Speaker 1: 0:00

The Modern Day Mountain man today on Get the Hell Out of your Life.

Speaker 2: 0:06

It's time now to get the hell out of your life. A weekly broadcast with real people sharing real struggles and offering real hope. Today's show will encourage, inspire and empower you to face life's challenges with a bold confidence and renewed hope. Now let's join our host, ron Myers. The promoter.

Speaker 1: 0:31

Hello my friends. So good to be with you today. I am so excited about today's show. My guest is Billy Moles, a modern-day mountain man. Billy has survived grisly charges. Billy's experience with a moose calf delivered him from a two-year bout with depression, and the day Billy's wife gave birth to their youngest daughter, he was 3,000 miles away in the Brooks Range Mountains and he said it was the greatest day of his life. Get ready to be encouraged by the modern-day mountain man Billy Moles. Billy, how are you today?

Speaker 3: 1:03

I'm doing pretty good, ron, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:05

So you're a modern day mountain man. What's a modern day mountain man?

Speaker 3: 1:09

Well, that is the brand name of my videos. Just my dream. How I came up with it? It was my dream as a kid to live the life of a mountain man.

Speaker 3: 1:18

My grandpa was a farmer and a professional trapper. After the fall harvest he would go up into northern Wisconsin, build a log cabin and then he would trap all winter long. And then he would come home in the springtime, sell his furs and use that money to buy seeds, start a new farming season all over again. And so his pictures and his stories really influenced me as a young kid. My time in nature, trapping with him and my dad and hunting and fishing. I felt the peace there that I just didn't feel anywhere else and I just wanted to live a simplistic lifestyle. And eventually the fur market kind of tanked so my dream of being a professional trapper kind of died out and then I started hunting and I really fell in love with it. My grandpa said Billy, if you want outdoor adventure you need to go to Alaska. There's places up there where man's never been, and ever since then you know just a young kid and knew that's where I wanted to go.

Speaker 1: 2:07

What was your age on your first trip to Alaska?

Speaker 3: 2:12

I was 19. Yeah, pretty much right out of high school and greener than grass, and I was, you know, I was pretty eager and pretty excited. But yeah, I was definitely humbled when I flew into Kodiak Island. That's where my first hunt ever was. I was a packer, basically a human mule. It was my job to backpack camping supplies, food and tents and whatnot into the mountains and kind of help out on the hunt however I could. You know we shot a bear. It was my job to pack it out.

Speaker 3: 2:40

Those mountains were pretty intimidating. The wilderness, the bears, bears, all that stuff was just very intimidating and I just it really squashed my ego right from the get-go, you know realizing that hey, this is, this is the real mccoy, this is what separates the wheat from the chaff. And you know, there was many times, and you know there's still, experiences where I question if I have what it takes. But that's the uh, the beauty of the wilderness is it humbles you. You know it. Um, you know adage, trial by fire, and that's kind of what it is. You're going to get into predicaments that you've never been in before and you're not sure how you're going to be able to handle it. And that's where the growth is. That's where the transformation is.

Speaker 1: 3:17

God will meet you where you're at, and there's been many times where I've called on him and I've needed him and he's always been there for me Listeners, if you just tuned in Billy Moles, modern-day mountain man sharing experience and Billy, one of the things I read was how you survived an attack of a grizzly. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3: 3:40

Well, it was a grizzly charge, so we weren't actually attacked. I don't think I have an attack there anywhere.

Speaker 2: 3:45

But yeah, we were definitely charged.

Speaker 3: 3:47

We had a young girl that was my client and she hit the bear, didn't make a great shot on it and I was able to get one shot into it just before it got into the brush. Long story short. Thankfully I had a fellow guide with me. I've got a video on this. It's a real compelling story.

Speaker 3: 4:07

I had a fellow guide with me who, when we went and talked to the bear, he said hey, I need to. He said, all right, so one of us needs to take the blood trail, go first, and the other one behind. The other one needs to be there to, you know, shoot the bear before it kills the guy in front. So whoever's got the blood trail, obviously he's going to have his head down. That's the most dangerous job there is, because the bear is going to try to kill that guy first. Wow, now the guy behind him has a very important job because it's his job to kill the bear before it kills the guy in front. And uh, I was. You know, I had guided the girl and I said I'll go in front. And john, who was with me, is about my age, been guiding in alaska many years. He said no, no, he said I'll take blood trail and he said you've got a wife and kids, billy, I don't have anybody. If I die here today, nobody's really going to miss me.

