God's Great Outdoors

Announcer: Around 2007, the hunting world was changed forever with something that has been called the hunting revolution. Many hunters didn't believe in it and others were doubtful, but they tried it just to learn that it really was a revolution. Everything we knew of scent control or scent elimination was thrown out the window.

With God's leading, we met the inventor of something that made hunting completely different and far more successful for those that trusted the new system. God showed one man something that would change the hunting world. Today, we'll talk about how the Ozonics product line came to be.

Even more importantly, we'll see how the complete removal of scent connects with the difference between the continual sacrifices for sin in the Old Testament and the eternal removal of sin in the New Testament. Let's join our host now, Dean Hulce, and his very special guest, as we discuss scent elimination as well as the total removal of sin from lives. We're heading to the South Texas area now on the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors.

Dean Hulce: Welcome to God's Great Outdoors, the Trail to Adventure. We are in Lake Jackson, Texas, south of Houston about an hour, thereabouts. We've got Dr. Scott Elrod today on the program with us. Scott, we're in your dental office, and most people don't know where this product we're going to talk about came from, but it came out of a dental office, really.

Dr. Scott Elrod: It came right out of the facility you're sitting in.

Dean Hulce: We want to talk a little bit more about it so just so people know where we're going, so we don't hold it back. You're the originator or inventor of Ozonics. Every deer hunter in the world, at least 90 percent plus, know what Ozonics is.

When I started looking at it, let me tell people how we met, and then I'm going to let you go with how this happened. I was at a church last year in The Woodlands and a friend of mine pulled me over and said he just wanted to introduce me to this gentleman. He said you might know his son. He told me who his son was and said maybe you've heard of this product.

I was an outfitter for 38 years all over and lots and lots of bow hunting. When he told me Ozonics, I said I don't know who Scott is, but I certainly know the product. Give me a little bit of background, because you said you've lived all over North America.

Dr. Scott Elrod: I was born in Minnesota and then after that, my father was in the service. We ended up moving to South Dakota, then Anchorage, Alaska, Dillingham, Alaska, New Mexico, and then back to Minnesota. That's where I went to high school. So, I'm truly a Midwestern guy.

Dean Hulce: You look like a Midwestern guy. You don't look like a Texan, not a lot of tan.

Dr. Scott Elrod: I've kind of gotten wise to the sun. I've been down here since 1998, and just love it down here. Texas has been very good to my family and myself.

Dean Hulce: Way better winters down here. I live in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Whereabouts in Minnesota?

Dr. Scott Elrod: Austin, Minnesota.

Dean Hulce: I had hunting leases in South Dakota, so coming from the Upper Peninsula to Minnesota, I had to go right through Austin. Actually, when I guided on Kodiak Island, Alaska, I had a doctor from the big hospital in La Crosse, a surgeon there, and his wife was the head of nursing. That's all I know about Austin. How long have you been here?

Dr. Scott Elrod: Since 1998.

Dean Hulce: Somewhere in there, you got the idea. You stumbled across it, God gave it to you, whatever happened. How did it happen that you went from being just a dentist to an Ozonics guy?

Dr. Scott Elrod: We've always been really big into sanitization. We do a lot of implants down here and a bunch of stuff so we need our surgical suites clean. Our team does a great goal with that, and then we had heard through a company that you could potentially ozonate your treatment suite, basically help rid any residual bacteria or viruses or whatever may be in the area that your people didn't get wiped down.

So, we were doing that. Back in 2002 to 2004, somewhere in that window, I was doing a surgery and went in there and had a bleeder and had a hard time getting it to control itself. So, I went in there with a laser. When I went in there with this little diode laser, I went over the area and let this plume of smoke kind of out. A lot of it is moisture, but in that plume, there's a lot of viruses and bacteria and it rises and goes up in your and your team's face, whatever they don't get evacuated out of the area.

