Jay Dobyns is a 27-year veteran undercover agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE). His career includes being shot his first week of work, before even attending the academy, and again before he celebrated his second work anniversary. His most documented exploit was becoming the first federal undercover agent to be patched into the Hells Angels. Operation Black Biscuit, a two-year investigation, accounted for 55 biker arrests. But it didn’t come without great personal cost.
The Story of Jay Dobyns
Betrayed by the very agency he risked everything for, Dobyns was targeted for death by those he investigated, with his BATFE supervisors acting as willing accomplices. This same corrupt leadership also brought us the infamous Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious. Special Agent Dobyns decided to take a stand and refused to be silent. His daring expose of the BATFE’s immoral and unethical management brought the full weight of the government’s resources down on him.
Dobyns’ story is one of great strength,perseverance, dogged determination and sacrifice. To tell it, I traveled withDobyns to the site of his first shooting, and we spent an afternoon recountinghis career.
Let’s start with a rundown of your awards andcitations.
Well, I really don’t take myself very seriously. Ican tell you where they’re all at—the landfill. Every frickin’ thing I ever gotfrom the BATFE is in the landfill, with the exception of three that I felt werehard-earned. I got two Gold Star awards that are awarded for injuries receivedin the line of duty. I held onto those two for my kids. I also received theEddie Benitez Fitness Award when I went through the academy after being shot. Youknow I got the DOJ’s Medal of Valor, and it was presented to me by James Comey.In 2004, James Comey was very well received, very much loved in the lawenforcement community—he was this up-and-coming star. But when I see how heconducts himself now, the DOJ Medal of Valor has lost its luster for me and doesn’tmean anything. In the end, the trophies and plaques and awards that are in thelandfill—I realized that my motivation was very unimportant to the people Iworked for and that was heartbreaking. It was soul crushing.
After a standout career in college football at theUniversity of Arizona, you played some pro ball?
You know, I was a great high school player, I wasa good college player and I was a terrible pro, to be quite honest. I’m aperson who never had a Plan B. I always had a Plan A but never had an escaperoute or a backup plan in case it didn’t work out. My Plan A was to play profootball, and through college I became pretty full of myself. It turned out Iwasn’t as good as I thought I was. When football fell apart for me, I was like,what now? I realized that, at best, I was always going to be a guy strugglingto stay on a roster somewhere. I always played with teammates who were bigger,faster, stronger athletes, but I was able to stay competitive in that environmentbecause I outworked them, I was tough, and I played recklessly.
So why the BATFE instead of the DEA, FBI or anyother agency?
I wanted to work at the BATFE because they had themost dynamic undercover program in the federal government. And I knew that’swhat I wanted to do. At the time I was trying to figure out what to do, MiamiVice was very popular. Sonny Crockett’s running around South Beach, and he’sgot a Hugo Boss suit on, and he’s driving a Lamborghini. He’s going tomansions, meeting slick kingpins, and he’s negotiating for a ton of cocaine ona barge in Miami harbor on its way from Colombia. There were cigarette boats,Learjets and strippers, and I was like, “Oh man, I think I could do that!”
In 1987, the BATFE was only 15 years old. Ibecame an agent when it was still under the Treasury Department. They werefinding people who were seasoned investigators, detectives and street cops atthe state and local levels. The BATFE was always considered the federal versionof street cops. I wanted to learn the job from them. These guys weren’tinterested in the wiretap-type cases—they wanted to build proactive, down-in-the-weeds,get-your-hands-dirty cases.
Tell us about your first week.
I got hired by the BATFE, sworn in and did mypaperwork on a Monday and got shot on Thursday. This was before I had even beento the academy, so they gave me a vest and a loaner gun. I’d never even held agun before, much less fired one. I was part of an arrest operation south of theTucson airport, in a neighborhood off Old Nogales Highway called Dogpatch. It’sall dilapidated trailers, and there are a lot of good, hard-working familiesdown there. But it’s a rough area.
So, this cat shows up and we start closingin on him, and he goes on the run. I wasn’t fast enough to play in the NFL, butI was faster than a bunch of old federal agents. We chased the guy and lost him.At that point, I took off my vest. Rookie mistake! He had hidden in some deepgrass, and as I walked past him, the dude popped up and put the gun to my head.It was surreal! Then he started walking me, with the gun to my head, to ourarrest vehicle. He pushed me into the front seat of this two-door car, and hehopped in the back, all while screaming, “Get me out of here! C’mon, let’s go!Let’s go!”
