#441 Matters Of The Heart

Hunting is more than just collecting antlers and comparing who shot the biggest game. For most hunters, it’s a way of life and how much they pour their hearts and beings into. Owner of Cory Sutton Outdoors, Cory Sutton, shares his insights on the impact of social media on the hunting industry. He talks about how online deer shaming has affected fellow hunters and its potential effect on the younger generation of hunters as hunting merges with the digital age. Cory reminds everyone about the importance of respecting the game you’re hunting. He touches on how, as a suburban hunter, he’s able to still hunt ethically. As someone who’s diagnosed with a rare heart condition, instead of feeling down, he uses this opportunity to reach out to inspire others like him that they can still enjoy the outdoors.

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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:

Matters Of The Heart – Cory Sutton

We’re heading back down to Tennessee and we’re going to connect with Cory Sutton. Cory has some great stories. The hunting story that I love the best was, one day, in the fall a couple of years ago, he decided, “I’m going to go out to my land and hang out. I got this little spot and funnel. If the deer are going to be moving, that’s where they’re going to be moving.” He geared up, yes, he did in his flip flops, cutoffs, his t-shirt and his ball cap. He did bring his bow and all of a sudden, an hour into the sit he’s sitting there thinking about things.

Cory does have a lot of things to think about. He has half a heart but that doesn’t stop this guy. This buck walked out and started munching on the forage available and Cory put him down. It was one heck of a deer. More importantly, Cory’s a beacon for us all of what you can accomplish, it’s the attitude. You’re going to have some drive and everything but it’s his attitude to say, “I love the outdoors. That’s what I’m going to do with my life. As well as take care of my wife and family.” Cory Sutton is up next.

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We’re heading down to the Memphis area. We’re going to talk to a gentleman that’s sweltering and it’s in the 90s. Cory Sutton is an interesting guy. He’s a student of whitetail deer. He’s married and has a couple of kids. He’s also had some challenges with his health and keeps on continuing to overcome those. Cory, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

You mentioned something that’s near and dear to all our hearts out here and that’s youth and hunting. You said whether it be four below or 100 degrees, your son’s ready to roll. Where did you get that desire to hunt?

For me, in my family, I’m the only person who hunts. My daughter, I have pictures of her when she was all the way from three months up to now with her holding antlers. I’ll bring home a deer from harvest and she’s sitting right there by it with her little hands trying to hold the deer up and everything. My son saw the enjoyment that I have with it. I took him on his first couple of hunts and he enjoyed it. It was a good time and now he’s gung-ho with it. We’re ready to rock and roll our season.

When we were talking and you said you’ve got cold front coming through, what’s your strategy for that?

Our front’s moving through about mid-day, mid-morning and mid-afternoon on Thursday. We plan on being in a lower bowl area where we hunt by Thursday afternoon. By Friday morning, we’re going to hunt beds or the funnels leading in and out of the beds. We’re hoping the cold front is going to have them up on their feet and would want to get up, eat and enjoy some cool weather for once. Maybe we can get a shot at a nice deer.

Are they coming to your food plots? Tell me about your land.

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It’s mainly CRP land and pines with a nice sizeable pond in the middle. I can’t do food plots. I hunt in the funnels and trails leading in and out of the CRP lands where they’re bedding. By this time of the year, I’ll be concentrate on hunting around my pond. Other than that, that’s how we hunt.

How many acres do you have?

I only have 50 acres. I’m not a big proponent of antler hunting. I’ll shoot what I want to shoot and what I’m happy with. This little 50 acres is in the suburbs and on the outside of the suburbs, it has produced three of the biggest deer that I’ve ever taken and one of those biggest ones I’ve ever seen alive. I’ve been honing my skills in hunting these suburban-type areas. The 10, 15, and 30-acre woodlots or land that’ scattered out around the outskirts of the city. As far as big land goes, we have one farm where we hunt. It’s mostly hardwoods and pines. It’s got a bunch of ditches that run through it. We’ll hunt the ditch crossings and try to split between the pines and the hardwood where the deer are coming out of the pines.

