In this episode, Shawn Mackie, an Avid Outdoorsman, Combat Veteran, Bowhunter and Dog Musher, talks about his hometown in New Hampshire. Shawn shares his insights and experience when he was in the Army, his love and dedication to the USA and how he got back to hunting after his service. Shawn also dives into his strategies on how not to get busted by big dominant bucks while hunting and how he uses his dogs to get the bucks out of the woods.
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Deer Hunting New Hampshire – Shawn Mackie
I’m joined by Shawn Mackie. Shawn lives in New Hampshire where I spent a couple of summers up in Lake Winnipesaukee, which is an hour north of where Shawn is. Shawn is a combat veteran and dog musher. He’s passionate and addicted to bow hunting. Shawn, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
New Hampshire, have you lived there all your life?
Yeah. I live in Station, Texas, but I lived there.
I’m trying to think of someplace by the beach. What’s the name of the town?
Old Orchard Beach, that’s in Maine and just over the border.
What’s the name of your little town?
I live in Kingston.
Is Kingston in Rhode Island too or that’s in the north? I spent a few years out in New England. I’m trying to figure out where the heck I am.
Have you seen some foliage?
I’m fishing and hunt all the way up to Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine.
You’ve seen a lot of those maples come out?
It’s absolutely gorgeous.
It’s unbelievable.
I live out west and Aspen is great.
My friend told me about that.
They’re nothing like the hardwoods of New England for foliage. Some people, that’s their business. They take people around for foliage tours.
It’s a little busy up there.
That’s for sure. Let’s talk about where you hunt and how you hunt it.
There’s a conservation land behind my brother’s house. It’s about 50 acres. It doesn’t get a lot of hunting pressure, especially during the postseason. I set up there with the stand and then I have a state park. That’s the trailhead is three doors down from my house. There are a couple of trailheads, but it’s not advertised and that doesn’t get a lot of pressure either until the gun season, you’ll hear some stuff in there. I was going back and forth between the two. I started getting wrapped up with that book on my brother’s so I abandoned the one by my house when it was the gun season. I’ll probably put up a little more. I don’t think I was doing too much pressure at the conservation lands where my stand was. I’ll make a stand and I’ll hand on the ground even with a bow. I’m going around quiet stocking around. I try not to put too much pressure on them and not to scare them off. I had a few times where I’ve gotten close on the ground and they couldn’t smell me. Nothing will happen.
How many stands do you have up?
I got one and I’ll probably leave that or keep it in that area. I’ll get a climber for the stand by my house that’s near the forest.
If you have any problems with public lands, do you even set up?
No. Some people leave a climber and they put a cable lock on it. You can see some bowhunters up here, but there’s not a lot, even people that I know. My cousin has been a hunter his whole life and he’s been successful. This is good enough, but you don’t see him too much.
Is it mostly gun hunting up there in New Hampshire?
Yeah. They got muzzleloader probably ten days before shotgun and rifle and it goes for about three weeks. You always got from September 15th to December 15th. You unfold the whole time. There’s no late-season or anything. Muzzleloader starts around Halloween and then the gun season starts around Veterans Day.
That’s a lot of pressure on the deer.
When I started getting into these bucks on my brother’s, that’s when the gun season started. I don’t know if that drove them back at night or more people were coming around pushing. What they do a lot is they do drives and I used to do this. I don’t do it anymore but it’s a group of four or six, a couple will set, and a couple will push. They’ll sit in all of these little areas because there’s not a lot of public land around here. They’re either hitting chunks of woods that are right of the highway or they know someone who’s got a big chunk of the portion.
What’s the size of your deer herd up there?
I’m not sure. The one in the next town over not the one by my house, I know it’s a good size, but I don’t know the numbers.
People talk about 30 deer per square mile and the other places have ten. It depends.
There’s more roadkill deer in Pennsylvania than your harvested in New Hampshire every year. We don’t have huge numbers, but these two spots are good numbers and I’m not surprised. A lot of times in the early season, I was going in for 1 hour to 1.5 hours before sunrise. I was pumping four or five does at a time. There were different groups I’ve seen.
Touching about mature gear or what a trophy is up there. It might be a doe or a ten-point buck. I don’t have any basis for the conversation.