My first thought was to throw on my seat belt and ram the motherf*cking telephone pole in front of us. But, on second thought, I might’ve ended up crushed and shot. The keys were hanging in the ignition of the car, and I took them out and dropped them on the floorboard. I told him I dropped the keys and leaned forward, and when I did, his gun came off my head and to my back. Then, the agents coming in around the car opened up, and he fired a round that hit me.
Maybe 20 rounds were fired in that 10-second gunfight. The suspect was killed, but his round hit me between my shoulder blade and spine. It went through my lung, narrowly missed my heart on the left side and exited my chest. I got the door open and fell out onto dog turds. I’m lying there in the dirt, and a puddle of blood is starting to grow. I tried to move, and something happened and blood started squirting out of my chest, like when you put your thumb over a garden hose. All I could think was, “I’m gonna f*cking die in this dog sh*t!”
They scooped me up and took me to Kino Community Hospital. The docs were like, “We’re not built for this—we don’t do Level One trauma care.” They ultimately stabilized me and put a chest tube in my side because I had a sucking chest wound. I was in and out of consciousness and hyperventilating off one lung. I looked up at a nurse and asked, “Am I gonna die?” And I just remember her looking down at me and saying, “We’re not sure yet, baby.” I was just 26 years old!
How long was your recovery after being shot?
Well, I was young and in amazing shape. I was fresh off the football field, so my recovery was really, really quick. I was off the job maybe six weeks. The shooting took place on Nov. 19, 1987, and I showed back up to work before Christmas that year. My boss said, “What are you doing here?” I told him I was good and ready to go back to work. He was angry and told me I still had three months of medical leave coming to me. I just wanted to get back to work.
I had attorneys begging me to sue thegovernment for being placed in that position without training. They wereguaranteeing millions of dollars. Money was never a factor for me. I justwanted to be an agent and see if I could do right the next time.
Then you went to the Federal Law EnforcementTraining Center (FLETC) in Georgia?
I was shot in November and was at FLETC in earlyspring of 1988. I loved, loved, loved being at the academy. Not one bad memory.Not one bad thing to say about anyone involved in the process—it was wonderful!When I got to the academy, I knew I had made the right choice. I was like, “Godthis is so cool!” I’m glad I made the decision to be where I’m at.
I was actually in the academy when the NFLwent on strike. I got a call from the Dallas Cowboys, and they offered me aprofessional football contract. “Here’s your ticket, fly to Dallas and you willbe playing football for the Dallas Cowboys this Sunday in Texas Stadium.” I’min my FLETC gear, on a payphone in the hallway of the dorm, thinking, “Hey,your Plan A is still there, dude!” But I knew the strike wasn’t going to lastforever. Did I want to trade a couple weeks or months or a season of my dreamto play professional football for a life and a career of what I really enjoyeddoing? I was like, “Thank you, I’m going to stay where I’m at. I’m content withwhere I’m at.” I’d found a new home and had a new Plan A.
After graduating, Tucson was out of the picture ifyou wanted to go back undercover, right? What happened next?
I got transferred to Chicago and was shot inAugust of 1989. We were doing a machine gun deal with some Vice Lord gangmembers in Joliet. In other words, we were selling the government’s machineguns to Vice Lord gangb*ngers. We made the transfer, and then our surveillancewas going to follow our guns to where these kids—these were just kids, and Iregret that—took them. We wanted to get to the shot callers, to climb theladder. For lack of a better term, this was a mini Fast and Furious. The bigdifference was there was no way we were going to let those machine guns walk.At that time, it was inconceivable to let the guns walk. Twenty years later,someone thought it would be a good idea to do that.
Our surveillance followed the load around, butthe kids had been trained and were smart—they weren’t just going to drive toJoJo’s house and unload the guns. So, they started running. There was panic—whatif these kids get away with our machine guns? The surveillance team didn’t havean airplane up, so they were just trying to follow them. Me and my undercoverpartner weren’t part of the surveillance, but we actually found ourselves in aposition to block these kids. Police cars were chasing them from behind, and we’reblocking them from the front, and me and my partner got out of the car. When Imoved to the side of the road, I heard their car start to accelerate. One ofthe bangers leaned out the passenger side of the car and started shooting atme. Pressed up against the edge of this cornfield, I fired back. During thisgun exchange, the car closed in on me and clipped me. I hit the windshield andflipped off the top of the car and landed in the dirt still firing.
