Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. And we're going to head to Illinois today. Yes, we're going to go smack-dab in the middle of Pike County, and we're going to talk to James Halliday, but otherwise known as Jimbo. And he works with Eagle Lakes Outfitters.

Jimbo, welcome to the show.

Jimbo: Thank you, Bruce.

Bruce: Okay, you're right in Pike County. Tell us all the wonderful things about all those wonderful bucks we hear about coming from Pike County.

Jimbo: Oh, Pike County, Illinois, is a whitetail buck hunter's heaven. We've got all kinds of rolling hills, wood mix, crop fields, corn, soy beans, wheat, timber, bluffs, rivers. It's a whitetail's dream, it really is. And I understand now why big bucks go here.

Bruce: Now, I understand that Pike County is either one or two in the nation with Buffalo County and some places in Kentucky and other places throwing in some mighty fine Pope & Young and Boone & Crocket bucks. But what makes Pike County so special?

Jimbo: I would say it's mostly the people. The people are friendly, they welcome you. And then on top of that, the deer hunt. The specialty about it is the number of deer that you see when you're sitting in stands. You can see anything from 5 to 10, all the way up to 50 deer. And the buck-to-doe ratio has been outstanding lately.

Bruce: So how does Pike County grow trophy-class bucks?

Jimbo: I've been told Pike County is the center of the whitetail range, where the southern bucks with the wide, massive antlers meet the northern bucks with the huge body. They have massive racks in the north. So you get a combination of the two, and you just have an explosion of world-class whitetail. You get the wide, massive racks on a huge-bodied whitetail. It's just the center of the whitetail universe. With the crops, all the genetics, all the feed, it's just easier to grow really giant whitetails.

Bruce: Talk to us about the total acres that you guide on and you hunt on, and how you prepare that for a hunting season.

Jimbo: Okay, Eagle Lakes has between 10,000 and 15,000 acres that they either own or lease. I guide on about 1,200 to 1,500 acres myself. There's six of us. When we find the property, we're allowed to go in, do all our scouting, put up trail cameras, put in food plots. If we own it, then we plant our crops. If we lease it, the farmer plants his crops.

But we'll pick the water sources, the food sources, and get ready to set up treestands mid-August. Of course, the hottest part of the year. So then, we have them up and ready in plenty of time. The scent's gone by the start of the season in October on.

Bruce: What determines where you set up your treestands?

Jimbo: I set them up according to the bedding, from the bedding area to the food source. I try to get on the trails in between the two for the rut season. For early season, I'll have a few other food sources around the food plots, on the crops, field edges. So the early season leaves me the pattern. But once the rut starts, I like to get down in the travel corridors, deeper in the woods where the bucks are cruising, looking for the does. Close to water, close to cover, they just don't like to get out in the middle of the field, if they don't have to.

So I try to get into cover. I love to try and find a evergreen tree so you have lots of cover around you when I set up my stands. I like to put them high and in lots of cover so that you actually have a better advantage of not being spotted by the whitetail.

Bruce: What type of treestands do you use? Ladder stands, ground blinds, or hang-ons?

Jimbo: We use a mixture of all three. Our clientele, some don't like to get very high up in a stand. We'll put our hang-ons about 20, 25 feet up and some clientele won't go that high, so some will prefer the safety of the ladder stands. And then some of the crossbow hunters or elderly hunters will prefer a ground blind.

Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. Today we have a real pleasure of putting a couple of young men, actually a crew, together out in Wisconsin. They're called Heartland Pursuit. Eric and Jordan, welcome to the show.

Eric: Hey, Bruce. Thanks for having us. I'm here right now with Jordan Farrell. We're part of Heartland Pursuit and what Heartland Pursuit is, we're out of Wisconsin. We hunt mainly in the Midwest, also travel out west if we can in fair chase of large game, big game animals, also hunt small game, turkeys and stuff like that, so pretty honored to be on the show today.