A lot of people hunt in suburban areas. I was talking with Robbie Knickman and he hunts out of the Baltimore area. There’s a ravine and the houses are down below and all the storage shed or large metal buildings are up at the top. He hunts between them.

I always wanted to keep it a secret but it has taken off. I’ve noticed in a lot of magazines that more people are talking about it and there are more strategies. To me, the biggest hang-up with suburban hunting is, after the harvest. I have an entrance and the exit where people around me can’t see me taking the deer out. I don’t want to drag it through somebody’s neighborhood or through their front yard or whatever. A good rule or a good point in suburban hunting is, as hunters, we want to make ourselves look as ethical and as good as we possibly can. If you are hunting these neighborhood pockets, have a stealth entrance and exit to your place of hunting.

Hunt and be invisible.

I have one property that I hunt in. It’s owned by an older gentleman and his wife. I have about fifteen acres and their property butts right up to a park and there’s a fence line and all that. It’s all posted and nobody can come over. I don’t have anywhere near that part. When the leaves are all down, and I’m probably 15 to 20 yards away from that part, it’s funny that I can see everybody walking around and not a single soul knows I’m there. I don’t know if that’s me being concealed good or people don’t realize, “There’s somebody hunting over here.”

They don’t. They’re not paying attention. They’re in their world. There’s a place in Wisconsin where I hunt across the river from a park. The joggers and there’s everything that parks are good for and to be used for. They have no clue that I’m sitting there.

The worst thing about it is, people don’t know your there so you see some oddballs. I see a lot of pee breaks. I’m twenty feet up there and I’m shaking my head thinking, “If I knew it wasn’t against the law, I turned my cam on and I would film this and then stick it out on social media.”

It’s funny to us but it’s not funny to people dropping through.

It is not at all.

Let’s talk about your love for the outdoors and how you became the passionate Hunter that you are. I know in your bio that you hit on some of the things and you’ve got a couple of favorite guys that you’ve read everything they’ve ever written. Let’s visit that for a while.

Starting out, fishing was my passion. My grandmother got me involved in that. At the time, we lived in Cartersville, Georgia on Lake Allatoona. Fishing consumed my life. At five years old, I was determined to use one of the old-style Abu Garcia 5500CS. It’s the big bulky bait caster and I worked on that one for a whole summer. Finally, I got it down where I wasn’t part nesting or backlashing and I thought it was the greatest achievement I’d ever done. Fishing was where it started out. I’ve got many memories of camping efficient with my grandmother. That’s where it started.

My first hunting trip was with a family friend in Cartersville, Georgia. It was great. I’m not sure where we went hunting. I was only 7 or 8 at the time but I looked like the kid from A Christmas Story with all the clothes one. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t put my arms down or anything. I looked like one big circle of clothes. I remember being on a hunting stand and I had on white tennis shoes and I laid down and I had my tennis shoes sticking out of the stand. The man I was hunting with took his rifle and tapped the top of my shoe. He was like, “Get your shoe back in inside the stand.”

I know I fell asleep at one time during that hunt and then I woke up with him grinning and with a loud bang. He’s shot a nice buck. I got down and it was the first time I’ve ever seen a buck harvested or one on the ground or anything like that. I would think that I hate it because I was freezing but that drives me to dive off into this like I did fishing. I was from my early 11 or 12, mid-teens and late teens. I was a DYI person. I never had anybody in my family to show me or take me. I hunted in a lot of state woods and a lot of trial by fire. I started honing my skills that way.

Who introduced you to Fred Bear?

I was in high school and at the school that I was at, had one of the largest libraries in the state of Tennessee. We were an optional school. We also had a planetarium. I don’t think anybody at the time, in the US had a planetarium in their school. We had a library filled with everything that you wanted and I always stayed in the outdoor, hunting and fishing section. I would read anything and everything I possibly could read. Reading Fred Bear’s stuff was amazing to me. I love Fred Bear and I don’t know if anybody remembers the fisherman, Doug Hannon. I loved reading Doug Hannon. He was called the Bass Professor. I loved reading his stuff too. That’s who I wanted to role model myself off on.

