Ron Spomer - Writer, Photographer, Hunter, Conservationist

Ron Spomer is a typical American country boy who had just enough smarts to make his passion his vocation. He’s been at it for more than 45 years and shows no signs of slowing … much.

“Folks often ask me how I got lucky enough to be an outdoor writer and TV host,” Spomer said. “They seem to think it’s the greatest job in the world. It isn’t.” And then he grins: “But it’s a tolerable second best.”

Ron recognizes he was lucky, perhaps even blessed to be born the grandson of German/Russian immigrant farmers in the Pheasant Capital of the World, South Dakota. Some say cold, windy SD is a great place to be from, but for a hunter it’s a great place to be, period. Upland birds, waterfowl, small game, big game, furbearers, fish… “The Sioux knew what they were doing when they migrated to the Dakota prairies,” Spomer noted. “So did my grandparents.”

Some of Ron’s earliest hunting was conducted with homemade bows and arrows in his Grandpa’s woodlot. More was done in his imagination. He dreamed of jungles and wild rivers running to the big shining mountains, poked into bird nests, chased raindrops, and netted tadpoles with gunny sacks. “We built ‘forts’ and played Dan Boone and Davy Crockett.” Perhaps you did, too.

“Dad steered me toward baseball,” Ron said. “Mom steered me toward piano. My instincts steered me toward the wilds.” That preoccupation with the wild and mysterious inspired Spomer to skip school dances to prepare for the next morning’s duck hunt; to miss Homecoming celebrations in order to hunt pheasants. He got kicked out of class for reading Sports Afield. Instead of a senior class ring, he bought a binocular. Mink, ‘coon and fox pelts covered half his college tuition. Farm hand, painter, roofer, waiter, bus driver — over the years Spomer worked enough real jobs to convince myself to try something unusual: outdoor writing.

While studying English at University, Ron bought a 35mm SLR and began learning how to run it. Right after graduation he wrote five articles, sent them to five different magazines and had the misfortune of selling all of them. He said “misfortune” because this inspired him to keep struggling. His next five stories didn’t sell. But he kept trying. “This proved hard on my typewriter and harder on my finances,” he laughed.

To continue eating, Ron taught high school and sold a few more freelance pieces before landing a job as Information Specialist with South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks. “Wonderful job,” Spomer admitted. “Great people, great organization doing great conservation work. And in a hunter’s paradise, central South Dakota.” After three years there and more sideline freelancing, Spomer was offered an editorial position at Petersen’s Hunting magazine in L.A. and a photographer position at another State conservation agency. “The editorial job paid $10,000 more than the photography gig, so I took the latter,” Ron said. “More proof that I had the right stuff to be a freelance writer. This career move saved me from a daily freeway commute and kept me in a lower tax bracket, a popular financial strategy among freelance writers.”

After two more years on a payroll, Spomer went freelancing full-time, do or die. “Nothing sharpens a work ethic like going hungry. Hunt, write, photograph, hustle, sell. Repeat.” Over the years Ron’s photos and words were published in more than 120 magazine as diverse as Rifle and Birder’s World. He even made it into Ladies Home Journal once. These days his work appears in Sports Afield, Sporting Classics, American Hunter, OutdoorLife.com, and a variety of local and regional publications and websites.

In addition to magazines, Spomer’s photographs have illustrated numerous hunting, fishing, and natural history books plus brochures, pamphlets and advertising campaigns. He’s authored seven books, ghost written a couple more and edited two. He’s hosted or guest starred on several hunting shows including Winchester Legends, Leupold Big Game Profiles, Winchester’s World of Whitetails, Ruger’s Adventure’s, Outdoor’s Ten Best, Whitetail Challenge and Hunting 201. He contributes to a You Tube channel, Ron Spomer Outdoors, and does a weekly podcast of the same title.

As for hunting, Ron has remained a generalist, pursuing upland birds, waterfowl, small game, and big game around the world. He loves upland bird hunting, and particularly enjoys North American wilderness mountain hunting. He considers himself most fortunate to have tackled a dozen sheep hunts and four mountain goat hunts plus many treks for moose, elk, caribou, ibex, chamois, red stag, tahr, bear, mule deer — some 70 big game species in all. Currently he indulges a passionate affair with Africa, slipping into countries like Namibia and Mozambique to become entangled with kudu, eland, buffalo, sable, and roan.

In addition to hunting, photographing, writing, podcasting, testing and reviewing guns, ammunition, bullets, and optics, Ron works with his wife in the day-to-day management of Dancing Springs Ranch, their off-grid mountain homestead. Ron and Betsy produce all their electricity via solar and wind, buck firewood from their maple forests, fight invasive weeds, and maintain miles of cattle fence to protect their native sage-steppe habitat for mule deer, elk, moose, pheasants, sharptailed and ruffed grouse, buntings and tanagers, and thousands of native wildflowers. They augment their native game diet with garden vegetables and eggs from a dozen hens. Future management programs include additional habitat plantings, food plots, nesting boxes and anything else that will increase native wildlife numbers.

“My abiding passion remains the natural world and my opportunities to interact with it,” Ron concluded. “I’ve hung my career hat on that, persevered, persisted and here I am, honored and yes, lucky, to be able to share my experiences with my fellow outdoors men and women.”

Within twelve years Betsy became a skiier, wilderness kayaker, and backpacker, establishing herself in Idaho where she and five other nurses and paramedics were the first Boise Life Flight helicopter team. An admitted adrenaline junky, Betsy has retired from nursing to co-manage RonSpomerOutdoors.com and Dancing Springs Ranch, their off-grid homestead.

While traveling with Ron as his photographer, Betsy’s grew increasingly interested in hunting. After contributing deer and pronghorn to the family larder, she was motivated to make her first African big game hunt in 2001 with the knowledge that the meat would go to feed her tracker’s family.

Since then, Betsy’s hunting expeditions have taken her back to Namibia twice, to South Africa, Zambia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, New Zealand, Alaska, Alberta. British Columbia, South Dakota, Idaho, and Kansas. She met her greatest challenge in the swamps of Mozambique where she took a Cape buffalo bull with one well-placed shot from her 375 H&H.

Betsy serves on the Board of Directors at Ron Spomer Outdoors, Inc.