Tom Beckstrand Talks Hunting, Shooting, the Desire to Serve and Wearing the Green Beret on ‘The Michael Waddell Podcast,’ Presented by REMAX OUTDOORS

Tom Beckstrand and Waddell Discuss Focusing on the Simple, Good Things in Your Life

DENVER CO (October 7, 2026) – Join Host Michael Waddell as he sits down with Tom Beckstrand, industry friend, decorated U.S. Army Special Operations veteran, and well-known Rifle and Optics Editor for Guns & Ammo (G&A). Upon retirement from the military, Beckstrand joined the G&A team as an expert contributor and now he represents the brand across all if its leading platforms, including print, TV, digital and social media. Born and raised in the small town of Wells in the northeast corner of Nevada, Beckstrand had a blue-collar upbringing and early on saw a military academy as an opportunity to get a great, free education. He earned an appointment to West Point and upon graduation he uniquely served an LDS Church mission in Belgium before going on to an amazing career in U.S. Army Special Forces and serving as a sniper team leader in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Beckstrand’s experience fighting the Taliban is now part of a five-part docuseries – The Ghost Bounty – now in field production with Outdoor Sportsman Group.

Beckstrand’s faith played a significant role in his approach to life and on his mindset as a Special Forces team leader and on his conducting of the War on Terror in the field, and he’s our special guest on this episode of The Michael Waddell Podcast, presented by REMAX OUTDOORS. While young Tom Beckstrand was serving his LDS Church mission in Belgium and learning to speak French, he met a refugee woman who had survived the Rwandan Genocide in the mid-1990s and hearing that Tutsi lady’s story of loss in Rwanda made a significant impact on Beckstrand and steeled him against coming hardships while challenging and inspiring him during his military career to do what he could to help people like her.

“I was talking to this woman who had fled from Rwanda,” Tom Beckstrand began, “and I asked her, ‘Well, where is your family?’ and she was like, ‘I don’t know.’ She goes, ‘I was away from our village when we got attacked. I was close enough that I saw the attack when it happened, but I had to run, and everybody ran in different directions,’ and this was like months ago. I just remember thinking, ‘Can you imagine a more horrible existence than one day you have to run for your life and you don’t know where your wife and your children are at because they had to run too, and [you don’t know] who survived.’ I just remember that night,” Beckstrand continued. “I was lying in bed, and I was like, ‘Man, you can’t solve the world’s problems, but as a missionary what I’d learned was that service is important, right. There’s more to life than chasing the dollar. You’ve got to have some dollars, but you’re never going to be happy if that’s what you build your life around. ‘I want my life to involve service. I’m going to do the Army thing; why not serve at a high level.’ I was like, ‘You know, we can’t solve all the world’s problems, but a handful of guys with rifles could have bought them enough time that they could’ve run together.’ Which is, in a lot of ways naïve, but I was like, ‘You’ve got to start somewhere,’ and that’s when I decided I wanted to be a Green Beret.”

Having a heart for service proved vital to Beckstrand’s military career, and it also has helped him make the transition to civilian life. “The secret to life?” Beckstrand interrupted. “Don’t look out for #1. If you spend all your time worrying about me, ‘What about me? What about me?’ I don’t mean to take us off on a tangent, but that’s one of the dangers of social media, right. We’re creating narcissists. ‘Look at me. Look at my life. Look at what I’m doing. I’m interesting.’ …You just worry about the long-term impact, right, because it sets a pattern in your life. ‘I’ve got to tell people about me.’ Have you given any consideration to the people around you? I get sucked into it too. There’s some hilarious stuff out there. God bless the Internet. It can be awesome, but it can be a trap too.”

