Years before TV cameras would capture them hunting and fishing with their children, Jarrod and Leanne Brannen were both pursuing targets only they could see.
Jarrod Brannen wanted a relationship with a woman who could handle a rifle and reel, didn’t smoke or drink, and looked good in camo. He found Leanne.
Leanne wanted love and work in balance. She pursued a medical career, but when being on call didn’t fit with 24/7 mom duties, she found her calling at home.
For five years now the couple, later joined by their kids, have starred on “Aaron’s Outdoors TV,” a cable and satellite TV show sponsored by the Atlanta furniture and more store chain founded 55 years ago by the Loudermilk family. In January, the Brannens’ show will reach 30 million homes when the Pursuit Channel joins the Dish Network.
The Brannens are the models, Aaron’s CEO Robin Loudermilk Jr. says on every show, for the Loudermilks’ belief that “the absolute gift of nature is the time we spend in it together.”
“Take your kids hunting, and you won’t have to hunt for your kids,” Leanne tells her audience each week.
On screen, the Brannens go hunting, fishing and, maybe most important, teaching in nature. Privately, nature taught them how to cope after a screen in a doctor’s office showed them the worst.
From country to cable
For Leanne’s recent 37th birthday, the family drove two hours from their home in Perry to the site of their parents’ first date back in 1996 — the Yellow River Game Ranch in Snellville.
Out of the family Excursion pop five kids in matching khaki shorts and button-down shirts with their show logo: Cole, 12; twins Toxey and Hatch, 10; Grey, 7; and pigtailed Mary Blake, 3, the youngest and only girl.
Part petting farm and mini-zoo, the game ranch is a leisurely jaunt for this family used to longer stints waiting for animals to catch or kill.
Minutes into the mile-long trail, they find deer to pet (“They’re in velvet,” their dad tells them.) and stray feathers for tying flies (“or anything shiny will work,” their mom says).
As the family hiked, Jarrod and Leanne Brannen recalled their trip from the middle Georgia countryside to cable TV.
“In Unadilla, we had a red light, but it got knocked down by a combine,” said Jarrod, 39, whose family has owned the oldest Ford dealership east of the Mississippi for 70 years. Leanne’s family lived 20 minutes away in Perry, but the couple met in metro Atlanta. The game ranch wasn’t too far from Emory University, where she attended nursing school in 1996.
“A few weeks into dating, we went dove hunting and, left-handed, she hit every bird,” Jarrod said. “I thought, ‘This might not be good.’ ”
Leanne, an honors graduate of the Medical College of Georgia, worked in an ICU in middle Georgia before seeking a family nurse practitioner degree from Emory.
“I would sit up in the deer stand with him and study,” she said. “It was so peaceful, quiet and still.”
They married in 1997, got pregnant a year later. Her two-hour commute to Atlanta no longer seemed as important as her mother’s example. Leanne wanted to care for her family full time and make a home where the outdoors were as familiar as indoors.
First-born Cole (short for Coleman, like the camping equipment) grew up watching hunting videos instead of “Barney.”
His parents hung an old wasp’s nest in the playroom, near deer heads and skulls. They stored baby keepsakes in the gun safe.
Even out on this casual hike, the lessons in outdoors life continue. Along the way, the Brannen boys ask their dad to identify a new odor in the air.
“That’s fox urine,” Jarrod said. “You can use it as a cover scent.”
Nature TV naturals
“The show was Robin [Loudermilk]’s idea,” Jarrod said. “He grew up in the same way that we are. His father and my grandfather used to dove hunt in Dooly County together.”
The couple began shooting five shows a season, taking turns using one handheld camera.
“We were never in a segment together!” Leanne said. “I was nervous at first, a deer in the headlights.”
Jarrod, who was named for the eldest son on the TV western “The Big Valley,” called the show his dream job — an indoor medium that gets people outdoors.
Cole made his debut filming the show’s tip of the week. Losing his baby teeth made him all the cuter. Meanwhile, 5-foot-9 Leanne found camo not only hard to find in her usual size but impossible to obtain in maternity wear.
So she made do during gestation of the rest of the show’s cast: twins Toxey (named for the inventor of mossy oak camouflage) and Hatcher born in 2000, Grey in 2003, and Mary Blake in 2007.
“One boat don’t hold all of us any more,” said Jarrod, 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds.
Gun safety lessons begin for each Brannen kid about age 3, in their own backyard, from BB guns to shotguns, with cabbages as targets. (“Blown to smithereens,” Leanne told them after the vegetable was hit. “That’s what can happen to your body or head.”)
The Brannens have brought their real (and reel) lives to more than 100 TV episodes so far, from Mary Blake sleeping in a Louisiana duck blind to the boys practicing catch and release on Lake Hartwell.
Every episode has candid moments where mom and dad impart lessons in safety, patience and the wonder of the outdoors.
Hunters and fishers often film themselves as proof of their stories, Jarrod said, “but our trophy is all seven of us going fishing together.”
The couple value hunting as an important tool for conserving species that, left unchecked, would starve.
“Hunters and anglers continue to represent the true salvation for North American wildlife,” their show opening says in a voiceover. “These generational contributors are mostly families. They understand the enduring renewability of wildlife.”
A loss and a lesson
“One of the key values the Brannens teach,” Loudermilk said, “is that life doesn’t always go as planned.” It’s something that rings true with many of his company’s customers, he said.
The Brannens talk easily, almost ceaselessly, until asked what event in their lives solidified their values. Jarrod asked Leanne if it’s OK to answer. She folded her hands behind her back, looked down at the trail and kept walking. He started the story.
After Grey’s birth in 2003, Leanne got pregnant again with twins. The couple celebrated with a 3-D ultrasound.
“We didn’t know about the miscarriage until we saw it on the screen,” Jarrod said.
“We lost one at 8 weeks,” Leanne said. “There’s nothing you can do. It was a vanishing twin.”
Ten weeks later, a checkup showed the remaining twin had no heartbeat.
“I wanted to be strong for her and them,” Jarrod said. “I explained to the boys it’s good to see dads cry.”
As the Brannens grieved, they found comfort in seeing the patterns of nature.
“You see fawns lost in the fields, and that’s part of the life cycle, and you don’t know why,” Jarrod said. “Animals never give up. They keep on no matter what it is.”
Leanne said the loss reinforced what they had been teaching their kids at home and their viewers on the show.
“Waiting on a group of ducks to come in or a deer to come into range teaches patience; casting for hours in a trout stream to get a bite teaches perseverance; and letting a small buck walk away to grow another year teaches respect,” she said.
“When faced with what to do in a real-life situation, they have these memories to call upon.”
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TV preview
"Aaron's Outdoors TV"
● DirecTV: Channel 608 (Pursuit Channel) airs at 8 p.m. Wednesdays, 8:30 a.m. Fridays and 4:30 p.m. Saturdays.
● Comcast/Charter: Channel 45 (CSS) airs at 9:30 a.m. Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
● Past shows are posted online at www.aaronsoutdoorstv.com .
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