Up here has always been a meat-first mentality. I see some of these racks are in western everything. I’m like, “I don’t know the label.” The size of the deer here, a good mature buck is 180 pounds to 200 pounds, eight-point that’s doing well. I see one ten-point my life and I was on the side of a road. It’s probably 100 pounds to 230 pounds or so for a mature doe. Trophy buck is probably twenty-point or so and a ten-point, I guess.
There's more roadkill deer in Pennsylvania than your harvested in New Hampshire every year. Share on XIn your whole lifetime, have you seen many of those?
No. I’ve seen more eights and sixes, whether that’s how it gets harvested. It’s a lot of harsh winters, so the last couple of years haven’t been good for the deer because we have had a lot of snow and it’s already starting off hard.
You got a foot down, don’t you?
Yeah. It’s highs of like ten. It’s going to go down as the week goes on so it’s a lot of fun.
I was talking to a friend Kevin McNeil up in McClellan, Alberta and was 30 below with about a 50-mile and 50 below wind chill.
I don’t mind the cold single digits. I just can’t stand it when it’s windy.
It sucks you right out there. I’ve got somebody that said, “Why don’t you come up and do this?” I go, “I am not going to a place near below zero because of my lungs. This is no way. I’m not even going to push that. I will sometime but this time.” They said that I’m healed and everything’s right, but I’m not going to screw around this thing and I’m not going to dance with it at all. There’s not a lot of deer to a mature buck isn’t as big as some of the people in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania and even up in New York, Lake Placid or so some of the places up there. It’s still deer hunting. How did you get schooled by that eight-pointer? Was it larger?
He was an eight. He was a tall frame though. There were times that he came up. Usually, I don’t see too many of those around so that’s good. That probably goes back to the last couple of years that are good winter for them and get a lot of food. It was my grunt call and he was buying into it. He’s like, “That thing is not real.” A couple of times, he hasn’t come into the thicket whether he’d just be snorting at me or he wouldn’t come out.
You were busted.
I know it’s my scent control because when I talk about moving my stand that afternoon, I had the biggest doe that I’ve ever seen in my life. She had a huge head and a nice full body, and she was a nanny. She came and she was trying to push that four-point off and she was right at the bottom of my stand. It was past legal light so I was going to shoot her. She jumped when I was trying to get on my GoPro and when I click the button to turn it off not because she smelled me enough. All she does is jump up and then she didn’t runoff. She stayed and kept going around. It’s probably my call to that buck.
Did you try to rattle them?
I tried to rattle them. It was that but it wasn’t coming for you.
How about snort wheeze?
I didn’t try that.
Putting scent out, you can do that.
The state discourages someone that likes to hunt and put attractants down stuff on the ground and everything because they don’t want to try to promote chronic wasting which it’s not up here. They definitely don’t want doe urine. You can use salt attractants, but it’s got to be less than 100%. I remember when I took my bowhunter safety course, the game wardens are like, “It says under 100% but all the other products would be 96% or 93% salt.” If I run into someone using it, I’m going to go have a talk with them. I usually don’t bother with that stuff. Maybe I’ll look a little more intimate.
This is shout out for Robbie Knickman of Camo Thug Outdoors. I use his deer popsicles. Look them up on Facebook. I’m hanging from a tree so nothing’s on the ground. You just hang them then they come in and lick them until they’re gone. That’s worked out well for me to places where you can use attractants. It’s a corn product. The warden came up, “That’s corn that you’re baiting.” They would certainly have a case about me but check that out. I had one buck that was hammering it every single night because if they hammered, they’re gone. I put one back in there and see how it worked. I want to thank you for your service. How does hunting help you get through what you did in the service?
It feels like 100%. When I got out of the service, I said that I want to get back to hunting. It’s 100% needing something to focus on because you go for focusing on training then you get out and life starts all over again. You get a job but it’s different. You’re missing that thing. I tried to plan for state police, fishing games, and fire departments. I’m trying not so much to get that thrill but getting that camaraderie and a place to belong. Hunting definitely fills that void. I got out of the service in ’07. I started bowhunting in 2009. I did it for a couple of years and I was into it. When the gun season started, I picked up the muzzleloader and abandoned it. I go back at the end of the season to the bow, but just the word in general, hunting, definitely helped fill that void.