Did you realize you’d been shot?
One leg was like completely incapacitated. The impact even blew my shoes off. I was sitting in the dirt with no shoes on, thinking “How the f*ck did that happen?” I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t walk, and a kid came over on a bicycle and picked one of my shoes off a cornstalk. He was like, “Hey mister, here’s your shoe.” Ultimately, they found the jacket of a bullet in my vest. It was in between the vest and the actual Kevlar. They said, “Dude, you got shot,” and I said, “You know what, if it didn’t make an extra hole, it didn’t count!”
I don’t say this in an arrogant or braggingway, but at the time, I felt empowered—I was friggin’ bulletproof! I wasinvincible. I’d had a bullet go through my chest at point blank, and I cameback and won the fitness award at the academy. It didn’t break my spirit. Iwanted to work undercover, so I was transferred to Chicago, where I was shotagain and run over. I was like, “Man I love this! It’s what I want to do!” Ihad brainwashed myself into thinking I was the baddest cat on the streets.
Let’s fast-forward 15 years, after you’ve handleda number of firearms and explosives deals. How did Operation Black Biscuit comeabout? Why infiltrate the HellsAngels?
The Hells Angels had been operating with impunity out west, and the Arizona Hells Angels were especially brazen. They were aggressive, violent and unchecked. The case agent, a guy named Joe Slatella, approached me and said, “I wanna make a run at these guys. I want you to lead the undercover portion of this case.” We had guys who were outlaw motorcycle gang experts. I wasn’t—that was not my gig. My cover, or the role I played, was a kind of thuggish, white trash, trailer-park hitman. And I recycled that role for years and years and just always played that vibe. I had 15 years of undercover experience behind me, but I wasn’t a biker investigator.
“Slats” was relentless. I didn’t know if Icould play a biker, but this also wasn’t JoJo’s Biker Club. This was the world’smost notorious outlaw biker gang. I trusted Slats with my life, and he believedin me. So we extorted and intimidated and leveraged our way into an outlawbiker gang that was based in Mexico called the Solo Angels. We used the SoloAngels and wore their patch to have credibility in the eyes of the Hells Angels.
We were independent of the Hells Angels, but we were making friends and gaining trust but staying at arm’s length. Things were going well until a Solo Angel out of Tijuana got in touch with a very violent faction of the Hells Angels in Phoenix led by Chico Mora. Chico was arguably the most wicked, vicious, violent and unstable Hells Angel of all time, and I’ve met hundreds of these dudes. He had manslaughter convictions that he had served time for. While he was locked up, he became the Arizona state prison boxing champion. He was bipolar, he was a drug addict. Other Hells Angels told me, “Stay away from that f*cker. He’ll beat the piss out of his own mother!” He carried a bullwhip with him and beat people with it. A bullwhip!
Anyway, Chico gets this information fromthe Solo Angels that the Arizona Solos, who had leveraged our way in, werecounterfeit. The Solos told Chico, “These guys extorted their way into our cluband basically bought their patches. Once they got patched, we never saw themagain. They’re not in touch with us.” That was an error on my part. Inhindsight, we should have continued to develop that relationship.
So, Chico took it on himself, and he teamedup with another wild Hells Angel named Dan Danza. Along with Hells Angel RodneyCox and yet another named Doug Wistrom, Chico put together an assassinationteam. They were coming to kill the Arizona Solos. The DEA had an informant thatwas next to Chico but did not know that we were working undercover. Theinformant called his handler and said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but Chicojust rounded up three guys, and they’re on the way to go kill the Solo Angels.”The DEA agent called Slats and said, “I don’t know where your boys are at, butyou better friggin’ let them know Chico is coming for them.”
I was at the undercover house with my crew when Slats called and said, “You need to get the f*ck out. I don’t have time to talk about this now, but get the f*ck out of the house.” There was panic in Joe’s voice, and he never panicked—he was normally like ice water. So, we left, and they set up surveillance on our undercover house. Sure enough, four Hells Angels showed up with baseball bats and sawed-off shotguns.
So, we assumed our investigation was done.This was unrecoverable—we were outed. They knew the Solo Angels werecounterfeit. I told Joe, “Let me take one last run at this and see if I cansave it.” I decided to go to the Hells Angels president in Mesa, “Bad Bob” Johnson,who I’d become very close to. Bob invited me out to this tavern. Slats said itwas a setup, but I said, “I can save this! I can save the case. Let me talk toBad Bob!”
