you I met Chris, and this isn't really about Chris, but seeing I've been able to put a program together with Chris over three years, we'll talk about him because Chris, if you're listening, you'll know why.

Brad Clay: Just show up at his house. That's what you did to me. You just showed up unannounced, didn't tell me you were coming. I'm just kidding.

Dean Hulce: I wanted to hunt turkey on your backyard. When I had somebody come to me once time not too long ago, probably four or five years ago, and told me they went to this great breakfast. And they told me they heard a guy from HHA give his testimony.

And I said, "Oh, who was it?" and they said "Chris Hamm", and I was kind of blown away because he was not necessarily known as a Christian guy before, and God did amazing things in his life.

Brad Clay: Chris is pretty open about the fact that obviously he was pretty late in life coming to know the Lord. And he's pretty open and honest about the man he was and the character that he had before. And there's been a pretty incredible transformation in his life for sure.

Dean Hulce: Well, God's using him in a mighty way now. It really is amazing to see a transformation of that level.

Brad Clay: 100%. A complete change. Well, and you know all of us, I want to get into your story, but all of us really in salvation, there's nobody any different. His was just more obvious. There's none of us any different. Even if you get saved at vacation Bible school when you're eight years old or nine years old, the redemption is the same. Your destination was the same. Without Jesus, it doesn't matter how great or little your sin view was, you still needed a Savior.

And so anyway, but Chris has really become a great friend. I call him brother. God is doing pretty awesome stuff through him and he's using HHA Sports as an opportunity to share the gospel and be a ministry to and serve a lot of people, veterans and first responders and all kinds.

Dean Hulce: We've not been to one of his events yet because every time he's going one way, I'm going the other way too. So let's get into I'd love to hear some of your story. I know you said to me off the air that you were born out in the middle of nowhere.

Brad Clay: Out in the middle of nowhere: Reydon, Oklahoma. You can look that up on a map because you don't just accidentally end up in Reydon. Really the only reasons you would be in Reydon, Oklahoma is that you were going to hunt Black Kettle National Grasslands, public land to hunt Rio Grandes or you were going there to hunt bobwhite quail.

But middle of nowhere had six kids in my kindergarten class. The closest Walmart was 55 miles away. Me and Tommy Music were the only two boys in my class out there. So having a girlfriend was pretty easy. Those poor girls didn't have a whole lot to choose from. Odds were in our favor.

That's where I fell in love with the outdoors. Growing up in rural America, hunting and fishing was a way of life for us. So my grandpa, my dad, uncle, all very, very passionate outdoorsmen: deer hunters, turkey hunter. We did a lot of quail hunting.

But my dad's passion was hunting coyotes, except he didn't use a gun. We had 16 greyhounds growing up as a kid. So I spent a lot of time driving because right around Reydon's not flat, it's actually pretty beautiful. I don't think people think Western Oklahoma and the word beautiful, but it is a pretty area.

But you get West into Texas or you go North of us, you start running into some pretty flat country. And we'd drive around early of a morning, see a coyote out in a wheat field or in a pasture and dump those greyhounds. And if you haven't ever seen it, there are some videos on YouTube. There's actually some young guys that are actually using a drone and filming greyhounds chase coyotes down and they've got some pretty incredible content.

Dean Hulce: I might have to check that out. The drone footage must be awesome.

Brad Clay: It's pretty wild. They'll dump those dogs and deploy a drone and here it comes behind them and it's pretty cool. They're doing a good job of just kind of creating some pretty unique content. But that's what I grew up doing. That's how I fell in love with the outdoors. So a lot of our Final Descent Outdoors episodes have been filmed on that property. Yeah, that's where I fell in love with the outdoors.

Dean Hulce: I don't expect that. I don't think of that part of the country and having it rolling and even a lot of trees I don't expect. I'm amazed how pretty this is right where you're sitting here is amazingly beautiful.

Brad Clay: Oh, thank you. No, we have this area, I've got a deer feeder in our backyard. Oklahoma is a state where we can do that. And I don't really hunt them here, but it's fun to look at. And we'll have turkeys. I don't know, I took a bunch of videos the other day, we probably had six long beards and ten jakes and 25 hens just here in the backyard a week and a half ago. And deer every evening, every morning coming to the feeder.

So this is a beautiful area. Oklahoma's a state that I think pretty diverse. You go to Southeast Oklahoma, I don't think people realize that we have a bear season in Oklahoma. We have a very large population of black bear that are in the Southeast part of the state and a growing population of alligators.

Dean Hulce: Really?

