Bruce: Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. I'm privileged to have Sheri Yarborough on the show today. Sheri and Judd Cooney run Iowa Trophy. Welcome to the show.

Sheri: How are you doing, Bruce? Great to be here.

Bruce: I'm really doing good. And I heard it's raining in turkey zone...

Sheri: Yes, it has. It's been wet and windy. It's not responding right now.

Bruce: Is there any hope that it's gonna stop?

Sheri: Oh, yeah. It's early. I just don't think they're fired up just yet. I need a little warmer weather and get out there and start playing in the sunshine. It's early yet.

Bruce: Well, thanks for that. Let's just jump into it. Why whitetails and why are you in the outfitting business? So the first thing is white tails and the second one, now you're in the business. You're in the outdoor business.

Sheri: Yeah I'm living the dream, whitetails. Born and raised in Idaho so mostly deer, elk that type of spot and stock. Came through Iowa few times and now we have Whitetail in Idaho they just have the mass and racks that the Midwest does and the terrain is a lot different. I've never even heard of hunting from a tree stand or a ground blind or a pop up where I came from and I come out here and you think, "Wow, this is gonna be easy." Out here flat rolling hills, easy to get around and I learned real quick it was a whole different ball game. The challenge, there really is no more intelligent animal out there than a whitetail deer. So I moved out here and started my taxidermy out here, and I'm thoroughly enjoying life mountain and other people's trophies and shooting my own trophies. I had the privilege of running into Judd Cooney out here and we hit off and enjoyed the same things and have the same passion with whitetails and he gave me an opportunity of a lifetime. Brought me in as a partner with Iowa Trophy Whitetail Outfitters, and like I said, I'm living the dream now

Bruce: Share with the listeners about what happens when you finish a mount when you created that gonna last in somebody's, a guy, a gal's house for a long time? How do you feel when they come pick it up and their jaws drop and their just astounded by your work? Share that from your end, not from the customer's end, but from your end as craftsman and somebody that really do a good job. Speak about it.

Sheri: Well you know that's easy. I've been doing it for 28 years and I've done it for the sporting good stores and the big office buildings. And I kinda got over my head there for a little while in Idaho before I came out here and it was like you are a number, "Here, mount this, this, and this, and this is your spot. You have x amount of time to do it in." You have the self-satisfaction that you did it, but the appreciation wasn't there. And so when I came to Iowa, I made myself a promise that I'd never get back to that point again. I'm working 18, 20 hours a day on a project there and you're lucky if you got a thank you. You've got a nice paycheck, but the appreciation wasn't there. When I came back here, I've done especially here because there is no age limit. You got 7-year-olds out there shooting trophy bucks. And you take a young man's first buck and you mount if for them and they walk in there and they see it with social media now, instantly it's plastered all over Facebook and they're telling you thank you and how much they love it and these likes mean more to me than the dollar bill does. And the self-satisfaction that, yeah, I created this and it's great but when you got a little kid that's ready to cry when he sees it because it looks so good, that really makes me feel good.

Bruce: I know that some grown man that cry when they see a job well done.

Sheri: I think I have a few of those customers, too.

Bruce: Nice job Sheri. You've mentioned something, the challenge of hunting whitetail. I don't know if that's exactly how put it. Let's talk about the challenge of hunting mature whitetail bucks.

Interviewer: DeerLab.com. Why get started, who's involved with it and who's your target market?

Jon: Sure. Well, it's kind of a funny story. I mentioned to you earlier that I've only been hunting for about five years and it really started with a date with my wife. We were out to dinner and I had a son, Reese, who was one at the time and really was trying to...I was talking to my wife, Samantha, just trying to come up with different ideas of what I can do with my son as I get older.

When I was 15, my dad turned 40 and when I was 40 my son was 1, so there was a huge difference as far as my age compared to my dad growing up. And I've always wanted to hunt but really never had anybody around me that hunted. And we were sitting at dinner one night and at a restaurant and I basically said to Samantha, "You know, I want to learn how to hunt," and we were just talking about the process of that.

