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Bruce: Welcome to another episode of Whitetail rendezvous podcast This is your host Bruce Hutcheon on the call today we have an Ionic outdoor personality, Mr. Judd Cooney. Judd is a noted outdoor writer. He’s done some fantastic things in the outdoor world. Right now, he’s guiding in Iowa, in Iowa Trophy Whitetail Outfitters, which I had the pleasure of joining them last December, took a very nice spot. So Judd, welcome to the podcast.
Judd: Oh, thanks, Bruce. I appreciate it.
Bruce: So Judd, why don’t you just give us a few minutes of your background, so people can grasp what you’ve been involved in in the Whitetail community?
Judd: Oh, okay. Well, I was born in southern Minnesota in Whitetail country. I killed my first Whitetail buck when I was 13 years old. [inaudible 00:00:51] South Dakota season and chased Whitetails with a bow and arrow, and hit the first bow season back there. So I think that’s 1954. Here, I’ve been chasing Whitetails ever since then. They kind of get in your blood. I’ve been all over the country. And I know a lot of places for Whitetails. Both in Canada and Mexico, and a lot of places in United States and back about 20 years ago. Iowa was the last state in the Union to open for nonresident hunting for Whitetails. And I got hooked up with a couple of black bear, and went back and took a Whitetail with my bow. And been going back ever since. So actually, we started an association back there with an Iowa region, and that lasted for a couple of years and I went on my own. I’ve been doing it ever since.
Bruce: Well, you run a great camp, Judd. In your experience, what’s one of the best hunting tips that you ever received, or you gave?
Judd: How many what?
Bruce: Best hunting tip. What’s one of the best hunting tips that you ever received or shared with somebody?
Judd: Oh, God. That’s kind of a lifetime endeavor. One of the problems that we see today. Of course, l’ve guided elk hunters in Colorado, bear hunters in Canada, antelope hunters, a lot of different types of hunters. People, because of the world the way it is, don’t have the time to put in studying Whitetails. And the more that you can study the Whitetail and get to know them a little bit, the better hunter you are, even if you’re hunting with an outfitter. We get a lot of people – I don’t say a lot, but some – that want to get into [inaudible 00:02:46] and as a citizen in [inaudible 00:02:49] and accomplished Whitetail hunter. That just doesn’t happen that way. Any one tip, I don’t think that would any difference, really. You just gotta get to know the Whitetail, and spend the time and effort that it takes to become an accomplished hunter level.
Bruce: Let’s talk about what is so magic, or why you like or love hunting Whitetail.
Judd: They’re unique animals. I’ve hunted elk, of course. Elk hunting is hard work. In Colorado, where I live, it’s close to bear season, so there’s not the opportunity. And with Whitetails, there’s a lot of opportunity. The seasons are long like [inaudible 00:03:38] operation. The archery season is the 1st of October and runs through January 10. There’s a couple of weeks of shotgun season or fire arm season, where you can’t hunt with a bow. But it’s just a long season, so it’s a unique opportunity. There’s Whitetails all over the country. Almost every state, except for Alaska, tackles Whitetail now. A lot of states have done a lot of game management for Whitetail. And there’s just a tremendous appeal to Whitetail deer.
Bruce: When you think about your richest week in hunting and writing, if I was a young guy or gal coming up, what would you recommend they do if they wanted the start writing articles about hunting Whitetail?
Judd: When I started out, I went [inaudible 00:04:28]. I had made up my mind in seventh grade what I wanted to do, was work in the outside, outdoors. I was fortunate, I went to [inaudible 00:04:36] State College. I took a course on journalism, which interfered considerably with my duck hunting. And my grades showed it, but I did pass the course because the professor understood. I never really thought about being a writer at the time. I guess what turned me on to writing, was that I read a couple of articles by guys. I was working for the Game and Fishing Department. Actually, I was in the Army and in charge of hunting and fishing in For Carson. I read a couple of articles by two different writers. One of them said you can’t hunt elk with anything but this. And the other said, “No, you’ve got to use this.” And I kind of got to thinking, “What does this guy really use?” It peaked by interest. And then I sat down and the first article I ever wrote was when I was in the Army, on field hunting in Alaska. I got ahold of a magazine and just wrote to the editor.
At that time, that was in 1964. And they said, “Well, we liked the article.” I sold my first article, and it just started and everything fell into place. I went to work for Colorado Game and Fishing Department, and it just seemed natural for me to take photos and write about what I love to do. I’m no journalist. I’m basically, I guess, an outdoorsman that writes, instead of a writer that goes to the outdoors. A lot of times today, that’s what you see. You see writers who are going to the outdoors or a lot of different fields, not only the outdoor field. Outdoorsmen can read that and they know that. But I’ve always been real lucky, writing has been easy for me. I can sit down and write an article about a lot of different things. Now, of course, I’ve got 50 years of experience, which helps, too.
Bruce: Yes, it does. So Judd, tell us about your photography. Because you’ve taken thousands and thousands of pictures of hunters and game of all types. Tell us about your interest in the photography end.
Judd: You know, I’ve always been interested in photography, even when I went through high school. I guess I didn’t have good equipment. I really didn’t have a driving interest into at the time. When I got to be a senior in high school and went to college, one of my very good friends that I know from Minnesota, a guy by the name of Jim Brandenburg – and I’m sure that many people will recognize that name – he’s probably one of the finest, most accomplished wildlife photographers in the world, not only in the United States. He’s one of the ones all over the world. And I though, “Boy, that is neat.” Well, finally, when I went to work for the Game and Fish Department, I thought, “Well, I’m out there. I see things on an everyday basis, wildlife and different situations. I should be taking pictures of them.”
So I started within. I got to writing and I went to the outdoor writer’s conference. For first couple of years I wrote, was [inaudible 00:07:43] set by the Game and Fish Department. One of the guys I met, was a boss that I had when I was a government trapper in [inaudible 00:07:52] and he introduced me to people. He introduced me to everybody [inaudible 00:07:56] to California. And asked John about articles and what he was looking for. And he said, “Anything from Colorado, from hunting predators, to birds, to fishing, and everything.” He said, “You send me the pictures that you have for an article idea, and I’ll tell you whether I want the article.”
That stuck in my mind. I thought, “If the pictures are that important, then my early idea is that if I had a lot of good wildlife pictures, I could send them in with a magazine article.” Well, that’s not the case. They wanted a picture of people doing things. So if the reader could try and impose themselves into that article, they wanted a good wildlife shot to lead in. But then they wanted pictures of people doing things. And so I started taking people pictures. I bought my first good camera, [inaudible 00:08:47], which didn’t have a very good lens or anything, in a pawn shop in Denver, so that I could take people pictures and share a lot of black and white. I gained experience, gained a little extra money, and got good camera equipment. I was always out there. It used to be that I was gone about 270 days a year photographing something. Well, after I quit the Game and Fish Department.
But to the photography with an article, I would much rather be a good photographer and a mediocre writer, rather than an expert writer and a lousy photographer. I [inaudible 00:09:24] illustrate other people’s articles, because the editors, they can take an article, and if a guy writes an article, they’ve got people that can redo that article and make it readable. But they don’t have people that can go out and get those same pictures that you would get while you were there. So the photos are probably the most important part. One of the reasons I’ve been successful as a writer, is because I have a lot of photos. Right now, I have probably 400,000 photos in stock. So that’s a lot of experience.
Bruce: Wow! That’s over 50 years, Judd?
Judd: Is it what?
Bruce: That’s over 50 years of taking pictures?
Judd: Yeah. I sold my first article, I think, in 1964. So that’s pretty close.
Bruce: Oh, my goodness! I didn’t realize that. Wow! That’s quite a collection, and you probably got a couple of computers that are pretty chock full.
Judd: Oh, yeah! I use a computer all the time. Actually, I’ve got three or four of them now. Yeah, I went from writing articles on a yellow notepad with a pencil, to going to a typewriter, Remington brand, and then going to an electric typewriter, and from then to a computer. I went from misspelling words, to misspelling whole sentences, to misspelling whole paragraphs. So it’s evolved. Right now, we don’t send photos out, per se, anymore. We send them out on a disk or email them, because the editor is going they want a photo. They don’t want it next month. It used to be I would get a list from a magazine and the photos they wanted for the whole year. And now, they’ll call today and want a photo tonight. And if you can’t get it to them, they’ll get somebody else. So it’s all changed. It’s very, very tough. And now, to make a living with photography, because everybody is doing it with the cellphones and everything else. So that’s all changed, but there’s still a need for writers out there. Of course, the better you illustrate your articles, the more you’re going to sell.
Bruce: Well, listeners, I’ve been taking notes, and hopefully, you have, too, because Judd has a vast amount of experience, as he’s sharing with us today. Judd, let’s talk about archery hunting Whitetail.
Judd: Okay. That sounds good.
Bruce: So what’s the first thing you do when you look at a new piece of ground and you’re going to set it up for archery hunting?
Judd: Well, when we lease ground back there, everybody asks us do we lease about an acre, or how do we leaf the ground. We lease that up to the standpoint of how many Whitetails would that land produce, say, for bow hunter. You can’t say, “Well, it’ll produce 10 Whitetails because an [inaudible 00:12:14] Whitetails on some piece of ground. You probably have to have 30 or 40 hunters, which I’ve never been a fan of taking a lot of hunters. There’s two ways you can do the outfitting. You can take a lot of people and not give much to them, in the way of services or anything like that. Or you can pick and choose your hunters, and it’ll keep the prices up there. Maybe not right close to the top, but take a few hunters. So that’s a quality hunt to me. But when you start looking for sign, rubs, scrapes, just Whitetail sign, you do some scouting. Maybe it’s a time of year where we can do that. That can give you a pretty good idea of the way the prop land is, the way the woods lay, and what’s the escape cover, if you’ve got everything.
Deer need food, water, and escape cover. And so you look for those three essential items. And a lot of times, we put in food plots on some of our leases to enhance them and make the deer easier to get to. There’s a lot of things to look at. While I’m in situations, you’ve got to spring where the deer are really hammering up. You’ve got water or food where they’re more huntable [SP]. And you could have 1,000 acres of land but they only have 100 acres of timber on it. I’ve got leases where a couple hundred acres will kill more deer on that hundred acres than we may on a 1,000 acre lease because of the habitat and the way it is. There’s just a lot of things. And it’s really hard to describe because it’s an experience type thing. You just have to get out there and then you learn every day. When we have clients, we may have two or three bow hunters on a lease. And while they’re out hunting, we’re out scouting. So we scout and learn everyday. One of the advantages that we have as an outfitter, is that my partner and I, there’s two of us, and we’ve got a guy, so that’s three, the most that we would take at one time on hunters is six in one week. And then we’ve got probably 3,000 acres lease at this time. So that’s nine people on a daily basis. So we get nine times the information coming through us, that the average hunter can get.
And so we ought to be better at it. We ought to be more successful now. We can’t guarantee the shots. We have our share of misses, bad hits, and stuff like that. We try everything within our power to avoid that. So the more knowledge you’ve got about the deer, their movement and where they’re going to be, the tracks tell you where they’ve been, but you need to figure out where they’re going to be.
Bruce: Talk to me how you integrate your trail camera system.
Judd: Well, I started out many, many years ago with some of the first. They weren’t even cameras. They were trail timers, and you had to put a piece of string across the trail and it tripped. And I started even before that time, with photography. I had trip cameras, my Nikons. I would put those on bear baits or elk trails, or waterholes, and rig them up to where the trip string [inaudible 00:15:29]. And I had a mouse trap with electrical coil. Pull the string, it would set the mouse trap off, which would close the circuit and take a picture. That was many, many, years ago. That was back before there was such a thing as trail camera. And then the first thing that came out was with trail timer. And I started using those. There was a couple of them that you just got one picture, break the string, tell you what time the deer had come.
And then they came out with another, the Trail Master, which was electronic. And a guy in Goodland, Kansas, invented those and used them for surveillance. And there were passive and active infrared. The passive infrared is where something had a beam. And anything that broke that beam tripped the trail timer. And the other one was active. It had two units. One put out a beam because the other one [inaudible 00:16:22]. So this told you what they did. And these developed a computer program where you could put that on a bar graph. It would show you where you’re getting activity. The first thing that I saw with that was that most of the activity was from nine o’clock at night until three o’clock in the morning where you couldn’t hunt them. So it did not tell you the size of the animal or whether it was a buck, or doe, or a fawn, or a coyote, it just told you that something went through that beam.
And of course, now, you set up cameras and we just put those on our food plots, on trails, travel ways, where we want to know not only what time the deer, because they take a picture, and they have a time frame on it and everything. And not only what time that happened, but what the animal was. So we can get a pretty good idea if we’ve got some good bucks in [inaudible 00:17:16] before we ever go into that area in the fall. And even then, we kill probably a fourth of our deer every year. So we’ve never taken a picture of them. They just either avoid the trail cameras, or they just suddenly appear from off some other and they move in, and you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. And the one thing that you have to be really careful with trail cameras, is that it doesn’t make any difference to that deer whether you’re checking the trail camera or you’re hunting.
If you start going into an area, a bedding area, a feeding area, or water source, that deer will smell you and know you’re there, and a matured buck will avoid it. So once the season starts, we’re very careful about trail cameras. I have friends that check their trail cameras everyday. And a lot of times, we’ll go two to three weeks. [inaudible 00:18:09] a hunter, we don’t check our trail cameras because we don’t want to go in there and bother anything. We try to keep completely away from a hunting area as much as we can. So that’s a really important factor, the trail camera. They’re great but if you have a tendency to overdo it and over use them, it’s just the same as hunting an animal. You’re going to drive them out of the area or make them spooky, or turn them into nocturnal deer.
Bruce: Let’s talk about mussel over hunting now? Does anything change when you take mussel over hunter’s in.
Judd: Well, when we start a Whitetail operation, a lot has changed with muzzle loaders. When we first got started, the in line muzzle loaders were just starting. And I love muzzle loader hunting about as much as any kind. And the muzzleloaders now have changed. They are no longer a permitting weapon. I shouldn’t say that because a couple of days [inaudible 00:18:57]. They’re not a permitting weapon. I have got muzzleloaders that will shoot each groups that are 100 yards, and they will be 250 to 300 yards guns. They’re are very, very good, with a good scope on them and everything. And the muzzleloaders are a deadly active of fear again. You have to be familiar with them. You can’t just pick up the muzzleloader and go hunting. Although, each fall, I have guys who work for them. They live in the city and don’t have an opportunity to go out and do much shooting. And I would rather have them use one of my muzzleloaders and [inaudible 00:19:34]. And perfectly deadly accurate rather than having them bring a muzzleloader they have never shot before. But the muzzleloaders have changed. It used to be the old muzzleloader, using a round ball and 80 things of black powder. And 50 yards was a long shot. And I’ve got muzzleloaders right now that I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot 250 yard with.
Bruce: How about the set up? Do you change your stands for muzzleloaders? Talk to me about that.
Judd: Well, we are in Iowa. You cannot hunt with a rifle. With my clients, I like 150 yard shot. If we’re going to set up a blind on a food plot, we normally set it up so that the further shot that they would have is 150 yards. And then even that with a good muzzleloader, I would much rather have a 20 yard shot with the muzzleloader. It’s amazing because it used to be it was always triggered with the high powered rifle a 300 wind mag, you can usually hit stuff if you practice. That’s a 500 yard, and with the scopes and the rage finders and everything they’ve got now.
And a muzzleloader, you’re looking at about a 250 yards down, and a shotgun, probably 150 yards. And you’re looking at a bow and arrow, that’s 30 yards. So there’s a lot of difference but the big thing that has changed with the muzzleloader is that the range finder now tells you exactly how far that animal is. And we range a lot of our stands and we put them in so they’ve got a good shot with an easy muzzleloader range of a hunter.
Bruce: Thank you for that. And I hope everybody is listening to the information that Judd is sharing. Let’s talk about what you feel when people come to your camp, when they come to the farm there in Iowa. What’s the most important thing they can bring with them?
Judd: I would say the most important thing they can bring is enthusiasm. We get guys that they’re so uptight in their job, and they come and they’re worried about their job. And they’re not really paying attention and they’re there for five days hunting. The first couple of days, they don’t enjoy it because they’re still struggling from coming back and leaving their job. They can’t get along without them and the whole thing is going to fall through. And then the last couple of days, they start worrying about going back. You owe it to yourself to take the time and get away, and relax and enjoy the hunt. Like I tell them, you’re there to hunt for yourself, not for your wife, or your girlfriend, or me, or anybody else. You’re the one you have to please. They go out and they’re happy to shoot a fawn, that’s fine. If they kill a new world record buck, that’s fine. But I think we can take care of the ability.