When they were doing that, I'm just I looked over at that oxidation system sitting over there in the corner and I'm like, my gosh, I wonder if that will help treat some of this we're being exposed to. So, I went over there and had the team put the unit in, plug it in, and just have them start running this unit while we were doing the surgery and went back in there with the laser and was treating the tissue and this plume came up. I was just like, my gosh, I don't smell that.

My team members made the comment like, man, you really don't smell that. As I was suturing up the case, I'm like, my gosh, I wonder if I could use that deer hunting.

Dean Hulce: So it was a selfish thing to start with.

Dr. Scott Elrod: It was one of those aha moments and I'm like, my gosh. That's where the story began. I went home and started trying to make ozonators on my freezer or out in my barn and shocked myself because I'm no electrical engineer or electrician or anything. I started out with metal tin boxes and a motorcycle battery and a ten-foot cord and that's how it all began to what we are today.

Dean Hulce: And when did it actually hit market?

Dr. Scott Elrod: In 2007. We came out with HR 100. It's crazy because we named it the HR 100 because I was so convinced because it worked so well that I was going to change the whole industry, so we called it the hunting revolution. Little did we know it was going to be a journey.

Trying to explain it to a bunch of our outdoorsmen, they're kind of get out in the woods guys just like me, but there's a lot of bright guys. How do you explain to them that this invisible molecule coming out of this box is going to get rid of your odor? We had a bit of a journey.

Dean Hulce: Well, there's been so many products that claim to work. Being an outfitter and hunting growing up, I remember one stand that I was hunting from the ground and I would always put a skunk den right by me. I would always put skunk scent on. What I found was I stunk, but the deer still smelled me. Occasionally with skunk or fox or something, it may cover up some scent, but it makes the animals come over and look closer at you instead of not paying attention to you.

Dr. Scott Elrod: What's crazy is that animals with almost any animal, as humans our nose is so small, we can smell pancakes or roses, we smell in what I call a collage. Animals with a longer nose, their nasal vortex, they have the ability to smell in the thousands of times better than we do.

When you go sheep hunting and their eyes are 10 or 15 times greater and you think that's a big deal, try a nose. Back when we worked with like the FBI and some of the other governmental agencies in regards to a bunch of different things, I learned so much about how animals smell because their biggest issue was dogs.

What I found is that in the nasal vortex of these animals, the resonance time of odor in there, when you and I smell something, we smell the collage. What they smell is a filing cabinet. So you could be cooking a steak and you put garlic salt and you put butter and you put some sage and you do all these things in it. That's not the way a dog smells. The dog smells everything that you put in or around that beef independently.

Dean Hulce: Almost like a little computer.

Dr. Scott Elrod: It is. So this whole thing of cover scents is the human frame of mind. The human frame of mind structures things based upon what is known to us. But the facts are the way an animal smells is a library, it's a catalog.

That's the reason why we'd rather people when they're using our stuff use nothing because you're just wasting the oxidant trying to get rid of all the other cover ups. Just let it get rid of your human odor, it's a lot more effective.

Dean Hulce: Amazing. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back. I have several questions. I've hunted and guided hunters for 52 years and we've tried and done about everything. I'd like to talk a little bit more about that and I see such great spiritual connections with so much of this. I'd like to share some of that. We're going to take a quick break so Adam can share with our listeners who it is that makes the show possible and how they can come alongside us. We'll be right back.

Adam: 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 blessings 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. Hunter Safety Systems, 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 on the Trail to Adventure again. We're in Lake Jackson. This is my first time ever in Lake Jackson. I've been to Houston probably 20 times in my life, I've never been down here. It's really pretty. The last 20 miles before you get in here is really pretty anyhow.

But we are with Dr. Scott Elrod. Your main career is dental, but you've got Ozonics as something you have a passion for as well. I assume you tested it yourself some before you put it out on the market.

Dr. Scott Elrod: The very first time we had come up with the idea and we made our very first prototypes, I had a church that we went to here in town and prior to church, we had like a coffee area. There were a few of the guys there at the church and I started explaining it to them and they were just like what?