What did he teach you?

Learn how to be a steward of the outdoors. Appreciate and respect the game you’re hunting. Share on X

It’s the ethics and how to be a steward of the outdoors. It’s how to appreciate the game. If you’re hunting, how to respect the game that you’re hunting, that’s what struck me the most.

What about hunting big bucks or hunting bucks? You’d said that whatever you want or you want to take, you take and you’re not worried about the bone on your head.

I got in that trap about probably in my middle 20s to early 30s. I got caught up on the whole, if it’s a basket rack, you don’t shot it. You let them go so they can grow. It was 140s or 150s only. I started doing research. In my area where I hunt in Tennessee, we don’t grow 140s, 150s and 160s. It’s far and few in between. That area between maybe 2000 up to maybe 2013 or somewhere around there when it got out of control with letting these deer walk. You’re not accomplished if you don’t shoot 140-inch deer. I did studies and research on my area and those deer are few and far in between. I looked at it like, “I’m going to take the nicest deer or the deer that I want to shoot. If it’s a spike, it’s a spike. If it’s a basket rack, if it’s an eight, it’s an eight. If I’m fortunate enough to have 140-inch deer come by, I’m fortunate. I’ll go to Bass Pro. We have the biggest Bass Pro shop in America at the Pyramid. I’ll go there and listen to guys talk.

I don’t say anything but I want to say, “We’re not Kansas, Ohio, Iowa or Missouri. We don’t produce that size deer on a regular basis. It doesn’t happen. Be fortunate to be able to hunt and to harvest a nice deer.” Just because it’s not 140 inches, that should be your stroke. You don’t have to worry about anybody else. That’s also another thing that I’ve noticed online a lot is, what I’ll call deer shaming a hunter. It’s one of the rudest and uncalled for things in the hunting industry. It’s not positive and it’s not right to belittle your fellow hunter. I’ve known people who have stopped hunting because of it. It turned them off.

Why not get off social media? If somebody’s bullying you or whatever, get off social media or unfriend people, “You’re all over me because I shot a doe.” You go, “No.” I’ll go, “Goodbye, Cory.” Unfriend or block or whatever the terminology is because we have to. In my opinion, we have to maintain our boundaries and it’s established those. This is what I believe and my whole thing about deer hunting and I punted a lot. Some of my best trophies had nothing to do with this size of the rack. It was the people I was with or the farm that I was hunting in. I was hunting with my uncle Henry when I was a kid and he hunted for food.

There’s no question about it. He was hunting for food and it didn’t matter if it was a buck, what mattered was the food that we put in the truck and took home and process it. Hunting is more than spilling blood and put a gorgeous rack on Facebook. If I ever have a chance to shoot a 200-inch deer, by golly that’s going to be something else. Also, the first year I ever shot was a six-pointer. That was 51 years ago and I still remember that deer. That’s one of the best trophies I ever took. Why? It’s because it was my first big game animal years ago. You can’t replace that. It was my beginning if you will. People know better than to say anything to me because it’s like, “You’re gone. You can’t follow my feed anymore.”

It’s the youth that I’m worried about. My son’s eleven and my daughter’s sixteen. Kids and teenagers don’t have the off button as we have. They take stuff more to heart than we do. I’ve tried to instill that into my son that if we go out and we shoot a doe, it is great. We just put a lot of food on our table. We’ll shoot a doe and I have a gentleman that I’ve been giving doe for years. When I bring this deer to him, you’ve never seen anybody happy in your life. It’s pretty much an emotional time. We’ve been doing this for years and it never fails that both he and I will cry.

He’s one of the hardest working men that I know. He cuts firewood and it started out with my dad way back when buying firewood from this man and me developing a relationship with him. I can remember the first year and the deer I dropped off to him. It’s all special. Now, I’ll take my son with me to take these deer to him and he sees the emotional connection with it too. That’s what I want for him to see. It’s the emotional connection, the respect in the animal and not get caught up in the size game or whatever.

