Ranger's Ridge became a reality when Dan recognized that our society has lost an extreme amount of skills and the ability to handle even the most basic hardships.  The eroding away of these essential foundations is what Dan strives to help others recover.  His hope is to build up individuals that can not only handle their own hardships but will come to the aid of others with grace and kindness.  All the while recreating these lost communities that will bring skill, self-efficiency, and stability back to our homes, churches, workplaces, and the environment that we live in.

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Brought up to love and enjoy God’s creation, Dan had many excursions with his family where he learned skills and took on the challenges of the forest, lakes, and mountains.  In later years, Dan continued this training with experts in wilderness skills and eventually became an apprentice instructor under Joshua Enyart from GB2 (GrayBeardedGreenBeret).  With this high-level training, Dan has become a sought-after instructor, won Master Navigator Top Team with his friend Chad Henry, and has become Wilderness First Responder certified to give the best care he can to his students.

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Dan began years ago as a skilled archer, placing in the top 4 participants two years in a row at the Gander Mountain Compound Bow Archery Tournament.   Since then, his focus has turned away from compound bows towards the harder challenge of traditional archery. Now he exclusively practices, hunts, and teaches only with recurves and longbows.   Dan even takes it further as he learns to build his own bows off the landscape. His success at teaching these archery skills to others has created students that go on as talented and skilled archers themselves.

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Like so many of us, Dan experienced high amounts of bullying and physical attacks through public school.  This led Dan to study aspects of self-defense and took him through multiple martial arts schools and disciplines.  He received rankings in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Tae Kwon Do and holds a Brown Belt in Yeshua-Do under the teachings of Glen Britton.  Dan found that with all this experience, most arts were too traditional or sports-based to be effective in real world confrontations.   This led Dan to develop a progressive 6-level approach to self-defense that he now teaches at Ranger’s Ridge.  This system continues to evolve as he studies the teachings of masters such as Dennis Cregier and the Forged Self-Defense Academy which has a focus on Krav Maga and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

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Strong mental approaches were needed to round out his training and he became a Certified Health and Life Coach at HCI (Health Coach Institute) with a focus on stress-management and conflict resolution.  He has also obtained certification in life purpose counseling.  Dan again took these teachings further and developed them into the much needed TODAY I WILL system that gives individuals an easy way to make honorable decisions regardless of what situation they find themselves in.

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Home life is a mix of work and play for this instructor.   Homesteading his land is an ever-changing blessing as they garden, maintain an orchard, manage their forest, and take care of the livestock and pets to keep it all flowing together.  As if all these areas aren’t enough hobbies, he still strives in woodcarving, herbal medicine, as well as learning to play guitar and ocarina.  Dan and his wife also took on the additional challenge of homeschooling their 7 kids which, like every homeschool parent will find, drives you to learn more so you can give the next generation the best knowledge, skills and opportunities possible.

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His whole life displays Dan as an instructor at heart and passing on the experience, knowledge and skills he has gathered over the years is a goal he hopes to achieve to better the lives and community of those around him.