Bruce: Well, thank you and again, so I can get everybody's name down, Eric, what's your last name, please?

Eric: Crum. Eric Crum and Jordan Farrell.

Bruce: Okay, and spell Jordan's last name.

Eric: F-A-R-R-E-L-L.

Bruce: Okay, great. So how did you and Jordan start Heartland Pursuit?

Eric: Well, we'd just been talking a lot and my dad, me, and my brother both had started filming deer hunts and we were talking, me and a few of my friends. We're like we should start doing that, putting it on YouTube, stuff like that. And then one day we all just decided to go for it, see what we can make it. And so there's six of us in the group, and then just all sort of talking, what are we gonna do, what's it gonna be called, all that stuff, and we decided Heartland Pursuit was a good name because another word for Midwest is heartland and then we're pretty much just pursuing animals, mainly in the Midwest, so that's how we came up with the name. And we're all really big hunters, so it all just is working out pretty well so far.

Bruce: Eric, when did you get started hunting whitetails? How young were you?

Eric: I was in sixth grade when I shot my first whitetail with my dad, second season shotgun in Iowa, but I'd gone with him multiple times before. My brother and I had gone with him and so my first deer was in sixth grade, and I'd been hunting since I was four, I believe.

Bruce: Wow, how about you, Jordan?

Jordan: My first deer was in sixth grade also. Me and my dad were out for the [inaudible 00:02:53] and I had a little [inaudible 00:02:58] and I took him out.

Bruce: Pretty exciting time, I bet.

Jordan: Yeah, it was pretty exciting.

Bruce: Give us some of your background, Jordan, about Heartland Pursuit. Eric's given some high points. What's your thoughts about what you guys are doing?

Jordan: I think it's pretty good, just trying to get some videos out, trying to get our name out, teach people about hunting and get them into it, take out some younger kids and get them into hunting.

Bruce: Let's talk about that a little bit more because that's a central theme that runs through all my interviews is people, old and young, are concerned about what we're not doing for the kids and concerned about the kids that are just on smartphones and iPads, and they're in the digital world. How do you think hunting can help rectify that?

Jordan: [inaudible 00:04:03] that we came from, like how we didn't have the electronics and everything, we were just...we had to live without it, hunters and gatherers, and get out into the woods.

Bruce: What do you think is some of the lessons learned by just being in the woods? What did that teach you?

Jordan: Patience and [00:04:33].

Bruce: Anything else?

Jordan: Quality time spent with the family, moments that you'll never forget, I guess, means a lot to both of us.

Bruce: Well, let's share a couple of those moments. I know we're going quickly through the show because you guys have got to get back to work, but share one of those moments that is in your memory bank and will last there forever.

Eric: Well, my favorite memory was me and my dad, it was actually me and my dad and my buddy Skip, [inaudible 00:05:14] my first hunt, and I remember I shot a doe earlier that day, earlier that morning, and then the afternoon, went back out trying to get me a buck.

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Bruce: Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to another edition of Whitetail Rendezvous this is your host Bruce Hutcheon. Today I have a very interesting gentleman Gary Zager pro staff with Relentless Addiction Outdoors. Gary say hello to the listeners.

Gary: Hello there how are you doing today?

Bruce: Gary let's jump right into it. Let's talk about Relentless Addiction Outdoors.

Gary: It's a great idea; it's a great concept it's going to be a great show. What we're going to do is we want to capitalize on utilizing our family members, our friends to get back to the basics of hunting get back to the original reasons why we did it for the fond memories and the tradition just spending time with each other in the outdoors.

Bruce: You mentioned something that's really core to Whitetail Rendezvous; family, friends and tradition. Let's start with the traditions of hunting where did that come from with you?

Gary: I was born and raised in Central Wisconsin. I've been in the country my entire life. My family has a tradition of hunting. I remember as a very young child our deer hunts and our falls were filled with a lot of people coming over, big groups for deer hunting getting together waking up on those cold mornings and having that big group together around the kitchen table making the plans for the day and just the excitement of sharing all those things with everyone. It was something [inaudible 01:32].

