Hunter and entrepreneur Mike Swartzentruber shares the story of how he grew up and hunted in his family’s five-acre property in Ohio. He describes how their property was set up and how he manages to hunt Whitetail deer in the area. Along with it, Mike gives important lessons he personally learned from hunting in his backyard. He goes on to explain how he used mock scrapes and licking branches, borrowing the technique from Jerry Everhart. Mike also delves into how he got into the coffee business and started Hunter’s Blend Coffee.
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Hunting Whitetails Successfully On Five Acres – Mike Swartzentruber
We’re in a for a treat because most of the people in the world start the day off with coffee. I’m with Mike Swartzentruber. He and his buddies own Hunter’s Blend Coffee. Mike hails from Ohio. I’m happy to have him on the show. Mike, welcome to Whitetail Rendezvous.
Thank you, Bruce.
Let’s talk about the coffee company, how it started and why you ended up at ATA a couple of years ago, introducing it to the outdoor industry.
We’ve been through the parent company importing coffee directly from farmers for over fifteen years. My brother-in-law and sister started doing that. My brother-in-law, Paul, was in a mission’s organization. When he would be down in Central American countries, he saw the churches had financial needs. He said, “I paid $14 for a bag of specialty coffee and here you are knee-deep in coffee.” He found out that it was difficult to buy. It normally goes through five or six different handlers before it gets to the United States. Long story short, I was able to develop friendships and relationships directly with farmers.
By being able to bypass all those middlemen, he’s able to pay the farmer two times or more of what they were normally getting. When the commodity prices are down, these farmers are selling their coffee for less than their cost to produce it. Fair trade does what it can. It’s on 10% off the coffee if a farmer’s in the program. It will pay a bit more for that coffee. If coffee and commodities are way down, that can still be below the farmer’s cost. By being able to buy direct, we can pay them more. It’s not a social program or a handout. It’s paying them what it’s worth by bypassing all those middle guys.
The other thing that’s unique too is there are a lot of green coffee importers. The big green coffee importers would tend to have a different world view than those of us in outdoor sports would view. They would be more inclined to get to lobbyists and causes that would maybe work against what we do in the outdoors. It’s a two-pronged vision that we have. One is we are able to do good with these local farmers and we’re able to good for the hunting community. We’re hunter-friendly. We donate to hunting causes. We’re hunters ourselves. What I’ve been astounded and humbled by is what these local people do with their increase in income.
The Hunter’s Blend is a blend of Nicaraguan and Thailand coffee. In Nicaragua, Diego the farmer is on a family farm there. He’s been able to sponsor over 30 pastors and get them started. He’s looking at launching a program to help some of these boys who lost their fathers in all the fighting down there. There’s a whole generation of boys that along with that they lost their legal identity. If he knows one of them, he can vouch for them, get him an ID and give him five acres of land off Diego’s farm to be able to farm on shares with Diego’s for a few years. He’ll have his own little property.
That’s the program he was looking into. He’s always looking for ways to help the local people which is humbling to me. Thailand is outstanding. The people there employ over 80 women hand-sorting coffee beans. About three-quarters of those women were previously in the city in some form of sex trade. They now have a legitimate, dignified job where they can earn income and be with their families. It’s not a social program or a handout. It’s good business and it ends up doing good locally there. We’re not going to change the world but we can help change the world for a few people.
By being able to buy directly to farmers, we can pay them more. It’s not a social program or a handout. It’s paying them what it is worth. Share on XWhen you were at ATA, you were talking to Jay McAninch about coffee and hunting in the outdoors. Where did that get off?