Speaker 3: 4:51

so he and I argued back and forth and um, but he just said, no, I, I won't have it. And uh, so he, he took the blood trail. Long story short, um, yeah, the bear ended up coming at us and um, I shot the bear and eventually it just falls, basically just I don't know five steps if that just right before us and put one final shot in there and finished the bear off. But it was just a real powerful story. It was what I recognized, that well, jesus said, I think chapter 15, verse 13, if I'm not mistaken, of John there's no greater love than for one to lay down his life for his friends. And that's what John was willing to do for me in that scenario, you know, he put himself in harm's way out of love for me and my family, or he'd never even met before, you know, took on a more dangerous scenario in that tracking process. So, yeah, that one all goes to John, my buddy that was with me. But intense situation no less.

Speaker 1: 5:50

What is an average size and weight of a grizzly?

Speaker 3: 5:56

Grizzly bear and brown bear are the same animal. A brown bear on the colus they'll get. I have to believe that's a big one. I've never weighed one personally, but a huge, huge coastal brown bear can be 1500 pounds probably a little more. Grizzly bears live more into the interior. Uh, they have shorter growing season, longer hibernation, not as good a food source, namely the brown bear has salmon. So grizzly bears have a tendency to be a lot more aggressive, but they're generally much smaller.

Speaker 3: 6:22

So there's some areas, areas in Alaska in the interior where a big, big grizzly bear is going to be 500 pounds. You know, maybe six or seven is probably max in a lot of areas for a grizzly bear.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Man, it's one thing watching things on TV, but another thing to actually hear you describe it in person. Boy, I bet that was a talking point around the campfire that night.

Speaker 3: 6:46

No for sure. And everybody always thinks oh man, I bet being charged by a grizzly bear, that's like the ultimate adrenaline rush. It's actually not an adrenaline rush at all. It's actually one of the most peaceful things that you'll ever experience. You know, john and I are both coming into this, as I mentioned, many years of experiences. You know of bear hunting experience, so you know we've been in similar situations before. But in a situation like that you're never more alive. The rest of the world seeks us to exist. You're so focused on killing the bear before it kills you and those that are around you and then your surroundings. So your senses are so heightened, they're so acute. You're listening for not just a twig to break but like a blade of grass to snap or a squirrel to chirp or a raven to caw, any type of indication or any type of clue that nature will offer you to give you a clue that that bear is coming. You know any type of shift and it's very, very peaceful.

Speaker 1: 7:50

It's just fascinating to hear how you come alive in nature when you are in a threatening situation and you're trying to protect a young lady who is your client, and wow, that's awesome. God is so good.

Speaker 3: 8:03

Yeah, yep, absolutely. It is astounding and I think that's why we, you know, we have to, we have to test ourselves. It's just like a muscle, you know, a weightlifter goes into a weight room and he needs resistance, he needs to, you know, in some essence, break himself down a little bit, work himself physically and destroy that muscle tissue to build the backup even stronger. And that's why I go to Alaska. I've never shot a big game animal for myself. I've been a guide there for 23 years.

Speaker 3: 8:30

What I love is the adventure, the experience. You know every hunt there's something unique, there's something that you learn, something that you see or experience that you go through, and that I mean that's the ultimate trophy. That's the ultimate takeaway from a wilderness hunting adventure is that you can't help but go into it and come out some way a better person.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Billy, tell us about your two-year bout with depression and how a moose calf uh came to your rescue yeah, it was.

Speaker 3: 8:59

um, I won't be boring with all the details, but uh, I had a young girl we dated in high school. Out of high school she was going to college. She was a couple of years younger than I and you know, just me being away, that was kind of. You know, it was hard. And you know, just, things kind of started to fizzle out for us and eventually we broke up. And when I was in the wilderness I was fine. But when I'd come back into the real world, so to speak, in the wintertime, I'd always come back to Wisconsin.

Speaker 3: 9:27

I wondered if I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, my whole life. I was kind of marched to the beats of a different drummer. You know I was kind of a lone wolf. I was always kind of doing my thing, definitely kind of had a chip on my shoulder, I would say. I always felt that everybody else had it wrong and I was the only one that had it right. You know, as you go through life, so many people are telling you you know, go do this, go to tech school, billy. You know, go to college, go do that. And I don't know, none of that ever resonated with me. All I ever wanted to do was be in nature.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Amen.

Speaker 3: 9:56

And during that time, that two year period, I just I couldn't help but wonder if maybe this wasn't the woman I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with. But in the back of my mind I knew that if I quit going to Alaska because of her, that I would resent her for the rest of my life. But that little bit of light kept getting dimmer and dimmer and I just fell into this depression and there was a period of time where I thought about ending my own life every day, sometimes minute to minute.