Bruce: Is there one central figure that helped you get into deer hunting or was it a collection of aunts and uncles and grandfathers, moms and dads?

Gary: It was definitely a collective effort but the one that sticks out really is my father. He's very old school and he is the basics, the traditions. If he didn't have to work for it, it really didn't seem like it was a...nothing is given to you and he instilled that in me and tried to follow in his footsteps as much as I can.

Bruce: Well I think you're doing a pretty good job based on the head shot we got...is that a musky or a pipe?

Gary: That's my [inaudible 02:21].

Bruce: Yeah he is known. Listeners you'll be able to see that when we put Gary up on his release date. Let's talk about lessons learnt. We all learn lessons when we are in deer camp or not in deer camp in the pre stands. What are couple lessons learnt last month and probably last year that you are going to take forward and implement this year?

Gary: One of the big things that I worked with and I really learnt last year was to have a multiple stand set up. In other words have different areas that I can go to on different nights based on wind conditions, based on weather based on patterns. Here in Wisconsin where I'm hunting you have to deal with that fall harvest and Deer patterns are going to change as far as what they are going to eat how they are going to travel when they are in the process of that harvesting. So it started out last year with only one or two options and I quickly found out sometimes those aren't the best things, and you'll spend lovely days out in the outdoors but you won't be feeling that in a inaudible 03:24].

Bruce: All right let's stay right there. How do you know that the Deer's behavior has changed?

Gary: Thorough the use of a lot of different things. Through time in the [inaudible 03:37] obviously, through trail cameras, through citing during the day or in the evening as far as when you're not hunting just driving around.

Bruce: Tell me how you deploy your trail cameras?

Gary: Usually I try to deploy my trail cameras on non-travel routes something that's easier for me to get to and get out of without trying to disturb the area too much. Trying to catch deer in and out like a set of their vetting areas, their feeding areas and trying to use that type of situation scenario to use them to my best advantage.

Bruce: When you're setting up a stand you said lessons learned that you had a multiple sets.

"BuckNuts."

Welcome to another episode of "Whitetail Rendezvous." This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. Today, I have Eddie McFarland from "BuckNuts." Eddie, welcome.

Eddie: Great to have a chance to talk to you and hopefully, we're getting out there and getting some information to everyone listening today.

Bruce: Eddie, let's start right off and tell us about "BuckNuts."

Eddie: I've been involved in the outdoor industry from a videographer and field producer standpoint for about seven or eight years now and during that time, I always wanted to try to start my own project. A couple of years ago, I just decided it was time. So I split with a good friend of mine that I was working with, Kyle Wieter with Adrenaline Junkies. I started "The BuckNuts" and my vision of what the program would be was evolving at that point. I went through some personal stuff and everything just kind of fell into place and I saw what I wanted the show to be about. Certainly about God, family and friends and the hard work that it takes to be able to do what we do.

We're not doing for it a living. We're not doing it to get rich and famous. We've all got 9:00 to 5:00 jobs and we've got to earn a paycheck, but when we've got that spare time, we're out there doing what we love.

Bruce: Let's unpack what you just said a little bit more. You said it was hard to get started, to get some traction, because there's a lot of listeners that would like to be where you are in the outdoor industry. What are some of the mistakes that you made in the beginning and what are you so happy about today that you made that decision?

Eddie: The biggest challenge or the biggest obstacle is just making up your mind that you're going to do it. You don't have to put yourself out there financially. You do have to take some risks and you have to have some financial commitment for it. It's basically just not saying "no" because it is an extremely competitive . . . Money drives the industry. It seems like a huge, large industry, but it really isn't. So every dollar that sponsors have out there is extremely competitive. You've just got to keep networking, keep talking to people and hopefully, you can get someone who'll cover your costs.

