Jay Ledbetter

Jay Ledbetter grew up in southeastern New Mexico, and worked in the oil fields during summers through high school and college.

As a youth, Jay had been given a crude, cheap fiberglass bow and a couple of wooden arrows. He would stalk across the plains east of his home and launch a arrow at any jackrabbit who was so inattentive as to stay within range. Jay never even got close to hitting one, but his crude marksmanship provided those rabbits some welcome entertainment and, on occasion, also some needed exercise.

Jay attended New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, and that's where his dedication to the military began. From NMMI, Jay went to Baylor University, where he graduated with a BS in Geology and JD in Law. Jay was in the Air Force briefly during the Vietnam war, and was discharged at war's end. Jay was selected to be a team member to rescue some American POWs after the war. And this is where Jay's love with special operations began to bloom.

He asked to re-enter the military, this time in the Army, and especially the Infantry. That was granted. Jay wanted to be in Special Forces, too, and pursued that relentlessly. Jay was part of a team which went into Central America to assist a country in training its senior officers in counter-guerrilla operations. Jay was deployed several times for peacetime and in wartime service. Jay's last military assignment was in one of the highest Special Operations Commands. As Jay is fond of saying, "Only the Army can really mess-up a camping trip".

Jay then focused on his civilian profession, and his love of camping, hunting and fishing. And that's when he met Bob Baldwin.

Jay was desperate. He contacted Bob, owner of BowhuntingInfo.com for help. As Jay breathlessly explained, a giant rogue bison bull was causing damage on Buffalo Mountain Ranch in Texas, and Jay hoped Bob could find someone crazy enough to come hunt this monster with a bow. Jay hoped to get the hunt videoed, and use it for promotional purposes. Bob, who hangs around crazy bowhunters all the time, had no problem finding the perfect patsy… er… that is… bowhunter.

Soon they were in Texas, face-to-face with a two thousand pound bull, head down, pawing the ground. After that bull chased Bob and the hapless bowhunter around a grove of oak trees a few times before the arrows in its side finally did their work, Bob now became the breathless one. Jay says that Bob was moving so fast that his momentum carried him around the grove at least two more laps after the huge bull finally dropped.

The video Bob shot that day wasn’t as good as Jay had hoped. Not much use for sky-ground-sky-ground-sky-ground video with audio featuring repeated gasps of panic punctuated with the rapid clomping of hunting boots through prairie grass. Although the snorting of a wounded, charging bison bull in the near background did add some suspense.

Once Jay could stop laughing, he recognized that hunting with Bob could be somewhat entertaining. So Jay went out on a limb and invited Bob to come to Colorado on an Elk hunt that fall. “You bet!” Bob wheezed as soon as he could form English words.

So, that’s how it all began. Since then, Bob and Jay have hunted and fished together now for more than a decade from northern Canada, to the great Rocky Mountains, and on the high plateaus of Texas. And just as Jay anticipated, during every hunting and fishing trip, something hilarious happens that finds its way into a story.

Bob and Jay say that the events in these stories happened just as they are written. “You couldn’t make this stuff up”, comments Bob. Jay has been heard to say, “I really wish there was more fiction in these stories. I’d need a lot fewer bandages.”

Bob and Jay have written now more than two dozen hilarious hunting and fishing stories which are now finding their way onto bookshelves and sportsmen's camps.

Jay lives in Centennial, Colorado with his wife Denise, who has tolerated him now for more than 35 years.