EP 355. Just Buy the Damned Trip Insurance!

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Duck Season Somewhere. Heads up, folks, getducts.com has worked diligently since COVID to come up with trip insurance program. Working with Global Rescue, we leveraged all the bookings that we do in a year to come up with a very competitive race and most importantly, a very customized program that will help you after 20 years in the business, I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen flights canceled, I’ve seen weather delays, I’ve seen cancellations, I’ve seen repairs, I’ve seen broken necks, I’ve seen job loss, the list goes on and on to where, frankly, buy the damn insurance. You ask me, I’m just going to tell you, buy the damn insurance. You need trip insurance. This is an investment of lifetime, we’re booking months or years in advance. And you know what, life happens. Hate to tell you folks, life happens. And when you least expect it, expect it, life happens. Joining me today is Justin Walker with Global Rescue, we’re going to walk through some key points of why you need trip insurance. Justin, how the heck are you, man?

Justin Walker: I’m doing pretty good, Ramsey, it’s good to hear from you.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Man, I tell you what, Justin, I really, truly appreciate the hard work you all put in about the last year, helping us to develop this kick butt program. Most of our clients need it, all of our clients need it, many of our clients have needed it in the past. And Justin, trip insurance is just kind of one of those things like auto insurance, like house insurance, like any other kind of insurance in the world, it’s the biggest damn waste of money ever invented, until you need it. And when you need it, you wish you had it. It’s like for the last year, knowing this thing is coming and getting an idea of what our rates were going to be, I’ve just kind of beta tested it to every single person that I’ve talked to, and I’ve talked to a lot of duck hunters going a lot of different places since you and I first had our conversation. And every single person said, heck yeah, I’m buying it, and they have. But Justin, I want to back up a little bit. Introduce yourself to the listener, who is Justin Walker?

Justin Walker: Yeah. Thanks, Ramsey. Great to be on the show. I’ve grown up duck hunting, growing up hunting. My dad was a big hunter, big upland game hunter, we raised Brittany spaniels as a kid, kind of grew up in and around that. And yeah, the last 15 plus years, I’ve worked in the outdoor industry, from marketing agency and content creator to working with some of the big wigs like Weatherby Sportsman’s Warehouse, Sitka and about 5.5 years ago, I was recruited by Global Rescue and came over and worked for these guys and I’ve never looked back. I love working with them, I love working with all of our big conservation groups and then, of course, outfitters and agents like you guys, like getducks. Just been a great run and I enjoy the industry and just enjoy the whole booking side and taking care of individuals, especially on the Global Rescue side where we’re getting people out of sticky situations. And it’s just like I’ve told you, it’s not a perfect scenario, perfect business, but we do our best to do what we can and insurance is one of those things. You said it best, you have to have it and you’d rather not use it, but if you have it, you might as well. So it’s one of those things that you just need it in your back pocket, especially when you’re spending so much money on trips and to go to these places we love. It’s just one of those things that if you have it in your back pocket, then you can sleep easy at night, you know that you’re covered and if something does happen, you can cancel your trip and you can go on that trip in a future date. And you save face with your booking agent, with your outfitter and then hopefully rebook that trip in a future scenario.

Ramsey Russell: Years ago, I used to cut a lot of corners, had to and I might buy trip insurance, but I usually didn’t. And probably 5 or 6 years into getducks, I’m going to say the year, maybe longer than that, Justin, I’m going to say the year was about 2009 or 2008, somewhere in that era and we had a client going to Argentina and he was supposed to land in Buenos Aires and he boarded his flight down in Miami 09:00 PM, going to wake up in Buenos Aires and go on his duck hunt. And we all knew what was going on and had talked to him about it, like, dude, there’s a volcano throwing smoke up in the air down in Chile. You’d go into Buenos Aires at the time and it would look like a real cloudy day. But if you drug your finger on the benches or the tables or something like that, it looked like you’d hit the bottom of an ashtray. It was all this soot, all this volcanic pumice up in the air. And the planes, when the wind would blow out of south, southeast, which is prevailing wind in Argentina, the planes would not fly over that airspace because they’d get up into those motor turbines and eat their engines away like sandpaper. And a lot of the airlines at the time when this was going on that summer, would cancel the flights or push the flights over to another date or something like that. Oh, no, not this airline, buddy. They got everybody on the plane and halfway over to Gulf of Mexico, the pilot come on and said, oh, by the way, we ain’t going to Buenos Aires, we’re going to go by Santiago, we’re going to stop off in Santiago, Chile, and make a reconnect and let this thing cool off. Everybody said, okay, they get to Santiago, Chile, the next morning and there is not a hotel, god’s honest truth, there is not a hotel within 1.5 hours of that airport for anybody to stay. So my client, who was not technologically savvy enough to keep a cell phone on, turned his phone off and just camped out for 4 days in that airport. 4 days. Meanwhile, we’d kind of gone around and tried to find him a ride over and some alternative routes to get to where he was going, he never answered his phone, he had 50 missed calls when he got back home and he called him back up and said, man, it was a complete and utter zoo. And he literally sat in a chair for 4 days, except when he was walking around to exercise.

Justin Walker: No, that’s terrible.