Brad Clay: Yeah. And so we're also one of the few states that you can hunt a Rio, Eastern and a Merriam in Oklahoma. And so you can get three of them in one state. Actually had a buddy that he used to do a TV show called Cody and Cody, and they did a hunt where they killed an Eastern, a Rio and a Merriam in 24 hours. And super cool that they did that. We have antelope, we have mule deer, we have whitetail. We have a pretty—

Dean Hulce: Do you have some elk in parts?

Brad Clay: And our elk population—we have an elk population now. And so we have an elk season. Well, actually, it's over-the-counter.

Dean Hulce: Really?

Brad Clay: It's an over-the-counter tag. There's just none that are really on public ground. There's the Wichita Mountains and just a once-in-a-lifetime hunt that you can put in for there. And that's on a refuge. But there's a ton of private land when you get Southwest Oklahoma, Western and Northwest Oklahoma. And then there's a pocket of elk in Southeast Oklahoma as well. And so that's a population that's really, really grown and continues to grow is our elk population.

Dean Hulce: Nationwide, there's so many you look up in Pennsylvania up that way and then Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, Wisconsin now. We've had them in Michigan back in Michigan for 50 years, more than that, probably 60, 70 years. And I quit putting in because it was like winning the lottery. And because I was doing it out West every year, so it was harder to justify.

Brad Clay: Well, I would love to say I've killed an Oklahoma elk. We're literally sitting under a big bull right now that kind of hangs over in my office. But I'd love to kill an Oklahoma bull and I put in for the Oklahoma Wildlife Department's once-in-a-lifetime draw. And I think I'm 17 years in not being drawn.

And our producer, Adam Carter, you've met Adam, little red-headed guy, his little pot of gold leprechaun self talked me into putting in and he drew on his first year ever. And he was like he calls me and he's like, "Hey," he goes, "Hey man, I just got a phone call from the Wildlife Department and I got drawn for that elk hunt. Did you get drawn? What dates do you have?"

And I go "Shut up. No way. There's no way your first year," because every year you put in, so my name's in 17 times. And he said "No, no, they called me. I'm going December 16th, 17th and 18th." and I was like "Are you kidding me?" And he's like "Yeah, yeah, I drew." and at this point too, he has only bird hunted. He's not even killed a whitetail.

Dean Hulce: Oh man, there's no way. A lot of elk hunters would have paid everything they got to draw a bull like that.

Brad Clay: Well, I'm usually not very lucky. But this bull here is about 350, 356, I think what he is. And I killed him the first day. I bought a landowner permit. It was just lucky. He walked to us, he never bugled, was hot. Shot him at 49 yards with my bow.

He's got amazing bottom—he's got all the way up his fighting tines are incredible. If he'd have finished up top, he'd have been a 400-inch bull. But I wouldn't pass him up. Hey, listen, we got to take a quick break because my Adam on my program is going to fill in on who it is that makes the show possible and let people know how they can come alongside us.

But we'll be right back with Brad Clay at his studio, in his office, and in just a minute on God's Great Outdoors.

Announcer: For the last 26 years, God's Great Outdoors Trail to Adventure has been broadcast out to win men and women, boys and girls to Jesus Christ. This is only possible by the generosity of our listeners. Thank you to all who have supported us in the past. God has blessed us because of you, and we pray that you feel His blessing as well.

Additional underwriting support has been provided by Matthews Archery, the leader in the archery industry; Mission Archery with revolutionary crossbow technology; Three Rivers Archery, supplying everything you need to make your own traditional archery equipment; Hunters Safety System, saving lives is what we do; and Conviction Game Calls. At Conviction, we don't separate work from our faith. We believe that our faith should be evident in every aspect of our lives and the outdoors is one of the best places to share that.

God's Great Outdoors has produced many ministry tools, including tracts, DVDs and books to help you reach others for Jesus Christ. You can access these items, other God's Great Outdoors items and so much more at our website godsgreatoutdoors.org. That's godsgreatoutdoors.org.

Dean Hulce: Welcome back to God's Great Outdoors Trail to Adventure. We are again in Guthrie, Oklahoma, which is just north of Oklahoma City and with Brad Clay. And Brad, we're out in your office in the backyard and actually it feels like a beautiful spring day. We just come out of Texas and we were in Texas over 100 degrees a couple days guiding some turkeys and collecting a lot of interviews. That's the biggest group of Christian outdoorsmen I think in the world is all over Texas.

Brad Clay: Yeah, we had a great trip. Met with a lot of people and it's been an awesome experience. We talked a lot about everything but what you really do with your—because your living is in the outdoors and you've had Final Descent for 15 years?

Brad Clay: Yeah, we've been on—this is our 15th season. Yeah. And it really is as much a living as far as outdoor program goes, it's a ministry, even more so.

