Whitetail Rendezvous

And we’re heading out to Salem, Utah, and Mike Merrill. Mike talks about Deer Hunting – Fitness Attitude defines the hunt.  Michael comes from a very large family. And we’re gonna talk about the hunting tradition, how it started. But, Mike, with Fourth of July like coming up tomorrow, I just wanted to say thanks, you know, for being with me this morning.

And it’s gonna be fun talking about, you know, as you coin it, “If I can see it, I can get there,” or, you know, “Hunt hard, go further.” And that’s kind of your motto. Those here two mottoes. And so let’s jump right in right there and talk about Mike Merrill, why when he sees a meal, they’re better down X miles away across a couple of drainage’s, he knows he can get there.

I appreciate it, Bruce. Yeah, I think the key to that mentality is preparation. And, you know, as we’ve talked a little bit prior here, last few years I’ve gotten real serious about my fitness and kind of off-season training, so to speak. And I love the coined phrase, “There is no off-season.” So I do train year-round, shoot my bow year-round. Even, you know, on two feet of snow, I’m up there on the hillside shooting my bow. People look at me cross-eyed and crazy. But, you know, when it comes time for the hunt, there’s absolutely no hesitation whatsoever to pick that bow up and sling arrows where I want to.

Hey, folks, this is kind of fun for me, I’m going to head back east actually to Long Island, New York where I went to High School at Massapequa High School. So if any listeners are hearing this and they were in the class of ’64, send me an e-mail at whitetailrendezvous.com and say “hi” to Hutch.

Anyway, I got Joe Rogan, he’s from Long Island and he’s created an app called Hunt’n Buddy. Joe, welcome to the show.

Deer Hunting – Hunt’n Buddy App – Joe Rogan

Hey, what the heck is this all about? You know, we got together and talked on social media and I said, “Man, we should put a show together.” So, hey, let’s talk about the beginning of Hunt’n Buddy, why it exists, and we’ll go from there.

Sounds good. Pretty much after years of hunting and trying to start incorporating new hunters into the field we just wanted to get something going that can teach and help experienced hunters and obviously novice hunters that are brand new to the whole aspect. And that’s…we just…I came up with a few ideas and put it on paper, checked out other apps in market and just tried to come up with something that was simple but yet had any feature that would be necessary for just the everyday hunter to use to get from point A to point B, to log data, to do mapping, and just give an extra set of eyes pretty much in the field where sometimes that’s needed when there’s a lack of communication between other hunters. And it’s just, you know, I felt it was a necessary tool that wasn’t on the market for hunters that… And, you know, we all have our phones with us and that’s just where I kind of founded this whole idea from.

So Hunt’n Buddy, and we’re going to go share the screen now. And we’re going to go to Firefox, and we’re going to go to… What’s the name of it, just Hunt’n Buddy,  http:// www.huntnbuddy.com

Joe: H-U-N-T-N-B-U-D-D-Y-A-P-P, huntnbuddyapp.com.

White Knuckle Productions Web Shows are filmed all-over the mid-west and are 100% Bowhunting, All Fair Chase, and All Self-guided. White Knuckle Productions Podcast is a podcast about all things Bowhunting and in general anything related to archery. The WKP team does all our own scouting and stand set-ups; on both private and public lands. We show every aspect of the hunt, not just the seconds leading up to the kill. We are hunters just like you, we get no special treatment or hand-outs, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Our DVD’s and the Web Show and Podcast are a celebration of Whitetails and the lifestyle of the serious bowhunter.

CEO, Todd Pringnitz has been hooked on bowhunting ever since his first morning on-stand. Nearly 18 years later, Todd’s passion for bowhunting continues to evolve and grow with every new season and new business ventures within the hunting industry. It was Todd’s goal to create a hunting production that would appeal to the do-it-yourself hunter, who was ready for a fresh approach on the very traditional hunting video.

We’re headed out to Wisconsin and we’re gonna talk to Zach Haas. And Zach’s with Wisconsin Lake and Pond Resources. http://www.wisconsinlpr.com/

Zach, welcome to the show.

Wisconsin Lake and Pond Resources

Zach and I have been talking about water. What’s so special about water? Well, the Earth is made up of water, human beings are made up of water, and the deer we hunt are made up of water and need water, as we do, to survive. So having said that, Zach is a Senior Aquatic Biologist. He knows his stuff and I’m so glad that John O’Brien from Grandpa Ray Outdoors gave me a shout out. Said, “Hey man, get Zach on because he knows something about water.” Which I don’t. You know, I’ve been fortunate enough to hunt places where there’s plenty of water and it wasn’t an issue. Well, it might be on your property and so that’s why Zach’s here today. Zach, tell us about why water is important for a healthy whitetail herd.