Ramsey Russell: But you know what, he had bought trip insurance. And when he got home, everything was taken care of. He needed a couple of receipts, he needed some documentation from us, and they took care of him, Global Rescue, took care of him. And that right there, I said, that’s why I need trip insurance. And so I’ve been a trip insurance user, especially on these big trips like that. And that’s what put it up on my radar of the true need. Every travel agent sells it, it’s all around, there’s all kinds of companies and products and everything else. But for as long as I can remember, Justin, Global Rescue has kind of been the blue chip of the travel insurance, outdoor insurance mountain. They have been at the top of the mountain. What is Global Rescue? How long have they been around? Who are they? How they get into all that kind of information?

Justin Walker: Yeah. Dan Richards, our CEO, founder and CEO. Back in 2004 when he founded the company, he was on his way to Africa and he was just getting ready to go to Africa and he just thought, when I get over there, if shit hits the fan, what do I do? And so he started asking around and asked some of his buddies and people that had been there and there were people that were saying, oh, you can buy travel insurance or you can do this and they’ll kind of help you when you get there. Anyway, long story short, he really just couldn’t find anyone that could help him, if something happened while he was in country, that could get him back home. And that really got his gears turning. And he founded the company in 2004, so we’ve been around a long time, we’ve done over 21,000 operations worldwide. We’ve got 5 centers working on, 6 right now in Puerto Rico and we’ve got 250 medical staff working for us, 5 physicians that are on staff. And we really are not a travel insurance company, at least, first and foremost, we’re not a travel insurance company out of the gate, we’re a membership organization. And then about 7 years ago, Ramsey, we partnered with a company called IMG and IMG is our insurance underwriter and they have built these policies for us and that’s really how we formed this policy for getducks in the last year. We’ve put that together, we’ve combined the global rescue medical evacuation that covers you in the case that, like you said, life happens, something happens while you’re in the field, doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you meet our evacuation trigger, which is essentially if you’re in imminent danger or you’ve got some type of bodily injury or you’re in threat of a bodily injury, we will get you out of that situation. And not only we will get you out, we’ll get you to a medical facility and we’ll get you stable. So there’s that side of it, which is the Global Rescue side. And then like we’ve been talking about, like we’ve been discussing the last year, travel insurance, trip cancellation, trip interruption, you get stuck in an airport for 4 days and your trip has been ruined, messed up because of inclement weather, the planes have gone down, whatever that scenario is, you’re going to get your money back to be able to put that towards your next trip. Whether it’s a cancellation, pre-trip interruption, whether it’s your deposit amount or however you work that out and that’s really what we’ve brought together, is that all in one package where it’s trip cancellation and Global Rescue, medical evacuation.

Global Rescue’s Insights: Travel Risks and Safety Measures since 2004

And forever we’ve always said, buy trip insurance, we recommend trip insurance, there’s some hunts I’m very reluctant to sell insurance.

Ramsey Russell: Justin, the name of the game in our business, 20 years in the business, we’ve been doing this, we’re good, we’re not God. I can’t make the weather colder, I can’t make it warmer, I can’t make the wind blow, I can’t make it stop raining, I can’t make it start raining, it’s too wet, it’s too dry, it’s too cold, it’s too hot, there’s so many variables in duck hunting anyway. But the name of the game is control, the controllables. You know what I tell clients? I tell clients if you get stuck, well, let me put it this way. I know you’re traveling today, your date is scheduled February 12^th to 17^th, going to Obregon, I’ve got a vague idea, I know who all my clients are, I got a vague idea you’re traveling on February 12^th and I know if my phone rings at 06:00 AM in the morning or 12:00 AM at night, I know you ain’t calling to tell me you found the coldest beer in the airport or the hottest pizza or the best deal on headphones, that is never ever why somebody’s calling on travel date, they’re always calling because they’re wrinkling a problem. I’m good, but I’m not God, I cannot make planes fly. And forever we’ve always said, buy trip insurance, we recommend trip insurance, there’s some hunts I’m very reluctant to sell insurance. King eiders, don’t ever go king eider hunting without buying trip ever, I don’t care who you book through, do not go king eider hunting without trip insurance, to which I say, don’t go anywhere without buying trip insurance. But that’s really and truly why as we started coming out of COVID which was a kick in the cojones for everybody in the travel industry, that’s why we really started saying, we’ve got to do something to control this. And we’ve suggested it, we’ve recommended it, we’ve had links to it and now what we’re doing is when you buy a hunt from us, you got a line item addition to your invoice, that’s trip insurance and now I’ve controlled it. I cannot control the weather, I cannot make planes fly, I’m powerless. If you’re being on a trip of lifetime is when your heart decided to act up or something happens, I’m powerless. If you get struck by lightning in Argentina, I’m powerless. But now I can control the best I can controllable to be there and truly have your back. And that’s why we really broached this subject. Thank the Lord, have mercy, I cannot believe that 20 something years in business, other than a few sore shoulders and trigger fingers, headaches from staying up, celebrating two night at late, that’s about the extent of the injuries we’ve seen with all our clients over the years, we’ve not had anything bodily injuries or heart attacks or true health problems in the field. But could you go into detail just a little bit about some of the examples or some of the things you’ve seen after all these years and that Global Rescue has seen since 2004 in terms of what could happen or what has happened to people in foreign?