I want to talk about health issues and how you overcome them. You’re not done and you’re in the battle but your story is unique. Share the parts of it that you want.

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Heart disease has run rampant in my family. You look up heart disease and there’s a picture of my family. I grew up in middle Georgia and instead of my bottle having milk in it had gravy in it. As I was growing up, I would notice how my family members are getting sick, passing away and being horrible health. I’d always played sports. I’ve always been active, running, baseball, track, football and the whole nine yards. I BMX bicycling, skateboarding and all that good stuff. I said, “I’m not going to end up like my relatives.” In my middle twenties, I started having some slight blood pressure issues. I’ve seen the doctor and did physicals and all that stuff. They gave me some blood pressure medicine. I always worked out, I was always a runner. I never smoked. I’m hardly a drinker. Fast forward to when I turned 40, I had my birthday on January 8th and on January the 10th, I wasn’t feeling too well. We went and had my blood pressure checked and it was astronomical, to say the least. I ended up in ICU for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, that’s where they found congestive heart failure, kidney failure and malignant hypertension. It was rough because I strived my entire life to take care of myself.

We worked with a geneticist and people who do the whole makeup of your system and your body because, at my age and my health, I was a phenomenon. I had doctors stumped, so the first year was rough. You battle and you go through the, “Why me?” The depression and not wanting to get out of bed, the whole nine yards. It crushed me. That hasn’t been fine. Overcoming this, I got up one afternoon probably two years into this and I said, “I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to get my life back in check and under control. I’m going to start doing the things that I love to do. I’m going to start fishing again. I’m going to start hunting. Do it again.” I knew I had limits on what I can and can’t do so I didn’t want to push myself.

I set cameras on my 50 acres of land. I left them out cooking for about two weeks. When I went to get them, it had three of the most amazing deers that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I was shocked at these. I was like, “It’s go time. It’s time to do this.” On October 1st, 2012, 2013 or somewhere around there, it was hot as anything and I had decided to go out one afternoon to sit there. I was bored and I wanted something to do. I had on an old baseball hat, an Oregon Ducks t-shirt, go ducks, I’m a huge ducks fan, cut off shorts and flip flops and I’d taken my bow in case. I don’t know what I was thinking, “In case of what? It’s 100 degrees. There’s nothing going on.”

I sit there literally no more than 15 or 20 minutes and one of the three deer walked out and I was like, “This is not happening. I’m hot. I’m delirious. I’m not seeing this deer.” He walked out. He never knew I was there and he never walked out with the little CRP area to some blackberries, briars and green stuff and he starts feeding on it. I was like, “Holy moly.” I didn’t have an arrow. I put an arrow in and let it fly. That was the beginning. That deer kick-started me wanting to reach out to other hunters and other outdoorsmen that are in the same condition that I am in. Fighting a disease, whether it’s terminal, short-term, or long-term. I got this deer in tears the whole time. I’m not too proud to say that. My wife and I, took a bunch of pictures and everything.

It was a surreal moment where I thought that I need to write something about this and about my experiences. I wrote to North American Whitetail and sent them pictures. I wrote to Campfire Stories, sent the photos and told everything. They published both of those and both went viral. That was a few years ago. On a daily basis, since then, I still get emails and inbox messages from people from all over, all walks of life, colors, and age groups saying, “Thank you for your words. It has given me the kick in the butt that I need to get up and enjoy myself and get back outdoors, hunting and fishing.” Even if it’s only going to a pier and sticking your feet in the water, do that. That was my whole goal. My saying was, “Get up and get outdoors.” It has effective a lot of people and it has affected me. I’ve had children of parents who have given up all their hobbies and all that and their dad would read this and I’d have a son or a daughter say, “This is the first time I’ve seen my dad’s smile in five years. Now he’s at a Bass Pro shop buying the place out because he’s going hunting.” It’s been surreal.