Anyway, long story short, for our anniversary my wife surprised me with a Mathews bow. And it was a complete shock because she's a CPA and very frugal in her spending of gifts. And so, anything over $50 is a pretty big surprise. So for her to go out and get a bow, she actually got a friend of mine that does hunt and he went out and picked out the bow for me. That really got me into hunting. I had a friend that I would go out with and basically try to glean as much information from him as possible. And we started using trail cameras and as I was using several trail cameras, it became a pain to manage all the photos. But also, trying to understand what was going on behind the scenes instead of just looking at the photo. "Okay, when is this deer coming in?" You know, "What other cameras is he hitting? Is there a pattern that goes behind this?"

And having a web background, that's where I started to kind of really build a tool out for myself, wanting to build a tool out for myself. And I had a friend who was up in Greeneville,

together and so we basically teamed up. His name is Ryan Wood, and started building Deer Lab. And so, really, the focus of Deer Lab is to pattern bucks with your trail camera photos. We are centered around your trail camera photos. And, you know, the end goal is to see where specific deer, or specific buck is moving, and along that way, along that route, is basically managing your photos. And so, it does that I think very well, very easy.

I mean one of the things that we wanted to do was really make it a very easy to use tool that anybody could use. No matter what your experience is, you could just upload your photos and we would do a lot of the work for you. And so that's kind of how it all started. We've been going since the end of 2013. And so we went through our first year last year and we're really excited about this upcoming year. We've added a lot of new features to the site and are just waiting for everybody to really get their cameras out and start using them.

Interviewer: Who is your target market?

Jon: Well, you know, obviously most people have one, two, three cameras and that's probably not our target market. We're after more of the serious hunters that have over three cameras. It's hard to pattern a buck with just a couple of cameras unless you're moving them around a lot. And so most of our users have over three cameras.

Interviewer: Up to how many?

Jon: It doesn't matter. I mean we have customers that have more than a hundred cameras, and we have customers all the way down to one camera. So there's lots of different varieties. We have different plans for each group. We also just have just a number of tools. Some people use it for patterning specific bucks. Some people just use it to manage their photos, to share their photos. We have some tools that can allow you to easily share your tools without sharing the sensitive information, such as where your cameras are located. I even have a client that is using it for patterning alligators, which I never knew you could do that...

Bruce: Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. And we welcome Kevin Paulson of Hunting Life to our community today. Kevin, welcome to the show. HuntingLife.com

Kevin: Hey, Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and I'm super happy to be here.HuntingLife.com

Bruce: Kevin, why don't you share with our listeners a little bit about you, and a little about HuntingLife.com, your background, and then at the end of course, we'll have the promo section where you'll be able to share specific details. But just give us a 300,000-foot view of Kevin Paulson and why you're so passionate about whitetails.HuntingLife.com

Kevin: Fantastic. I've been hunting beside my dad. From the time I was about 5 years old on, I was following in his footsteps. My dad was 30 years in the United States Corps service so I grew up hunting and learned about conservation firsthand in our national forests. My dad was throughout California for the first 15 years of my life. The first year, I actually chased a mule deer at the Inyo National Forest in California. My Dad was transferred to Washington DC and moved to Virginia.HuntingLife.com

And I learned how to chase whitetail a little bit. I wasn't really successful the first 4 or 5 years of chasing whitetail. Actually the first deer I actually shot was with a bow in Oregon, a blacktail. I started in the business and did pretty well in Washington DC, and I bought an outfitting business after going on a couple of elk hunts in Montana and Idaho. And spent a couple of years, I call it my Harvard education, I learned how to guide elk and mule deer hunts, and spring bear hunts, and mountain lion hunts.HuntingLife.com

And sold my interest in the outfitting business and bought HuntingLife.com the very next day. I found that what I really enjoyed about the outfitting business was the writing aspect of it and getting to talk with hunters and work with the conservation groups. We built HuntingLife.com to be a national news source for hunting and conservation, and we're going on our 10th year. So it's been a real fun experience.HuntingLife.com

Bruce: Thank you for the background. Let's go back and talk about the relationship you had with your dad in regards to hunting. What are some of things that have stayed with you to today that's a useful to hunting and just the lessons learned?HuntingLife.com

Kevin: Well, I think the biggest lesson that I learned and I instill with my kids was making hunting enjoyable, and making it more than just about killing, getting to be out there and experience the time outdoors, and spend the time necessary to become proficient with your weapon. When I first got to go deer hunting, I was 14 years old.