Yup. So I’ll start with the basics and kind of get crazy, and I might nerd out here a little bit on water. So the basics. What does everything living need? It needs food, cover, and water. And water is the most overlooked thing on most property and most properties don’t have water. Especially if you get out of areas like Minnesota-Wisconsin. We have a lot of water. When you start getting in areas like Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota, you start getting into areas that don’t have a lot of fresh water, you’re starting to actually see less successes in that way.

You know, so whenever you get water on properties the goal is to get them that third element that they all need. Right? You know, it’s just a matter of you give them that element, now it’s a matter of making it the right element and the way I bring that up is there’s a lot of bad water out there. Possibly the biggest thing that’s striking most, actually, of the country. You go to the Dakotas, out west, Iowa, we have EHD issues. Now that stems from poor water quality. You know, so obviously the EHD midge loves poor water quality. So our goal is to show land managers, show hunters, show conservationists how do I get the right healthy water. You know, so that’s my goal here. That’s kind of where  out of my work more recently because being a big hunter, it’s been a passion that’s a good combination for me.

Mass Pursuit TV – Wilbur “Spanish Mac” Ramos

“Spanish Mac”

Well, thank you for inviting us. And, of course, I was hoping Jason could come in with us, as well, but he’s on the road driving and he’s out of pocket right now in an isolated area where he can’t get no signal, but maybe during the show he’ll join us. But, yes, sir. You know, having the Mass Pursuit TV show has been something, a long life dream of mine that I’ve had. And it came to reality about six or seven years ago when I started actually filming my hunts and so forth.

And I ventured out and got some good friends here that most people know as “T-Bone” Travis Turner http://tboneoutdoors.com/ and Michael Waddell https://www.bonecollector.com/meet-the-guys/. These guys are from the same area I live at here in Harris County, Georgia. And, you know, they’ve taught me a lot, the ropes on how to get the stuff going here for the show. And my love for the hunt and for the fishing, it will always be there. So what better way of doing what you love to do and putting it on video and sharing it with the folks out there and having something to look back in the years down the road to share with your grandkids and your kids? So that’s pretty much what led me to it, you know? Just the love of the sport and enjoying the outdoors.

Just the love of the sport and enjoying the outdoors.

We’re heading actually down to Georgia, and with Lyle Avis, and we’re going to be talking about dog tracking tonight. And he’s quasi-famous. He’s real famous in Georgia for Deer Hunting with his tracker – Zada, he’s getting famous throughout the social media world with just his stories and his handheld videos. And, you know, pronounce the name of your company, your dog company.

Right. So it’s Schmavis Outdoors.

: Schmavis Outdoors, so remember that. And you can look him up on social media. But Lyle kind of got reverse engineered, he fell in love, and then his wife got him into hunting. How did that happen?

So, yeah. So, I mean, my dad hunted a little bit [Inaudible 00:00:48], but I just wasn’t that…you know, I was never interested. And then I ended up getting married. We moved to Iowa, I get married and join the Army, move away. Years go by and we come back and my father-in-law and my wife, they’re like, “Hey, you want to go hunting today?” And I was like, “Man, I’ve never hunted anything in my life.” And on top of that he wants to go bowhunting. I’m like, “Well, I’ve never even shot a bow outside of like Boy Scout camp when I was like five,” you know?

So he comes home at lunch, hands me this bow from my little brother-in-law that’s, you know, about three inches draw length too short for me. And he’s like, “Here, I’ll show you how to shoot this.” So about 30 minutes of instruction at lunch, he comes back after work at about 3:30, 4:00 and he’s like, “You ready to go?” I’m like, “I shot for a half hour. Sure, I’m ready to go hunting.” They take me out there on that first hunt, I think I shot every arrow in that quiver and didn’t come within 10 feet of the deer I was shooting at, but, I mean, after that I was hooked. Went the next day, bought my own bow. And you’d be surprised how good you can shoot when you’re shooting a bow that actually fits you compared to shooting one three inches too short.

But, I mean, that’s what really sucked me in from there, was the in-laws and them wanting to go hunting and go out all the time. I mean right now they’re probably the biggest pheasant-hunting family that I know and a whole house full of pheasant and deer heads on the wall. And, you know, they have the land that we hunt whenever I go back home to Iowa [Inaudible 00:02:24]

Now what part of Iowa is it? What part of Iowa is it?

Northeastern Iowa, so it’s Dubuque, Iowa. They actually live in Epworth, Iowa right now, a tiny little speck on the map outside of Dubuque. Right on the Mississippi River kind of, where Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa all touch in that little corner right there, that is my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa.