Justin Walker: Absolutely. You said it right, Ramsey is just being in an area that you don’t know and maybe you do know, but they do things a little different than the USA. And I would know being over in Africa or down south, anywhere south of the equator, some of those areas, they’ve got great facilities, specifically their private facilities as far as medical goes and it’s really just getting an individual to those facilities. And we deal with anything and everything, the non-sexy stuff as well, traveling, diarrhea, getting bit by a bug or something like that, that is just, you would not expect to happen, but it does happen. And we’ve got scenario after scenario where individuals have been just on their trip, minding their business doing their thing and had altitude sickness, or down in Peru, in Machu Picchu and running into issues there. We deal with strokes, heart attacks, everything under the sun. Stuff can happen so fast and the scenario can go so sour so quick that it’s just easy to have someone like us in your back pocket and it is so affordable for what you get and the level of service that you’re going to get. If an individual were to call us up and say, they’re down on one of these trips with you guys and something were to happen, they needed help and they could call us up and within 30 seconds they’re speaking with a paramedic or a nurse, a certified medical professional and they’re speaking with them regarding the scenario that’s going on. Inside of our operations centers – yeah, they’re speaking with somebody who knows how to communicate with them. And then not only that, when someone calls in, you’re not just getting one individual that’s on your case, you’re getting 2, 3, sometimes 4 of our operations personnel that are going to be working your particular case, it depends on the emergency. If you call up and say, hey, we just got in a car accident and I can see a bone sticking out of my leg, what do I do? You’re going to have that first guy or girl is going to tell you how to stop the bleeding and what to do and try to keep you calm. The 2^nd operations personnel is going to start working logistics, what kind of assets do we have in the area? Where’s the closest medical facility? The 4^th guy is going to be looking at the nationality of the individual, of the member of Global Rescue. Where are we sending them? Who can we speak with regarding them? If they pass out, what are we going to do? And so they just start. It really is a logistical nightmare from the members point of view. But from our side, these guys are trained in this and they operate and they do this every single day. I’ll tell you a story, we have a really good member of ours, a spokesperson for us, she was in South Africa with her husband, they were dove hunting and they were up in northern South Africa in Limpopo and the PH and the husband had left the truck to go out and pursue some of these birds and Angie and her driver were sitting there and they had a cape buffalo just caught wind of them, came up behind her while she was sitting at the edge of the truck and hooked her with his horn. Black death. These things are no joke. They look like giant cows and then as soon as they put their ears back and they have a short temper.

Ramsey Russell: Be like getting run over by a freight train.

Justin Walker: Exactly. It’s basically a car. And if you haven’t heard of a cape buffalo, I mean, their horns are big and hooked. Well, he hooked her spine and severed her spine, flipped her around, knocked her on the ground, gored her several times, flipped her end over end, as you can imagine, the driver’s flipping out, yelling for the guys to come back, he doesn’t have a gun or anything to scare this thing away. And eventually, when she wasn’t moving, he left her alone, the driver jumped in the truck. Anyway, the husband and the PH come back and luckily they had Global Rescue, they called us up and we have some local assets in the area and evacuated her to Johannesburg to a facility and deployed some of our personnel to go out and be, like, a bedside advocate for her. And she went in and out on the brink of death for almost 6 weeks straight and eventually we got her back to her home in Dallas, Texas. But she’s now in a wheelchair and she has no feeling below her waist. That’s one that we can honestly say that we’ve definitely saved her life. I think, nothing against the local facilities there, but they definitely had a panic attack and some of those medical professionals weren’t exactly sure what to do in that scenario, especially the local ones, before we got her back to Johannesburg. So for our guys to get out there as soon as possible and really just be that bedside advocate, I mean, the story is just amazing. Unfortunate for her, but she’s alive, she’s happy, happy as she can be in what happened to her and she’s a very positive person and she’s happy to be alive and she is alive because of Global Rescue

Ramsey Russell: Years ago, I don’t even know that getducks was existed, but I heard a story from a friend of mine and his family and his brother in law and sister and everybody went down to, I think, the Galapagos Islands, just doing a nature tour, just looking at nature and riding around whatnot and they were sitting in back of the pickup truck, you know how those old country boys sit on the side of the truck when we’re rolling across a pasture and they hit an ant hill or aardvark hold or something and he fell out of the back of the truck and broke his neck. And you can bet that Galapagos Island doesn’t treat broken necks like John Hopkins Medical Center does. Yeah. And problem is, there’s no boarding onto an American airline with a coach ticket to fly back home to get medical treatment, when you’re in that condition, airlines won’t have anything to do with you and it takes specialized medicine to do that kind of stuff. And one of my biggest fears, it’s like vaccines. I’ve got every vaccine on the yellow card because one time I was out duck hunting some foreign country, talking to some doctors that I knew very well in duck blind together, talking about stuff and one of them asked me, what all vaccines do you have? And I shrugged and said, I don’t know, probably nothing. He said, Ramsey, as much as you travel, you really need vaccines, he said, and it’s not going to be the crazy stuff that gets you, play the statistics, man, it’s going to be something as simple as you stepping on a rusty nail and your tetanus haven’t expired or you have a plane crash, you shoot yourself in the foot, not a plane crash but a car wreck and you need a blood transfusion and you’re in a country that doesn’t really have American standards. And, man, it made sense. And the truth matter is, if I have trauma, of course I want to be stabilized nearby, but if I have something like the lady in your example or a broken neck or something major, I don’t want third world country or second world country treatment, I want to come home. I want to know I’m flying home and getting the best medical treatment on earth. And again, what do you do if you don’t have trip insurance? How would it even be possible? Justin, I heard a story one time, and I’ve heard this a few times, I heard it very recently at SCI convention, because somebody came up, was talking about a hunt, I think they bought it, and they said, do you have trip insurance? It’s coming, we’re working on it. And the reason he asked is they had been somewhere, maybe Africa, I want to say, but some reason South America comes to mind and an elderly member, an older member, a dad or granddad and their party just went to sleep one night, very happy, I’m sure, because he was hunting, didn’t wake up the next morning. Well, you can’t just pack them in a suitcase and check them as a bag and get them home, it’s a big freaking deal getting a deceased body out of a foreign country. A long time ago, I got to talk to somebody, him and his dad had been fishing down in Lake Guerrero and same thing happened, his elderly dad just went to sleep and his words, not mine, a very happy man with all the big fish he’d caught that day, didn’t wake up the next morning, just died in his sleep. And then his face kind of welled up and like a bed stung him on the nose because he said, there’s no getting my dad out of Mexico without a lot of money, money we didn’t have and connections we didn’t know how to go through. I said, well, what’d you do? And he said, we rolled him up in a carpet and smuggled him across the border, buried him in a family cemetery. Nobody expects to leave and something like that happen. But have you ever had to deal with the extirpation of a deceased body in a foreign country? Because the guy at SCI told me, he said that they called Global Rescue and that was it. Global Rescue went through, they knew who to call it, the ambassador’s office and all the channels to go through to get the body, the deceased brought back to America through the right channels. And he said, we have no idea what we’d have done. Weren’t no rolling him up in a carpet and bringing it back from Africa or South America, wherever he was, if they hadn’t had Global Rescue. Nobody expects life to happen like that, but it does. What do you do in a situation like that, Justin, I have no idea, except call Global Rescue.

