Iowa born and raised, Nate Keeney, grew up in a family with a strong hunting tradition. That’s probably one of the reasons why he became part of Extreme Element Outdoors. Nate tried to pursue a career in Natural Resources Management but eventually realized that it was hard work establishing a career in it. Using his experience, he planted custom food plots for himself and for others who share his vision. At Extreme Element Outdoors, Nate was able to connect to a community that loved the outdoors as much as he did. The group aims to share strategies and lessons from their various experiences on hunting, fishing, and being in the outdoors. Hear more about it from Nate in this episode.
—
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Extreme Element Outdoors Rock Mature Bucks – Nate Keeney
We’re heading out to Iowa, the home of the giants. Everybody knows that Iowa has giant bucks. Nate Keeney is going to tell us all about a young man who’s working on a farm. He doesn’t own it, but he’s working in 2,000 acres and that’s his job. He’s able to have a couple of honey holes on that land. Plus, he’s got some other honey holes through his joining up with Extreme Element Outdoors. Those guys are putting together a great team in Central Iowa and you’ll be hearing more from them. I’ve got Chris Enyeart coming up on the show and he’s going to talk about Extreme Element Outdoors. Nate’s a gung-ho young man that loves hunting whitetails. If he isn’t working, he’s sleeping or hunting whitetails. He’s eating, too. By the way, Nate got married. I hope that your wedding went great. Nate Keeney is going to bring some keys to why he’s a successful hunter. One, scent control. Two, stand placement and three, he always watches the wind. Nate, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Bruce.
I know that you left school and went to be in Natural Resource Management. What was that all about? Why didn’t it work out? If you can share that.
I left my hometown, thinking I need bigger and better things. I started on the path of Natural Resources Management. I did my Associate Degree at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo. I went to Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa and pursued natural resources all the way out to get my Bachelor’s degree. I found out the hard way that it’s a popular job. Once people are in that field of being a conservation officer, fisheries, biologist or anything on that line, it seems like they stay in that job for a long time because something that they love and love to do every day. It’s hard to get your foot in the door and have the experience that they want. When you come out of college, you only can work as a summer seasonal. You get to school all the other times. All of that led me to where I am now with farming down in Southeast Iowa. The farm I work for personally does about 600 acres along with a grandfather and an uncle that have quite a bit more. That all tallies up to about 2,000 acres in total. We raise turkeys on the side of all that for Subway, Costco, and all that big box companies.
Is this part of your family’s land or you’re just hired out?
I’m a hired man.
Two thousand acres is a lot of dirt.
It’s year-long, spring and fall. It’s a busy time all year round.
You throw in the turkeys, which you’ve got to harvest for Thanksgiving. Let’s say there’s a big play and they’ve got turkey breasts in those stores the whole year or so. You’re a busy guy.
To put a number on it, we raise a little less than 300,000 birds a year. It’s a big number.
That alone is a huge job. Even if you have computers and you have everything automated up to snuff, it’s still a heck of a job.
When you love hunting and fishing outdoors, you could sit down and talk about it for days on end. Share on XWe’re not as automated as the chicken industry. In the turkey industry, we have a lot of automation with our lights. We have curtains on the side of the blinds that go up and down due to temperature. Otherwise, everything else is done by our own hands. It keeps us busy.
How the heck do you get out and chase whitetails? It sounds like you can have those 24 hours a day.
It’s 50 plus hours a week, but I use 90% of my vacation times at the end of October through November. Sometimes, even through December. That’s when I try to juggle tours for the turkeys, harvest, and doing all that. The plus time is taken to me so I can get to the stand.
Prime rut time is right before Thanksgiving. How does that work?
Throw in all the holidays there, I pick and choose. Normally, if I hunt in the morning, I’ll work through the day and the night. If I hunt at night, I’ll go to work earlier in the morning. I’m back to the stand at 1:00 and open that at all. It all works out into my favor that night or morning that I’m out there.
Do they let you hunt their farm or you have to find your land?
I have one track of their parcel. I have that locked up for myself. I have another 160 acres that’s just 5 minutes out of my front door. I can on another guy’s property. There are properties that have been my honey hole for several years since I’ve moved down here.
Are you married?
Yes.
Props to you and congrats. It’s a wonderful thing for a gazillion people. Your life is going to change. My wife still lets me hunt and that’s been for years. That doesn’t change so much.
