Bruce: 5,4,3,2,1. Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. And guys and gals across Whitetail Rendezvous land, we are in for a treat with Michael Hyle, Business Development for Kill Cliff Incorporated and a former professional baseball player with the Chicago Cubs and Marlin Organizations. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael: Thanks, Bruce. Thanks for having me.

Bruce: Michael, in the warm up, we talked about cutting up with the guys and gals after hunting all day and sitting around camps. So let's just bring up our stools and put our feet up and talk about camp fire stories and why that's so important to you.

Michael: Yeah. It all started with me back when I was playing baseball. The game of baseball, itself, is great, but the brotherhood and the camaraderie and those relationships that you build, throughout your years of playing is what makes you come back every single year. And when I decided to leave the game of baseball that was the hardest part about me leaving was leaving that camaraderie and that brotherhood. One of the biggest things that brought me back into the world of hunting was that ability to reconnect with a lot of those friends and a lot of those baseball friends in the hunting world. Because, as you know, the baseball season ends and deer season begins. So it runs perfectly as a parallel to major league baseball players and that's why so many of them do hunt is because the seasons run up. So I've been able to connect back with a lot of my old teammates and buddies even as I've been out of the game through the hunting season and being able to share that time with them again at the [inaudible 00:02:06].

Bruce: What's a couple of funny camp stories that you would wanna share or can share?

Michael: Oh, I don't know if there's any in particular. The biggest thing I think that always gets brought up around a camp fire is, you wouldn't believe it but this is what happened. Most of the time I think it's in some way shape or form there's a little bit of exaggeration going on there as we can all attest to. But just sitting in the tree and having that alone time and then coming back and hearing what everybody else saw and talking about what were the deer doing, how were they moving, what were they seeing, that's just all about it. And it's never really anything too crazy or over the top. But when you see certain things when you're sitting in a tree stand, you wanna share that with your group of friends and with that brotherhood. And it just makes it cool to be able to have that time where you have dinner, have a cold beer and sit down around the fire and just enjoy each other's company.

Bruce: Where did the hunting tradition start with you?

Micheal: For me, it started in my late teen years. We had a family friend that had some land. It actually started in bird hunting. So I started off doing quail hunting, and that evolved on that same piece of land into hunting whitetails. And I remember . . . Eric is the guys name. I remember talking to Eric and kept telling me, "Oh, we got to get you down here to do a deer hunt." I said, "Well, I'm all on board." And it started with a . . . I was using a 270 rifle and I shot my first doe. And there was no turning back for me. I was like, "Uh oh, this is gonna be a problem because I'm addicted." From that point on, I was hooked. And Eric, good family friend of ours, was the guy that introduced me to that. And it's just been . . . I haven't looked back. And then the second phase of that whitetail hunting life for me, my rebirth into whitetail hunting was about eight or nine years ago. One of my best friend called me and he said, "Hey, we just got a track of land and I want you to come down here and hunt it." He's actually stilled involved in baseball and so he gets back from the season in October time frame. He said, "Well one thing, you can't bring your rifle, this is bow only.