Mortal Remains Transportation: Challenges in Third World Countries

Outside of the hunting world, we service a lot in the climbing world, the paragliding, luxury, travel all over.

Justin Walker: Outside of Global Rescue, I really wouldn’t have an answer. We call it an MRT, essentially, Mortal Remains transportation and we deal with this all the time. Outside of the hunting world, we service a lot in the climbing world, the paragliding, luxury, travel all over. We don’t discriminate on what our members are doing, but specifically some of those, like you said, third world countries, if you pass away or a loved one passed away while they were there, a lot of those countries, they make it very difficult and you have to jump through some just ridiculous hoops to get that mortal remains back home. And we’ve done the song and dance enough times that, a lot of times, some of these countries or just these morticians there, will essentially hold the body hostage in a sense and say, hey, it’s going to be this much to get the body home. And it’s unfortunate, but it happens quite a bit. And so we know how to negotiate that and just to go through those proper channels to get them remains back.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a real big deal.

Justin Walker: It is, absolutely. It’s just like bringing, you could say, trophies home or anything from out of country bringing it back home is difficult and just getting it through customs going out, customs coming in. And as you can imagine, a mortal remains is one of those things that there’s lots of red flags. And so you really are very strict. TSA all over the world is very strict on how that transportation happens.

Ramsey Russell: All right, let’s get into some nuts and bolts and then we’ll talk more fun stories. We’ve got this getducks signature outdoor adventures travel protection powered by Global Rescue. And most of our hunts will be covered $3000 to $6,000 and for less money than you’re going to pay shooting ammo or tip your guides or whatever, buy gifts to bring home to mama. $350, you’re in, $8 more you’ve got medevac. But walk me through, Justin, the nuts and bolts of under that policy, what does the customer get for that? Because you all are a membership company and I noticed that covered immediately. First thing is now I’ve got a member for the duration of my travel in Global Rescue. Can you walk me through the nuts and bolts of what these policies entail?

Justin Walker: You bet. This getducks outdoor product is really a hybrid, kind of like we said earlier, it includes the medivac on one side of it, it’s almost like an add on. But the real nuts and bolts is this trip cancellation, right? An individual is putting down their deposit for their trip, putting money down and at that point is when they really want to pick up this product and nuts and bolts. And the number one reason for this trip insurance, in my opinion and Ramsey, you and I have kind of laughed about this because I have not been the best at buying trip insurance for myself. And at this price, you can’t afford not to. I mean, you and I have talked about it until blue in the face. The trip cancellation, trip interruption, it’s going to cover you, if you get sick, if you get injured, if there’s a death in the family.

Ramsey Russell: Lose your job.

Justin Walker: Oh, absolutely, lose your job, pregnancy complications, traffic accident, inclement weather, mechanical breakdown of the carrier, which essentially means airport or say you were in transportation to the airport or something like that and you missed your flight and that was connecting to another flight. And anyway, it just kind of became the snowball effect, you could cancel for that reason. Theft of passport, hunting restrictions issued by the government. So if they were to shut down an area or something like that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a big deal. Now, look, we came back to you all specifically about that. 5 years ago, I wouldn’t have given two thoughts to hunting restrictions, but Australia is on the brink, we’re hearing rumors and murmurs everywhere. Do you know some of the strongest, most financiers, anti-hunting financiers of global anti-hunting originate in South Africa? Did you know that? We don’t know what the future holds, we’re booking hunts 2, 3 years out because people like to plan these big trips a long ways out, who knows what’s going to happen in 3 years? It could be that there’s no hunting in that country anymore. We don’t know, nobody knows. But anyway, go ahead, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but that’s a big deal, man.

Justin Walker: It is a big deal. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now this isn’t ducks specifically, but there’s closures going on in Alaska for Dall sheep right now for non-residents and that’s what they’re really considering doing is shutting it down for non-residents. I mean, this would be a perfect scenario.

Ramsey Russell: Perfect scenario.