That’s a great story. Thank you for sharing that because it’s the reality. Real people and real places. We haven’t talked about a lot about technique, but I had a visualization. You’re sitting there at a hundred degrees, you get a t-shirt, you got a ball cap, a pair of cutoff and flip flops and you kill a gorgeous deer. How does that work for Bass Pro, all these guys on TV and all those products we got in the world? If you don’t have a Ford or a Chevy pickup truck with Ozonics and Scent Crusher in your bag. I have nothing against those guys, you’ve got great products. What I’m saying is sometimes it’s simple. You can walk in the woods, put your butt down and stay there for a while and let’s see what happens.

Sit there, be quiet and be still. Other than that, I don’t know.

Let’s go back on that because I asked you what’s your go-to technique and strategy. Some guys it is those Ozonics and some guys it’s Scent Crusher for scent control. Other people, it’s their Hoyt Bow, Bowtech or Matthews. For me, I shoot an Excalibur Crossbow. That’s my tool and that’s my go-to technique. What’s yours?

It’s patience. Sit there, be quiet and be still. I’m not a big scent placement person. I will spray my clothes off and my boots. As far as anything else, right tubes, cans and calls, to me, it’s one more thing that can go wrong or can deter any deer that was possibly coming into you, to begin with. I like to hunt ambush points, setups, funnels and trails leading to and from bedding areas and feeding areas. I stick with that way and what I know. I want to be as an accomplished hunter that way as I can, where I don’t have to rely on $3,000 worth of stuff that I’m lugging to the stand. I want to go in stealth with the bare necessities of what I need to get in and out. That’s about it.

You mean I can’t bring my lunch?

I do eat. I bring food. I’m not going to lie to you. My ALPS backpack is loaded down with snacks.

Let’s give Colby Smith from ALPS OutdoorZ a little shout out. Both Cory and I are fans of the ALPS. If you haven’t yet gone through their website, it’s ALPS OutdoorZ. Check out everything they’ve got and say hi to Colby Smith. He’s a good friend of Whitetail Rendezvous and certainly, he’s a good friend of Cory Sutton. There you go, Colby a little shout out for you.

ALPS has been great to me with everything that I’m accomplishing and trying to accomplish with donations and support that way. I have a couple of other companies that have stood by me through all this. Bison Coolers, Jeremy and his wife, Emily, are two of the greatest people we ever made. They’re right there in Texas and they’re American made. I can’t say any more than that. Their coolers are all amazing. They’ve stood by me through all this and have helped with donations and never batted an eye when I needed anything. It’s been great. Stan with A&W Nature Labs out of New Jersey, they’re a small company. They’re not a big box company but to me, they make some the finest supplements that you can buy for your deer. I’m not a big person and fan of the supplement game but I have had great luck with them. I’ve got holes that if you burry a full-grown man in and the deer it’s destroyed.

Thanks for that. Let’s go back to the social conscience. Everybody here has an email account. Everybody here probably hasn’t either Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or maybe they have all four. What do you think that’s doing to our industry?

I don’t know how to say this without being the biggest jerk ever, but it’s ruining the hunting industry. I’ll point blank say it. It’s turned the hunting industry into what I feel is a joke. You have all these insta-famous people. You’ll have women that are half naked holding a bow upside down and not completely wrong and on the other hand, they have a 200-inch deer and the comment is, “Look what I did.” It’s mind-boggling. You can’t post a picture without adding 500 endorsers or sponsorships or whatever. You can’t put a picture up there and say, “I went out and shot a doe.” It’s no big whoop. It’s not an accomplishment. Social media has shined the light on a lot of people who don’t deserve to have the light shined on.