What work did you end up getting?
I thought that I had something lined up. I started work at 6:00 and 0.5 hours from my house. I was waiting and hoping to get on to be an instructor at the academy, but it didn’t pan out. I left after a few months and I went back to construction that I did before the service. I joined the Carpenters Union in 2012 which is a little better than what I was doing before.
You’re steadily employed. You have a couple of bucks and time off to go later on to hunt but it seems like you’re right in where you hunt. You don’t have to go far.
I don’t have to go far. I’ve usually done the one behind my brother’s on the weekends more and one by my house. I can just come home, shower, change, walk out the door and I’m in the woods. I don’t get to hunt this one in the morning. I got to put some cams up over here to see what’s going on.
How many cameras are you running?
I got one over on my brother’s. I got two that’s adjusted seven-foot one up. I’ll go out and I’ll run the trails up at my house, too. I’ll look at the tracks every time I go. It was a big game trail. They were using it. I saw in the early season, but when I went out on Christmas Eve, there are no tracks in the snow. It just snowed. We had an ice storm the night before and there are no tracks anywhere around where I saw him in the early season. I got on what I did with the hide so I got to put up a camera out there.
Do you run competitively or just run to stay in shape?
Not competitively. I love to run so I have been on the shelf for a couple of years even with hunting. I tore my ACL and both my meniscus when I was in boot camp halfway through. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to get recycled and started over. Probably 0.5 years later, I finally had surgery to repair it, although the buckling has done a lot of damage to the bone cartilage. I had another procedure a year afterward to clean up some stuff because the meniscus didn’t take it when they perform the surgery. They sew it back together and that was ‘04 and ‘05. I got out in ‘07 and I was already having trouble with arthritis and running. In 2015, it got worse. I come home from work and ice my knee five times a night and I wasn’t able to do anything, but I’d barely be able to get through work.
For a couple of years, they went to do microfracture where they poke holes in the cartilage and help regrow, but they said it was way too bad. My knee got worse from there because every time you go in and mess around, it’s going to get worse. In 2016 in February, they did bone plugs in my femur. That’s where they core two one-inch holes. They did it to a cadaver and press-fit plugs. It’s all a new server persona on the femur or cartilage. I went to rehab and I was out of work for a few months and at the beginning of hunting season, I tore my hamstring in the same leg. I went out the woods twice and that’s where I ran into that bucket, walked into that bucket and I’ve got to go. I have a muzzleloader. I went to shift my foot to get a better angle, snap a twig and they heard it. They didn’t take off. They just did a 90-degree turn and kept walking.
I thought to myself, “I got a deer. How the heck am I going to get this thing out of here by myself with a bump hamstring?” I decided to call it for the year and I didn’t go back out and bounce. That’s the first year that I’ve been back full-time hunting and that was the first year that I bow hunted the whole year. I pulled out my muzzleloader, wind it up, and shot it a couple of times in a couple of days before the season started. I went to go walk out on the first day of muzzleloader. I grabbed it and I said, “No. I put it back. I haven’t been in a situation where I’m disappointed because I had the bow and I needed a gun instead. I stuck with a bow the whole time and I didn’t pick up the muzzleloader again. I kept with it and it was amazing. I love it and it’s unbelievable.
Your knees now operate and work?
Yeah. It’s not chronic like it was. Once in a while, it still aches a little bit. I started taking Arctic Cod Liver Oil. It takes about a month to build up in your system and someone turned me on to it. I was telling him that I work with them. I said, “You know my need. This isn’t going to work.” Nothing works and he’s like. “Come on, just try it. You got to take it religiously every day.” A month later, I started noticing that it wasn’t bothering me with certain things and I was like, “Wait a second.” I shot him a text. He said, “That’s the power fish oil.” I’m like, “There’s no way,” then I thought of getting back in hiking and running. I want to try to run the roads because I want the extra. It’s been pushing in on it. I’m 100% back at it.
I’m glad I asked that question. You put your muzzleloader up and said, “I’m a bowhunter.” Help the readers to understand your style of hunting. What’s the whole thing behind it?