Is that near McGregor at all?

It doesn’t sound familiar, but I haven’t been there.

Okay. McGregor is a little bit north of that. You know, like you said, you know where I went to college at University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, and so I wasn’t that far from it. I never hunted Iowa, I’ve only hunted Iowa for whitetails once, pheasant hunted a little bit. But I’d like to get back there, but it’s a four-year wait. You know, it’s just a four-year wait.

this is part of the preseason prep. And Bruce Ritter-Clark, otherwise known as Hoss, works at Ethics Archery https://ethicsarchery.com/ down in Arizona and he and I got together and had some great conversations back on…we were just on Facebook talking about what we’re going to talk about on the podcast.

So, Hoss, welcome to the show. And you’ve been an archer for a long time, but, man, you really dig deep and it’s…you know, I think the tag line for the show is, “What I’m using and why.” Let’s talk about…

 “What I’m using and why.” Let’s talk about…

Let’s talk about that tag line, because I think it’s perfect.

conversation. Before I start getting into any kind of dissecting their bow or their arrow setup or their broadhead choice, anything like that, I always like to start and say, “What are you using and why?” And you’d be surprised how many people can’t give me a legit answer as to why. They’ll always tell you what they’re using, but they don’t know why.

And a lot of times the real why, when they actually sit and they have a “come to Jesus” moment with themselves and they have to be honest with themselves and they say, “Why am I using this product?,” 9 times out of 10 is, “Because of what I saw on TV,” “So-and-so, big name on TV, is shooting it,” or, “My buddies are shooting it.” There’s no real thought process as to why they’re shooting it. It always has something to do with social, it’s not the ethics, the ethical use of the product based on using it on an animal. That thought process isn’t there, and you’d be surprised how much that happens.

So that’s what I…I mean I like to get into that, get down to the nitty-gritty. And everything that I build, from my bow to my arrow setup, everything, has to do with ethically killing that animal, causing it the least amount of pain, expiring fast, and hopefully expiring within sight so there’s no track job. And I also build things to…I prepare myself for the worst, but I practice for the best, right? If that makes sense.

So we all know exactly where to shoot a deer, we’re always practicing that one spot, but what happens when that deer turns and goes to roll out of the way and you hit shoulder bone? Is your setup going to be able to go through that shoulder bone? Are you going to get adequate penetration to ethically take that animal down, and quickly, and painlessly? If not, then maybe you should re-evaluate what you’re shooting and put a little though process into it. And that’s usually where the conversation starts.

H-U-N-T-N-B-U-D-D-Y-A-P-P, huntnbuddyapp.com.

Bruce: Here we go. All right, so it’s a free hunting app in the App Store and Google Play, right? Tell us about it. Tell us…you know, just tell us about it.

Joe: Yeah, so it’s 100% free. We did this on purpose, as well. There’s…we’d like to keep all the features that we offer for everybody to use, everybody to test, everybody to try out. There’s no trial period, there’s no monthly subscription. The app itself is free. We do offer a subscription, yearly subscription, for $29.99 that’s for parcel data. But there is…on the free version you get eight parcel selections per month. Pretty much its main feature is it does mapping, you can post waypoints, you can look up parcel selections, parcel data. There’s trail camera settings, you can take pictures off of your trail cameras and implement them into your phone, drop them on a waypoint. So that will be stored. If you have a trophy buck that you take down and you want to take a picture of it and remember the exact location where it is, you can take that, as well, log it into the app.

One key feature with the mapping is there’s a group hunt feature where if you and I both go out into the field, you go on a property that I own, you’ve never been there before, I don’t have to go through the whole process of, “This is one stand, this is the next trail.” All I have to do is send you a friend request, as long as you have the app you accept, I invite you to a hunt, now we’re both live on our phones on a group hunt. You see every parcel selection that I’ve selected, every waypoint that I’ve put down, and my location, my live location. And I see your live location, as well. So in theory I’m sharing all my data with you, who could have just walked off…never been on my property before and have full access to everything.

Deer Hunting – HutchhasaLittleHope – Casey & Hope Hutchinson. Just a great time in our lives to start sharing our pursuit of happiness out in the field!

Come follow us and our crazy adventures and other shenanigans!https://www.facebook.com/pg/Hutchhasalittlehope/about/?ref=page_internal 

Hope is a women whose heart exceeds the all outdoors.

Casey is the wildfire fighter who loves Hope.

Together they hunt the Midwest and the Rockies.

They bring folks together to all reach common ground.

Special appearance by Whitetail Rendezvous host Bruce Hutcheon on the condition of hunting today in America.