Everyone was convinced this meeting with Bob was an assassination setup. I got to Bob, and he was like, “This is what I’m hearing, and I am pissed because I’ve been f*cking vouching for you. I’ve been hanging out with you, doing gun deals with you and drug deals with you. You look me in the eye and tell me you’re not a f*cking cop!”
I said, “Bob, you need to pump the brakes. Think about all the things we’ve done together and how long we’ve done them.” And I went through my history with him, my friendship and all the drug and gun deals, and parties and stuff. I said, “I’m sorry, and I don’t want to create a conflict with you, but your boys are wrong. Your boys have it wrong—they have bad information. You know it’s wrong because you know me.” He thought about it, then he called Chico and told him, “Call this off, right the f*ck now.”
Right then I knew we weren’t done, and we knew the case was saved because arguably the most powerful Hells Angel west of the Mississippi had just vouched for me. He took my word over those of his brothers, some of whom he’d known for over 30 years. But then the other shoe dropped. Bob said, “I just stayed your execution, but now you’re with us. You’re all in. You guys are coming over to the Hells Angels. And if you choose not to, that’s fine, but I don’t ever want to see your face in Arizona again. You either come with us and become Hells Angels or you get the f*ck out.”
Now we were part of their gang, but withthis black cloud hanging over our heads. The dynamic really changed. We were tryingto engage in compromising conversations, conduct our investigation, with thissuspicion on us. We ultimately overcame the doubts and were able to gather muchmore information because we were inside the wire.
What was the toughest part of the operation?
Operation Black Biscuit ran just short of twoyears. Those were definitely the longest two years of my life with 18- to 20-hourdays—day in and out. It’s super hard to be a Hells Angel. They live hard, fast,unhealthy and dangerous lives. It’s even harder to be a Hells Angel when you’rean undercover cop. You have to live the Hells Angel life within their beginningand end of day. But as an undercover, before your Hells Angel day begins, yourday begins with your team. Your briefing, your plans for the day, who youintend to meet, where you intend to go and what you hope to accomplish. Then,when your Hells Angel day ends, your day as a cop resumes. You have totranscribe tapes, write reports, process evidence, debrief, plan for tomorrow. Iwas working off four hours of sleep a night, under life-and-death stress, fortwo years. I was wiped out.
There are things you simply can’t do, as afederal agent, that were part of the world of the Hells Angels. So, on theseextended days when guys were sucking up co*ke and meth and powering through theday with high energy, I couldn’t do that! But I had to keep up with them.
It started out with drinking Red Bull and hitting Starbucks and ultimately turned into six Red Bulls a day and three packs of friggin’ Marlboros. I was smoking cigarettes as fast as I could light them. But it just wasn’t enough—it wasn’t working. So, I started taking diet pills. Back then you could buy them over the counter, and they had ephedra in them. I think on the bottle it said not to exceed two or three a day. sh*t, by the time the case ended, I was eating 20 diet pills a day just to keep going. I was constantly racing.
I woke up one night, and it felt like my heart was exploding. It was racing so fast that when I took my pulse, it felt like one heartbeat. I drove myself to the hospital in Tempe and sat in the emergency room parking lot waiting to calm down or die.
After the operation was complete and Istopped taking the diet pills, my physical health bounced back, but my mentaland emotional health was destroyed. My spiritual health was destroyed.
Let’s talk about the results. How many arrestswere there?
There were 55 arrests, and 16 of those chargeswere on RICO [under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act]. Twodefendants were arrested on murder charges and became death-penalty candidates.They had murdered a woman and tried to cut her head off in Apache Junction. So,the case concluded, and we were pretty satisfied with what we accomplished. Butthe prosecutors and the BATFE could not agree on how to move forward with theprosecution, specifically around discovery issues and what the BATFE did and didn’twant to release. Slats had informants’ lives on the line, and he wasn’t willingto sacrifice them for convictions. The prosecution was disrupted, and the BATFE and DOJ were very willing to just let theblame lay at the feet of the undercover agents when they knew that wasn’t true.Cases were dismissed and righteous felony cases plea-bargained to misdemeanors,and some carried little or no jail time.
Was it worthwhile?
You know, it was two years of blood, sweat andtears. It was two years of extended periods of time away from my family, and mykids were little. I put massive amounts of battle damage on my family in theprocess. If someone asked me, “Would I do it again?” the answer is yes, but Iwould do it better. In hindsight, I wouldn’t make some of the mistakes I made, andI would have taken better care of my family.
