It wasn’t on a tropical island mimicking Survivor and there was no Fear Factor, but Dr. Jim Byford’s day competing in the Field and Stream Total Outdoorsman Challenge tested his mettle. And, he fared pretty well.

Editors at Field and Stream settled on the challenge earlier this year as a measure of a true outdoorsman - not the kind sporting every fishing and hunting gadget on the market. Instead, challenge participants had to be masters of skills such as knot-tying, pistol and rifle shooting, fly and bait casting, archery and orienteering - demonstrating map and compass skills.

After four of seven skills events in the contest sponsored by the magazine and Jack Daniel’s Distillery, Byford was first. In the end, however, it was the pistol shoot that did him in. Contestant Chris Nischan, who teaches fly fishing in the Nashville area, won the competition.

Byford, the oldest contestant at 61 and dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, finished the day-long competition in fourth place. He is a longtime outdoorsman and brought plenty of credentials to the competition.

Byford learned of the competition when a former student, Joella Bates, who is in the UTM Sports Hall of Fame and was competition director, contacted him and suggested he participate.

He applied and was selected. As it turned out, Dr. Robert Beard, UT Martin coordinator of career advising and head rifle coach, was a judge, and Byford competed against two former students - Odell Braswell, who has a weekly outdoor television show in Cookeville, and Dale Grandstaff, a wildlife officer in Montgomery County. Grandstaff placed third in the competition. Second place went to Scott Marcin, who trains hunting dogs in the Nashville area.

“I’ve done this kind of thing all my life,” said Byford of the skills involved.

“I didn’t go in expecting to win. They had a leader board so you could see how folks were coming along.”

Byford said it was a friendly competition with “good fellowship.”

He added, “Some of the guys were pretty nervous at the beginning. I can honestly say I was not, but I didn’t have a big stake in it.

“My job didn’t depend on it. For a lot of the people, if they won this thing, that would mean a big thing to their business. The winner received a $1,000 check, a full article in Field and Stream magazine, and all sorts of sponsorships. For me, it was just kind of a fun thing to do.”

Byford has been a certified professional wildlife biologist since 1979; however, his command of the outdoors dates back to his childhood hunting and fishing with his father.

Byford has taught children about wildlife and outdoor skills for 35 years. Carrying on a tradition started by one of his college professors, Byford founded the Tennessee Snake-Bite Club encouraging students to let a non-venomous snake bite them so that they would know that it does not hurt and would no longer be afraid of all snakes.

“A few thousand kids did that,” he said.

Byford spent 20 years serving as extension wildlife specialist in Georgia and Tennessee - giving hundreds of presentations and writing numerous articles on outdoor skills. Byford was featured in the 1983 Sports Afield hunting annual and in the June 1985 issue of Outdoor Life. He appeared regularly on TNN Outdoors from 1996-98. He has been a speaker at deer hunting seminars to audiences of more than 5,000.

Byford continues to write the monthly column (since 1984), “Southeast Outdoors,” for Southeast Farm Press. So when Byford showed up at the Jack Daniels corporate headquarters in Lynchburg pitted against eight other contestants, seven of whom had careers directly related to the outdoors, he knew what he was doing.

Contestants started off with fly casting and then moved into orienteering, for which they were given a map and had to make their way through a scenario where speed and accuracy counted. This was followed by rope tying, also a speed event. By the time lunch was served, it was announced for the first time that Byford was in first place. “I said, ‘Say that again.’ I’ve got to admit, I was a little excited about that. It’s not my business, but I do hunt and fish a lot, so it seems kind of second nature to me to do these kinds of things.”

However, success can be fleeting. “I had a short reign of success because right after lunch I went to the pistol and that was my worst event, by far. I knew it going in, because I don’t shoot a pistol. I don’t hunt with a pistol. So, I knew that was going to be my toughest event. I had the lowest score in the pistol of all the competitors. If I had scored just average in the pistol, I would have won the challenge. The pistol is what killed me.”

Byford finished strong in archery and rifle-shooting competitions, but it was not enough to capture the title. “This whole program is about a balanced, a broad kind of person. It’s not one who’s an expert in fishing, or an expert in shooting. You have to be a total outdoorsman and that was the gist of the Field and Stream article (announcing the competition). There are not a lot of people who do all of it fairly well.”

Summing up his showing in the challenge, he said, “I was not the total outdoorsman, I was six-sevenths of an outdoorsman.”