Speaker 3: 10:28

It just nothing made sense. I had this. It just there was. The sweetness in life was gone. It was almost inner dialogue in my head and in my heart. You know the Bible talks about hell there being weeping and gnashing of teeth, and you know that sounds kind of odd, you know that language is odd, but that's kind of how I felt. It was just like like weeping, just like this inner despair and the gnashing of teeth. Just you can just imagine just grinding your teeth and clenching your fist.

Speaker 3: 10:58

At the same time I was just so frustrated and I felt so lost and it just got to be such a burden that I almost didn't want to do it anymore. I never held a gun in my mouth but I thought of it and probably more than anything else, that really got me through it, or at least kept me from doing it at that stage, was just the love of my parents, namely my mother. My mother was always very selfless. She always loved me and my siblings above all else and I just couldn't stand the thought of her ever finding me dead or, you know, having her son die that way. I started seeking God at that point and I had this spring bear hunt felt like it was kind of a turning point in my life. I just needed to find some sort of direction. I actually drove up to Alaska my plan move there, you know, become a resident and the outfitter dropped me off. I had no communication of any sort. Dropped me off and he says I'll bring you a hunter, and five days later I hadn't seen anybody and I had no idea if he died in a plane crash or whatever. But to be honest, I wasn't quite worried. I knew that I could hike out to the ocean and get help and survive and everything.

Speaker 3: 12:07

During this time there was a cow moose and her yearling calf that would cross the river right by my camp and I'd see them, sometimes a couple, two, three times a day. There was kind of a shallow riffle there where they'd cross the river and meanwhile I was pacing up and down this gravel bar by my tent and I was just praying God, please, you know I need something to go off of. If you know, if you're real, I need you now. So after five days the outfitter, he comes in and I mean I probably prayed, I probably said a hundred prayers on this five day period, probably several hundred. So the outfitter comes in after five days and he says hey, sorry, I don't have a hunter for you, but I will have another hunter for you in two days, I promise. He brings me a six pack of beer and a package of pork chop.

Speaker 3: 12:46

So I hadn't had any fresh food for, you know, the five days that I'd been there and so I had nothing but time to kill. So I go back to my tent and I got a little one-burner stove and so I throw a pan on there and throw a pork chop and start frying this pork chop. And so I just crack open a beer and figure, well, you know, I crack open a beer and figure, well, you know, might as well enjoy this time while I'm here and I really was, I was finding this peace, you know, I was okay with, you know, being there. There was no place else I'd rather be. And so this cow moose comes along. I hadn't even finished, just cracked a beer, just started frying the pork chop, and this cow shows up and so she goes across the river and she's eating, nibbling on these willows. And she looked back, as her yearling is in the river, and she just looked back at it and right there when that cow looked back at that yearling.

Speaker 3: 13:34

Just it was a light switch moment for me. In that instant I just recognized that any day now that cow is going to kick away her yearling because she's soon going to be going in and give birth to her new calf, and nature is black and white. You know, there's no emotion in nature and so much of our modern world as humans is all this gray area, but you don't have that in nature. I recognize that any day now that yearling is going to be 100% her own for the first time she's going to be trying to dodge wolverines and survive. Grizzly attack, wolf attack, all that stuff that yearling is going to have to figure out on its own for the rest of its life and and that yearling has no idea when that's going to happen. But I knew one thing is that, no matter what happened, that yearling calf would never stop trying to maximize its potential, it would never give up and it would never quit. It was literally a light switch moment. I just realized, billy, you can either get over this or end it now. There's no sense in delaying this any further. And it literally was a light switch moment. Two years of depression were just gone in an instant, and that experience has stuck with me ever since.

Speaker 3: 14:54

I think what it was. I mean, when I got answered my prayers, he spoke to me. He met me where I was at. He spoke to me in the language that I understand, just the way he did with Peter when he told Peter to cast your nets out into the deep and Peter didn't know that it was Jesus except Master, because you said we will do it. And when they cast the net out into the water and he hauled up 167 fish, peter knew he was a professional fisherman. He knew that there was no way I'd ever catch this many fish other than this. Was God himself orchestrating this?

Speaker 1: 15:27

Amen to that.

Speaker 3: 15:27

Jesus spoke to Peter in the language that Peter understood. And nature is the language that I understand. And there's, you know, dozens and dozens of experiences that I've had where there's no doubt the Lord has spoken to me nature, and that's why I'm sharing my experiences. I felt the Lord was calling me into ministry several years ago. I just couldn't see myself being a pastor, you know, like man, no way. But then I just recognized that there's a lot of guys like me that you know maybe church doesn't resonate within them so much or they get more confused while they're there. And I recognize that's my ministry. There's a lot of people out there that are called to nature and they think that it's the animal that they want, you know, it's the bragging rights or the trophy or whatever, but it's that connection with God that they're experiencing and maybe don't even recognize it. And that's who, I feel God called me to minister to.