One of the regrets I have is that duringthis case, this role I had as “Jaybird Davis” evolved from what I did to who Iwas. I was in it for so long, and it was so intense and full-time, that insteadof it being what I did for a living, it became who I was. Jaybird Davis startedcoming home, and he wasn’t treating his wife and kids very well. I was a badhusband and a bad father, and I inflicted damage on my family.
And then you became a target of the BATFE? Why?
My true identity was revealed very early in theprosecution, and that’s when the death threats started coming. The Hells Angelsheld a death contract on me. They farmed out a contract to the AryanBrotherhood and another out to the MS-13. They farmed one out to the 18th StreetGang in Los Angeles through prison connections. So, I was kind of like, it’sthe cost of doing business. But then the threats started surfacing on myfamily. There were threats to kidnap and torture my daughter, who was ateenager at the time. I actually ran into a Hells Angel on the street—one of ourtargets—and we had a confrontation. He told me, “We know where your son goes toschool. Oh, you’re shocked by that? We know where you live. We’ve followed him.Someday you’re going to be waiting for your little boy to get off the bus, andI know you love your little boy, and when he doesn’t get off the bus, you’llknow he’s with me, and you can think about what I’m doing to him.”
No one at the BATFE with the influence toaddress this did anything—no one cared. I went to my BATFE bosses and said, “Youhave an obligation to investigate this.” They said, “You’re on your own, dude.We can’t help you. This is too big for us to contain. Where do you want us tostart? With the Hells Angels? They are on every continent—there’s 7,000 membersworldwide. How about the Aryan Brotherhood? Should we start knocking on prisoncells? And MS-13—should we go down to San Salvador? Should we start there or inLos Angeles? No, you’re on your own to figure this out. We can’t help you.”
One boss said, “Look, I’m really sorry thisis happening to you. Tell your family to maintain a heightened sense ofawareness, but you need to understand something: You did this to you. No oneheld a gun to your head and made you take this case. So, if these bad thingsare happening to you, you did it to yourself. It’s not our problem.”
I realized the hard way that these people Iworked for, sacrificed for and had taken risks for cared nothing about me.Nothing! I had become a stale French fry in the bottom of their Happy Meal bag.Something I learned through this process is 90 percent of the world doesn’tcare about your problems, and the other 10 percent is happy you have them.
I knew they weren’t going to investigatethis. So, I wrote my first book, No Angel. The only resource I had wasmy story. I decided to hide in plain sight, and the BATFE sued me. They werelike, “We didn’t give you permission to write this.” I said, “You told me thatI was on my own. You told me this was my problem to resolve.”
Then I filed a complaint. The OSC [Officeof Special Counsel] and OIG [Office of Inspector General] investigate it and independentlyconfirmed everything I said. Horowitz wrote his report and confirmed everything,they sent it on to President Obama, who sent it to Eric Holder, then to Congress,who sent it to the BATFE. Nothing happened. I was like, “How can something thiscatastrophic not become a blip on the radar?” It made no sense to me. Somethingbigger was brewing. I just had no way of knowing what that was.
The BATFE was pissed because I had taken this story out of the house. I was hanging out their dirty laundry. Newell and Gillett and Higman—the same BATFE agents who orchestrated Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious—and some other people conspired to unmask all of my undercover documents. My vehicles, license plates and registration, home and tax records, voter registration, utilities—everything becomes open-source information that had been previously listed under different names and false locations. The BATFE intentionally unmasked all of those documents as payback for me complaining that they did nothing about the threats. Three months after that, in August of 2008, my house burned to the ground at 3 o’clock in the morning when I was out of town. Thankfully, my wife and kids were able to escape, and it was ruled an arson.
I’ve always been a silver-lining kind ofguy. I always look for something good in something bad. Investigators came outand said it was a failed assassination attempt. One said, “If your son didn’twake up when he did, your family would’ve died in that fire.” I thought, “Finally,they’re going to have to do something. They can’t run from this anymore, and itcan’t get any worse.”
But then they doubled down. Holder and the corrupt BATFE bosses in Phoenix built a task force and tried to frame me as the arsonist, someone willing to burn down his own house with his family inside. They fabricated evidence, conducted illegal surveillances, and filed false reports. They did everything in their power to frame me. Many knew, but no one cared. I said to myself, “Why am I the only person bothered by this?” And then Border Patrolman Brian Terry was killed.