It’s definitely more struggle and it’s tougher. The difference between bowhunting and firearms is you got to get closer. You got to do your homework more, and you got to scout the area up in the early season. If it’s during hunting season, I’m not always on the stand. I’ll sit or I’ll walk a little, and check stuff up. I try not to do it all the time because I don’t want to push them away or push them nocturnal. I know that there’s a big rainstorm coming too and I spray my boots down but if there’s a big storm coming, I’ll definitely get out, move around more, see what’s going on and see if they try to skirt me again. I’ll push them back or I’ll have my stand set up on a game trail. They’ll push the game trail back 50 yards. The weather was pressure for me or another hunter. It’s more homework and more intimate. I’m not going to give up on firearms. I’ll definitely still consider doing that again, but I couldn’t put the bow down.
What’s the last piece of gear you bought? Why did you buy it?
I used to always hunt back in the day with work boots or Army boots that was assured. I was like, “I need to have some for winter hikers, but I need real hunting boots.” I bought Under Armour, that Brow Tine 2.0, 400 grams of insulation. Those things that grip unbelievable, but the way the boot cradles your Achilles is like a lab mouthing a duck. It’s nice and soft but a good grip and your foot don’t shift around at all. They’re built almost like a backpacker boot, but they’re light as a regular hiker. They’re waterproof like at the storm technology, super comfortable with space. I run around quite pleased with them. Maybe I should have got an 800-gram insulation set before because the late season is a little chilly.
Hunting fills the need for camaraderie and a place to belong. Share on XThanks for that. I appreciated that insight. The other thing we talked about is that dog musher. How does that work?
I’ve always been obsessed since I was a kid. I always wanted to run a sled with dogs. When I was six, we got our first dog and he was a hybrid wolf. We had to put him down because of hip dysplasia. That started when I was a teenager, I got a Siberian. I never got a sled dog and then in 2012, I was looking to get a dog again because mine had passed away. I was looking up for good work and dog breed. It’s amazing because I’m from New Hampshire. I have three Chinooks and it’s the state dog of New Hampshire. They were created up north of Winnipesaukee by Tamworth, New Hampshire. They used them on the 2nd Antarctic Expedition for hauling freight 100 years ago and they’re rare. There are only probably about 1,200 or so in the world.
I did a lot of research and they seemed the best because when huskies are off-leash, they’ll take off, and they’re gone miles. I got a high prey drive and not good with recall off-leash. These dogs are great. I’ve got one and I’ve worked on. I bought a big anchor chain so we could pull weight and harness. Even in the summer, I get them to work in a motorcycle tire. I use it when they’re puppies. It makes a noise behind him and it’s light enough. They get used to the sled being behind them. We went up to the festival. They have a festival every year and I already had one. We didn’t have the second one yet and there were given a ride. I jumped on someone’s sled and that was my first time mushing.
It was freedom being on that thing and the dogs were on the frontier. It was incredible and we end up getting another one. I had picked up a sled, finally. This is why I say I’m part-time. I went out a few times but then that’s when I had the last two surgeries and we have the too bad winters. We have hardly any snow at all. One time, I was able to get out once it was spring and we got hit with a flood or something. I was sweating my butt off though trying to run with the doors. That’s my main hobby other than archery but there’s a lot of work with three dogs and in keeping them going if they’re running with me or if we go hiking.
I’m thinking about the dogs, sled and a deer. You can put a deer down anyplace and those dogs will haul out, right?
Yeah. That was like the snow. I could just hook them up. I’ll try them to eat the thing on me.
No, they wouldn’t, just throw it in there.
I can get a kid’s snow sled.
I have a seven-foot-long kid’s snow sled and they call it a game sled. The same things you buy at Walmart. You put two dogs on that, they can slide anything.
They’re about 60 to 70 pounds and they can pull three times their body weight, each one. That’s like 180 pounds apiece.
That’s a lot of weight.
When I tell people, I take them out on the sled. I had to go when I had two, but now I got three. They think that it’s a big team like six or twelve dogs you need to pull one person. I said, “No. You can go for 1.5 to two hours with three dogs. They’ll be tired, but they’ll go.”
How do you keep them fed? Are you feeding with fish or fish from the ocean?
