Michael Hecht is a leasing agent and land management specialist for CS Outdoors. He is starting to bid in with his own hunt, especially scouting mature bucks. CS Outdoors offers a couple of different options. As far as leases go, CS Outdoors’ leases are strictly for hunting, excluding the agriculture aspect of things. They offer yearly leases, as well as what is called an elite hunt, something so different and unique that you don’t see it in the market at all. It’s a five-day unguided hunt, very low-pressured. Last year, CS Outdoors ran six people on all their properties. If you want to keep it relatively small, with an unpressured atmosphere- take a listen.
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Michael Hecht joins us today. Michael is a Leasing Agent and Land Management Specialist for CS Outdoors. He grew up on a predominantly cash crop and cattle farm in Saginaw Bay area of Michigan. His father instilled his passion from the outdoors and his love for the land along with his “never quit” work ethic. “Still to this day, I credit most of my success to the way I was brought up. Although my love for the land differs from my father, I still share the same passion for the outdoors. In 2006, I attended the Winterhawk Outfitters Guide School in the flat top area of Colorado where I successfully completed the course and sharpened my skills as a hunter. Although I do not guide, I used the knowledge I gained in the classes for all my hunts.”
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Michael Hecht: How To Scout Mature Bucks
We’re heading out East and heading to Michigan. We’re going to talk with Michael Hecht, Leasing Agent and Land Management Specialists for CS Outdoors. He’s starting to get into videoing his own hunt. Michael, welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Bruce? Thanks for having me.
I’m excited to have you because Mike McIntyre was on a couple months ago and he spoke highly of his whole team there at CS Outdoors. Without further ado, let’s talk about CS Outdoors and what you do for them.
CS Outdoors is a leasing agency. They’re solely based out of Missouri. I have to correct you a little bit. I’m originally from Michigan, that’s where I was born and raised. That’s where all my family’s from. I moved to Iowa back in 2012. That’s where I currently reside.
Thanks for sharing that.
Not a problem. I’m a leasing agent for CS Outdoors. All my properties are in Southern Iowa. I pretty much love the southern two tier counties in Iowa.
What is CS Outdoors? What do you do? Are you leasing for hunting? Are you leasing for farming or habitat improvement for white tails? Tell me more about it.
We offer a couple different options. As far as our leases go, our leases are strictly for hunting. We haven’t dabbled into the agricultural side of things. We offer yearly leases as well as what we call an elite hunt, which is something completely different, but you don’t see it on the market at all. It’s a five-day unguided hunt. It’s very low pressure. We ran six people on all our properties. We’re going to keep it a relatively small, unpressured atmosphere. This year we’ve double up our size of our leases in our properties and we’re able to run twelve guys through this year. It’s compared to an outfitter. They’ll run twenty or 30 guys through a piece of property, where we only run a handful through. You might have one guy at a farm all year and we don’t have any antler point restrictions or minimum size. We encourage you hunt for them, the most mature animal on that piece of property. We run our trail cameras and we have a pretty good understanding of what deer are out there and what deer we want our harvest to be.
How many acres do you have under lease there in Iowa, Missouri, throughout the Midwest?
In Missouri, I’m not 100% sure. The owner, he handles all the Missouri properties. I handle the Iowa properties. In Iowa, I have six. We have right around 1,500 or 1,600 acres up for lease. Not to say that we’re not going to add a few more farms this year, I just haven’t had the time to get out and knock on some doors like I was hoping. My daughter was just born last Thursday. It’s a life-changing experience there and luckily I have an understanding wife. She understands that this is part of my job and wanting to have a career in the outdoor industry. It takes a little bit of sacrifice. She’s very understanding of it.
Do you have another job besides this job with CS Outdoors?
I do. I’m a field mechanic for a utility contractor.
You are a busy guy then?
I am. I can spend one or two nights a week away from home and then get home on the weekends. During hunting season, it’s every weekend that I’m gone.During this time of year,I used to take the time off and it was family time.Now, working with CS,I have to be gone a little bit more. You can’t get security grounds sitting on the couch just like you can’t kill any deer sitting on the couch.
We’ve got a lot of listeners from Iowa. The guy or gals in Iowa are saying, “I like to find out more about this.” How do they reach you?
There are two ways, if there’s general interest or you want to know more about our leases or more about an elite hunt, we offer consultations for land management. We can come out and say, if you have 300 acres, we decide how much food you should have on your property by browse pressure. Now’s a great time to go out there and you can look at your cedars and your edible trees and see how far they’re nipped up. If you got every tree that’s nipped up about five to six foot off the ground, you got to have some food on your property.You’ve got a lot of natural browse pressure. It’s nice to have some added food on your property.We offer that consultation as well. The website is www.CSHunts.com and that’ll give you some general information as well as Cory’s contact information.
I have hunted Iowa and every time I hunt, I have to give a permit.I have to get a tag through the draw because I’m not a resident.For non-residents, how would they use your service?
The best thing to do is you got to start planning.In Iowa, unfortunately on their draw system, say you have two points; if you don’t apply for two years, something happens. Say you forget or you think, “I got two points, I’ll wait a couple years to put in.” After two years, you’re back down to zero, you lose your points.Number one step is when somebody calls and they say, “We’re looking to archery hunt.” I have to tell him, “You’re looking at a minimum of four years, maybe three.” You’ve got a small percentage but four or five years is a realistic goal.
Obviously we don’t plan on going anywhere in five years. We don’t ask for a deposit for somebody who’s booking a hunt for five years. We just tell him, “You got to stay in contact with us.Call whenever you need to.If you want to see some trail cam pictures, we can email you some trail cam pictures from the year on our leases.” You have to get those points and down here that’s a little bit easier.Down in zone five, zone six, you got about a 50% chance of getting it your first year. That’s shotgun and muzzle loader, depending on which one you pick.A 50% chance, it’s a pretty good odds to draw on getting your tag your first year.
