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Bruce: You know, I’ll just count down. Five, four, three, two, one. Hi, everybody in Whitetail Rendezvous Community. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. So I’m really excited to have somebody from north of the border, Don Sangster, from Ontario, Canada has joined us. He’s got an extensive background in the outdoors having written articles and been involved in the outdoor industry for a long time.
Don, hey, say hello to the folks at Whitetail Rendezvous.
Don: Hi, folks. Hi, Bruce. Thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure.
Bruce: How many years have you been in the industry, Don?
Don: Well, I guess I’ve been an outdoor writer for about 16 years now, but obviously I’ve been a passionate hunter since the weeds were taller than I was.
Bruce: [laughs] Well, let’s start. Let’s just start right there. When did you start hunting whitetails?
Don: Well, I guess I started, as far as gun in hand, age 15 here in Ontario at the time was the minimum age, but I was accompanying my grandfather or my uncle on deer hunting trips for a number of years even before that, before I was old enough to carry a gun of my own.
Bruce: So you went to deer camp? At what age did you start going to deer camps?
Don: Fifteen, I would say.
Bruce: That’s great. What’s your best hunting story? Include in that hunting story one of your favorite whitetail hunting tips.
Don: Well, you know, I’ve been fortunate as an outdoor writer to hunt in a number of different whitetail destinations both in Canada and the U.S., around the Midwest in particular. I’ve hunted in the Midwest quite a bit, and I’ve written on a number of whitetail-related topics. Maybe the best whitetail trip… I’ve had two really memorable whitetail hunts. One was in Texas a couple of years back. I’ve wanted to go to Texas for probably 30 years and it was everything I expected and more. And probably the other most memorable whitetail hunt I had was out on Anticosti Island in Quebec which is a well-known destination for whitetails as far as numbers of whitetails. Perhaps not huge trophy-quality deer but I guess maybe one of the tips that I’ve picked up along the way that I think a lot of people maybe make a little bit of a mistake on sometimes is use a trail cameras.
They’re great, they actually revolutionized deer hunting and they’re indispensable now. But I think the thing that people, a lot of people, don’t realize is that you can overdo it, as far as how often you get out there to check your trail cameras, pull the cards out of the cameras. That’s why I’m really a big fan of the new ones with the cellular technology that will transmit the photos to your laptop or to your mobile phones without you having to go into the deer’s wood to actually check the camera. Because you’ve got remember, every time you step into those woods you’re creating a disturbance, you’re leaving scent, you’re making noise. You’re basically allowing the deer to pattern you, and that’s exactly the opposite of what you need to do, of course, if you want to shoot a big trophy buck.
So my tip would be just don’t overdo the use of trail cameras. Put them out there, let them do their job, check just as often as necessary, or switch to some of the more cellular ones that allow you to do things remotely. That’ll probably be my number one tip.
Bruce: Thanks, Don. Let’s unpack the “allow deer to pattern you” comment. Let’s talk about that for a little bit.
Don: Yeah, and I’ve written on topics about hunt like a ninja and be as stealthy as you can be, flip in and out of the woods. But the reality is this is not our backyard, this is the deer’s backyard. They know that like we know our living room. And while we can move around in our homes without making a lot of noise and disturbance, there’s only so much we can do in the deer woods. We can control our human scent to a large degree and minimize noise and use cover to our advantage. But these animals have to have their senses on to the highest alert to survive us and other predators so for the most somebody knows you’re there when you’re there even if you don’t think that anything realizes you’re there.
They know that you’ve been there, at least, even if they didn’t detect you while you were there. They’ve may be caught some lingering scent after you left, what have you. And if you’re checking your cameras every day, every other day, every week even, and weeks and months leading up to deer season, each time you do that you’re leaving evidence of your presence. I’m a big believer in if you want to kill a big buck in particular you’ve got to absolutely minimize the amount of contact you have with that deer before the time comes when you’re actually going to draw that boar or put the crosshairs on him. So I really try and stay away from where I’m going to be hunting until I’m actually am. Obviously, you’ve got to setup your stand and do whatever you’ve got to do after that, but then I leave the cameras and let them do their job and just check them as often as necessary and no more often than that.