Justin Walker: Yeah. Perfect scenario. They’re going to shut it down for non-residents. If I had drawn a sheep tag this last year and put in in December and drawn that sheep tag, I would be SOL. Already put my deposit down with my outfitter and here we are sitting, I wouldn’t be able to go in there this year specifically because they’re getting hammered by the weather. But it’s a perfect scenario.

Ramsey Russell: What would happen in the instance that if I got drawn for a swan tag in Utah? Now, most of the hunts we deal with directly, most of our clients are going outside the US into a foreign country, we’ve made this policy available to anybody going anywhere. If you’re going to Disneyland, we got it. If you’re going anywhere doing anything, we got you. But what would happen in the instance, I just had this thought, number 1 rule in reporting like this is never ask question you don’t know the answer to. But I’m going to ask you anyway, Justin, what would happen like, I get drawn for a swan tag in Utah, which is a big freaking deal. And before I get there, they close the swan season. Let’s say I schedule to come out there on December 15^th, but they closed the season on December 1^st because too many trumpeter swans have been shot. Boom, I’m out. I mean, what happens then? Is that somehow covered under some of these policies?

Justin Walker: Absolutely. If they shut it down, if the government shuts down the season, then absolutely we would file a claim for you all day for that trip. Boom, trip insurance.

Ramsey Russell: Buy the damn insurance, heck yeah.

Justin Walker: Yeah, exactly. And Ramsay, I mean, I’ll tell you, I’ve been working in the industry now for almost 6 years, which isn’t crazy long time, but it’s long enough to understand some of these other insurance companies and I don’t want to knock on them at all. But a lot of those companies, they really pick and choose what they cover and what they don’t cover more specifically. And this product that’s been built for getducks specifically is really tailored and custom to the outdoor individual. I mean, you said you could use it for Disneyland and you absolutely could, but it really is, this is built for the individuals that are going on these high value, high expensive hunts and not crazy expensive, we’re talking $10,000. But that’s a lot of money. And these policies are very affordable. You could price shop them all day and for what you get, it’s bar none, some of the best service that you’ll ever get. And I’ll just speak a little bit to that. I’ve worked with a lot of different carriers, a lot of different underwriters and our insuring underwriting company, they really took care of our customers during COVID as you can imagine, we had a lot of cancellations, I think, for 6 months straight, that’s what I was doing, was filing cancellations, filing claims and this company really took care of our clients and our customers, which made my job, I work with our partners at Global Rescue, our hunting and fishing and our outdoor partners. And so for me to still have a job, this underwriting company really took care of our clients. And like I said before, it’s not a perfect business and at the end of the day, it’s still insurance and sometimes it’s tough to get these claims to go through, but we get them to go through and we work and do our best to make sure that the client is taken care of, number 1.

Ramsey Russell: No doubt. I think you do. And I’ve got so many stories from clients that have used Global Rescue, you all have come in like the Calvary a million times. And of course, Justin, I know you from shows and you talk about apologetically almost, that you only work 6 years, baby, there ain’t nobody that has put 15 years into 6 like you, because there ain’t no way. I don’t know that you sleep. I have literally written you at 02:00 AM in the morning to ask you something and you hit me right back. And every time I can’t never catch up with you at SCI because you’re go. You’ve got a lot of experience for just 6 years, I’m going to tell you right now, you’ve been extremely helpful with us developing this program. And more importantly, it speaks to me that you must have been a hunter, because I see at these hunting shows, but when we sat down the first time and started talking, you knew exactly what we needed. You knew exactly the kind of client we were dealing with and the kind of problems that they were going to most commonly encounter. And it’s been extremely helpful having that, Justin, I’m just going to tell you right now and anybody listening.

Balancing Passion for Hunting and Responsibilities as a Guide

And it really is about taking care of our clients and making sure that our customers are taken care of.

Justin Walker: I appreciate that, Ramsey. Well, I try. I guided for about 4 years, mostly big game. Yeah, mostly big game. Mule deer, elk, more than anything, a little bit of antelope, a little bit of sheep. But yeah, mostly mule deer and elk over in some of the western states, Utah, Nevada, Arizona. But I figured out real quick that I like chasing the game a little too much and maybe pulling the trigger. But I worked for a very small guide and I understood that most of these guys and outfitters and even booking agents, I mean, you’re wearing a lot of multiple hats. And it really is about taking care of our clients and making sure that our customers are taken care of. I’m a conservationist, I love to hunt, I absolutely love it. Anytime I can get in the field here in Saturday, I’ll be taking my 9 year old out and hopefully she’ll be smoking a turkey. Well, thank you, yeah, should be good.

Ramsey Russell: When somebody buys this hybrid policy we’ve got. Let’s talk about Global Rescue membership. It includes travel assistance, it includes medical and security advisory, field rescue, we’ve talked a little bit about, in house expertise, we’ve talked a little bit about, destination reports, you all even got an app that’s kind of a big deal. Right there on my little phone that I’ve got in my pocket, I’ve got 24/7 access to Global Rescue expertise, don’t I?

Justin Walker: Yes, sir. And really, if you’re going into an area that, like, we keep talking third world or just one of these areas that’s off the beaten path, I mean, we’re adventurous, we like to get out, we like to get away from people, we like to get in the wilderness, get in the wild and really strive for these wild experiences. And by doing so, we put ourselves in these scenarios that there’s not a CVS down the road and there’s not a hospital right down the road, so it really is a peace of mind in your back pocket. It could be something as easy as, I need an antibiotic and I have no idea where to go, how could I get this? What could I do? You could pull open your phone, open up the Global Rescue app, message our operations team and say, hey, I’m here, here’s my coordinates, you could hit a little button on the Global Rescue app that would ping them, give them your coordinates, they would know right where you’re at and you could say, hey, I think I need an antibiotic or I can’t keep anything down, I’m throwing up. How could you not want to travel with that and utilize that service? I mean, you’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it, because if you don’t have it, then what do you do? I really don’t know. There really isn’t a great answer for that.