So we went ahead and I think we had a total of eight or ten units made that were basically a flip top lid that were green that had a dial from zero to ten and an on-off button and a ten-foot cord and a motorcycle battery and duct tape. Seriously, that's about as big as it got. It was about the size of a watch box. It was pretty small but it was just brutally simple.

We went ahead and I went to a rancher that we knew that had a deer lease out here in Texas. It was in January after the hunting season was over. Here in Texas, they have these ranches where they have these management programs where they harvest x number of bucks, x number of does, but when they go after and start harvesting them, they knock a lot of animals down in December and January. To say the deer are skittish is kind of an understatement.

Some duck hunting is still going on, so in the distance whenever a shotgun would go off or whatever, they just flip out of their skin. So we decided that would be a good time to go test our Ozonics unit out. We all got these ghillie suits and got the units and the motorcycle batteries and we take people out and put them on the ground and put mesquite around them. With a camcorder, no firearm, no nothing, just a camcorder covered up in mesquite.

We would go ahead and check where the downwind side of wherever the feeding area was and we'd surround them by corn. It was unbelievable. I wasn't even there the very first time. I had to work. Starting Ozonics, everybody thinks that starting companies, you make a boatload of money. When you start companies, you're praying every day that you can make payroll.

So I worked here as a dentist and they were out there testing out the units. I remember the very first time they went out there, these are full grown men. These are men in their 30s and 40s and I think there were a total of six or seven of them that went out there. I get this phone call at like 10:30 in the morning and so I go over to it and it was the guys.

I'm like, hey, how's it going? They were like screaming on the phone. They're like you won't believe what happened! We had deer eating by our boots! The one guy was like I couldn't believe what was happening. So I went up there and on camera I turned my unit off and just kind of watched all the deer start to walk away. They didn't run, they just walked away. In their heads, they didn't know it was going to work. They wanted to believe it would, but they were in shock. In theory, it worked. So those guys were the tip of the spear when we started it. We went through all the processes of getting the company started and started the journey of Ozonics.

Dean Hulce: That's just about 20 years ago. Next year's 20 years. It seems like just yesterday it hit the market. It's funny how fast time flies. You and I were talking during a break that I've guided elk hunters in the mountains. Someday you can come up with one where a guy can carry it on his back and blow it up over the top from a battery. That for mountains would be great when you're hiking.

Dr. Scott Elrod: We have that. That's what I've been using for elk hunting now for probably eight years.

Dean Hulce: Because elk hunting, especially archery hunting, and I guided for almost 38 years of elk. We had some of the best elk hunting in the world. Southern Colorado, right on the New Mexico border, 83,000 acres. When you'd watch Primo's Truth About Hunting for years, when you saw them on the Cielo Vista Ranch, that was the ranch we were guiding, ran the whole hunting operation.

Guys would spend 15 minutes in the morning putting all their scent-free clothing on that they spent hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of dollars on. Then they'd spray themselves head to toe and by the time you're 100 yards up the mountain they were sweating so badly in that clothing. The scent killing stuff of that clothing and the spray was gone. Not that it doesn't mask some odor, but it can't do, it's not possible to do that.

So this is something completely different than what that is. It really is pretty amazing. A lot of my hunters have come and brought their bow stands, they always bring it with them. Now so many people hunting from pop-up blinds and nobody used to hunt from box blinds in Texas probably more than the rest of the country. But now a lot of guys have a place to hang it right in their box blind and it really has changed hunting. Not that you still shouldn't pay attention to your wind direction. I hate to say that it's not infallible. I think it is, but 99 percent of the time it seems to be effective in every situation.

Dr. Scott Elrod: Sprays and clothing, we've kind of understood that there's a form of passive, meaning that you activate it and you put it on, you spray it on, and then once it's saturated or it meets its half-life, it's no longer really effective. And the odor has to come into contact with it. That's the challenge.