She’s an avid outdoorswoman and had taken to a late muzzleloader in Iowa. She’s done a great job here for several years. She’s taking baby steps. We haven’t got to the big bucks yet, but she has filled the freezer with all the does that she’s harvested during the late seasons down here.
Coming from Colorado, every four years, you can draw a tag. It’s hard. When I was at the Des Moines Whitetail Deer Classic, the size of the deer that are coming out of Iowa was phenomenal. They can go up against anybody. There seem to be a lot more of them in Wisconsin where I hunt extensively in the fall. We’ve got a lot of big deer and I’m going to hunt in Buffalo County and that has 200-inch deer. I’m not going to say in every section, but there are a lot of those. You won’t see them, but they’re still there. Iowa’s got it going on. Why do you think that is?
It’s the abundance of row crops. It’s the biggest part of income and other things around the state. They’re well-fed. There are some areas in Iowa that some people may have never stepped foot on so they’ve got places to hide. They’ve adapted to how Iowa has changed over the last 50, 100, 200 years. Somehow, they still outsmart us guys that are avid outdoorsmen who eat, sleep, and breathe in deer hunting every year.
Why is that, Nate? I’m not that bad of a deer hunter and I am not the best deer hunter in the forest. I got a buddy that is good and he says, “It gets harder in Iowa to get those big bucks.” He’s taken some substantial deer, but there are hundreds and thousands of guys like me that go out and get a 130, 140 or 150 deer and it’ll be a great season, rightfully so. There are some guys that are always looking at that 180. They’re looking at 200-inch buck.
A part of it is one, you got to have a little bit of luck on your side, but some of the guys that are doing that repeatedly also have a substantial deer quality management going on, too. It could all just be luck. They’ve got one heck of a gene pool. The guys that are 10 miles south of me are Lee and Tiffany Lakosky and they do that year after year. From what I’ve read and what I’ve watched on TV episodes, they know Deer Management 101 to a team that they’re doing a great job of it. I know a lot of people look at them and they don’t like them, but they’re doing some great things down there from what I’ve seen and read.
There are a couple of kids that grew up in the whitetail thing, figured it out and made it happen.
They’ve got the dream right there.
Sometimes, some of those people look at him and they take their excuses away if you will. That’s trying to start a fight on Whitetail Rendezvous, but sometimes, you might tip your hat and say, “Hell of a job and go on your way,” because everybody can’t have the same thing. As far as I know, Lee and Tiffany, nobody gave them anything.
They’ve started from their book, which is good to read that from day one, it’s like, “Let’s move to Iowa.” They started where everybody starts. Unless the ground is inherited, but none of theirs was. It’s all started from the ground up and it’s become one heck of a journey for them. That’s for sure.
You’re farming 24/7 just about. You must’ve gone home, take a shower, go to sleep, eat, get up, and go to work again. Is that a typical day of a week?
It’s a typical day every month from Sunday to Sunday.
They had to give you some time off if you wanted to go to church, you wanted to go get groceries, and get a haircut.
The more time you spend in the woods, the better off your opportunity is going to be. Share on XI normally do haircuts over lunch hour and we’ll do a lot of our grocery shopping. Some days, I get off at 4:30 and some days, 5:30. I only get that done, come home, unpack it all, go back to bed and start the day over fresh.
This is a reality for all the farmers out there that are reading. I’ve talked about real people in real places and that’s why we’re hovering around on Nate’s a work ethic. That’s what he does. When you’re running that many acres, that’s what you got to do to stay up on it. Beyond that though, one, he’s got to get married and two, he’s connected with a couple of good friends of mine at Extreme Element Outdoors. How’d that ever happen?
It was one thing where I got to talk to Emmitt and his dad, Chris, there. It came down to I had the same passion they did and it was easy to talk to them. That was one thing because it’s like talking here on the show that when you’re talking about hunting, fishing, and outdoors, you could sit down and talk about it for days on and you don’t get tired of it because it’s something that you love. The person you’re talking to love it as much as you. After all those conversations with those two, it led to becoming a Pro Staff before them and getting to know them. Some of the guys are from Pennsylvania and some of the other guys are from here in Iowa. Chris and Emmitt have the headquarters down in Van Buren County. It’s our place to meet up and we got some food plots established. They’re working on getting everything ready-produced. We bounce ideas off of everybody and we go from there. Hopefully, everybody’s successful.