I know plenty of guys that are putting on shows right now and they're either losing money or breaking even. It's fine if you break even. I certainly am not in a position and I know most people aren't in a position to have a hobby where you spend that much money to have a TV show.

Bruce: Where does your show air on the TV?

Eddie: Right now, we're negotiating. We've had a couple different airtime contracts and we've pushed them back due to not having that title sponsor to cover the airtime and we're still looking for that to be honest. We had . . . We're negotiating different airtimes on Pursuit Channel. We were going to go with two networks, one being Pursuit and one being NBC Sports. But I think we're going to just back off and go with Pursuit. Get more bang for our buck in that direction.

we're shooting for midweek, prime-time spots.

As far as air times, we're shooting for midweek, prime-time spots. We've had those airtime contracts in our possession. We just had to push it back to third and fourth quarter for 2016.

Bruce: Looking at . . . go ahead.

Eddie: Basically, you could see us on air in July of 2016. We'll be filming additional footage this fall and then that'll hit the editing room and be ready to air in 2016.

Bruce: Tell people about the crew at "BuckNuts."

pretty diverse crew, some guys and gals that have had industry experience

Eddie: We've got a pretty diverse crew, some guys and gals that have had industry experience. They're not green, if you will. They've filmed and hunted on other shows before. We've got some new people, too. It's what you bring to the table. I'm not saying that we're recruiting now, but we're always on the lookout for somebody that kind of fits the bill.

Pro Staffer for PSE since 1986

Welcome to another episode of White Tail Rendezvous. This is your host Bruce Hutcheon.

This afternoon we are very privileged and fortunate to have on the show, Gary Campbell. He's been a Pro Staffer for PSE since 1986. He also played basketball in college and spent three years in the Pittsburgh Pirate Baseball organization. He's an artist and has a number of his works spread around the city of Pueblo, Colorado. Gary, welcome to the show.

Gary: Thank you, Bruce. It's a real pleasure to be on here.

Bruce: Let's just jump right into the interview and talking about how your excellence in competitive sports, basketball and baseball, helped you as a hunter.

Gary: Well, I was raised in a little town called Bell, Missouri, down in the Ozarks of Missouri, and it was about 800 people in the town. You did three things. You played basketball, baseball, and you hunted. That's all there was to do.

Some kids didn't play sports, but everybody hunted. And I was fortunate to be in the presence of my grandfather who was kind of the modern day mountain man. He died in 1954 when I was 10 years old, and he still trapped for a living in Missouri. He gave me the background of my hunting and what have you, and he made all my bows and arrows when I was a little kid. I started at about five years old. He was an artist with a piece of glass and a knife. When he finished my long bows, they looked like they'd come out of the factory, and I was the envy of all the kids.

I would beg him to shoot his guns, and he never would let me. One day, wasn't long before he died, I said "Grandpa, why can't I shoot your guns?"

Gary, that bow will teach you to hunt, but with a rifle you've just got to be a good shot."

He said "Gary, that bow will teach you to hunt, but with a rifle you've just got to be a good shot." It was the best thing I was ever told. Not that I didn't hunt with a rifle later years, but I've always stayed with a bow. Since I was five years old, I've shot a bow and hunted with a bow as I got a little older. That's basically what started my background in hunting and having the influence of him.

Then, of course, playing sports. I was a basketball player and a baseball player. I was very fortunate that God gave me the ability and talent to play in the sports. When I graduated from high school, my senior year, I had six professional contracts offered to me in baseball. And I had 17 scholarships offered to me by colleges, and I made the All-American team in basketball. I decided to go to Missouri University, and on a [inaudible 00:3:23], it didn't cost me anything to go to school. I played two years, and then I signed with the Pirates.

To get back to your original question, how did that help me in my hunting? Through, I think, where I was raised had more to contribute, and my grandfather, then probably being athletic. Although, I believe being athletic will always help you in everything you do. But as far as being a hunter, it was born in the desire of my background to hunt. As you well know, Bruce, you don't ever get rid of that, pal.