It started leaking that the guns used inBrian Terry’s murder had come through a BATFE investigation. More informationcame out that there were more guns in Mexico. ICE Agent Jaime Zapata wasmurdered with another Fast and Furious gun. Guns had been “walked” to the cartels throughOperation Fast and Furious, and now they had a hand in the murder of BorderPatrol and ICE agents. That’s when it all made sense. The people that wereignoring the threats against me, the people who tried to frame me, were thesame exact people who were running Operation Fast and Furious. Nothing was donebecause they didn’t want to disrupt the operation. They couldn’t take thosepeople out of play. There was something so much bigger going on than Jay Dobynsand the threats against him and his family. Something much, much bigger andimportant to them. They’d do anything to keep that alive, including destroyingme.
Why take on Goliath?
The things that happened to me have happened before, but those people never spoke up—they absorbed it. They took it. They went away or hid long enough to make a comeback; that empowers those who do the bad acts or treat others the way they treated me. The problem is, they did it to Jay Dobyns—they picked the wrong cat to f*ck with! That was their error. I said, “The buck is going to stop with me. I’m not going to take this. I am probably going to get my ass beat in the process. You’ll probably ruin me, my finances, you’ll ruin me professionally and my reputation, and you’ll suck every friggin’ ounce of life out of me. But, guess what? I’m going to win or die trying.”
After they tried to frame me for the houseburning down, I had enough of the internal complaints, right? Because I sawwhat happens with internal complaints—nothing. So, I filed a lawsuit. In thepretrial conference, a DOJ attorney said, “Jay, you’re gonna win at trial, andwe know what the evidence is. But you need to understand something: We willnever let you win. We will appeal this, and we will fight this forever. We haveliterally thousands of attorneys, billions of dollars and unlimited resources.Do you? Can you keep up with us?” That might have been the one honest statementthe DOJ made in the process.
They knew they were going to out-resourceme. Which is exactly what they have done and what they are trying to do. I wonthe trial, but the DOJ appealed, and my victory was overturned based on atechnicality—not on facts or evidence, but on a technical interpretation ofemployee contract law. The appellate court left all of the facts and evidencein place. In effect, they said, “What happened to you is unfortunate, but thereis no law that says an agency can’t treat an agent like that.”
My appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court wasdenied in February of 2020. Sixteen years after it all started, it was finallyover. I had lost. I failed in my attempt to create change.
What keeps you going?
My family. I know that if I didn’t push this thingthrough until the end, I’d be a counterfeit in the eyes of my wife andchildren. My family suffered as much or more than I did. They never quit on me.I gave them a million reasons to bail out on me, but they gave me amillion-and-one second chances.
Through this process, I’ve become veryspiritual. There was a point in time where I felt like God had lost my phonenumber. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong. Then I realized Goddidn’t lose my number—he was calling me. I was able to turn everything thathappened into something positive. The things I felt that were so unfair andundeserved, I’ve turned into training, books, a podcast, my coaching. I thinkGod put me through those things, or allowed me the free will to go there, notbecause he lost my phone number, but because he had something else in mind forme, something better, hopefully.
Tell us about your books and podcast.
No Angel is kind of a case study of my infiltration of theHells Angels. I wrote No Angel almost in a panic to defend myself. I wasout of resources, and my family and I were receiving death threats. I was in ahurry to have my story known. Catching Hell is a bigger picture of mycareer. I self-published this book because some of the larger publishing houseswere nervous that I used real names and thought the content might invite someunwanted lawsuits. But I was like, “You know what, I can validate every claimmade in that book, and they can kiss my ass. Hey, I’m sorry if you’re notpainted in a flattering way, but you earned it!” I didn’t soft-sell anything. Ididn’t write it for payback, either. I wrote it for my kids, to document thetruth and maybe, someday, have them better understand me.
My podcast is called Copland. Iproduce it from top to bottom as a one-man show. It’s raw, indie style. I findthe guest and prepare, conduct and edit the interview. I write and record thenarrative copy. I mix it, then publish it. I have no sponsorships, no money, noendorsem*nts, nothing. It’s just me, and I do it as my gift back to myprofession. I do it as a favor to first responders to share some of the amazingpeople I’ve met and their stories, in their words. Wherever you listen topodcasts, you can find Copland.
If someone wanted to contact you about speaking toa group, how would they find you?
My website is jaydobyns.com.
This article is an extended version of the one found in the June/July 2020 issue of Ballistic Magazine. Check out our current subscription offer at OutdoorGroupStore.com.
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