Where are your headquarters? Is it down Van Buren or is it up north?
It’s down in Van Buren County, roughly around the town of Keosauqua.
Is this where Chris is from or Emmitt?
No, both of them are living up in Ames. It’s probably 2.5 to 3-hour drive for them down. It is still a beautiful place down there, so they’re spending most of their weekends there.
When I had Emmitt on, I thought he was he was hunting North of Des Moines around the Ames area, so I’ve wanted to make sure I was talking on the right side of my mouth.
He’s got a property up there that he hunts with him still in school at Ames. He’s juggling both spots but I know that he wants to be down here.
Talk to us about Extreme Element Outdoors. What is it? Why does it exist? Where’s it going?
It all started with Emmitt and Chris having a dream and being able to show everybody that you’re a normal American Iowa woman working 40-plus hours a week and still able to make that time for a weekend in the outdoors of deer hunting, turkey hunting, and any hunting that happens here in Iowa. They wanted to show that we all still can do it and there are many more opportunities that other people can. That’s what we’re trying to portray with our videos, blogs, and everything that’s being uploaded. The website for Extreme Element Outdoors is finally up and going. It’s flourishing and it looks good. Hopefully that with all this, we’re able to show people that you can still work a full-time job and still be able to get out there, put a big deer on the ground and be as happy as everybody out that does it for a full-time job.
You’re saying that everybody’s working. Most of us work, so what’s the deal about Extreme Element? Where’s the juice or where’s the special magic about it?
Bringing the group that we have together and hopefully, it reaches out to a whole lot of other people that were still able to, in the long run, do what some of the people with a full-time job and get to that same level as them, but we’re not able to put 200 hours in a stand a year. Every chance that we get when we’re not at work or we have time off, were in stand showing people a way that we would do it to put you in the right spot at the right time when that 180-inch buck walks by.
Let’s talk about hunting that Mr. Wonderful as I call them. Mr. Wonderful is any buck that’s over 150. How did you go about hunting him? You’re in and you’re out.
That’s a challenge that I’m still trying to perfect down here on my one property. They come and go as they pleased. I still hope that that one day that I get to the stand, I’ll get that little bit of luck on my side. The last couple of years haven’t played out to my advantage. I know they’re still there. You can pattern him all you want and one day, to you, he’s supposed to be at that spot at that time, but then he never shows. I’m creating the food plots for them to hold there a year in and year out, and figure out where their bedroom is, where they’re feeding and somehow, intercept them somewhere between there. All of that goes into time in the woods. The more time you spend in the woods, the better off opportunity is going to be.
Do you have cameras on the places that you hunt?
Yeah, between down here and back home, it’s about twelve trail cameras in total.
How do you check them?
I normally go and track 95% of the time. Otherwise, I’m full. It’s normally the middle of the day, noon. I’m at lunch hour down here and my dad has to take care of the ones back home. It’s normally once and in June, July, August, and September, it’s about once every two weeks. After that, most times in our stands or somewhere in that vicinity. All cards on our way to stands and our way out.
What do these pictures tell us? On any given day, there are millions of camera photos made available. I talked to one guy and he’s got 10,000 when he pulled all his cards. He’s got a lot of cameras. How do you look at that? How do you catalog it? How do you make any sense of it?
They’re in their summer pattern, which is fine. At the end of October, everything goes to the wind. I’ll sit down at my laptop with my pile of cards and I’ll go through. I got different folders for each buck. Most times I can ID him because he’s from last year or he’s from two years ago. I compile an inventory of photos and that gives me time, temperature, and moon phase. I go off of that over and use the pictures or even continuous pictures throughout the year. You can somehow come up with the database in Iowa, “He’s sitting over here at 3:30 and he shot up on this camera over here at 4:00.” Somehow, we may be able to compile a home range and figure it out coming from bedding to food sources and back to bedding. Hopefully, there’s a continual where he shows his face on each site. Over time, that’s when you can feel confident about patterning your deer. He stays different and they could do something completely different and throw you for a loop.
I truly marvel at all this data that we have. Up on the farm that we hunt, the farmer pulls the cards because he hunts with it, and the tractor and stuff. It’s no big deal. In some places, we don’t. Having said that, I look up all this information. As you said, you got folders and you’re trying to build the hit list, and then all of a sudden, Mr. Wonderful shows up and you’ve never seen that deer. Why does that happen?