If I know that a guy is not quite as good a shot and maybe he’s limited to 100 yard shot at maximum with one of my muzzleloaders, why that’s where I’m going to put him. I’m not going to put him in some place that’s going to have a 250 yard shot. If we have good hunters every year, I’ve got guys that have been hunting with me for 10 years and they’re up right now. They just want a monster buck and they will pass up bucks. And when they get on them, they pull the trigger. And so if we’ve got confidence in the hunter and we know them at the known quantity, so when we pick up a guy up at the airport, or gal for that matter, we start to try to prejudge him, judge their attitude, enthusiasm, and what they expect. And we sit down and we deal with reality. Some even come in and say, “I don’t know. I’ve never killed a Whitetail buck before, and I do not want to shoot unless it’s 180.” Well, first of all, I mean, they may not even have a clue as to what a 180 buck is. And secondly, those expectations are too high. So we try to work with them on that, and get them to where they’re realistic. And in [Inaudible 00:24:01] happen a personal tester scan is high and then take something because it’s not quite that caliber, and that is fine. Because it’s called hunting, hunting is a physiological thing, too.
Bruce: Hello? Is that beeping?
Judd: No, I think it’s my phone maybe going off.
Bruce: Oh. Someone might be calling in. Thank you for that, Judd. One technique that I’ve witnessed first-hand is your stealth approach to either ground blind, tree stand, or wherever you’re putting your hunters out. You want to talk about that a little bit, please?
Judd: Well, we use all kinds of blinds. Now, it’s a little bit difference for bow hunting, because you’re talking bow hunting. You’re talking about a 20 to 30 yard shot. So most of our bow hunters, we use tree stands and we use hay long tree stands, and some bow circulation. Although, we are getting away from those and using ladder stands because they’re much safer and more comfortable. And it doesn’t seem to make any difference to the deer. And we also use ground blinds. We use whatever it takes to put the hunter in a very [inaudible 00:25:12] into a deer’s pathway where the deer is going to be. During the fire arms season in late winter when it’s colder than heck, we use hard wood, dark wood ground blinds. And they’re portable. We can put them in the truck and one guy can put them up. They actually look like an outhouse, but they’re very comfortable and wind proof. And they keep the scent down. But we use all kinds. Most of our stands are tree stands and ladder stands. We do still have a few hang ons, but they’re, again, in the later season.
Iowa season is in November, and it can be very cold. And it’s just 20 below zero and you’re wearing heavy boots, heavy jacket, and heavy pants and everything. It’s kind of hard to get into one of those stands. So we try to use the ladder stands for that. And we’ve got stands that are set up in the morning stand, and we only hunt them in the morning. We’ve got stands that are setup on food plot stands, and blinds that are set up on food plots. And we may not hunt those in the morning, because if you’ve got deer in the morning feeding, that have been feeding all night and are in the food plot, you drive them and spook them out. And worry a little buck and may not want to come back.
So we usually get in to those on a food plot later afternoon. We’ve got stands on travel ways. Everybody talks about scrapes and raw blinds. They’re nice to see and we look at them when we close a deer in the area, but we don’t normally set stands on a raw blind or a scrape line, unless it’s a travel way or a ridge top, or something that the deer are normally travelling anyhow. Just so many variables, and then they change. We’ve got the portable ground blinds and we move them around, depends on what the weather is. We usually have stands set up for just about any situation. And we will not hunt a stand nor will we allow a client to hunt a stand unless the wind is right. You can wear all of the camouflage and all the scent lock clothing and everything you want, but we’re going to hunt with the wind in our favor.
I did an article one time on scent. And I’ve done numerous articles on scent and how it works. And it’s a whole different discussion on that. But I said, “Anything will work as long as you keep three things in mind. And that’s the wind in your face, the sun at your back, and luck at your side.” So those are the three keys to being successful. And we take care of those. We don’t let a hunter tell us what he wants to do. We’ve been in the business too long and spend too much time trying to make them successful. And it’s like I’ve told several hunters. These guys from back east, said “Well, we come out here and we’re paying for hunting. We want to this.” I said, “You know my feeling doesn’t matter. You’re paying me way too much money to listen to an idiot. So I don’t.”
Bruce: Hey, Judd, talk about when you drop people off and pick them up. I call it the stealth method of delivering and pick up of your hunters. Could you share just a couple of minutes? We’re coming to the end of the show, but I’d like to just have you share a couple of minutes about that technique.
Judd: Sure. We’re very specific about that. We don’t want somebody sneaking in to a stand. The deer are too square sharp for that. You talk about patterning deer, everybody wants to pattern the deer. Well, those deer, every time you go out there, they’re patterning you. And they’re very [inaudible 00:28:47]. They’re patterning you by sensing on the leaves, on the ground, or sight, or noise. And so what we do, is we drive the hunters right to the stand. We drive them on a four wheel drive or four wheeler.
