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Iowa Hunting Tradition

This is Bruce Hutcheon, your host at Whitetail Rendezvous. This morning, I’m with Matt Barret. Matt and I have known each other for a couple years. We were having coffee the other day at the Breakfast Club here in Colorado Springs. We started talking about Whitetail hunting. Matt said he used to love Whitetail hunting when he was growing up in Iowa. So I invited him to be on the show today. So Matt, welcome.

Matt: Hey, thanks, Bruce. It’s good to be here. It’s good to see you.

Bruce: So tell me about how you got started in Whitetail hunting when you were a kid in Iowa.

Matt: I grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa. [inaudible 00:00:34] Iowa, a town of 60,000 people, that’s a pretty big city. Typically, city boys didn’t get out on a farm very much. But when I grew up, we actually went to this little church about 20 miles east of Council Bluffs, a town of Oakland, Iowa. I was one of the only city kids that went there.

So all of my friends from the youth group at church were farm kids that would come in. As I made friends and developed relationships with them, we would go and have sleep over’s at their house and they’d come to my place. We’d hang out. Just hung around, a farming, hunting culture. Some of them were a year or two older than me, would come back and start talking about their experience hunting. I think it was just part of the culture. It wasn’t really expected that I would become a Whitetail hunter, but it was something that I saw the opportunity of.

I saw the relationship that they had between them and their fathers as they would go out hunting. That was just something that I really wanted

I saw the relationship that they had between them and their fathers as they would go out hunting. That was just something that I really wanted. So when the opportunity came, took my hunters safety course at Iowa Western Community College one Sunday, or one Saturday morning, passed the test, of course, and went Whitetail hunting.

Bruce: Just tell us about how that happened.

Matt: Yeah, a good friend of mine. Well, at the time, best friend of mine from the church, a kid named Doug Pedy. Doug and I, we got together and he had been hunting a year before me. He was a year older. We just went out to his farm. He lived on a farm. I guess the biggest town near there would be Griswold, Iowa. He was in Elliott, Iowa.

Bruce: Is that along the Missouri River, or close to it?

Matt: Yeah. We’re probably talking, I’m going to say 30 miles east in the Missouri River, so definitely right along in that area. We went out to his place, probably spent Friday night at his house, went to bed, woke up before the sun got up. At his farm house, his mom was making breakfast for us. I still remember we’d get up and we’d have french toast or pancakes, a pretty hearty farm breakfast. His dad would come in from choring.

He was out feeding hogs and making sure that everything was set up for the morning. We get together, jump in their truck, and then we’d drive off to meet up with a group of other people. As I was explaining over coffee the other day, we’d just drive through the dark and you’re barely half awake. You’re all geared up in your blaze orange coveralls, your stocking hat pulled down over your head, trying to stay awake, a little bit of adrenaline pumping through you.

Because my first time hunting, I didn’t know what to expect.

Because my first time hunting, I didn’t know what to expect. I know we had a gun. We had shells in the back. For a 14 year old kid, that was kind of a cool thing. We just randomly drove down this road. I had never seen it before.

It was certainly dark. I didn’t have any idea where we were. All of a sudden, headlights started appearing over the hill, and pretty soon there’s four pickup trucks pulled along the road side. We all showed up together and get out. A lot of people today hunt in tree stands, kind of go out on their own. This group of people who I went with, went group hunting. Group hunting is we find a tree stand, or a stand of trees rather, and we put four people on one end on the stand, and four people go to the other end. Like dogs, we pushed the deer through.

They had studied all year long where the deer were going to run out. They studied all year long where they were going to break, where they were going to jump the fence, or what they’re going to do. They put people in the right places. As us young kids, were required to push the dear through. They’d stand on the other end and shoot them as they came out. It’s still very, very fond memories of my first time going out. Didn’t bag anything the first year. My friend, Doug, he got his first year that year, and still remember what that was like, watching him field dress that deer, and just had amazing memories as a kid.