Bruce: Are we talking every 10 days you check your cameras or longer time than that?
Don: I certainly won’t do it, and frankly part of that is my schedule simply doesn’t allow me to check it more frequently, so maybe I’m lucky, but weekly. I would say once a week. And part of that also comes down to positioning of your trail cameras. You don’t want to, as tempting as it may be, to put it right at the heart of getting cover or wherever you’re going to be hunting. To me that’s risky. I’m going to put it on more on the edge of the deer’s range or territory, or where I believe I’m most likely to encounter them during hunting season. Obviously, if you’ve got multiple cameras that’s even better, but I consider how easily can I slip in to check the camera, swap out the card, just like we do when we’re planning our stand locations in terms of accessing it and getting out at night and you want to do it with minimal disturbance, so we don’t want to be seen, we don’t want to be heard, we don’t want to be smelled.
I put the same attention into where I put my trail cameras because, again, I don’t want to be seen, heard or smelled while I’m putting up the camera or checking the camera, so I’ll take all of that into consideration.
Bruce: You mentioned the word ninja and very stealthy, if that’s a correct word. Tell me about hunting your stand, or stalking your stand. I’ve had some guests that say they spend a lot of time figuring out different paths to their stand that, one, won’t cross any runways or trails; two, always factoring in the wind, and third, they don’t want to bump deer on the way in, on the way out. So let’s talk about that for a little bit.
Don: Well, yeah, I agree with all of that, but the truth is that’s in an ideal world and we don’t live or hunt in an ideal world. Winds swirl, deer take tabs that they haven’t taken before, or don’t normally take. There’s all sorts of things that can throw a wrench into the work. For instance, the property I hunt the most often, there’s two ways to access that property to hunt. One is to drive in on the road that leads to the old homestead and then walking across a cut field, a cut corn or bean or whatever, and then just slip into the woods along the edge of an old logging trail. And from the sort of a human effort perspective, there’s no question, that’s the easiest way in, but it also exposes me to their view, certainly the view of any deer that may be, if I’m going in the early morning hours, that might still be out on the edge of the field feeding. Or if I’m coming out at night they may have already slipped out of the woods somewhere on the edge of the field, I could be seen.
So instead of doing that, instead of taking the easy route, I drive much further down the road from the entrance to this property, and then I hike through a low-lying field that’s hidden from where I’ll be hunting, and then I hike up this large steep hill. By the time I get to the top of the hill I’m huffing and puffing and overheated, and it’s not fun especially when there’s a lot of snow, makes it even more difficult to get up or down, but it keeps me hidden until the final, maybe, hundred yards when I top out into the field, I get up the top of the hill, top out into the field, and then I can slip across to the woods and into my stand. So, yes, it’s more work, it’s more effort, it takes longer, but it’s a simple precaution really to try and minimize how many animals know you’re there when you’re there.
Bruce: Well said. I’ve talked to my friends that I hunt with, and we’ve really changed at how we’ve hunted in the last 10 years just because of exactly what you said. Because we’re used to coming out certain paths, and going in certain paths, and we changed that a lot. And guess what? Our hunting has gotten better.
Don: Yup. We’re creatures of habit just like deer. They mess us up. Bucks mess us up when they do something that’s unusual, that we didn’t expect, that they haven’t done before. And whether they do it consciously or not, who knows, but it certainly helps them survive. So if we can turn the tables on them then and do something that maybe they don’t expect us to do because it’s not something that we’ve done before. Approach your hunting property from a different location, get out of your tree stand and into the ground blind, hunt at a different time in a day, whatever. If we can throw them a wrench or a curve ball like they like to do to us, sometimes that gives us the best chance for success.
Bruce: Thanks for that. Tell us why you love hunting whitetails.
