Bruce: Hello, everybody out there in Whitetail Rendezvous community. I'm really excited today to introduce AJ Gall. He's the Community Content Coordinator at Legendary Whitetails. Welcome to the show, AJ.

AJ: Hey, thanks for having me Bruce. Yeah, well, go ahead.

Bruce: Go ahead.

AJ: Like you said, I work here at Legendary Whitetails. Basically I'm the in-house whitetail addict, so to speak, and I spend pretty much my time learning, teaching, and sharing my experiences with other hunters through our community page of the website. For those of you that have never heard of Legendary Whitetails, we are a family-owned, direct-to-consumer catalog and Internet retailer, selling casual lifestyle apparel and gifts for the whitetail hunters.

Pretty much, as a hunter would sum it up, "We offer awesome clothes for those who want to celebrate the hunt every day of the year." Our whole company is centered on deer hunters and their lifestyle.

Bruce: And specifically, what is your role there as Community Content Coordinator?

AJ: I have a unique job within the company. While everybody else is diving into data reports, or working on products, and shipping out orders, and stuff like that, I'm able to sit at my desk and write an article on how to kill your next buck or something like that. So basically, our company is focused around the hunter, so it's my job to relate to them, to share with them, and to teach them a little bit about the sport and just some of my experiences, so we can keep that context going between the brand.

Bruce: Thanks for that background.

AJ: Sure.

Bruce: Let's just jump right into our content here, our interview. Share with us, AJ, your best hunting tip, that's in story form. So some place along the line, something happened, you get a story about it, and it ended up being one of your best ideas for whitetail hunting. So share that with our audience please.

AJ: Okay. I would say my top hunting tip -- of course there's a long list of them -- if I had to rank the top one, I would say the first one or two times hunting a particular stand is probably your best chance at killing a mature buck. I learned this within the recent years. I would say in the last three to five years is when it really became evident and clear.

It was when I was spending, after college I was able to land an internship down at Midwest Whitetail in Iowa, and pretty much spent the entire season hunting, so, being around a bunch of guys that were able to hunt every day, and setting up stands and all that. Then came November, the rut, and that's when we all hit it hard. But we had stands all over and we were primarily hunting public land. Out of the four people that were successful, including myself, every one of those bucks that were shot was within the first two stints of sitting on that particular stand.

Since then, it's been a pretty evident story, moving forward. The following year I was filming Dr. Woods down in Missouri and we were hunting a seven-year-old buck. It was the first seven-year-old buck and they had never seen it in daylight in years past. They knew where it was through trail cameras and stuff, never were able to lay eyes on it, until I think it was October 24th or something. We snuck into the one stand that we had hung the previous August and it was the first time ever sitting in that stand. Two hours into the hunt, all of a sudden he showed himself, walked five yards under the stand, and that was that story.

And then, it worked for me one time last year, second time in that stand. I had a nice shot at one of my top three bucks. Unfortunately I blew that one, but we'll probably talk about that a little later.

Bruce: Lessons learned, right?

AJ: Yeah!

Bruce: Lessons learned.

AJ: Yeah.

Bruce: Let's dig in a little bit more about that seven-year-old buck, because everybody knows there's a big buck on their property, or they wouldn't be hunting the property. But they never see them.