Waddell asked if, given Beckstrand’s war experiences overseas, if he has found it difficult to see so many people dissatisfied with life here in the States. “You’ve got to be careful about the things that you focus on,” Beckstrand responded, thoughtfully. “Because if you’re looking for problems, you’ll find them. So, I try not focus on them too much. When I think about the things that I’d like to share with people, ‘If you look for the good things in your life, you’ll notice them.’ Because the reality is, I won the lottery two times in my life. First, I was born in the United States of America. There is no place in the world [like the USA]. Like, ‘Congratulations! If you’re living here, you won the lottery. You’ve got opportunities and blessings in your life that are beyond comprehension.’ And then the second time I won the lottery was when my wife agreed to marry me, because I married a good woman.”

“It’s kind of a joke at my house,” Beckstrand continued. “Here’s an example: When I go to get in bed at night…I’ve spent enough times being miserable, like rough nights, not sleeping, sleeping on the ground, on the hood of a Humvee, all night people trying to kill you, like I’ve had some long nights in my life, most people have. No sleep. So, like, I get really jazzed at bedtime. I’m like, ‘Look at that bed! Oh, I’m about to get up in it, man! So, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say brand stuff, but I got the Sleep Number, split mattress, lift the head, lift the feet, and before I get in bed, I’m stretching the sheets tight, and my wife just lies there, right, and I’ve got to straighten all the blankets and get everything smooth because I want it to be perfect when I get in, because I just love getting in bed. And I love a hot shower. And I love a good meal. And above all else, I love time with my wife and my kids. So, you can have a great life if you’ve got those things. Like, you know, instead of getting sucked into, ‘Get outraged over this thing…’ Hey, your outrage is not meaningful service. There’s nothing positive; there’s nothing constructive that comes out of your getting outraged. Why don’t you focus on the simple things that you have in your life. Above all else, the people who love you, and devote your time and energy there. Hey, can we just do more of that and less of getting angry and less of the fighting? Do we have problems? Sure, we’ve got problems, but we’ve got a system. Work within the system and control what you can, and then in the meantime, focus on the great things you have in your life.”

The Michael Waddell Podcast is produced by Outdoor Sportsman Group and is available widely on Outdoor Channel YouTube, MyOutdoorTV, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and OutdoorChannel.com, to name a few.

During this podcast, Waddell and Beckstrand talk at length about going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan: “September 11^th happened, and I felt like I had an advantage when the war started. Earlier in life I had learned…don’t fight angry. You’re going off to war and you’re going to kill your nation’s enemies. You can’t get mad about this. A lot of times people say, you’ve got to get mad; you’ve got to fight. But killing and anger are super-destructive, and I think that’s why a lot of our vets have problems. So, I was like, the Towers come down and our nation says, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the Taliban is giving them refuge, so we’re going to war. …We can’t coexist right now; we’re going to come over there to kill you. You’re going to do everything you can do to kill us. No hard feelings, but you’re making bad decisions and we can’t let this continue. It’s going to stop. That’s kind of how I framed it up.”

Waddell and Beckstrand also discuss, in-depth, the life of an Army special operator. “You get over there, and I had learned this as missionary,” began Beckstrand, “you start rubbing elbows with the locals – that’s one of the things that I loved about being a Green Beret – you go live in the world’s worst neighborhoods. You’re going to go live in the hood. A lot of the Special Operations units, they live on big bases. You don’t get to know those people. You sit on the base and wait for intel. ‘I’m 911 for the military. When there’s a problem, you call me.’ Well, you spend a lot of time looking at big screen TVs and getting jacked in the weight room, and then you’re going to run out and maybe you shoot your gun and maybe you don’t, and you’re going to go back, rinse and repeat… It feels good, and it’s valuable service to the nation, but it becomes significantly more meaningful when you go live among the people who you’re trying to help. Because what you learn is that there are a lot of good people in this world, and they don’t look like you, and they don’t speak your language, and they have different customs, but they’re good people.”