Don: Well, I’ve been thinking about that one a little bit, Bruce, and I like to do a lot of different kind of hunting. I’m definitely a multi-specie hunter, both small game and big game, birds, a lot of fowls, that thing. But, honestly, there’s no question, on a yearly basis, I spend more time deer hunting than anything else. I think, for me, it’s a combination of a couple of almost core opposite factors. When I was growing up here in southern Ontario we actually didn’t have a whole lot of whitetails, at least not compared to… in terms of density anyway. It was my third year deer hunting before I shot a deer, and the folks I hunted with, they certainly didn’t shoot a deer every year. In fact, these days you go out for a drive out in the countryside and on a summer evening just before dark, and sure you’ll see deer out in the field.
That didn’t happen, with any regularity at least, when I was growing up. So I guess there was a little bit of scarcity, shall we say, that attracted me to whitetail hunting in the sense that it was particularly challenging. Today, things have almost swung the other way. In certain parts of Ontario we’re overpopulated with deer. You get up in the northwestern Ontario, in the famed Kenora and Dryden area of northwestern Ontario, particularly in the town of Kenora, and there’s deer walking down the streets of right downtown Kenora, and gas stations and people’s front lawns, clearly overpopulated. Now that’s not the case everywhere. Ontario is a huge, huge problem in terms of area, so we still don’t have the density province-wide like places like Iowa and Illinois might have, but we certainly have way, way more whitetails now than we had before.
So now it’s an abundance of opportunity that attracts me to it. I can hunt between bow season and motherwell season. You can hunt in Ontario for whitetails from the beginning of October to the end of December. And there’s multiple tags, special seasons, and doe tags, and so there’s way more opportunities we had when I was growing up. So I guess the bug bit me because they were sort of hard to find and hunt as a kid, and now as an adult I’m able to enjoy the abundance that has now swung the other way here in Ontario. So I think that’s really what draws me back to hunting every year, and has driven me abroad now to all sorts of different provinces and states to hunt these critters, so I think that’s what did it for me.
Bruce: Let’s take a couple of minutes and talk about the whitetail industry which you’re a part of. Let’s talk about where you see it going. Is it going to continue to expand and how it’s going to continue to expand?
Don: Yeah, I certainly think that these are… old-timers in particularly like to talk about the good ‘ole days, but truly these are the good ‘ole days of the whitetail industry in North America, I have no doubt about that. Between hunting opportunities like I just outlined, extra seasons, extra tags, long seasons, special hunts, special areas to hunt, and just the number of whitetail that we have in North America is more than we’ve ever had before. And with that abundance and bounty the industry has grown. The amount of equipment and the variety and quality of equipment that’s available to us today is… you know, our grandfathers would be staggered by what’s available to us electronics and bows and firearms, and whatnot, and clothing. It’s just unbelievable.
But, you know, manufacturers wouldn’t continue to make these stuff if people weren’t buying these stuff, and we are buying these stuff because it’s great and we love the sport and certainly a big part of that is the media, whether it’s writers like myself, or podcasts such as yours, or television. There’s way more whitetail hunting shows on TV now than ever before. So, frankly, I just continue to see the industry continuing to grow as more and more people, young hunters, and women, big growing segment of the sport, as more women get into the sport, as youngsters get into the sport, frankly, I think the future looks bright. The whitetail hunting industry, that market, I can see it continuing to grow and expand. Absolute, I do.
Bruce: If I was a young listener, not young listener, any listener, and wanted to become a writer, what are one or two things that you would recommend they do?
Don: Well, the biggest thing that I did that helped me out tremendously is I took a course through the North American School of Outdoor Writing. Believe it or not there’s an organization that helps people become outdoor writers, and it’s a correspondence course, and you can do it at your own pace, and it’s taught by folks who have worked in all facets of the outdoor writing world, and it was tremendously helpful for me.
To give you an example, before I got into the industry, or actually before I took the course I was under the mistaken belief that the way outdoor writing works was you came up with an idea, you wrote an article and then you try to sell the article to a publication somewhere. Well, that’s actually the opposite of the way it really works. You don’t want to waste your time writing an article that nobody wants to buy. So instead of writing an article and then trying to sell it, instead you come up with an idea first, it’s called a query, you flesh it out in email, on paper to some details that an editor can get a good sense of what this topic would be about, and then you pitch that idea to various publications.