Brad Clay: Very much so. So I surrendered to the ministry when I was a senior in high school. And I played football in college, but while I was even playing football I was a bivocational, part-time youth pastor at a church and my faith's always been very important to me. Ended up going into full-time ministry after I graduated from college and we moved to a town in Southern Oklahoma called Sulphur, Oklahoma, who made some national news not long ago for a tornado just went through there and wiped out their downtown. It was just devastating.

But anyway, Sulphur's beautiful. It's got Chickasaw National Recreation Area, was one of the first national parks that was in Oklahoma. Beautiful area in the Arbuckle Mountains. And our church was growing. I mean it was really, really growing and our young married couples Sunday school class was growing and it seemed like all of our wives were finding ways to spend time with one another and they were going shopping and doing this. And us guys were like, "Oh, we need to hang out with one another outside the walls of the church."

And found out a bunch of us liked to hunt. And so we just started hunting together. We were going duck hunt together, turkey hunt together, we were deer hunt together, we were bow fishing together, just having a great time. And on a whim, we decided to buy a video camera and three of us went in and bought a camera together and started filming, really no intentions of ever doing anything with it. We just were wanting to capture just the memories of what we were doing.

And this about Facebook had just come out and you could upload a clip on Facebook. It'd take 45 minutes to upload a clip on Facebook, but you could do that. And anyway, I started dabbling with some editing and trying to learn a little bit. And I had a friend who was on staff at a bigger church in Southern Oklahoma and they had their own TV ministry. They had their own cable station and they aired their services and local high school football games. They did all kinds of different broadcast stuff. And my friend who was on staff there, he said, "Hey, have you guys ever thought about doing like a faith-based hunting show?"

Dean Hulce: And I was like "not really," and he's like "Man, you got to think about doing it. We'd air it on our station."

Brad Clay: And so we had to come up with a name and we chose Final Descent Outdoors. And I get asked a lot about where that comes from. It actually comes from scripture, Mark 13:32 and 33, which says, "No one knows the day of the hour the Lord's return, not the angels in heaven nor the son, but only the Father." and we're called to be on alert, be on guard because nobody knows when Christ will make His final descent. And so we don't know when Jesus is coming back, but we need to be ready for that. Amen, right?

And so we chose the name Final Descent Outdoors and we put together our first season, 13 episodes to air on CommuniComm cable Channel 12 in the Lake Texoma area of Southern Oklahoma and it was the worst television you've ever seen in your life. But we set kind of a precedent that we wanted to—there's some other programs out there that are very upfront about the spiritual aspect of who they are, which is awesome.

We wanted to be probably a little bit more seeker-sensitive. And then maybe even a guy who's like, "Oh, I'm not going to watch that show, it's a Christian show. I don't want to watch." So our goal was we never hid that aspect of it, but at the end of every episode, we wrap the show up with a devotion. And that was a goal: we wanted to present the gospel at the end of it, tie it together and challenge our primarily male audience with, "Hey, you need to be a better husband, you need to be a better father, and you need to begin to have a relationship with Jesus for all that stuff to come together for you."

Dean Hulce: And so we aired our first season. It was horrible television. We had no idea what we were doing. And we ended up airing another season there. Season two was a little bit better.

Brad Clay: And then we got a phone call one day from KWHB TV-47 out of Tulsa, Oklahoma and they said, "Hey, we hear you have a faith-based, family-oriented hunting show. We have an outdoor block on Saturday mornings and we would love for you to be a part of that." And so we moved from about 30,000 households in the Lake Texoma area to about 700,000 households in the greater Lake Texoma area. It was great. Season three was a little bit better.

And then the Pursuit Channel was looking, they had just finished their first season as being a nationally syndicated network, and they were looking for new programming and we submitted an episode. We were like, "Okay, what's the best one we've done? We don't have a lot to choose from, but let's submit it."

And we sent it to them and they picked us up. We spent 14 of our 15 seasons on the Pursuit Channel and then also aired on Wild TV in Canada for a long time. And then we air and continue to air locally here in Oklahoma and on some other local networking. We're streaming on CarbonTV.

Dean Hulce: Anyway, that was kind of the dive into it. There is this misconception that when you're on TV, it means that you're rich. And even radio people think that. So, "Oh, you're on TV, you must be wealthy." And definitely not the case. We're all paid programming and we buy our airtimes from the networks and we have to sell advertising to pay those bills and God's been faithful to help us to be able to do it as long as we have.

But there's not a lot of money left over and I remember when the Lord was like, "Hey, I want you to do this full-time." And I'm like, "Hey, You're good at a lot of things, God, but maybe You're not good at math." This doesn't make sense. I can't pay our bills. I can't live on that. I have a family. God just said, "Trust Me."