Compared to shotgun hunting, bow hunting is probably one of the biggest adrenaline rushes you can have. Share on XThe ghost buck gets you every year. You get those that move on from a different area. They show up and they blow your minds. You’re like, “I haven’t seen him.” All of a sudden, he becomes top of your list and it’s like, “What brought him to this area?” It’s something that maybe I’ve done with a food plot or because the hot doe brought them in. There are many different variables that go into it. There’s always going to be a couple every year that blows your mind and you hope that maybe something on that property is what brought them there. Hold him and hopefully, you get that opportunity. The ghost bucks, I call them, they get to me every year.
I was hunting with Judd Cooney and Sheri Yarborough at Iowa Trophy Whitetail Outfitters. They took the biggest deer of the week that they had never seen. They’re running at 5,000 acres and had never seen him. The deer walked right into this food plot and the guy shot him at 80 yards. He was 196.
That’s a stud.
It was. Everybody else in the camp is going, “Okay.” It’s a great deer and I’m clapping for that guy that got it. The biggest thing that I was amazed by is that they had never seen the deer ever and they’ve been here for a long time. You think of somebody that was going to be a cover like that, they’d go, “Let him grow another year.” They never had that. Why do you think these ghost deer show up? He wasn’t going to get his butt kicked. He was going to be the one kicking, so he’s in his core area and everything’s hunky-dory. He travels X and shows up, end of the story. He walked into that food plot and the guy that sat there said, “Come on,” and he finally dropped him at 80 yards.
That’s a prime way of talking about how these deer that you own get smart. If no one’s seen him before that day, I’ll talk to that guy you’ve never seen.
The guy that took him is a good hunter. He didn’t hit the panic button and he said, “Let’s see how this goes.” He never walked into him. Nonetheless, what we’re saying is you can do everything right. You can have all the cameras, the food plots, and everything. If those deer aren’t going to be there or all of a sudden, a deer shows up that you’ve never seen, that’s what makes it whitetail hunting to me such a chess match. It’s fun because you never know what you’re going to see. One, you get to put your time in and two, you’ve got to be hunt prepared. What are your thoughts, Nate?
I always compare bowhunting versus shotgun hunting. Bowhunting is probably one of the biggest adrenaline rushes I’ve ever had in my life and that’s what keeps me back year after year, even though I may not kill one every year. My drive to go out there is all driven by that adrenaline and comradery between family, friends, and people that have been in it. That’s a big driving factor.
Let’s talk about a custom food plot. You’re not the only guy in the United States that are doing this custom food plots because a lot of guys like me, I’ve never been a farmer. I’ve sat on a tractor and that’s about it. If I was going to build a food plot or plant one, I’d have to go to somebody like you and say, “I don’t know anything. I got a couple of bucks and we can get the tools. That’s where I’m all done.” What does custom food plots do for people?
It creates a permanent food source that we can keep establish on a property and it comes down to, are you looking at hunting it or bow season or maybe you got a younger daughter that’s in a new season and you want to make sure that you get her first deer. It all depends on what you want your outcome to be. It all comes down to late-season muzzleloader shotgun, you want it for bow season or you want food plots established for each one of those seasons. On my part, it’s asking all the questions of, you look at an aerial map of a property and they say that they want this 2-acre plot over here on this side of the property and you get a background of what they want.
They’ve seen this deer over here and maybe there are adjoined properties that don’t have any food sources other than the crop fields that farmers have around. You want something that’s going to draw them to your property once those crops are picked. Hopefully, it will make your odds and game a little bit higher for that phase. If you’re doing doe management for those to appear or if you want to get that 180 class out in the open, that is something that we have thought about in the plan. You want late-season until you want to go deer radishes and turnips with sugar beets in there or you can go all different kinds of ways. It’s all that the customer is wanting.
If I come up to you and say, “I’ve got five places on my land. I want food plots.” Do you go tour an aerial map? Do you go Google Earth or you go and walk them off the dirt?
