Maybe I am showing my age but New Year’s Eve came and went while I was fast asleep in bed. One of the older members of the Crew, Mike, would typically be in bed by 20:30 most nights. We would joke he was an old man who needed his beauty rest. He actually posted the following meme on his Facebook page from Budget101. It is good to know he still has a good sense of humor but oh, how I can relate.
Looking back at 2019 there are several memorable moments. All in all, it was a good year personally and 2020 looks to be even more promising, more about that in a bit. This year marked the first time I have been outside of the shooting and hunting industry in seventeen years. Many of my peers in that industry had to grind out a tough year. I was fortunate to have found a good home with a family-owned company in the HVAC and Roofing industry. Generally speaking, outside of the news media and past Facebook posts, most people I met or work with seemed to be in good spirits and have positive attitudes. There were several moments that seemed to happen in the blink of an eye.
Our daughter went from being a white belt to an advanced green belt in the Yong-In Taekwondo tradition. For Christmas, we were able to support her goal of attaining a black belt by enrolling in the program further.
She also learned how to shoot a rifle and went from a Bear Brave to a Bear Cruzer G2 complete with Tru-Fire Release.
My bow hunting partner, Kelly, tagged out on a good bear during the spring season. I was honored to be there with him and help.
I also was able to move my bow range and get it set back up again with a clear shot to the backstop of up to 65 yards.
We spent some time exploring rural Idaho and found an actual working payphone.
We witnessed some pretty inventive ingenuity by a group of brothers at McDonald’s. These guys nearly were standing on the counter before we left and with permission from their parents were snapped a photo of them in action.
Later in the season on opening day, Kelly helped me tag out during archery elk on a nice cow which I talk about in this post. Less than twelve hours later, we were packing his bull out too.
Brew Crew member Jeff arrowed a nice western Kansas whitetail on a last-ditch effort.
We spent some time on the water, hiked mountains and relaxed in a hammock.
We took a road trip from Idaho to Minnesota to see the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi river.
And on the way back, we got some helpful advice in a gas station restroom.
Our daughter took her first painting lesson and this work of art now sits in my office.
Late archery season ended earlier when Kelly’s ATV rolled snapping his collar bone. He is on the mend now with some fancy new hardware in his shoulder. I am hopeful he will be ready for fall bow season.
Those are the big moments of 2019 for me personally. So what does 2020 hold for us? Well if you believe Psychic Nikki, you can read a whole host of predictions. I said earlier that 2020 looks to be even more promising. Mainly, this stems from an understanding of a numbers game. In December, I had the opportunity to hear two very interesting speakers at an HVAC industry conference in New Orleans. Alan Beaulieu is a leading economist. Ken Gronbach is a demographer and futurist. Both of them had very convincing evidence of why they were right. It was very thought-provoking.
Beaulieu started his presentation with the number of times he was statistically correct. Any time I see a speaker do this it is a red flag that someone is trying to validate their worth or substantiate why you should listen. Giving him the benefit of the doubt after briefly considering this might be the world economists live in, I listened to what he had to say. In short, he said the numbers and trends currently suggest a sluggish first half of 2020 and with a booming second half. He also predicted that by around 2030, we would probably have another great depression. He might be right if the US continues the debt spending and the world doesn’t move to asset back currency. Numerically, we can’t continue to do what we are doing with there being a fall.
Gronbach, however, looked at the same period with a different take. Instead of opening up with how many times he was right in the last few years, he talked about his Honda motorcycle dealerships and what happened to them. This propelled him into studying generational data. Depending on the source and adjusted with immigration, there were approximately 80 million Boomers. Boomers broke all markets and generated more wealth than any before it. My generation had only 69 million, a drop of 11 million in the generation population. Gen X was told on the nightly news, I literally remember this, that we were the first generation that would not do as well as our parents. Talk about motivation, my generation is marked with seeing the glass half empty, believing you won’t make a difference so why try and we are very pragmatic. Then along came the Millennials. There are an estimated 88 million of them and Boomers tend to not like or understand them. Ironically, Boomers created them by going out and challenging the norms, pushing for more safety requirements and creating new technologies. The oldest Millennials are now in their mid-thirties. Gen Z is predicted to be 90 million and the oldest are in their early 20’s. These are the Snowflakes and don’t get Millennials started on how they feel about Z’s.
When you look at what both Beaulieu and Gronbach said you get a very interesting picture. We do have a spending problem as a country and if it is not addressed, Beaulieu is correct, the economy will collapse because taxation is the government’s quickest way to bring in more revenue. We are already borrowing against revenues past future Gen Z taxpayers. On the other hand, more people can also mean more economic growth under the right conditions. Boomers proved that to be the case. In every stage of their lives, Boomers broke market trends and created records sales for age-appropriate products. Imagine being in the diaper business during a population explosion after World War II in the United States. Then sixteen years later, imagine being in car sales and so on. Millennials represent a huge market and Gen Z’s are even bigger. Reaching them isn’t as hard either with the advent of mobile technology. What is hard is getting through the clutter so they hear you.
Falling back on some of my past, I relooked at the NICS checks data going back to 2006 to the current year. I then matched that up with when Millennials would have been more active in making purchases based on age. Previously, the industry attributed the rise in firearm sales with politics. Though this did have an impact it is probably not the only factor. More consumers of age meant more buyers of controlled goods like firearms. My “research” is rudimentary at best but the trend proposed by Gronbach seemed to hold up. Though still higher than historical levels, there is a dip from 2016 to current. Many attribute this to the “Trump slump” where firearms buyers feel their 2nd Amendment rights are somewhat safe. However, though I don’t have the answer, I would be curious to know what impact firearm bans on social media platforms and the like had on reaching Millennials. Many of those bans started in late 2016 and were accelerated after October 2017.
The year 2020 is going to be an interesting one. As we head toward another election while both sides of the aisle begin launching their offensives, polling shows there is little change in people’s minds. The election cycle aside, I think 2020 is going to be a good year and a lot will be coming at us so try not to blink. If anything, it will be fun to watch and I might finally get a tattoo. Maybe something like this?
- L. Yarbrough, Bucks & Beers