And our family took a step of faith about 13 years ago to step out to do this full-time and travel and speak at a lot of wild game dinners. That has slowed down a little bit, just really after COVID. There's been quite a few of them that didn't come back.

But I do speak at somewhere now around 20 to 25 wild game dinners a year. We've put out two different men's Bible studies centered around manhood and the outdoors. And so God's been faithful to use our ministry and allow us to be able to continue to present the gospel through the common ground of the outdoors really for the last 15 years.

Dean Hulce: But I think even though we don't doubt God because we know He can do it, even when you said maybe You don't know the math and I know that's a little facetious, but when we think about how is this possible? We think in human terms.

But when we give God our everything and we say, "God, this is for You," because You knew you couldn't make it, you couldn't make a living on it just without that. I mean, you could make a living and I think there's a lot of guys living off their ego to do it. And I've met a lot of people that I'm shocked when I've watched them on TV and heard them praise God for things because I see their life outside of that.

But when someone really gives it all and says, "God, this is for You, this is my desire, but I want You to lead it," He'll do amazing things.

Brad Clay: Right. And we have seen God do some incredible things. And it's not been easy for me and my family. There's been some times where you're like—and I remember early on when we started our ministry and we have a 501(c)(3) as You're Going Ministries, based off the Great Commission: make disciples as you're going, as you're living life.

Being at a place where we sat down and like, "Hey, end of the month, it's going to be we're out." I don't have any speaking engagements for another month or things of just trying to figure it out and literal "ding" and somebody made a donation to our ministry and it was exactly what we needed. I mean, we've—

Dean Hulce: We even had a moment where similar situation early on where, "Hey, after the 15th, we're going to have a tough time and I don't see anything on the horizon." Going to the mailbox and there was an envelope that had no name on it and it was just cash. Really? Just I can name numerous times where God has just provided.

And it just goes to show, you know what? If God calls you to it, He's going to see you through it. That's a mirror of Linda and I for a lot of years, not knowing if it's going to be there but it's always there. We went through—and I brag on God here because it has nothing to do with us—we went through a year and a half with no regular paycheck of any kind. I did speak at some churches but nothing where I knew I was going to have a paycheck. Cancer in that and a hip replacement in that.

Brad Clay: Oh my gosh. Never asked anybody for money except for God. We asked God and it was always there. It's amazing what He'll do. That's a great thing to think of what God can do when we just trust Him because if we don't trust Him, He's not going to supply. 100%. Yeah.

God calls us to Himself and the call to Himself is to trust, and even if it doesn't make sense to you, it doesn't make sense to me, it doesn't make sense to my wife, it doesn't make sense to my accountant or CPA. They'll say you can't live like this.

Yeah, exactly. And I remember when we did take the step of faith to step out because I was on staff at a church, it wasn't like I was in the secular world. But when I took a step of faith, I remember us having family saying, "This is stupid. You have a retirement plan, you get a paycheck every two weeks, your family's insurance is through—"

And I said, "I realize all that, but this is what I'm called to do." And I know it doesn't make sense. Dave Ramsey would throw a fit right now. I've thought of that all the time. This is a bad choice. But this is what God's called me to do and I can sit here today and say that God has been just incredibly faithful in it.

Dean Hulce: Listen, we're out of radio time. But we're going to go on to the podcast. We're actually a little over radio time, but we're going to find room to we'll take out anything I said and we'll be okay that way. But we're going to go on to the podcast.

Thank you for joining me for the radio. It's been a lot of fun. It's gone by quick. For our listeners, if you can't get to the podcast, join us here each week wherever you're listening on God's Great Outdoors as we travel down the Trail to Adventure.

Announcer: Today we heard Brad Clay tell us that he enjoys his calling but that it hasn't always been easy. We love the part where he said that Dave Ramsey wouldn't approve of the direction he took, but God called him out of the church ministry to an outdoor ministry and he's living that out.

What is God calling you to? Are you living out the Great Commission that Jesus talked about in Matthew 28 where He told us to "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age"?

If you've felt God's calling on your life and you've been afraid to step out, just know that you might be missing the biggest and most exciting time of your life. Step up and step out and allow God to use you in amazing ways. You'll never regret that.

If you've enjoyed today's program and would like to hear the extended podcast version, you can find it by looking for Dean Hulce or Trail to Adventure wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This program is provided by and can be contacted at God's Great Outdoors, PO Box 414, Powers, Michigan 49874 or on the website godsgreatoutdoors.org. We want to thank you all for joining us here today and each week as we live out the calling that God has put on our lives.

Please join us each week as we bring the stories of God's people as they share their lives with us as well as their calling by God. We're blessed to share the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors with you each week and we look forward to meeting up again each and every week right here.