Bruce: No, sir, you don't. Your career is illustrious, to say the least, and you've competed on championship levels, All-American levels, and professional levels, and that stays with you. Your drive in the hunting, in our conversations about hunting, I think that definitely has made you a better hunter.

Good afternoon, everybody, to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. From time to time I run across somebody that's that's gotten something new on the block, something interesting, something current, and you don't have to be technologically savvy to run it. That man would be Scott Osteen with Inside the Hunt. He is the founder of Inside the Hunt and he's got a lot to share with us, so Scott, say "Hello" to the folks.

Scott: Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? Bruce, I appreciate you having me on, reaching out to me, and asking me to be a part of your show. I'm interested to listen to all of the episodes and get to know everybody that's out there. Thank you for having me.

Bruce: Well we welcome you to our community. And it is that. It's a community. We talk about hunting. We talk about personals in hunting. We talk about the things we care about: the youth, the women, and mostly important, the tradition of hunting. So how is Inside the Hunt going to help us, and help you, and help hunters build a tradition? Get youth involved and get women involved in the sport.

Scott: Well, the reason I got started with it, I'm probably not much different than everybody else. So when it comes to watching hunting shows on TV, you watch and you see these massive, big bucks being killed and you say, "Man, I've got to have some that!" And when you get to the woods and that doesn't happen, I think we all may get a little distraught or a little down about it.

My idea was a couple of different things, but to give the average individual like myself a platform for sharing their hunt, to take to take us, the general public, inside their hunt. What do you do that I'm not doing? And to be able to share those experiences. I hope that when people get to using it, and get familiar with the sight, that they will start to make little videos of how they place their stand. Little videos of what they've done in their food plot, just any number of different things, because we don't all have the budget that you see on TV.

I think there's probably a lot of good information that's out there and there's not one central location for people to share that about hunting. And to me, this community -- and you're exactly right; that's what we are -- this community is very shareable, very friendly with one another. And we have the technology now. Everybody has a phone that has a camera on it that can record a video. Upload it right from the food plot.

I see constantly people that just got through hunting and they share their video of their hunt, where they killed -- it's currently turkey season -- where they killed their turkey. As I watched some of this, I noticed that it was shared on Facebook. A lot of people made comments that were anti-hunters or whatever. I said, "We need a place where we all feel welcome as hunters, and we don't have to listen to outside voices, and we can share that information back and forth.

And to encourage women and children to get involved in this sport. I have a nine-year-old son, who yesterday was begging me to take him fishing. So I think having a community like this, where we can share that type of information was what really got me started on the website.

Hello everybody out there in the world of Whitetail Rendezvous. Today we're bringing a very special guy. Because everybody in the whitetail world uses some kind of broadhead. And Preston Lewis is going to share what he does at American Cutting Edge. He is the Outdoor Division Product Manager, and also he and his friends, in 2012, started up a company called Blood Trail Hunters. Preston, say hello to our listeners.

Preston: Hey everybody at Whitetail Rendezvous.

Bruce: So, Preston, let's talk about what you do at American Cutting Edge?

Preston: As the Product Manager at American Cutting Edge, I handle a wide variety of outdoor accounts, mostly focused on broadheads, more broadhead manufacturer, or blade manufacturer and distributor in Dayton, Ohio. So the top names in the industry, if you've ever shot a broadhead, there's a good chance you've shot our blade.

Bruce: So just to get that right, so I used to shoot Barrie Archery Rocky Mountain Supreme. So it's a possibility you made those blades?

Preston: It's a very good possibility. Yeah, I obviously couldn't say because of . . .

Bruce: Sure.

Preston: . . . because of protection. But, yeah, there's a great possibility that. . . you'd be hard pressed to go to a sporting goods store and find a top 10 broadhead that we haven't had our hands on in one way or another.