There’s a lot of other hunters out there that bust their butts every day to hunt, harvest ethically and to teach. They never get a bat’s eye wink at them. You have these million dollar hunters that have all land in the world and can do whatever they want but they also do dumb stuff. They’re going out and killing elk when they’re not supposed to and throwing one-off into a ditch. It makes us look like a bunch of buffoons, you could say. I think that social media is going to be the downfall of not only hunting but civilization as a whole because it gives a platform for people to speak on and don’t have any idea about what they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, you have to have social media. If I didn’t have to have social media, I wouldn’t use it. I wouldn’t have it but it is a way to stay connected to a lot of the sponsors who do help and support me and in return, it’s a way for me to give back to them by taking pictures of the gear and thanking them for the things they’ve helped me with. As far as hunting goes, I honestly think that eventually, it’s going to be the downfall of it because you can only see so many half-naked people holding equipment completely wrong and standing in front of a massive moose and say, “Look what I did.” You know it’s fake and they’ve got 200,000 followers. It’s mind-boggling. It is.

It’s up to each one of us to police our own community or tribe. Let’s put it that way. Allow people to be people and the thrills and everything else that we see shouldn’t be that important. That’s the way I’d say it. I came off the mountain after a few days chasing elk and I only saw one elk and my buddy didn’t get a shot, but that country gorgeous. We got up on this ridge over 10,000 feet and look towards the Maroon Bells, Snowmass and all those mountains that had snow on them. I turned to my buddy. I said, “Rodney, you’re the only person from Illinois that’ll ever stand in this place and ever see that thing. He looked at me, he was dumbfounded on a little bit and he smiled and said, “You’re right.” He never thought about that. He was elk hunting but put yourself in the right place on top of a mountain in Colorado and it’s breathtaking. It’s no different than if you’re fishing. It doesn’t matter what state you’re in because there are some sunrises and sunsets that I can remember in Wisconsin that are, “Oh my goodness.” I’m sitting here and I’m a part of it. That’s the thing I love about hunting is I’m part of it.

Patience is the best technique a hunter can have. Share on X

My son made a comment when we were hunting one time. He put his hand on my knee and the sun was coming up, animals are scurrying around, birds and turkeys are talking and all that and he said, “This is probably my favorite time of my life when we’re watching everything come to life.” I don’t think I could have been any prouder at that moment because of that moment that he got it.

He got it for him though. He realizes the impact of the outdoors and that echoes for everybody. You can be in Alaska or you could be in ten acres outside of Memphis, Tennessee and the same thing happens, in my humble opinion.

In my humble opinion, that’s what it’s all about. It’s not the kill or anything like that. It’s being one with nature and enjoying everything that Mother Nature has to offer. Lots of people miss out on that. They’re misconstrued about hunting. Even if you’re not a hunter, you can still get up and go on a hike or something and see Mother Nature in all her glory. Get out of the concrete jump got jungle. Get out of Target, Walmart and the malls. Get out there and learn nature.

With that, on behalf of thousands of listens across North America, Cory Sutton, thank you so much. This has been an interesting show. People, read what Cory shared with you because it’s important for one, recruitment and two for hunting tradition. Cory, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

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We’re going to enjoy an October trick or treat with Tom McMillan. Tom McMillan and Michael Wardell have teamed up to create something called Deer Week. Now, Tom’s on the Sportsman Channel and Michael Waddell is on the Outdoor Channel and they’re going to have a whole week of nothing but whitetail. The good, the bad and the ugly if you will and you’re going to have to watch the show. Tom promised me that there’s going to be plenty of laughs. Tom’s a guy that never left West Central Kansas. A lot of people graduate from high school and want to head to the big city, go to Wichita, Kansas City or Denver. He stayed home because he liked the lifestyle. He liked ranching, riding horses, growing wheat and he loved hunting the whitetail deer in his county. That’s what he did and he’s carved out quite a lifestyle for himself. Yes. He’s a personality on the Sportsmen Channel. Yes. He has McMillan Outfitting. Yes. He has a family. Yes. He grows crops and runs cattle. He’s a busy guy, but he sure loves what he’s doing. After the show, you’re going to find out, like I did that he’s got a big sense of humor. Stay tuned. It’s a great show.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:

Matters Of The Heart – Cory Sutton

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