Local gets spot on outdoor TV show

It was a combination of skill as a hunting guide, some luck and shared faith that made Jared Piepkorn of Clovis a television personality.

Piepkorn said he makes his living as a hunting guide, which requires intimate knowledge of areas in which he guides hunters and how to spot places where fish and game will be available for fishing and shooting.

Last year, Piepkorn, who spends most of the year leading hunting and fly-fishing expeditions in New Mexico, Texas, Minnesota and Alaska, hosted Rev. Mark Bishop, a Louisville, Ky., pastor, and found they shared a love of hunting and fishing, and deep Christian faith.

Piepkorn led some successful hunts with Bishop, and Bishop offered Piepkorn a position of "professional staff" for Bishop's outdoor adventure and spiritual discovery show called "Decision Pointe Outdoors."

The "e" on the end of Pointe comes from the name of Bishop's church, the GracePointe Baptist Church in Kentucky.

"We're rednecks," Bishop joked, "but the 'e' on the end gives us some class."

Piepkorn has now appeared on four "Decision Pointe" shows of its first season of 16 episodes on the Pursuit Channel, an outdoor sports channel available on satellite and cable television.

"Decision Pointe," Bishop said, started out as a YouTube channel in which Bishop shared Gospel messages with hunters and fishermen while they enjoyed the outdoors.

"It caught on," Bishop said. "In a couple of months we were getting 1 million hits on YouTube" and that got the Pursuit Channel interested.

In recently televised episodes, Piepkorn said, he and another "pro-staff" guide traveled to Alaska and bagged two bull caribou.

To get to the hunting ground, Piepkorn said, "We fly into Fairbanks and drive into the bush."

Fairbanks is a base for trips to the Alaskan tundra and the Arctic Circle.

"Decision Pointe" camera crews were also on hand when Piepkorn's daughter Jaren, 23, bagged her first antelope on a New Mexico ranch.

"She got it on the first shot from 400 yards," Piepkorn said.

Because of Piepkorn's record of success in previous episodes of "Decision Pointe," Bishop said,

plans call for Piepkorn to guide "four or five more trips" in coming months.

While Piepkorn said he feels privileged to be featured on the show, hunting with a camera crew around "makes things difficult."

The result, however, is worth the extra effort, he said.

Soon, he said, he will take his son Jax, 15, on his first elk-hunting trip to the Sacramento Mountains.

Bishop said he and Piepkorn are united on how outdoor sports and faith are connected.

Hunting and fishing, Bishop said, "get us outdoors and into nature to see its beauty, made by the Creator, and we, too, belong to him."

Piepkorn, a Lutheran, added that outdoor sports remind him that as a Christian, he is a "steward of God's creation."

Hunters, he said, "ensure conservation efforts" to make sure game animals will be plentiful for future generations.

Bishop said he is an armed forces veteran but Piepkorn is not.

"He respects veterans, though," Bishop said. "When I told him I was a veteran, his price dropped."

Piepkorn also arranges special expeditions for disabled veterans, he said, "to say thanks for their service."

Being outdoors, he said, is good for mental health, and is valuable to veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"They really enjoy their time with us," he said.

In the off-season, usually in the spring, he said is when he spends most of his time at home.

He works on a ranch near Grady and coaches baseball for the Grady High School Bronchos baseball team, he said.