At ATA, a lot of people said, “Why coffee?” What Paul told Jay when he was being interviewed, to be able to see if we can get in the show or not. Jay asked him the same question and Paul said, “Coffee makes the hunting world go round. How many times do you hear in hunting camp, ‘First one up, put the coffee on?’” Jay said, “I get it.” It is that way for us who do drink coffee, it’s a year-round thing. It’s not hunting camp. It’s a lot more than putting a deer sticker on a random bag of coffee and say, “Here’s hunting coffee.” It’s what we are trying to do in partnering with the hunting industry, being pro-hunting and supporting hunting causes. The coffee drinkers, as soon as you start talking about that, it’s true. I go for too hard a drive, I’m putting coffee in my thermos and hitting the road. It’s part of daily life for those of us who drink a lot of coffee.
There are a few million that start their day with a cup of coffee like you do. There are some guys like me, who are in the minority, who drink green tea and honey. I boil water in the morning in my Jetboil and it goes into my mug. If I jump into my truck, it goes with me there. I have small thermoses that go in my backpack for my mid-morning break or whatever. We all like a hot beverage, we can say that. I would challenge anyone to say, “What do I drink in the morning?” Few people don’t drink coffee.
I was more this way up until a number of years ago when my wife and I started buying our coffee from Paul and Grace. It’s whatever was on sale in the store this week. We’re drinking off the shelf coffee. Once you taste the specialty coffee, it’s the difference between going to the grocery store and getting one of those half-pint things that they call a tomato and it crunches like an apple or you go out to your garden and get this deep red ripe tomato off the vine. They’re like two different fruits. That’s how it is with coffee. You break open a can of coffee off the shelf and you drink a special quality blend like this that was recently roasted. It’s like night and day.
I have a great friend, Brett Bixler. He owns and runs Mission Coffee with a similar business plan. He goes down to Honduras, Guatemala and all Central American places. He works directly with people. He’s got pictures of the guy that owns the coffee place. He carries a gun to keep people from coming in and stealing his coffee. That’s how precious it is those countries. This is a bit of our social conscience at Whitetail Rendezvous. There are a lot of things we can do. There are a lot of people that will ask you for your dollar, but coffee is something that we do. Look at Starbucks, Caribou Coffee and Dunkin Donuts.
Coffee is a huge billion-dollar business. Here at Whitetail Rendezvous, we can support some folks that are doing a little differently. It’s more than drinking a cup of coffee to me. That’s my soapbox on that. We’re going to turn it into a hunting show again. I want to share something that’s a couple of guys and gals are doing that for a couple of people are making a huge difference in their lives. We’re going to switch out and find out how an Iowa boy got to Ohio and shot his first deer. Let’s start at the first deer. Tell us the story.
I’ve gotten a small deer in my first year. I was all geared up to hunt the rut. At that time, I was hunting in our five-acre property. The back of it is a creek with about 100 yards of trees on either side. We may have an acre or two of trees. It is a good travel route. There are a couple of resident does that live probably not on our property, but right through here all the time. Do you remember one of the guests you had on before, Jerry Everhart with The Hunt Fish Journal? I figured that I could probably learn a few things from a guy in their 70s who’s been hunting for 30 to 40 years, making copious field notes every time he goes to the field. I’ve been following his idea of using scrapes and licking branches. I was all geared to hunt the rut that year. A couple of days before the rut, I got the news that my dad had a stroke on a trip when he was out in Maryland. I ended up going to the hospital. I spent the last year of his life in the hospital with him. I’ll never regret that. I’m thankful that I got to be there. We could never talk but it was a precious time. My family was able to be there.
I missed the week of the rut I was planning to hunt. A few weeks later, my daughter looked at her back window and said, “There’s a deer standing out there.” It was down across the creek. I got the binoculars and I noticed it was a buck. He was injured so he wasn’t moving around a lot. I figured he probably found a safe place so he thought he’d stand there in broad daylight and eat. I showered up and had my son take me out with the four-wheeler so we wouldn’t disturb the deer so much. He took me around back behind the deer. He laid down because there wasn’t a human walking around, it was just a machine.