So you have clothing and sprays, passive-based technologies. Active-based technologies is when you produce an oxidant in a downstream air stream moving down. When we talk about being cognitive of the air movement in the direction, without a doubt, because our unit always has to be pointed downstream. It delivers oxidant in the air stream and whatever you release, the ability for ozone to oxidate the olfactory code that you're releasing, it's literally like a nanosecond.

It just has to break one bond in the molecular code and it's no longer human. So that's the reason why some deer downstream, they'll be out there 20, 30 yards and they'll start waving their head around. They're smelling you, but they're smelling basically a broken-down fragment of you, or there may be a little bit of you in there, the full code that didn't get oxidized.

But it's so diluted that the animal thinks you're a lot further away, like 400 yards away or 300 yards away. So it's like, okay, so if I can't visually see you now, we're okay. So then it keeps on going.

Dean Hulce: As we've been talking about this, something has come to mind. I was thinking of this beforehand, but it really has come to mind that when we look at this spiritually, our program is really about what is God doing in all this.

When you think about it, in the Old Testament when they did sacrifice and they took the blood and the blood was what covered our sin. It was something that had to be done over and over again and it covered our sin, but it was still had to be done over and over again.

But like Ozonics in the hunting world, or in dental world or wherever you're using it, that Ozonics, it removes it. It's like when Christ came and died, He removed our sins. They didn't have to be covered over and over again. They were removed once and for all. It doesn't mask anything. It just, it's gone. It's like it didn't exist. It's done.

That's the way God looks at us after we've come to Christ. That's a great analogy. Over and over again of the steps that didn't work, because those sacrifices the first time they sinned, they were right back in the same place they were. But with Ozonics it's gone as long as you're connected, which is our connection to Christ, it's gone forever. That's a great analogy. I never thought of it until we're sitting here talking about it.

We're almost done with the radio time. I'd love to hear some hunting and maybe some fishing stories because you've got some of the best trout and redfish fishing. You grew up up north, I grew up up north where trout meant streams and rivers and Alaska had rivers with trout, different trout altogether.

But you've got redfish and trout fishing that's probably almost second to none. And you go the other way and you've got the whitetail hunting. Tomorrow I'm going down right next to the King Ranch to guide some turkey hunts. So you've got the best deer and some of the best deer and turkey hunts in the world, hog hunting.

So I want to hear some of those stories and I want to hear maybe on some of the most unusual or interesting stories where you've seen Ozonics work in the hunting world. Maybe some of the elk hunting. I've guided probably a hundred plus bulls to people. I love to hear it and I wish I had had Ozonics lots of times because there were times bulls that my dad killed two bulls that I remember at under five yards with his bow. Luckily the wind was right and the thermals were right where if they'd have been just a little bit off it would never have happened.

Well thank you for joining us for the radio portion and we're going to move on, but thank you for joining for this. We're going to come back in just a minute with the podcast. So if you're here with us for the podcast, stay tuned. If you're here only for the radio and can't get to the podcast, thank you for joining us. Join us every week as we head down the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors.

Announcer: Don't you wonder how many times we miss a calling on our lives from God because we just weren't paying attention? God shows us things all the time and often we take notice, then we get distracted and move on. The story today from Dr. Elrod is an amazing story of how we sometimes see what God is showing us and it can be life-changing.

In Psalm 103:12, the writer tells us, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us." The Ozonics system and what it does for odor is an example of what God does with sin in our lives when we've turned our lives over to Him. When Jesus came and died on the cross for our sins, He paid the price once and for all. He didn't just cover our sins, He permanently removed them with the blood He shed on the cross.

What a great thing that is. So many people think they could never be good enough for God to do that for them, but we don't have to be good enough. Jesus paid the price for all of us, no matter what we've done. All we have to do is believe and accept the gift He's offering. If you'd like to talk to somebody about this gift, godsgreatoutdoors.org is the place to go to find our phone number and give us a call. We would love to talk to you about what Jesus did just for you.

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. Thank you for joining us again this week. We hope that you join us every week on God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure.