Welcome to Kids Hooked on the Outdoors

About Joella Bates

Co-Host Joella Bates brings a heritage of outdoors passion, with a lifestyle including fishing, hunting and archery.

Joella Bates is a Wildlife professional and dedicated outdoors participant. She has worked as a naturalist, wildlife officer, fisheries manager, and environmental scientist prior to becoming an outdoors promoter. She can do it all: hunt, fish, shoot any type of weapon with considerable skill. She is also a writer, speaker, instructor, coach, sales person, and motivator drawing many persons into outdoor adventures.

Joella was honored as a 2011 inductee into the Legends of the Outdoors National Hall of Fame and a 2005 inductee into the Outdoor Channel’s Circle of Honor. In 2004, Joella was selected as the Event Coordinator for the Jack Daniels – Field and Stream Magazine’s Total Outdoorsman Challenge. Joella coordinates many outfitted hunts for groups. She is currently co-hosting two TV shows: ERCO TV (Ebarb’s River City Outdoors) and Kids Hooked on the Outdoors.

Joella has partnered with the National Whitetail Deer Education Foundation (Deerassic Park) and is actively involved in an outreach program that is reconnecting youth, women, and families with the outdoor world through archery programs.

After attending the University of Tennessee at Martin on a rifle scholarship and earning a B.S. in Natural Resources Management, she added a M.S. in Biology with emphasis in Fisheries Management from Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, TN. In 1996, Joella became an inductee into the UTM Athletic Hall of Fame for the sport of rifle.

In 1989, Joella took up archery for bowhunting; she has taken 63 different species of animals with her bows including becoming the first woman bow hunter to harvest a Cape buffalo in 2001; a Wild Turkey Grand Slam in 2004; and the Big 5 (lioness, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard and green hunted a white rhinoceros) in 2009. She is the first bow hunter to take the Big 5 of Africa in a single safari in < 30 days.

Joella has claimed five 3-D Archery World Championship Titles – four as a Woman Pro and has earned over $100,000 in tournaments along with numerous national, regional, state, and local titles until an injury in 2003 sidelined her from competition.