My son came back to the house. If you look at this set-up, imagine a baseball diamond. Our home was home base, the buck was standing across the creek, between second base and outfield. My treestand was over on left field in this map we’re trying to draw in your mind. I got up in my treestand and I spent some time looking. I didn’t see a thing. My son was over on the right outfield area, putting around on the four-wheeler. Once he went back inside, I was about to feel like giving up. I wasn’t seeing a thing. All of a sudden, I saw a flash of white. The buck was standing broadside of me, licking his wound.
I learned there how easy it is to overlook a deer. They can be standing right in front of you if you’re not paying attention. This buck was 20 to 30 yards. He stood up and started feeding again. I was able to get down into the creek and use that for my cover. I stalked up close to the deer who was feeding within ten yards. I was able to peak across the top of the creekbed and shoot him. I learned another lesson. I was shaking so bad. He took off like he wasn’t injured. I was like, “I missed that guy.” Lesson number two that day. I got up out of the creek and went over to look for the arrow. All of a sudden, I see him take off. He had gone ten yards and was standing there. Learning the lesson of you clear the area for half an hour.
Don’t go looking for your deer right away. I went back to the house after I came back to look for him. There was hardly any blood, but I was down on the creek. It wasn’t an angling down shot so there was no blood squirting out. Finally, I went to where I saw it last. That’s where he piled up. He went another twenty yards. When I got back to the house, my wife and my son had watched the whole thing from the back window of the house. It was a unique thing put together, spending a week with my dad at the hospital, my daughter seeing the buck, my son taking me out there and my wife and my son watching. The whole thing was a unique experience. I made a funeral mount out of him. I don’t have a lot of hunts under my belt, but that was the most meaningful and neatest one that I had.
When you skimmed him out, had he been hit by a car?
His leg was broken. When I shot him, I would have sworn he wasn’t injured. He moved like a healthy deer. It was amazing to see. His one leg was completely broken clean through so I’m assuming it was a car hit.
A lot of deer get up and run away after we shoot them with our bow or our rifle. If it isn’t in the right place, they can go for a long time. I hunt elk and I’ve seen elks go far because it was bad shot. I remember I took a guy out to elk hunt. He had a 7mm mag and the cow was 75 yards away. He shoots and the elk runs away. He was flabbergasted, “How can that happen? I’m shooting this 7mm.” I said, “That’s how tough they are plus they’re juiced up with adrenaline.” It’s amazing what a deer can do. You’ve got to wait it out even though you double-lung him and blood’s spurting all over the place. It doesn’t matter. Give it some time before you climb out your blind because or get down from your stand. A lot of deer have been lost.
I was hunting with Sheri Yarborough and Judd Cooney in Iowa. Judd goes to where the deer was standing, where the first blood is. He marks it and walks away. He doesn’t go back in until the next noontime. He doesn’t go in in the morning because of the rut of deer around. He’s going to disrupt the deer. He has a Jack Russell so it makes recovery easy if the deer is dead. That’s something to think about. We all get excited. I’m as guilty as the next guy, “I got him. He’s going over to that hill. He’s going over to that swamp.” You do that and nine times out of ten, you’re going to bump the deer. Your thoughts on that, Mike?
I certainly learned that lesson when I got that buck. I was under the impression that if you double-lung, you’ve got 40 yards and they’re piled up. There was this winter, I shot a doe and she dropped like you shot her with a gun. She dropped but she got up and tried to run. Her back legs weren’t working well or they didn’t work. I couldn’t figure it out because the arrow went in behind her left shoulder and came out near her right shoulder. She dragged herself a little distance but not far. I could tell she wasn’t going to get anywhere. After fifteen to twenty minutes, it was getting dark. I wanted to get wrapped up. I was barely confident that she wasn’t going to go so I walked up and put another arrow into her. She died almost right away. When I field dressed her, as near as I could tell, I got both lungs. I didn’t know how long she was going to live. I learned that too. They can live a long time.