Bruce: Now let's talk about that because there's a gazillion broadheads out there, many, many fixed blades and then mechanical blades. And what makes a really good blade for a broadhead?

Preston: It kind of depends but usually, and the people hate to admit this but there's not a whole lot of variety in broadheads when you come to think about it. I mean, there are tons on the market. Don't get me wrong. And there's tons of slight changes, but you have your two sections. You have mechanicals and you have fixed. What really makes it is basically just the torture test. I mean, if your material of your blade and the material of your farrow can stick up to a torture test, you've got the blade that everybody's going to want. You've got a broadhead that everyone's going to want. So when you hear a popular broadhead, it's not because the marketing is behind it. It's because it's a good broadhead. It does the trick.

Bruce: Torture test, can you share or is that proprietary information?

Preston: Yeah, not at all. It's part of a first article and precision testing that all companies do one way or another. I mean, you see them on commercials and things like that. As a matter of fact, if you go to Wac'em's website, they just launched a new website. It's really cool. I was on there the other day checking it out. And they basically show the steps of a torture test. I mean, it's the barrel shoot. It's the bone break, it's the cutting diameter so on, so forth. Once you pass all those, as long as your blade's standing at the end, that's all that matters.

Bruce: Now why are blades so hard to get out of the tree because I just shot over an elk or underneath a mule deer?

Preston: Yeah, haven't we all at some point.

Bruce: I pulling up on my whitetail buck and he jumps the string. The tree should have never saw the arrow. So is that gone? Is it worthwhile pulling those out?

Preston: If you can get them out, you can get them out depending on the head. They're not meant to hit that kind of impact. With bones, and flesh and meat, and all that good stuff, it's meant to go through that. It's built for that. The hardness that we put blades to and farrows to on the HRC scale, you really just can't get anything that solid and expect it to be just okay. So that's my two cents about it. I mean, if it's not going through an animal, it's going through something else and sticking into it, it's going to be hard to get out. Especially with that kind of kinetic energy.

Bruce Hutcheon: 4, 3, 2, 1. Welcome everybody to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. And I'm really excited to have our first seed growing, or seed distributor, food plot, seed merchant. Tony Andrews is the owner of Andrews Seed and it's a food plot business. Tony, welcome to the show.

Tony Andrews: Thanks for having me.

Bruce Hutcheon: Hey, just tell us about the seed business. You know, I'm intrigued about, you know, how you get into that. We all know, everybody's farming food plots and building good protein and nutrition for deer. But tell us about your story.

Tony Andrews: Well, I grew up on the farm. I was able to come on board with a couple of major seed companies and kind of seen a niche market in my area for some food plot business, so I started Andrews Seed here about two or three months ago. I hooked up with a couple of distributors. I can pretty much do any custom blend that anybody would ever think of, got access to thousands of different seeds through the different companies that I work with, and just kind of seen a niche market here in my area that nobody was really involved in, so I took the opportunity and hopefully can run with it.

Bruce Hutcheon: Let's talk about food plots. I know you're in the agriculture business and this is planting time and all that, so you're busier than anything, and thank you so much for taking the time, but let's talk about, spend a few minutes on the importance of food plots and why you think everybody is starting to become, become farmers and supporting deer because of what they're growing.

Tony Andrews: Well, I, I see it being very beneficial in my area with. I know we've got a lot of wheat growing in our area, but this gives the whitetail another option as far as higher protein food. Something that is going to be summer hardy that is going to give them good feed quality throughout the warm season and also supplement, you know, the farmer's wheat fields that the deer are grazing. And it helps to hold the deer on your property is what I've found to be most beneficial.

Bruce Hutcheon: Okay, I'm writing that down. So the biggest thing is they have a food source. Because I've heard food, water, and cover and the deer will come, you know, if they're, you know, if they're in the area and the better you protect that, then the more deer you're going to grow. Do you agree on that?

