LARAMIE — There is a rugged beauty to southeast Wyoming.
A new organization wants to help combat veterans experience that beauty in a positive way.
Laramie Range Adventures for Veterans is a new program connecting combat veterans with hunting, fishing and wilderness experiences, as well as with fellow veterans.
Daniel Haff, LRAV founder and president, said the concept of bringing veterans to the outdoors has its roots in the military experience.
Haff, a U.S. Army veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan, noted that on the front lines, the military experience is nearly always outdoors.
“You spend your military career becoming one with the outdoors, how to deal with it. In the military, we just call it ‘the suck.’ We call it ‘the suck’ because it might be beautiful in Afghanistan, but I can’t have a fire. The enemy can see it. You can’t cook food over the fire, the enemy can smell it. You have to be able to move at any moment. We don’t get tents set up, we don’t get to sleep in,” he said.
Wyoming, he said, very much resembles northeast Afghanistan.
“The beauty is now I can go down there and catch a fish and start a fire and set up a tent and actually be part of the outdoors instead of seeing it as something adversarial,” he said. “In a way, you’re integrating something you dealt with before as something bad, all of a sudden you’re seeing the beauty.”
Haff cited psychological studies showing that humans respond well to having nature in their lives.
“Not only are we getting nature in people’s lives, we are getting back in that environment, but in a totally different mindset or way because they’re able to go out now and enjoy that and not worry about a Taliban machine gun being behind the next rock,” he said.
LRAV was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in August.

Haff works with four other volunteer board members to coordinate hunting, fishing and hiking trips for small groups of veterans. The new organization, which replaces an informal network of guides and hunters who have been taking veterans on these trips, will find participants through established contacts or existing nonprofit organizations.
The first year of operation will have guided trips for antelope and elk hunting in Wyoming and waterfowl hunting in Wyoming and North Dakota.
Plans include a spring goose hunt. Haff called this a “four star” experience with a private waterfowl lodge in North Dakota, and chef-created meals.
All of the outdoor experiences, including transportation, lodging, food and equipment, will be provided free of cost by LRAV. Funding is raised through donations from private citizens and tips from a monthly brunch service at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2221 in Laramie.
Guide and other professional services for each trip are donated.
The trips are open to combat veterans, including those whose injuries continue to be a presence in their lives.
“I was wounded, shot off a mountain in Afghanistan in 2006. And so I’ve got a spinal fusion; bullet hole, nerve damage in my arm; my legs and hips are pretty messed up. So pretty much everyone we work with has some medical issues,” Haff said.
Haff described a friend who had been shot in the spine on the same deployment in Afghanistan. His perspective helps make the outdoor experiences accessible for all.
“He’s in a wheelchair; he hunts, he camps with me. He’s like our quadriplegic liaison because he knows this,” Haff said.
Last year, volunteers worked with a veteran without legs.
“We got him out into some duck hunting in North Dakota. The guy had tears in his eyes because he thought he’d never be able to duck hunt in water again,” Haff said.
Haff hopes that the trips will not only help veterans find peace in nature but also establish relationships with other participants that will help them navigate life outside of the military.
“I joined the Army when I was 19 (and) spent eight years (in the Army) – three overseas. I learned more in that eight years than I did since,” Haff said. “But when I got out — I could lead men in combat, I could be in charge of nation building and foreign policy on the ground — I could do all this, but I’d never been to a real job interview. I had never done a college entrance exam, I had never gotten a loan before.”
Part of the process is bringing combat veterans together to create a network through which veterans can ask questions to fill in the gaps in their experiences.
He has seen small groups in an outdoor setting can allow veterans to ask questions and be open about issues they might not want to address in another setting.
“I was a squad leader on three overseas trips. You’re around people who would die for you. And you would die for them,” he said. “And then you’re thrown into the world, which is much more cutthroat. And people don’t know how to deal with that. They feel alone, like they have no mission or purpose any more. And it’s amazing, to watch these folks when they come back to a group of people that they know, trust, have been through the same things they have.”
Though the trips are guided, participants learn outdoor skills so they are able to return to the wilderness on their own.
“One of the best things about taking out combat veterans is no matter what, they know how to shoot a gun,” Haff said. “But they’ll learn how to hunt, clean and prepare animals. On fishing trips, they will learn how to catch and dress trout and how to cook with ingredients found in the wild.”
Participants in earlier events have been invited to alumni reunions. Nearly all of the veterans are still in contact with the organizers.
“A couple of years ago, the event was ending and I was talking to folks. I had one of the guys say, ‘I was contemplating suicide; this trip was going to be one of my last things.’ We’ve lost a lot of our folks to that battle,” Haff said. “It was two or three years ago. He is still with us today. He still talks to our folks; that’s a big deal.”
More information about the new organization is available online at lravnonprofit.com.
The top of the website states a simple, yet meaningful mission of “reconnecting veterans with nature, brotherhood, and purpose.”