Ramsey Russell: I can tell you what you do. And I’m going to speak personally, because one of the coolest trips I ever did, one of the most memorable, one of the highlights of my career was a duck hunt in, drum roll, please, Pakistan. Pakistan, it was amazing. We think of Pakistan as looking like mountainous Afghanistan, 2/3^rd of the country is. But running right down the middle of that country is the Indus River, it’s a major corridor for Eurasia. And we found ourselves at a duck lodge, the host could not have possibly been more professional or hospitable. It was just an amazing trip from start to finish. But when you come from places like America to countries like Pakistan, I don’t care where you’re hunting, who you’re hunting with, it’s different, it is a third world economy. And rule number 1, you don’t drink dairy products and rule number 2, you don’t drink the water and you don’t eat stuff like salads that were washed with the water. It was 98°, day 3, I was already gimping because I was having a flare up, didn’t have my prednisone and it had to been 97°, 98°, I was sweating like I can’t imagine a center in church and that salad was beautiful. Oh, my gosh, it was beautiful. Most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and it was delicious. Buddy, let me tell you what all I can tell you, the reaction the next morning, the only way I can describe it is and this is self-diagnosed, not looking at the Internet or nothing is amoebic dysentery. And all 3 of us that ate that salad had what I would describe as amoebic dysentery. And no little old prednisone is a $1.39 a bottle, not over the counter, but through a farm, they don’t even have it over there. I had nothing, I had no med, they had aspirin and it was a bad situation, man. That’s what you do, you know what you do? You almost die or you wish you could and you wish you’d just go ahead and kill you. And if I drank a bottle of water, I passed 5 bottles of water and probably things I’d eaten in 4^th grade came out. Would I love to add that out right then, baby and fly me home or send me something? But besides stuff like that, you all’s travel assistance, if I’m not mistaken, even cover stuff like lost passports and that really does happen. People lose passports, they lose stuff like that. It happens.

Justin Walker: Or they get mugged. We just had a gentleman in South Africa called us up in Cape Town and said, I have nothing, I just got mugged, I have no wallet, I have no passport, what do I do? Our operations team, I mean, they just walk him through, he’s American citizen, we find the American consulate, get a hold of some of our people over there, and they get him all squared away so he can get back on a plane and get home, because he has no wallet, no passport. I mean, what is he supposed to do? No way to pay for anything. Can you imagine things like that that you just don’t think about? Oh, it’s never going to happen to me and the odds are less likely, they’re pretty few and far in between. But when they do happen and if you travel enough, something will happen eventually.

Ramsey Russell: Guarantee you, it’s going to happen sooner or later. It’s a small minority of people that we deal with over the course of a year, but it happens. It’s like this, we all go and buy or at least I do, don’t judge me, but let that Powerball get up over about $100 million, I’m going to buy a ticket. Because even though I got the odds of getting struck 15 times in 15 consecutive days by lightning, as I do of winning it, I got the same exact odds as the other fools that bought that ticket. I’m going to buy that ticket. Well, traveling is kind of in reverse order of that. I’m going to play the odds that I’m not going to miss a flight or get sick or get hurt or something or lose my passport, everything’s going to go perfect. But I can hedge that bet and lay off some of that risk by buying the damn insurance, you know what I’m saying? It’s kind of the same thing. But Justin, it’s usually the real common stuff that we have to deal with, fortunately, thankfully, mercifully, we haven’t had anybody die or become gravely injured, except for me being amoebic dysentery, RR guy in Pakistan. But stuff happens, you know what I’m saying? I had a client one time step off a plane and go to meet, he’s going to La Paz, Argentina, he’d been flying overnight, Martha said, he came out at a 90° angle, he had something going on with his back, he couldn’t do nothing. She had to find a doctor to get him that cracked his back and got him operable again. But that’s about the worst we’ve dealt with. I was one of the lodges we used to work with down Argentina, 4 men in a blind, they were buddies since high school and as I understood it, they all 4 stood up to go shoot ducks and one of them had his hand shot by an adjacent hunter that swung a little too far, stuff happens. They’ve been hunting together for all them years, but something happened. But mostly what we deal with is the guys, like I said, going to Mexico and they hit ice or we had some clients year before last, it was 12 clients, let’s say 3 or 4 different parties mixed up going to Mazatlán and American Airlines, a week before their trip, wrote them all an email saying, your flight’s been canceled, not your flight’s been rescheduled, not your flight has been delayed, not your flight is going to fly, they just said, wrote them a blank boom, your flight’s been canceled. That’s it. Your flight’s been canceled. And now what do you know? Life happens, man. That’s the kind of stuff. Anita and I have always felt like and you’ve met her enough and talked to her enough, you know I ain’t lying when I say she’s the brains of the operation. But we’ve always felt like Santa Claus, we can’t control the weather, we can’t control the ducks, there’s a lot of uncontrollables in wild duck hunting in wild places, but we’ve always felt like Santa Claus because everybody goes and has a great time. The real Grinch in this whole travel thing normally is airlines. That’s the biggest Grinch in travel, is just airlines. COVID’s over, but the airlines haven’t gotten over the recoil yet. I was saying, what was it during the holiday, something like 200,000 people were stranded in airports over the holidays because the flights couldn’t get their stuff going. And it just happens, man. And that’s where you really need trip insurance. Justin, I was going to say, we’re talking about these bigger trips, most of our clients are going to fall in that $5,000 to $10,000 range and can probably hit that mid range. But it’s like 3 tiers of coverage, it’s something like $0 to $3,000 and $3,000 to $6,000 and $6,000 to $10,000that’s kind of the brackets of travel insurance. Now, here’s a question I’ve been asked quite a bit in the last year is, what of my trip, I’m just going to make this up. I’m going to Utah and I’ve got an $800 ticket and $1,200 hunt, whatever. If I’m going to Argentina, the rates change. But what should I consider to insure when I decide on how much coverage I need for this trip? Everything? Every out of pocket expense.