A regular kibble but high protein, buy a higher-end on the market. We make some stuff to work with some leftovers. Sometimes, we’ll do a chicken, cut it up, and tear it apart just like you get some other meat, too.
I watched enough Discovery Channel or National Geographic with these guys in Alaska. They’re fishing chum salmon and get a couple of tons of it. That’s what they feed their dog.
The breeder we got them from used to have the official game of contact when there was roadkill. We go pick it up and then cut it up for the dogs, but they had some dogs. It was a low expense for him, just regular kibble.
What don’t you do? I’m thinking, “He’s running dog and he’s an archer. He put them the VA or whoever put him back together and now he’s running.”
I used to rock climb, not with ropes but bouldering. I haven’t done it since my knees but maybe I will. I’ll think about it again.
Where do you go?
There’s a place, Pawtuckaway State Park. It’s probably 0.5 hours north of here. It has enormous boulder fields the size of houses, there’s probably 20 or 30 of them. It’s unbelievable when you walk in there and see everything from the glaciers when they came through. There is a couple of slab to slab walls.
Can you do cracks in there? Does the slab have enough cracks and people free climb it?
Yeah, these slabs here are too big. It’s not like you’re going to be as quick as maybe ten, fifteen or twenty minutes. It’s not like you’re out on the slab for a couple of hours. I don’t have time for that. I might think there was. If you’re out there, you’re in ropes but then the bad storm rolls in the summer or something and you’re stuck during a thunderstorm on the side of a rock. You can’t rush to get up any faster because then you’re taking too many risks.
Go back down. I don’t know what I would do in that. It’s been too long. Do you belong to New Hampshire Deer United or any of the whitetail groups so you can get with guys and gals that bow hunt or not?
No, I haven’t. I’ll also look into that.
The camaraderie that all veterans have and it’s the sense of belonging in the presence of the team and all that. I found some of the conservation groups. There are a lot of guys like you that like to hunt and all a sudden, sit down, have a beer, have a cup of coffee or whatever. You get a lot of common ground. That’s what I was thinking. What are five things that you would tell people if they’re hunting small parcels of land close to those houses?
Respect their property. If I am sneaking around and I’m on a deer trail or whatever, but then the next thing I know, I’m up in someone’s backyard, I immediately back out. I don’t keep looking. I don’t leave any trash or anything behind.
What about hunting techniques? Trail cams, stand sets, and scent control.
In the summertime, get out there scouting to see what they’re doing. Set your cams up and move your stand for the night. Look food sources, too. We got a lot of white oak up here. They love white oak, beech tree, and drops nuts. I usually have good early season around the white oaks to run food sources. In post-rut, they change. I didn’t see them as much either. The weather was wacky and it’s tough to gauge.
One thing you said is we’re going to wind up on this recruiting other people into the outdoors. How do you go about that?
Let’s talk about it constantly at people at work and friends. They’re active or they like to go hiking and they come over for a cookout. I pull out the bow or I got a tomahawk. I throw tomahawks, too, “Let’s have some fun and have a couple of beers.” I try to introduce them. The two guys, my buddy, and his brother came over one summer and they’d never shot a bull before. It was a small compound and his brother never shot one and they were like, “That’s cool. We should do this again and get together.” People from work were talking about experiences, similar likes or people in the industry that they know about. They’re like, “You got to you to show me how to shoot a bull.” That’s good. That’s rewarding to me, to teach them that. When I was in the Army and I was teaching my privates on the tank on how to do everything and how everything should be then you see him apply that and you see them become successful, that’s the same feeling that ties back into how it’s similar.
Shawn, thank you for being a guest.
Thank you for having me.
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You don’t want to miss the next episode. Why am I laughing? Because Michael Walker is one piece of work. He’s a gold miner, he hunts, and he’s a Nashville recording artist. His first single hit was Ain’t Takin These Guns and he’s turned that into an album, Californeck, and Michael’s an interesting guy. I met him at a Professional Outdoor Media Association Convention and he’s unique. I’ll let Michael talk to himself on what unique means. All in all, Michael Walker, Ain’t Takin These Guns, a country artist, and doing one heck of a show.
Important Links:
- Camo Thug Outdoors
- Michael Walker – past episode