Most times, I’ll hold up in aerial maps myself, Google maps, or Google Earth that way. I’ll want to walk the property with the property owner or leasing it, and then I can get a sense of the lay of the land for one. I’ll get a personal view of watching the guy talk about his feelings about it. We can talk about what products are out there now and that early season and late season. We’ll get all that talk out of the way and then we can sit down and hash out. I’m not going to make the decision. I like them to be 50/50 on everything and figure out. Maybe they’ve done some research and they’d like to try this. Maybe I’ve tried it and he wants me, but we’ll tackle it that way. Somehow, we’ll get everything implemented throughout if you planted in the spring. We’ve got to have everything ready early on. If it’s a fall plot, you’re getting everything ready throughout the summer and getting it planted that last of July through that first week of September. We can get everything implemented at the right time so that it’s in perfect condition for when seasons come around for them.
When you do the customer food plot, do you do the work of bringing in and turn it over?
Most of the time, I’ll haul everything with my truck and trailer, and maybe possible trips, but we’ll get it done one way or the other. Most times, it’s stuff that I’ve brought in or maybe I have the tractor and he’s got the disc. I’ll do it that route or most of the planning stuff. I bring that all myself. I don’t expect someone to go out who are starting food plots to go buy a drill or go buy a dinner feeder or something like that. That would be awesome. The equipment is what gets a lot of people where big money comes into the picture.
Many guys want to get into this. They didn’t realize what they’ve got to do and all the tools they have to have. All of a sudden, the seed is cheap. When you throw in the labor and the tools, it can be daunting.
That’s what I’m thankful for the family that I work for. I don’t have the money to buy the equipment and they have the equipment over the last many years of being a farming family. They let me borrow the tractors, the equipment, and everything. They allowed me to do that on this site and have fun with it. All I have to do is ask them and 98% of the time, we’re not using that piece of equipment, so I’m able to go and get things done when they need to be done.
Who is your favorite seed company if you have one? If you don’t, that’s okay, too.
We’ve had good success with running Whitetail Institute. We’ve partnered up with them and it’s not my first planting, but being in my first year with Extreme Element Outdoors, it hasn’t let me down. It’s something that I’ll keep planting and until the day that I’m done hunting because it’s a product that I’ve always had a 100% success rate with it. Terminating, coming up and being the best for what I’m using it for. They have gone above and beyond with their products.
Do you have other people you want to give shout outs to, Nate?
Extreme Element Outdoors, number one, thanks for letting me be a part of everything and getting it all rolling off the ball. Easton Arrows, their products. I love my full metal jacket. That whole family that’s part of the archery industry and getting that stuff all off the ground. Wasp Archery, the broadhead that we use. It’s a bone-crushing machine and that’s never let me down. I’ll never leave that company. With the level of tree stands that are being nice, easy, and ready to hunt all the time. Someplace set up and they’re ready to hunt from the time they come to your door to the time you hung in the stand. They’re ready to go.
Thank you for that. Thousands of my followers are going to read this story. That sounds like you’re living the American dream, so hats off to you, Nate.
Thank you, Bruce. Thanks for having me on the show and I hope to do it again in the future.
You take care.
You too, thanks.
—
We’re going to meet up with Stephanie Vu. Stephanie is a lady that wanted to know where her meat came from. She was a vegan and she said, “What’s this whole story?” She started hunting and people on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels help the young lady to find out, “Here’s what hunting is. Here’s what it isn’t.” She got along with Steve Walls from Shield Mountain. Steve and his crew out there were instrumental in helping her understand the ins and outs of hunting. She took to the woods and she didn’t harvest anything, but she learned some lessons. One thing about Stephanie is she’s bagged nineteen of the fourteeners. I would say she’s a good shape. She’s got a drive and her passion that she wants to learn how to hunt. A lot of people have stepped up and said, “We’ll help you along the way.”
Important Links:
- Extreme Element Outdoors
- Chris Enyeart – past episode
- Iowa Trophy Whitetail Outfitters
- Whitetail Institute
- Easton Arrows
- Wasp Archery
- Stephanie Vu – future episode
- Shield Mountain
About Nate Keeney
Extreme Element Outdoors – Nate Keeney. I am a small-town Iowa boy that grew up with a strong hunting tradition in the family. It’s all about family, friends, and the outdoors to me.
I left home to pursue a career in Natural Resources Management but that all didn’t work out in the end. I am now living the American Dream of farming in Southeast Iowa.
With that background, I started planting custom food plots for individuals that had the same dream I did. I joined the guys at Extreme Element Outdoors a little over a year ago, talk about great people that love the outdoors.