And I came to my dad, and I had a bow at the time, and I said, "I want to bow-hunt first." And he looked at me and he said, "I don't know if you're quite ready for that." And I said, "What do I got to do to get ready?" And he said, "You've got to place 50 shots in 50 yards, every single one of them into a paper plate." And I said, "Okay." So I sat down and I practiced 2-3 hours a day, every day that summer and I got proficient with my bow. And I spent the time necessary to learn how to use that weapon, and it's made me a better hunter today.

Bruce: Listeners, I hope you took a note as I just did. I get quiet sometimes when I'm writing. But practice every single day with archery gear is paramount to having the confidence when that buck or doe walks underneath your stand that you're going to put the arrow right where you want it. Would you agree with that, Kevin?

Kevin: Oh, absolutely. Aim small, miss small, spend the time to know your equipment to where it becomes second nature. I shoot the Mathews No Cam right now and I absolutely love that bow. It's incredibly flat at shooting. But there's a learning to make it muscle memory to where every single time you pull that bow back, the string coming across your nose, the pin sight's exactly where it's supposed to be...

I would have to agree with you on that, Bruce. It is the backbone probably of hunting here in the United States. I mean, the elk are phenomenal animals. The mule deer, the antelope, the turkeys, the ducks, the pheasants, I get it. But when it all comes down to the bottom line, it's the whitetail deer that kind of drives the industry. So we've had a good product to work with in the whitetail deer, and quite honestly, in our 33 years, we have been blessed with so many loyal and generous members. That's what allowed us to flourish, and to be able to work toward that mission statement.

I would say just get out there, and check it out, and see how you feel when you get outside because there's a lot of people who, at first they might be intimidated by it or feel uncomfortable because they've never done it. They might be embarrassed or feel like they might do something wrong, but when it comes to getting outside and just experiencing it, you can't really go wrong. You get out there, and you'll fall in love with it. You'll see something you haven't seen before. You might feel something you haven't felt before. And I've seen, from the young people that I've taken out with me, something comes alive inside of them and they find that passion too, most of the time.

So I think the whitetail deer will always humble you. Right when you think you've got them figured out, they pull something new out of the hat. One of my favorite places, especially if I'm hunting a new area for whitetail, at least first hunt from an observation point, don't go diving right into the middle of the wood lot right away. So many times, you see a deer trail heading in a certain direction and you assume he's gonna come out somewhere on that trail. But those trails will circle up into the field almost every time, or I'm sorry, downwind of the field. So be aware of that. Look from a distance. Watch where you're going. They will never cease to amaze you with how they approach a field. A mature buck or a mature doe, a mature doe that's raised two fawns despite hunting, coyotes, and wolves is a smart animal.

You know Bruce, I really can't say I have one thing that makes me absolutely passionate about it. There are so many things. The one thing is, I do a lot of hunting alone, and I can get out there and get in my tree stand, buckle myself in and, you know, I can watch the squirrels play and get over the top of my head and drop acorns and I'm happy. Or I can watch the little birds flutter around on a limb and play with their friends and I'm happy. It's just, it's alone time for me and I always, you know, there's, I always let deer walk that you know that are small, that are not of age. Bucks that are not three and four years old. You know, if they're one two and three, I probably let them walk and go until they're four and five years old. You know because I don't want to cull my herd and let the young one's get bigger. The thing is, it's getting closer to nature. It's getting me time. It's getting time to enjoy what God has put on this earth to give us to enjoy.