One time, I was treating the scrapes in the morning before I got in the stand. It was so dark that I could barely see a thing. I hear this noise 30 yards behind me. A big-bodied deer walked across. Here I am, bent over in the scrapes, smelling like doe urine and a big buck is right there. I didn’t like my odds well. I wanted to get to the stands as soon as possible. I had a trail blown through the leaves to get to the stand but it was on the other side of the stand. I didn’t want to take the time to walk all the way over there. I walked through the leaves. It was like a herd of elephants. The guy stuck around. I got up in the stand and he stayed around for ten, fifteen minutes. At daylight, he was gone. At noon, I had to make a phone call so I went back into the house and did that.
I came back out with a leaf blower. I blew another trail to the stands so I can get to the stand in multiple directions. I put the leaf blower and got back got up in the stand. I had just clipped, I didn’t have anything ready yet and I heard a noise. I looked and 50, 75 yards out, this big buck is heading towards me. I was able to get everything ready. He came in about 50 yards and he made a semi-circle all the way around. It was a little more difficult for him to walk that way than if he had straight toward me. I had a feeling he was the one that was there that morning and felt a little nervous about the area so he avoided that. That was a nice buck. I hunt in such a limited area. I have limited opportunities. That was 50 yards, but there was a bunch of brush in between. I wasn’t able to put a shot on it.
In three years, I’ve had a nice buck come through in the first two, three hours of the first morning of being in the stand. That last one was in decision on my part I didn’t punch the trigger. That’s a lot to do with following Jerry’s scrape method in timing and all that. That year my lesson was making up your mind ahead of time to pull the trigger. That buck he wasn’t old. He was probably only two, but he had a nice rack for the two-year-old. It would have been a lot bigger than the one I shot before. He walked into the area and this voice came in my head, “This is the kind of deer that if you let him walk, you wish you would’ve shot.” I came to full draw. He was at fifteen yards. I didn’t feel comfortable with the angles he was giving.
I was afraid to bleed at him. I had not done that before. He walked in front of me, I had to let down because there was a tree there. He came over to my right again, fifteen to twenty yards, came to full draw. The same voice went through my head, “If you don’t shoot, he’s going to walk right out of here.” That’s exactly what happened. That was another lesson. Make up your mind ahead of time of what you’re willing to shoot and shoot. It was my inexperience and indecision. It was a great experience and I learned something new.
Make up your mind ahead of time of what you’re willing to shoot. Share on XLet’s talk about your creek bottom and your 100 yards of woodlot with houses on one side and I’m assuming, ag vine on the others. Is that true?
Our house is the only house right close on our side of the road. Our house is surrounded front, back, and sides by ag fields. Right when you get to the back end of our property, it opens up into 40 acres of woods. Behind us and on to the sides, it joins a small patch of woods that rut follows the creeks. I have a salt lake back here and there are some nice bucks on there. One summer, I had one nice buck. I don’t know where his home area is during the breeding season but it’s not here. He moved off sometime in October, I think. I’m working on trying to make the place more attractive. I have some food plots here even though we’re surrounded by ag. I put forage soybeans out. They’ll like them even during the middle of winter, they’ll come out and eat the pods. This year, I started putting turnips and a winter mix.
I put that out in the fall so there’s some nutrition during the winter too. It’s a tiny area but half the fun is to see, “What I can do here to get deer onto our property?” I planted some switchgrass on the perimeter of these couple small areas that I have small food lots to try to give them a protected area. It’s not the place you’re going to go that get a Boone and Crockett necessarily. It’s fun to see that you can affect their movements and their patterns, by what you plant, making some trails or making them a safe place. Our dog died this summer and this fall, I noticed that we had a lot more deer in daylight than what we used to have. I think she probably ran the deer quite a bit too. It’s a small area but it’s adjoined all the way around by fields. It’s like I’m part of a large area.