Nuts and Bolts of Trip Insurance: What’s Covered and What’s Not

We go to file the claim, the insuring underwriting company will look at that and say, well, Delta Airlines will give you $1,200 in travel credit and so they will not refund that portion of the trip.

Justin Walker: Well, I mean, no, I wouldn’t. It really comes down to, if you want to get into the nuts and bolts, most of the airlines right now, for example, I just had to cancel a trip, I was supposed to fly out 2 weeks ago to Lincoln, Nebraska and I had to cancel, it was a $300 ticket and I had to cancel my ticket. And if I would have insured that, if I would have bought and trip insurance and it’s a low amount, I booked with Delta Airlines and they gave me a credit. They didn’t give me money back, but they gave me a travel credit for future. Yes, exactly, good for a year. And most insurance companies and IMG, Global Rescue, this product that we’re talking about, would not give me that $300 back if I would insured it. What travel insurance will ensure is non refundables. So there are several airlines out there that will not give you a travel credit and that is the scenario where you want to insure those tickets. Now, we’re talking about a scenario, so if I book a trip with you and I pay you $5,000, Ramsay and then I go and buy my plane ticket, which is $1,200, I would look at whether that airline will give me a credit and if they will, then I would only insure the $5,000 with getducks. I would not insure the airline because at the end of the day, when we go to file the claim, the insuring underwriting company will look at that and say, well, Delta Airlines will give you $1,200 in travel credit and so they will not refund that portion of the trip.

Ramsey Russell: If I bought a $1,200 international ticket and it cost me $250 to reschedule it, for whatever reason, I bought $1,200 ticket, international ticket and they’ve got an international change fee. So I now got $950 credit towards the new thing, they would reimburse me for the $250?

Justin Walker: They would. Yes, they would. Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Go ahead.

Justin Walker: Well, technically, so in that scenario, Ramsay, I would insure the whole thing, because I would say that you could get that back, that $1,500 you could get all that back because it becomes a non refundable. They’re not just giving it to me, I have to pay an additional fee, so I would insure it. So if I spent $5,000 with getducks and then I bought this $1,200 international and they charged me $250 to change it and that becomes a non refundable. They’re not just giving it to me, does that make sense? We can put that in the claim and we can get that money back and then you don’t have to deal with the $250 claim or the $250 change fee and you just insure the $1,200. So you really just have to look at it. You know what, I tell people this all the time, sometimes these policies are like interpreting the old testament and it can be difficult to just interpret what they’re trying to say. My team and myself, we read these policies in and out as much as we can, it’s not glamorous, it’s not glorious, but we really want to take care of our clients at the end of the day and our members and just all of our affiliates and partners. So we’ve got to know these policies in and out, and they change them all the time. So you just have to kind of know that you need to do some research or in the case that they’re working with you, Ramsay, they need to just get on the phone with us, if they have questions. They can jump on the phone, it takes 15 minutes to go through and really understand what we think you should do. And my team myself, we’re not pushy, these policies, they sell themselves. There’s no reason to push this on anybody. You either want the insurance or you don’t. And if you talk to Ramsey at getducks, he says, buy the insurance.

Ramsey Russell: Buy the dang insurance and we’re going to add it to the invoices. Now, if a man, just for whatever reason, don’t want it, that’s on him, it’s not my problem anymore. He was offered, it was there, it was an extremely competitive price. I’d say is more competitive than anything he’s going to find elsewhere, it’s written by the right people. Now, Justin, when I make a claim on this insurance and mercifully, again, by the grace God, I have bought trip insurance in the past, I’ve never had to make a claim. What do I need? What then? Okay, so I missed my trip, I missed my flight, something happens, I’m assuming lost luggage might even be or lost guns or something, I don’t know. But what happens? What do I do now? I call somebody. But what do you all need to process my claim? What should Anita and I be prepared for to give the listener if they had to file a claim?

Justin Walker: Absolutely. So it really depends on the scenario. So we brought up flights being canceled earlier, all we would need in the scenario that they just, maybe it’s inclement weather or maybe there’s a tornado, who knows? A natural disaster, that kind of thing. All you would need is an email from the airline, their email saying, we’re canceling the flight or we have to move the flight and it really just isn’t going to work for you because of either a connecting flight or you’re getting on a boat or whatever the scenario is and we just have to cancel the trip. And in that scenario, you would just submit that. Ramsey, you’ll have an email that you can send, basically a distribution email that you would send a claim into and one of your clients would just send it in and say, I had to cancel my trip, here’s the letter from the airlines. And then from there we would circle back up and we would need receipts for the deposit amount, we would probably need a letter from getducks just stating that the trip has been canceled and that’s basically it. It’s pretty straightforward. From there, we send it into our claims department, the claims department looks it over and anywhere from one to two weeks, they’ll get back to us and give it us an idea of whether they’re going to accept the claim, whether they deny the claim or what it looks like exactly and they just kind of piece it together. So when we’re talking non refundables, for example, if I put down money for a trip and that deposit amount is non refundable, then that falls into that category. So if I’ve paid you $5,000 and I have to cancel my trip and I need to file a claim, that $5,000 would fall into that category.