Speaker 1: 16:26

You know that's such a great point, billy. I've just from experience, have said that when things get all hectic in life, sometimes we need to take a break and go out to nature. Maybe we're not hunters, maybe we're not even campers, but just there is something about being in nature that you can really feel the connection with God, and that's for anyone in nature that you can really feel the connection with God.

Speaker 3: 16:49

And that's for anyone yeah, romans 1.20 or 1.28,. You know that we can see man is without excuse. We can see the invisible qualities of God, that no man is without excuse. You just see the connectivity. And here's, ultimately, I think, really, if I had to break it down into a nutshell and just say, how could you take your experiences in wild and say that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? You know outside of, you know the gospel in and of itself, which for me always seemed like fairy tale.

Speaker 3: 17:19

Well, I guess I'll make maybe make this twofold is that everything in nature, nothing in nature, worries about itself. The end objective of everything in nature is to give something back, and the more that it gives back to nature, the more it will receive. And there's no selfishness in nature. And that's exactly how Jesus lived. You know Jesus laid, as I mentioned earlier, his life down for his friends live. You know Jesus laid, as I mentioned earlier, his life down for his friends. Jesus' whole life was lived, just like everything in nature, for the continuation of all life. If we love God before all things and love our neighbor as ourselves, we wouldn't be in any of these problems that we're in in our world today. So it's the obvious connectivity of everything and how everything works together in nature, and that's exactly how Jesus lived his life and that's why I started my online or YouTube ministry.

Speaker 3: 18:19

It's called Trust the Guide, because Jesus is our guide. That's why he came to earth to be our example of how we are to live and, obviously, ultimately to be the sacrifice, you know, for the atonement of our sins. For that believing in Him and just to trust Him as our Savior, that our guilt and our shame of our past and our wrongdoing we don't have to let that bog us down and we can rid ourselves of our selfishness and our own, just like I was, how I was so depressed. I was no good to anybody at that point because I was so deep in my depression and that's where the devil wants me, because I won't be able to do anything for anybody else. I was basically just taking up space in the world and I was never going to be able to help anyone. And that's where the devil wants us Chasing idols and doing worthless things and be shameful and guilt and sin-ridden, because we're only living for ourselves at that point and that's not the way God wants us to live.

Speaker 1: 19:17

So well put, Billy. Billy, I know I'm running low on time, but I do want to get the one part in. Your wife gave birth to your youngest daughter while you were 3,000 miles away. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3: 19:30

I was hunting sheep and my wife was going into labor. I'll kind of give you the abbreviated story here. But my wife was going into labor and I was calling in with a satellite phone to my sister-in-law every 20 minutes or so and I just had this overwhelming angst. I just felt so despondent. And that was about 10 years ago and I'd always questioned the gospel of Jesus up to that point. As a kid. I saw it in cartoon form and it always seemed like a cartoon. And as I'm praying, the more I prayed, the more I realized that I didn't have any right to be asking God for any favors. And I knew enough that I finally just told myself Billy, you know, pray, say what you gotta say and get it over with, because God's not gonna be impressed by the number of times you pray and finally, I just got down on my knees and I just said, god, you've blessed me beyond what I deserve in this life.

Speaker 3: 20:33

And if anything bad has to happen today because I was really guilt ridden and just felt a lot of shame for how I'd lived my life and here I am crying out to God to help my wife and my unborn child, because I hadn't heard from my sister-in-law in like two hours at that point, and so I was worried that something, very worried something, was wrong. And I just fell down to my knees and I just said, god, if anything bad has to happen today, I would rather you strike me dead right, here and now, than for anything to happen to my wife or my unborn child. And I meant it from the bottom of my heart. And when I said amen, and I got up and I looked across the valley, they'd been there for a week but there was 35 dull sheep, lambs and ewes on one mountain and then on the other side of the valley there was a sow grizzly and her two cubs and they'd been there all day. But I just kind of checked on them and right after I said that prayer and I looked up and I looked at them.

Speaker 3: 21:25

All of a sudden, bam, john 3, 16 just comes right into my mind. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whomsoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. And I recognized right there this happened just so beyond instantaneously, I mean it was just flooded the Holy Spirit. I didn't, you know.