Tony Andrews: Right. I agree wholeheartedly. But then a lot, I guess a lot of our area, the big deer hunting areas is a lot of creek ground, muddy, slumpy areas and then you get further away and then you kind of run into some sand hill areas, and I've got a lot of guys that are doing this out in the sand hill areas where the, the forage or the food quality out there is, is mostly just grasses. They've got to travel quite a ways to find a good wheat field and things like that, so this, this helps ensure that the deer won't necessarily leave your property or if they do, they don't have to go as far.

I mean, we're, and we're seeing great results just from some other guys that have tried other, other brands, other varieties that you buy as your big, big box store, big retail stores. And I, and I decided to start doing this to kind of help those guys. You know, me, especially. I don't want to go out and spend a hundred and fifty bucks on a ten pound bag of seed when I can spend the same amount of money and get a 50 pound bag and do twice as many acres, so that's kind of my thought.

Kind of my process of why I'm doing this is to make it a little more affordable for some of those guys. Some of the guys that maybe don't necessarily have the money to buy a lease. Just have a few acres that, you know, a local farmer lets them hunt. They can go in there and scratch up the ground a little bit. I mean, a seed spreader and a rake is really all you need for some of the blends that I offer and I feel lkl that makes it more available to just the every day guy that maybe doesn't necessarily have ...

Steve Purvis Owner Kentucky Dream land LLC Avid whitetail hunter and real estate investor

Bruce: All right, here we go. Hello out there, everybody in the world of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is Bruce Hutcheon, your host, and today I have Steve Purvis from Kentucky Dreamland, LCC who buys and sells hunting land throughout the mid-west. Welcome to the show, Steve.

Steve: Hi Bruce, thanks for having me.

Bruce: So starting right off, let's talk about that story you shared with me a couple weeks ago about that 142 that you had patterned pretty well, then he disappeared and let's hear what the listening audience, just what that was all about.

Steve: Okay. Well that story started off with getting tons of [Inaudible 00:00:51] pictures of this buck, and just like everybody else a lot of them are at night time, but I was getting a lot of this buck along with four or five other bucks. And I always had a perfect win for this stand, I always buy grate proof lots, I can never understand when I was hunting I wasn't hitting these bucks but I was getting them on trail cam. So it came to my conclusion that I need to set some trail cameras up on the route that I'm taking to get to my stand. So I put up a trail camera and sure as the world, the exact same stand I was walking to, the path, to get there, I had every single buck on camera using the exact same way.

So, with that knowledge, I had set up on a tower stand and at the end of the field where I could overlook to see what would come out that next night, and about 15 deer came out, seven buck, I mean just grunting. The greatest little scene you could have ever seen. Well, then I realized . . .

Bruce: Wow.

Steve: It was awesome. I mean, I couldn't even, I've never even heard of so many bucks grinding at one time in my entire life on this day. It was the last day of gun season. I really wanted to kill a buck, this buck, with my bow, I'd rather kill him with my gun. Sot he next day, it's back to bow season, gun seasons's over, and I just take a different route to the exact same tree stand. I get up into the stands and it's the exact same wind, exact same stand, I just took a different route getting there. Within 30 minutes, him, another younger 18 pointer, a smaller buck, all was chasing a doe. He came right down, 15 yards from my stand and I shot him and he went about 25 yards and fell over.

Bruce: Wow.

Steve: The moral of the story here is just, like, you know, it's the same stand. I wasn't hunting the wrong stand, I wasn't hunting the wrong wind. I was over the right food source, I was in the right area. It was just the way that I took to get to my stand.

Bruce: So when you changed up how you got to the stand, lets' tell the listeners exactly what you did. Tell us what you did before and then what you did to solve the problem, because obviously the deer was there, you did something that he didn't like and then you did something that he didn't know about and game over.