And only if and when somebody comes back to you and said, “Yes, we’re interested in that piece. Go ahead, write that piece,” only then do you actually spend the time and energy, and perhaps money, in researching and producing that article because now you know someone has interest in it, because as I said, you don’t want to waste your time on something that nobody wants. I would never have known that, or at least it would’ve taken me a long time to come to learn that if I hadn’t taken that course first. So I absolutely would highly recommend anybody interested in getting into outdoor writing to sign up for the North American School of Outdoor Writing. A hundred percent.
Bruce: Do you ever mentored aspiring writers?
Don: I have, I have. More on an informal basis. But here in Canada we have the Outdoor Writers of Canada, and certainly in the United States is the Outdoor Writers of America, and there are a couple of other organizations in the U.S. and a number of regional organizations, Great Lakes and Southeast, and whatnot. Many of them have more formal mentorship programs where an aspiring young writer is sort of paired up with an older veteran writer to sort of learn the ropes. So absolutely that’s an option, but a course like the North American School of Outdoor Writing really teaches you all segments of the industry right from how to write query, all the way up to things like self-publishing a book. You get to the point where you want to write your own book and publish a book, as well as it talks about video and photography, and really all aspects of the industry.
Because that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize as well. If you want to be an outdoor writer you have to be a photographer as well. You can have just about the best article in the world but if you don’t have the proper illustration, photos, whatever that go with it, it’s going to be very, very difficult to sell. So you have to be almost as much as a photographer as you do a writer.
Bruce: I hope everybody is listening. I’m taking notes. That was great, great content. Let’s talk about the best advice you ever got about hunting whitetails. And the second part is who gave it to you?
Don: I guess I honestly don’t remember who told me this, and it may not have even been a specific time or place that one person told me this, as much as it was perhaps just sort of an aggregation of various people sort of saying things along the same lines. And that is just get out there and do it. You can do all the reading you want, and watch programs, and listen to podcasts. There’s no question there’s far more information available to new hunters today than there was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever, and it’s more easily available, no question. Absolutely, you’ve got to research and make sure you have the right equipment and everything else, but you actually have to get out there and do it.
And the reality is that despite how well-prepared you think you may be with all the best gear and latest techniques and whatnot, you’re still going to make mistakes. In fact, most of the time we’re going to fail. It’s like baseball, right? Even the best hitters in the major leagues fail seven out of ten times. And the same goes for deer hunting. If you look at it from how many hours we’ve spent fruitlessly in the deer woods, compared to when actually we were being successful, it’s not a good success ratio. So we’re going to make mistakes but we learn from those mistakes, or at least we hope to learn from those mistakes that we don’t repeat them, and so we become better hunters. And it’s experience, right? It’s all experience. There’s no such thing as a bad experience. It’s all experience.
But you’ve got to get out there and gain that experience because a lot of the knowledge and even, I don’t know, intuition might be a good way of describing it, that we develop over time only comes from time spent in the woods, early season, late season, different weather conditions, whether it’s archery, muzzle loader, shotgun, rifle, whether it’s deep woods, whether it’s agricultural fields, up north, down south. Wherever it may be, it all contributes to our sort of personal database of knowledge that just makes us better and better hunters over time, so just get out there and do it and get some experience under your belt. That would definitely be the number one thing.
Bruce: Thank you for that. Here we are we’re coming to the end, and one last question. You just acquired a new hundred-acre parcel. And what are the first five things you’re going to do? You just bought the land today, so what are you going to do to get it ready for rifle hunting next fall?
Don: Well, it’s funny because the temptation I guess would be to rush in and start hunting. It’s a hard temptation to resist. But you’re almost better off to spend even the first season just getting to know the property. So that would be my first suggestion. Get to know the property. Walk it, ATV, maybe get some aerials, aerial photos, or satellite photos for any areas that are hard to access or that you fear are really bear bedding areas and you don’t want to get in there. Get to know your property, I guess would be the first thing, just sort of the geography of it.