You have 40 acres and a creek. Are we talking of a pinch point? Are we talking about a funnel where they come out of the 40 and drop down at the creek? How far can you hunt far down or up the creek?
It’s probably 150 yards from the house to the back end of the property. That’s where the creek is and that cuts diagonally cuts through our property. Where I hunt back there, it’s a pinch point. There’s a creek crossing there. It’s about as narrow as the point in the tree line from the transition of the big woods in the back. As it goes on the creek to our property, it widens out a little bit. I have one spot on our property to hunt and it’s back at the creek crossing. That’s where I put my minerals so they can have them year-round. That’s where my stand is.
Jerry Everhart is big on mock scrapes, isn’t he?
That’s one of the cornerstones of his three-legged approach.
How many mock scrapes do you put out?
He said in his experiments years ago that he put a scrape out and didn’t see anything so he put another one. That’s what I understand a lot of people will try, to put a scrape out or two and nothing happens. Jerry kept adding scrapes until he had three or four around a stand and he started seeing an increase in activity. His thinking and experience is he wants a minimum of six. I have six to eight scrapes. I have another small property that I can hunt on. Most of my stands have six to eight scrapes on each on. I started the licking branches early using a pre-orbital buck gland. I had on trail cam video. These does are going nuts over those licking branches with that buck pre-orbital gland on here. That was cool to see those things that I had started being used more actively.
One fall, I had a buck. I’m pretty sure it was the buck that came through the first morning I hunted. He was coming through the last few weeks before that morning that I went out to hunt. He had been through there almost every night, working the branches and the scrapes. My goal was to make it more attractive, to bring more bucks wanting to remember that area, come through there, check and say, “There are a bunch of does here and I want to check the scene out.” That was cool to see those scrapes that I had created being used.
That first morning that I hunted one year, a doe and her fawn came through. The fawn went to the first scrape and messed around for a while and moved off. The doe came to the same scrape and messed around for a while. I know Jerry said that most of his does he shoots at scrapes as well. That’s what I saw happen. She came, she stopped and she may have presented a nice shot. On the off chance that I would get a buck that morning, I didn’t want to have two deer down and work them up. I was busy enough at work that I passed on that doe, but she presented a perfect shot standing there at the scrapes and checking it out.
Jerry talks about the box. Did you set up with the box or not?
I can’t do a complete box because of a couple of angles and the way our property is. Mine is almost like a triangle instead. It doesn’t have that one leg coming down. The other place where I do have a stand that I can hunt, that one I do have a box around it.
Why don’t you explain that to our readers?
The goal is to find two parallel trails where if you have a stand in between them, you could shoot either trail in whatever shooting distance is. You go out in front of your stand for another twenty yards and cut a crossing trail. It would look like a big H on the ground because you have these two parallel trails coming towards you on either side with a crossing. It’s like if you took a set of goalposts and knocked them down, where you’re standing is on the bottom of that. The scrapes, you want to set up as far to your left as you can shoot. You can shoot down to 7:00 to your left if you’re right-handed.
All the way around to your right, you could shoot to 3:00 anyways. You want to have scrapes around those perimeters, as many as you can. This provides a lot more shot opportunities no matter which direction the deer comes from. When you’ve scented those scrapes that morning before you get in the stand and you’ve de-scented as much as possible, you’ve minimized your odor footprint. What’s strong the doe in heat odor down on the grounds. It’s a double whammy. You’ve minimized your scent and you’ve increased that scent as an attractant but also as a byproduct. You’ve got a cover scent as well to help whatever minor odor you might have left.
Talking about licking branches, do you have to cut licking branches and tie them to a branch to have them? You’re putting up six mock scrapes. All of them are not going to have licking branches.