“So, in Afghanistan, 95 percent of the people I ran across were good people,” Beckstrand continued. “Most people were like, ‘Hey, I know there’s a war here; I’m just trying to live here. You all sort this out.’ Ninety-five percent of the people you run up against, they’re trying to raise kids and support their family, and so I’m going to try to help every one of those people. Ninety-five percent I’m going to help. The other five percent need to be shot on sight. Now there’s rules, and you should always try to abide by those rules, and again, don’t get mad about it, but when you find people who are actually trying to destroy or subjugate these small villages and terrorize them into behaving [a certain way] or into giving up their youth to go fight the Americans, when you finally say, ‘That’s him!’ and you smoke him…You’re never going to celebrate taking a human life. We’re all God’s children. We really are. It’s always going to be unfortunate. So, we’re not going to celebrate that. But is there some satisfaction when that little slice of evil is removed? It is the definition of valuable community service. When you remove that problem and see what happens in the community when that influence is no longer there, it absolutely is rewarding.”

Beckstrand spent a significant amount of time in Afghanistan, and his team was so effective that at one point the bad guys put a $200,000 price on his head, but as time went on his head told him one thing when his gut told him another: “My gut says, ‘Love Afghanistan. There are a lot of great people here. We can’t fix this. We should leave.’ But we stayed. So, I’m like, ‘Fine, we’re going to stay. Why are we staying? Well, let’s do as much good – we’re here, for whatever reason, we made the decision to be here – let’s do right by the people of Afghanistan.’ And we did. We bought a generation their freedom. They were freer in those 20 years than they had been previously, and certainly than they are now, so you can’t say it was all for nothing. What was so offensive to me is the way it ended. It was like, someone rolled out of bed and was like, ‘Pack it up; let’s leave.’ And then you abandon people; you abandon people who served alongside you; [you abandon] the Afghans who fought alongside us; and you think about all the American lives, hundreds of thousands of lives forever changed, the thousands of lives we’ve lost; and you just kind of walk away from it and the only explanation you give to America in August of 2021 is, ‘Hmmm, who knew it would fall apart that fast?’ You can’t do that! If you’re in a leadership position, you owe it to the people who believed in you and supported you to give them an explanation. And so, ‘Okay, Tom, what was your solution?’ That’s when I was like, ‘You know what, maybe I’m going to write a book and maybe do this docuseries…because it’s a case study in explaining [what] we were up against.’ This was a problem that was far more complex than anybody told you, and the challenges we faced were, frankly, insurmountable. You cannot just make the world the way you want it. People are too complicated for that.”

“It was a real honor to sit down with Tom Beckstrand. He’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, somebody you just want to have fun with and go hunting and fishing and shooting. Considering the bad things that he had to face during his military career, his positive approach to life is strong encouragement not only for fellow veterans but for anybody who has experienced horrible trauma in their lives. As we recently marked 25 years since 9/11 and the wars that followed, I’m increasingly grateful for the men like Tom Beckstrand who answered our country’s call to duty. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for his upcoming book and docuseries.”

The Michael Waddell Podcast releases new episodes every other week.

Waddell’s story began in the backwoods of Booger Bottom, Georgia, where he grew up surrounded by nature, family, and a love for the outdoors. A self-proclaimed “rowdy redneck,” his passion for hunting and storytelling led him to win a Realtree turkey-calling contest, which launched his career in the outdoor industry. From guiding and filming hunts to creating hit shows like Realtree Road Trips and Bone Collector, Waddell has become a beloved figure in the outdoor world.

About Outdoor Sportsman Group: Outdoor Sportsman Group is comprised of the world’s foremost media and entertainment brands for outdoor adventure enthusiasts. It includes four leading multichannel networks: Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel, World Fishing Network, and GAME & FISH TV, a dynamic new Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) channel dedicated to sports enthusiasts and outdoor lovers. Additionally, Outdoor Sportsman Group operates Sportsman Channel (Canada) and MOTV, the world’s leading subscription streaming platform created for outdoor lifestyle enthusiasts. The Group also consists of numerous established publishing assets, including 14 outdoor magazines such as Guns & Ammo, Game & Fish, Petersen’s HUNTING, and In-Fisherman, along with 20 top websites. Outdoor Sportsman Group also includes television production operations through Winnercomm. For more information, visit www.outdoorsg.com.

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