We place our stands up. We have several stands. We’ll take a good hunter and let him walk into it. But very few of those. Those are mostly during bow season. But the deer are used to trucks, are used to farm vehicles, are used to [inaudible 00:29:15], are used to the smell of diesel, are used to the smell of gas. We go in and we drive a person to the stand, we drive them the same way every time. We drive in. We may drive right by the stand, drive up to the end of the lease. That way, any deer standing in the back, sees your truck or your vehicle, and five minutes later, it’s gone. And it’ll come right back. We have a lot of hunters that we’ll drop off in the dark. And in the morning, drive right up to the stand. They take two steps. They go to the stand. There’s no stand. There’s no noise. They don’t panic any deer. We’ll drive in, let them out, they get in the stand, and we stay right there with the truck, with them in the light, make sure they get in the stand, they’ve hooked up their safety rope and their safety belt. Once they’re settled, we drive off. And within two to four minutes on site, we zero right back out because they’re used to the vehicles. You can’t sneak into a stand. If you’re sneaking into a stand and a buck sees or smells you, he’s not going to come anywhere near that stand. And he will change his pattern. And even with us, sometimes we try not to hunt a stand very hard.
If you book a hunt and come on a five day hunt with us, you may not hunt the same stand twice. Because we try to lay off the stands. We don’t want to burn a stand up. Once a big buck knows a stand is in there, boy, it’s all in his favor. So we’re very careful by driving up to the stand. I mean, that sounds like an oxymoron, but we’re careful because we don’t want people walking around. And we bought our leases and we have set that rule. You cannot get out of the stand or the tree once we put you there. And we’re very serious about that. [inaudible 00:31:06] several people because I come to pick them up and they’re out wandering around. What they do, is they just blow that stand for three, four days. They did some studies this last year on stands, and found out that within three days of using the stands, 75% of the deer that were coming around at a stand changed their pattern. And so you’re eliminating chances of 75% of the deer being there where you can shoot them. So it’s a real interesting thing. But as we say, we don’t want anybody to walk around on our lease at all, except for us. If we go and recover deer, we try to get in and recover the deer and get out of there as quick as we can.
Bruce: Thank you for that information, Judd. This is the time of the show where you get a couple of minutes just to share about your outfit in Iowa, your writing, whoever you want to promote or suggest that our listeners look up, and how to get in touch with you is probably the most important thing. So Judd, take it away.
Judd: Okay. Well, out there, as stated earlier, as Iowa [inaudible 00:32:16] out there. And we’re located in west central Iowa, we’re about 20 miles from the Nebraska line. But we have all private land. And we have bow hunters. We will take no more than six hunters at any given week. And we’ll only take about two weeks of bow hunters. And then the gun seasons are five day hunts, and it’s shotgun and muzzleloader only. No riffle hunting. Gun season’s almost the first and second week of December. And then it changes into a late season that runs until January 10. And so we try to take as few people as we can. We have a quality hunt, a completely guided hunt. We pick you up at the airport. We take you back, food, lodging, everything that you need on the hunt.
If we get cold weather, we’ve got gear body suits we use. We use four wheelers. I’d say we’ve got a pretty well established hunt. We’ve been doing it for 18 years. And right now, we get booked up about two years ahead of time. So with the exception of the bow season, Iowa is an overgrowing basis. All of the hunts are on drawing basis, but we’ve been real lucky. Our area doesn’t get as much hunting pressure than some of eastern areas closer to some of the bigger states. So you can still draw a light and stuff. We have a website. It’s either juddcooney.com, or iowatrophywhitetailoutfitters.net. And that’s basically got all the information, phone numbers. I hate booking guys that I haven’t talked to, or gals. So go on the website, see what you think. And if you get some ideas or questions, give either Sherry or I a call, and we’ll try to answer them.
Bruce: I should mention, Sherry Alvarel [SP] is your partner. Is that correct, Judd?
Judd: Yes. Sherry, she’s from Iowa. She was actually born and raised in Idaho, but she’s a hunting soul who loves fishing and loves hunting. She’s a master class taxidermist. And she is a great gal. She’s as tough as a [inaudible 00:34:31]. She loves to get out there and work hard, and that’s what it takes. Like I say, the harder you work, the luckier you get. So that’s what we try to keep in mind.
Bruce: Judd Cooney, thank you so much. And I appreciate our friendship and our ongoing relationship. And thank you so much for being a guest on Whitetail Rendezvous. Have a great day.
Judd: Well, I enjoyed it. Thank you, Bruce.