The scrapes become secondary to the licking branch. The location of the scrape is dependent on being able to get a licking branch. For some of them, although I can find a tree, it may be a sapling. It may be five or ten yards off the trail, but I can pull the whole sapling down and tie it. The top end of the sapling is what’s hanging out over the trail and not technically a branch. Some of my branches may only be as big as a pencil. I did one on a pine tree that was half inch or bigger in diameter. I have no idea why pounded the heck off that thing that summer. Anything from a pencil up to your thumb or a half inch can be the licking branch. Going off on what Jerry said, it’s nice if you can find a live branch that you can utilize, tie down, and get into position. If they don’t kill it off, you’ve got it there for next year. If you cut a branch off and wire it into place, it’s good for one winter. Every year, you have to put one on there. My scrapes are dependent one the ability to pull a licking branch down there. The licking branch comes first. If I can get the licking branch, I’ll go ahead and place a scrape there.
You want all your scrapes to be at your maximum yardage? You can shoot dead on at 50 yards, fine. If it’s twenty yards, that’s what it is.
Wherever you’re comfortable with. He always recommends to not putting a scrape where you can’t shoot to. If a deer comes along and eats the scrape, that’s maybe too far behind you that you can’t shoot to and that’s the only one he visits when you’re up in the stand, you’ve lost him. Put the scrapes where you can shoot to is also part of the plan.
It’s fun to see that you can affect the deer’s movements and their patterns by planting, making some trails, or making them a safe place. Share on XMike, what’s your email address? The readers may have questions about Hunter’s Blend or the techniques we’ve been talking about. A lot of people have small acreages and they don’t realize the potential of it. You have to have deer. When everything else is right, you put a trail camera out there and you’ll be surprised what comes through there.
Our garden is 40 yards behind the house. One year, a doe was mowing off our strawberries. She found a smorgasbord there. Every morning, she was coming over there. By the time I found out, it killed the previous year’s crop. Right in the corner of the garden, there’s a small sapling. That tree got all rubbed up. They’re all around us here. The goal is if you’ve got deer you can pull them on your property. My email is [email protected]. We’ll do a giveaway of coffee if anybody is interested in trying out some coffee. Send me an email with your name and address and we’ll do a drawing. If we get a lot of people sending their emails, we’ll give away more coffee too. We’ll give away a little bag of coffee for you to try out, so you can email me at [email protected].
Mike, it’s been a pleasure. Some of the things you’re doing through the world and plus hearing a guy hunting 200 yards, 150 yards off his back deck, that’s cool. Sometimes we get all wound up, “I’ve got to be here, I’ve got to be there.” They’re right behind the house like you said. Boone and Crockett bucks aren’t there today, but if you keep doing what you are doing, there’s no telling who’s going to waltz along your creek bottom.
That’s true. I truly have as much fun planning crops. That’s another thing I learned. The first time I planted anything, I had my neighbor disk up the sod. Ever since then, any seeding I have done, even soybeans, I’ve done with a lawn seeder. I overseeded right into the unprepared soil right, through whatever residue was there from last year’s crop. I usually go through it with a lawn rover after that. I don’t know if I need to. I try to do it when it’s moist in the spring and it’s going to rain again soon. I have a four-wheeler and a lawn seeder. You don’t have to till the soil. With ground-up ready soybeans, you can burn off all the weeds and have a nice stand of soybeans. I’m sure your germination rate isn’t as good as you if you tilled it up. You can go out there with a lawn spreader and throw the seed out. If it’s half or quarters of the germination rate as you would have had, but if you don’t have the cost, time, and expenses of a tractor and a disk, that opens up a lot more opportunities for people on a smaller budget or without big equipment, you can do a food plot.
On behalf of thousands of readers across North America, Mike, this has been enjoyable. I hope you enjoyed being a guest on Whitetail Rendezvous.
I appreciate the opportunity. I always like hearing your stories. I hope when I’m your age, I can get to half the places you’re still getting at. That is impressive.
Important Links:
- Hunter’s Blend Coffee
- Mission Coffee
- Jerry Everhart – previous episode
- [email protected]