ST. HUBERT: How Hunting Together Led a Group of Men to Pursue Holiness

The path to the ST. HUBERT line of hats started when GBHC founder, Jacob Coatney, was a FOCUS missionary in Nebraska. The influence of good friends and meaningful recreation time together deepened our founder Jacob's love of God, and inspired him to encourage others to use hunting and Catholic hunting apparel as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Jacob describes this progression as follows:

I didn’t grow up hunting in my family, and of all the hobbies and outdoor recreational activities I picked up through college and early adulthood, hunting was NOT one of them. I had friends in college who were avid hunters, and I ended tagging along a couple times to observe, but it didn’t quite stick.

When I moved to Nebraska as a FOCUS missionary many of the students and friends I made were hunters. That Spring, a recent alum of the campus I served at invited me to visit him and go turkey hunting. Matthew and I had become friends throughout the year as he came to town for Newman Center events and saw friends who were still on campus. And he had been talking up hunting the whole year, so I was pretty excited to go out for the first time with tags of my own and an experienced hunter guiding me. 

We awoke well before dawn, loaded up the truck, headed to our spot, and set up a ground blind and the decoys. Perrion had seen turkeys all over the area, and as the sun came up, we actually could see them a ways off, roosted on a powerline of all things. We watched for what seemed like hours as they stirred and began to fly down.

As Perrion worked his magic on the box call, several toms started meandering the long three quarters of a mile to us. He was so far off that as I watched him in the binos, I could see him gobble what seemed like a full second before I could hear it. I was shaking with anticipation the entire time he strutted in, gobbling all the way. When it was finally right in front of us and about to beat up one of Perrion’s decoys, he had to remind me forcefully that it was time to shoot. 

Jacob (left) and Matthew (right) after Jacob harvested wild game for the first time ever.

I will never forget that experience of watching the turkey for what seemed like hours as it came within range.  But what sticks with me more is the impact that praying before and after the hunt has had on me. The way Perrion led that hunt from the perspective as an opportunity to encounter God, with the intercession of St. Hubert just ignited my devotion to the saint. 

From there a small group of guys banded together with this fiery passion for hunting and the story of St. Hubert.  They prayed before, during, and after every hunt. They pursued God in their daily lives, and waited with eager anticipation for the next opportunity to go spend time in God’s Creation. Jacob even printed and laminated prayer cards using packing tape to codify a standard prayer for them to use on all of their hunts. They’ve been champions of the story and intercession of St. Hubert ever since.

The original St. Hubert hat, featureing a hand tooled leather patch.

GBHC’s line of ST. HUBERT hats was born out of this devotion that was built through brotherly recreation. The original ST. HUBERT design was a hand-tooled leather patch, and since then multiple variants have developed based on different hat styles and types of hunting that are out there. It almost became an unofficial uniform, and it was one more reminder to elevate all of our activities - from playing darts in the garage to hunting and everything in between - as an opportunity to first seek God.

Join the movement of Hubert’s huntsmen, and pursue God first, THEN game.