Hunters across America dream about the backcountry and right in the heart of America the Great Midwest there

Shane Porter is well he's become kind of a friend of mine through the podcast, so much so that his

business now is a sponsor of the podcast.

And today for the first time I'm excited to welcome Shane to the show. We're going to talk about his business about the specializing in high-end backcountry hunting rifles and then Shane's going to share some cool backcountry hunting stories with us, particularly,

about a grizzly or brown bear hunt that he made in Alaska this spring and so forth.

Shane, my friend, great to have you on the show. Well thank you thank you for having me on it's

it's honor and pleasure. Oh you bet now walk us through a little bit your

your own background tell our listeners who you are and then a little bit. your own background, tell our listeners who you are and then a little bit about your business.

I'm Shane Porter, I'm from Mountain Home, Arkansas, a native from here. I started Porter's Pond and Bargain Center Incorporated in 1995 or

approaching our 27th year in operation. We operate two stores, one in Harrison and one in Mountain Home. We have

two 8,000 square foot buildings with 15 employees, a jeweler, a gemologist on staff.

We sell high-end guns online, gunworks, proof research, we have to be, and we service our loan customers and Dylan Muse goods, estates, musical instruments,

tools, video games, just about anything, boats, trucks, things like that.

Yeah, very cool.

And what drove you to the high-end guns?

Because, I mean, that's not necessarily the common forte of a pawn shop. Now granted yours is a specialty shop that

obviously deals in a lot of high-end products but why premium grade hunting rifles? I've always

been passionate about hunting I've hunted out west and been fortunate enough to be exposed to that arena and I've just

always had a you know I've always read and studied and reloaded and shot and and wanted to evolve myself.

And as my interest grew, I seen a niche for that and it was kind of kind of I guess through COVID and challenging times we kind of explored our options online and trying to you know diversify and

concentrate on other segments of the business and we just started out small and got it online and grew from there and then my brother-in-law and I he's my

PJ's my operations manager he's passionate about hunting and we

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