Steve: Well basically, I mean, when the deer are taking the same path that you're walking into the woods, there will simply smell you. I mean, you could use all the scent products you want and you can put on the rubber boots and do the whole nine yards, but there's still that scent there that they're smelling you. Or if he wasn't smelling me, he could have been overlooking that bedding area on the woods area that I was coming through and they could have simply seen me. I don't know that factor, we'll never know. They either a, smell me walking in or they seen me walking in. So when I just changed the route and I came through the field versus coming through the little woods path to get to the exact same stand, there was no way. I know they definitely couldn't smell me because of the way that I came in through the field.

Bruce: Mm-hmm.

Steve: It made all the difference in the world, so those deer that was coming up the hill to the bedding, now there was no way.

John Musgrave Game Seekers Outdoors to educate and encourage folks about the art and passion of hunting, trapping and experiencing the outdoors

Interviewer: Okay, here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This afternoon, we have John Musgrave, lead manager, pro-staffer at Game Seekers Outdoors. John, welcome to the show.

John: Thank you for having me.

Interviewer: Hey, we’ve been sharing some tales. Let's just go right back to what we were just talking about, about that buck you patterned and how you were able to get ‘em. Why don't you just bring us back about three or four minutes and start that story all over again, because that was a good one.

John: All right, well I started about three years ago when my wife got me a set of property. Went out, hunted the stand, first day hunted the stand, and had a nice, big [inaudible 00:00:50] come in behind me. No shot whatsoever. He takes off, bolts on me, and my heart just sank. I thought, "Man, there was only my one chance." I’ve never seen anything else the rest of the evening until just right before dark and I had this nice, big four-point.

It was probably 130, 140-class buck, come waltzing in, give me the perfect broadside shot. Took the shot, and I'm not 100% sure why it hit him, but the ol' golden rule is when in doubt, back out. I got excited. I'm like, "Nah, I'm not backing out. I just went out after it." Then the landowner went after him, and lost the blood trail. I mean it just teetered out to nothing.

In this following year or later on in that year, I set trail cameras and started seeing some nice bucks on the trail cameras. Then they come this last fall, and started seeing this nice big eight on there, and I thought, "Man, this is the one I wanna take." He looked like he was a decent-sized buck. Just liked the ways the horns were built. It looked like he was a solid three-and-a -half, maybe a four-year old.

So I patterned him and I had him down to where he was exactly the times he was coming in. Went in on November the 1st, crawled up there that morning, had a little four-point come in 15, 20 yards from me. Watched him play around a little bit and kind of enjoyed getting some video footage of him. That concluded the morning. Went and knocked out the afternoon, set up there in that stand, and wasn't seeing nothing. I thought, "Man, this is going to be a bust evening, I guess."

Man, I just happened to turn my head to my left, and I when I turned my head to my left, there this big boy was coming in grunting, perfect, just perfect textbook situation. He comes in, about 25 yards, gives me a nice shot, I take the shot, and I hit him real low. Unfortunately, I thought I had a good hit, but apparently not. It was a three-and-a-half mile tracking job. I'm thankful for the Raven Broadheads that we were using at the time for Game Seekers.

They got two-and-a-half inch cut on ‘em and they opened him up something bad. It was solid blood trail from the impact all the way until the time he dropped. I tracked him all night long that night till about midnight. Come out with my buddies, we had jumped him up in his bed. When we jumped him up in his bed, my buddy asked me "So what do you wanna do." I said, "Well, the only thing we can do is if… well, I'm almost 100% sure that I can. Let's go on up there. If there’s blood on the bed, we're gonna get him out of here." Sure enough, we walked up, blood on the bed. So I thought, "All right, let's go." So we leave.

I go back out the next morning alone by myself. Picked up the blood trail right off, and as soon as I picked up the blood trail, I walked 200 yards and there he laid dead. It's my biggest buck to date with my bow, and I mean I couldn't be more happier to get that buck.

Interviewer: Thanks for sharing that story. Let's just circle back around. Let's just talk about the genesis of Game Seekers Outdoors. How did you get involved in that and why you're in...