Ramsey Russell: And it’s up to 100% of trip cost, that’s refundable?

Justin Walker: It is.

Ramsey Russell: For trip cancellation, trip interruption and that’s amazing. Accident, sickness, medical expense, up to $25,000 a person, that’s damn good coverage, Justin.

Justin Walker: Yeah. Ramsay, just to expand on that a little. You’ve got American Express and you’ve Expedia travel that has trip, they have a cancellation or they have a travel insurance add on that they try to give out and American Express does. And if you’ve ever had to deal with that or make a claim on those guys, there’s a lot of stipulations, there’s a lot of exclusions, there’s a lot of little fine print there that these travel insurance companies are really looking at that profit and loss. And so if they can get out of that, I mean, it’s just like if you get in a car wreck, they’re going to be looking at paying out the least amount of money. The difference between that and this product is 1, you’re working through Global Rescue and we’re not the insuring underwriter. And I have to be careful about what I say especially on this podcast. But let me just tell you that we are going to do whatever we can to get you some money, get you your claim process, taken care of. It’s in our best interest because I’m representing getducks, I’m representing Ramsey Russell and taking care of your clients. And so it’s very important that we take care of these individuals on our side. They’re our clients, they’re our customers and we want to take care of them. And we’re not the underwriting insurance company. And so it really is a different feel, it’s a different look, it’s a different feel, it’s a different product altogether. It’s a hybrid product and it really doesn’t exist in the industry right now. I mean, you are at the forefront of this, like you said, it’s taken us a year. I mean, it’s taken us a long time to put this together. But great things take time and I think we’ve got a great product.

Ramsey Russell: One thing we haven’t talked about is, I’m going to ask you this question, because I had a client bring it up the other day, why he buys trip insurance everywhere he goes. I’m fixing to travel out of country, I’m going to go somewhere else, I’ve been playing Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance since I got out of high school. But you know what, my health insurance in America doesn’t cover everywhere, does it? Trip insurance does. You all’s policy covers this accident and sickness, medical expense, not all health insurance works outside of the country, I’ve learned that the hard way from talking to clients. That’s another reason to buy good travel insurance or trip protection. It’s getting up to health insurance, hey, most everybody listening has got it. You better talk to your service provider because it probably don’t work in other countries, have you heard that, Justin?

Justin Walker: Yeah, I hear you, Ramsay. So you’re probably 80% of your health insurance providers do not give, they will not provide health insurance if you’re out of country. And it’s probably higher than that now, to be honest, I think COVID really changed some things. And there were a lot of health insurance companies, like, we just can’t cover this. It is a huge reason. If you’re in a foreign country, a lot of these companies will say, yeah, we’ll admit you, but please give us your credit card and you’ll pay for that stuff right out of your pocket and it’s no joke. They really will hold your credit card hostage, in a sense. And if you’ve got travel insurance, you can just rest assured, as long as you get a receipt, they will pay out your medical expenses. And this product covers up to $10,000, you can’t beat that. Especially if you’re in a foreign country, it’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to go over that $10,000 mark. You’ve got some of these other insurance companies that they’ll insure you up to $100,000, but is that realistic? You’re most likely never going to get to that point, because if you have this getducks outdoor product, you’ll also have Global Rescue and we’re going to get you home and you’re going to use your regular insurance when you get home.

Ramsey Russell: So if you’re real lucky, instead of getting trip interruption on the front end and missing your hunt, you catch it on the back end. I talked to a client this morning going to Mexico, he’d heard about this trip insurance, he called us up and said, hey, is it ready? I go, yeah, they’re going back down there. I said, are you going to buy it? He goes, yeah. He said, we had it last time. I guess they bought it direct from Global Rescue. But they had it last time, and they had hunted for 3 days and they all got the email on the phone, flight been canceled, weather delayed because of snow in Dallas and they were stuck down in Mazatlán for 2 extra days. There’s worse places on earth, Detroit, for example, to get stuck in travel. But I’ve been stuck in Detroit for 2 days, that wasn’t fun, but they were glad to have it. Now, what happens if I get stuck on that end? What would a policy like this cover if I got stuck down there on vacation and couldn’t get home? Would it cover some of my hotel expenses and stuff like that?

Justin Walker: It would. Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Free vacation, baby.

Justin Walker: In that scenario, if you get any type of trip interruption like that where you’re incurring extra costs that were not planned in the trip because of a trip delay, then absolutely. All you’ve got to do is keep receipts and just show that some type of delay letter, per the airlines, per TSA, whatever it is, just make sure we have documentation, because that’s what the insuring underwriter is going to ask for.

Ramsey Russell: Justin, I appreciate you coming on board and explaining all this stuff to everybody.

Justin Walker: I appreciate it as well, Ramsay. I think we’re going to do some great things. Like I said, it’s not a perfect system, but we do our best and we take care of a lot of people, which is great.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, when you least expect it, expect it because life happens. Buy the Damned Insurance, please. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Duck Season Somewhere, we’ll see you next time.

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