The second thing I would suggest is get to know what the deer do on the property. And this is where you might get some trail cameras going. Again, we’re not hunting yet. We’re just trying to figure out what the deer do on this property. Do they bed on this property? Do they feed on this property? Do they simply pass through this property, heading to or from a bedding or feeding area? What trails do they use? What time of day are they in those certain areas? Get to know the deer. So that we got to know the topography and geography of our property, now we need to try to get to know the deer on the property.
The third thing I would look at then, is to see what we can sort of do to assess the deer on the property. So if you have sort of some resident that bed, feed there, whatever, try and get a sense of what’s your population like. How many deer do you have? If you can get a sense of buck to doe ratio. Do you have some older-age class deer in the area? Or are they yearlings or transient deer? Again, especially in the summertime, looking through usually binoculars to scan feeding areas, just last light, deer are pretty predictable and pattern-able. During the summertime you can see them coming out to the same feeding areas, the same time of day. Get a start, a long distance away you can glance them without disturbing them. Do your sense of what is your deer population like.
The fourth thing I would do is start to assess the habitat on the property. What can I do to make this a better property? Whether that’s food plots or maybe doing some timber cutting, cutting some trails. Whatever it may be to enhance the property both as either something that attracts deer at bedding. You have security cover, bedding cover, or feeding. Feeding area maybe add to the nutritional value and the ability to produce nutritional value on the property. So, again, food plots, etcetera. Just enhancing the property in anticipation of hunting.
And then the fifth thing would be actually getting ready for the hunting part. And that’s taking all of the information that you’ve gathered to that point, putting it into use as far as where to put your stands, what time of day or what time of the year, of the season to hunt different areas. Again, now you’re really relying on your information from your trail cameras in terms of ground blinds, tree stands. Do I hunt in the woods? Do I hunt on the edge of fields? Is this a property that I can hunt by myself? Or can I just be myself? Or is there room for one or two companions to hunt with? What kind of winds am I going to need to hunt on or avoid hunting on?
So, again, the temptation is to sort of succumb to the excitement and anticipation of acquiring a new property and rushing in there to hunt it. But you can actually sort of mess things up for yourself for a while if you rush into it before you’ve really gotten to understand what you’ve got first of all. So by spending some time, even that whole first season, even if you don’t hunt that first season, just spend it understanding the property and learning what you do on that property, I think that puts you in a much better position when you actually hunt maybe the following season.
Bruce: Thank you for all the information that you’ve shared with us, Don. I’ve got almost a full page of notes. And we’re at the part of the podcast here Whitetail Rendezvous, Don is going to tell us what he does and how does it and how to get in touch with him, his websites, or Facebook page, or Twitter account. So, Don, next couple of minutes are on to you, so go ahead, sir.
Don: Yeah, thank you. Well, I am involved in the outdoor industry in some different respects actually. I’ve started booking some global hunting and fishing trips, places like Argentina and New Zealand, specializing in offering these trips to Canadian hunters but certainly these trips are also of interest to American friends as well. I’m an outdoor writer. I write regularly for Bass Pro Shops, Bass Pro One Source. I write a regular blog there as well as some features and how-to’s, and you can also follow me on Twitter @donsangster. And finally I have my own business repping and distributing and wholesaling different hunting and fishing products here in Canada, and that’s called Outdoor Dreams Enterprises, and people can catch me at www.outdoordreams.ca.
Bruce: You mentioned Bass Pro One that you write for. Any other blogs that you’re up weekly or monthly?
Don: On some other blogs will take some of the things that I put on Bass Pro One Source, and they reprint them on their sites. But Bass Pro is the one that I write most regularly.
Bruce: Well, Don, it’s been a pleasure having you, and I look forward to another interview down the road. And to all those people out at Whitetail Rendezvous, thank you for listening today and may all your hunts be great ones. Thanks again, Don.
Don: Thank you.