Speaker 3: 21:44

The Holy Spirit just hit me big time and I recognized that every animal in nature would fight to the death to protect its offspring. And I recognized that there was nothing more that God could do for us to show his love for mankind than to send his son to earth to die for the forgiveness of our sins. And right then I just realized that the gospel of Jesus Christ was no fairy tale. It became real for me and I knew it. And right then I remember from our church as a kid, philippians 4, 7, I believe, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, would guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And that was the only way that I could explain how I felt, because I was feeling peace beyond understanding and I knew it was the Holy Spirit. I'd always wondered what the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost was.

Speaker 3: 22:35

It was always really weird to me, but I knew I was just gripped by it and that peace was so powerful. And the Bible talks about how a man cannot get into heaven unless he is born again. When Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, and there again, that's the only way that I could describe how I felt is that I knew in that moment I was born again. I was literally. It was like a film was wiped away from my eyes as I was looking up at those mountains and I just realized that I will never be the same again and the world is a completely different place. And I didn't hear an audible voice, but it just came to me. I mean God speaking to me. There was no doubt about it.

Speaker 3: 23:12

And what he told me was tell others.

Speaker 1: 23:15

Tell others, tell others. Well, you just told a boatload of people on radio plus podcast all over the world. Billy, tell us a little bit more about the online videos of Trust the Guide.

Speaker 3: 23:30

Campfire Chats. It's on YouTube. It's called Trust the Guide.

Speaker 2: 23:34

Trust the Guide.

Speaker 3: 23:36

Yep, trust the Guide. So the guide is Jesus. Obviously I'm kind of playing on words there as a guide. You know, there's so much relation that I find, as I'm trying to guide these hunters and lead them into the wilderness, well, jesus is trying to lead us through into a lot of similar situations as to what I've done through. You know, anybody goes through in the wilderness and so if you go on YouTube, look, type up Modern Day Mountain man or Trust the Guide, you'll find it.

Speaker 1: 24:04

And one last thing, billy, before we go. The name of the show is Get the Hell Out of your Life. Billy, with all your knowledge, wisdom and experience, how do I get the hell out of my life?

Speaker 3: 24:15

Wow, good question. I would say live for others, and I say that because that's something that I'm working on, you know. Just try to get rid of of selfishness out of out of your life. And and if we quit worrying about ourselves, what I find, the more that, the less that I worry about myself, the happier that I am.

Speaker 3: 24:35

I had a guy come up to me one of the first times that I shared my faith and my presentation just kind of sunk because I was so nervous. And and this guy comes up to me and he's got tears in his eyes and I thought, oh, presentation could have been that bad. You know, he comes up to me and he just said, billy, he's like I just got to tell you, I just want to shake your hand. I'm going through a really hard time in my life right now and I can't tell you what your testimony meant to me. And it was like god hit me in the chest with a fledge hammer. That was better than any 70 inch moose or 40 inch ram. I just recognized that at that moment. That's why God called me to nature since I was a young kid is because that was my gift, that was my purpose is to go out and experience nature, not so that I can have trophies on my wall, but so that I can share my experiences with other people.

Speaker 1: 25:20

The modern day mountain man listeners. You want to check out his YouTube Trust, the Guide Billy. God bless you. Thank you for sharing with the listeners today Very, very inspiring and encouraging. God bless you, brother, and keep up the good work.

Speaker 3: 25:36

Awesome. Thank you, ron, my pleasure. Blessings to you.

Speaker 2: 25:39

You're listening to Get the Hell Out of your Life with your host, ron Myers. Real stories, real struggles and real hope.

Speaker 4: 25:49

Ron, we'll be back in a moment to wrap up today's conversation. We want to encourage you today with God's promise to you. It comes from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 29, verse 11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and the future. That's God's promise to you when you choose to commit your plans and future to Him. Now back to Ron.

Speaker 1: 26:24

Boy, billy had some incredible stories. Have you ever felt like Billy did that time when he said that he felt so worthless in life that he even thought about ending his life? I know I did, back to the age of 11. And that was the day God visited me and said don't hurt yourself. I've got a plan for you, friends. God's got a plan for you, for me, for Billy, for everyone. All we need to do is surrender our fear, surrender our doubts and surrender our life to Jesus so we can discover our assignment while here on earth. You know God isn't finished with you. You have an incredible destiny in front of you. Get the hell out. Get the hell out.

Speaker 2: 27:11

Get the hell out of your life. Get the hell out of your life is underwritten by the Christmas City Gift Show. We invite you to come shop with over 255 vendors from all over the United States from November 8th through the 10th inside the Coast Convention Center located on the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi. You can find more information at christmascitygiftshowcom. Thanks for listening, and if you would like to share your story of what God has done in your life or listen to previous episodes, please visit our website, thepromoterorg. Join us next week for another episode of Get the Hell Out of your Life Real stories, real struggles and real hope.