What zones do you handle or have properties in Iowa?
Right now it’s zone five strictly. That’s where I hunt. That’s my home base, is in zone five. I’ve branched out a little bit from zone five or just around zone five there.Eventually, I’d like to have some zone six on a ground, even some zone seven if possible, but it’s going to take time.Getting it all the right people in building that reputation with our landowners, we try and put our landowner’s needs first before your hunters and clients.Like I say, we’re land managers first and we’re leasing agents second. I care more about making sure that deer are healthy on the farm and they’re taking care of them, making any money in the deal.
Five and six,I think they’re south of Interstate 80, is that correct?
Correct. They are south. Zone five is South Central. Zone six would be felt South East.
Six along the Mississippi?
I believe it borders, that is zone seven borders. I’d have to look at a map. It’s five, six and seven, I believe. I’m not 100% sure on that.
If you have older deer, you’ve got to pass the great deer or the good deer to get the great deer. Share on XIf there are any landowners from Iowa that are also hunters, what are five things that you do when you come in and do the consulting? You talked a little bit about the forage and the browsing, if they’re over browsing. What are a couple other things that you do for the landowner?
It’s up to the landowner. We’ll do anything that they need us to do. If they want a turnkey operation, trail cameras out, tree stands hung, food plots installed, monitoring of the trail cameras, that’s all that we will do, pretty much anything that they require us to do or as little. If they just want us to come up there and look and say, “Where would you guys put your tree stands at?” We’ll study some topo maps, we’ll study aerial pictures and we’ll try and figure that stuff out to our best of our knowledge and get them set up.
What’s a range of feet? Not specifically, do you have feet per acre? What is that range?
It’s either fourteen or fifteen an acre, I believe it is.
Let’s jump in 2006, you came out to Colorado, went to Winterhawk Outfitters. How has that helped you be a better whitetail hunter and be able to take care of the clients of CS Outdoors?
In 2006, I attended the Winterhawk Outfitters Guide School. I grew up on a farm. I had a summer off and I said, “I want to get out.” I do love the outdoors. I grew up on a farm. I wanted to be involved in the outdoors, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to farm. I got my love for the land from my dad. It differs a little bit from his. I applied for the school, I got accepted. I went out there and completed the course. It’s some of the most beautiful country. When you can go to bed the whole summer and you can go to sleep in full view then wake up in the morning with full view. It’s an amazing experience.
The Flat Tops have the largest herd of elk in the United States, I believe in North America. Flat Tops Wilderness, it’s pristine and it’s tough to get in and you can hike or you can ride horses. It’s some beautiful country and I’ve been fortunate to hunt up there a number of times. It’s a wonderful place and it looks like it’s coming right out of Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. In outdoor light, it’s quintessential elk country. I’m glad you had that experience. Let’s spin it around. Let’s now talk about your three things about whitetails. The first thing you shared in the warm up was age class. Let’s explain that to our audience. Let’s expand the importance of looking at each class of whitetails.
When I touched on it a little bit earlier, with CS Outdoors, we don’t have a minimum score or a minimum point structure or anything like that set in place. We encourage the harvest of the most mature animal on the farm. That means you get past a three-year-old, 150-inch deer. Chances are if we have that deer trail camera, we’re going to show you some pictures of him and we’re going to install some signs on them. That carries over to my personal farms. There comes a point when you say, “I can shoot a 146-inch deer.” That’s a great deer for me. If that’s the biggest deer on your farm, the oldest deer on your farm, that’s a great deer take, 146-inch deer. Who’s not going to shoot that? If you have older deer, you’ve got to pass the great deer or the good deer to get the great deer. That’s something that I try and be a stickler about this year, is going strictly for and not even picking up my bowl for those three-year-old or three-and-a-half-year-old, 140-inch deer, and strictly hunting for deer. I experienced it this year with my father. If you can harvest the most mature deer on your farm, that’s a trophy. That’s something to be really proud about. You just outsmarted a deer that’s alluded everybody else for six years, five years, seven years. In my dad’s case, that’s something to be really proud about.
How did you get to where you decided, “I’m going to go for the top end of the age class on this piece of property?” Take us through the process of getting you to get to that point.
It actually started on the farm that I killed my buck on this year. I hunted the farm, this will be my third year now. There’s a deer, he’s a scurry rack. He’s a beautiful six on one side. The other side, he’s got one long name to him, and then he has two brow ties. This year he grew an extra point, middle of the bead. I talked to a landowner, they said, “That deer’s been there for two years already. He’s been like that ever since we’ve seen him.” I got to thinking and I’ve had some encounters with the deer. The year before I had him twice at twenty yards, and I passed him. I probably should have shot him. He’s a great buck with a lot of character, but that side held me back and both times he was chasing a doe, so I never got a good glimpse at him, just being in a natural habitat. The more I watched the trail cam pictures, I noticed that this year he kept core. That farm where I was hunting, that was his core area. There was not a lot of other deer within that core area. He was the oldest and most dominant deer in that area. I figured he’s going to have about six years of history in this year. Going solely off of the history, that in itself meant that deer this year may be my number one deer. If he made it through this year, he’ll be guessing roughly minimum seven years. That’s going to be a great year to be able to harvest that, a seven year old deer.
How big is his core area? How many acres?
It shrunk quite a bit this year. The farm itself is about 260, about 30 acres of woods. That’s a long creek draw. That leads into about a 60 acre chunk of woods that’s privately owned by a different person. Majority of my deer bet there, we use that quick draw for a travel corridor but his core area this year is strong. Where the year before I was seeing him about 500 yards down the draw, and then this year he was locked down and he did not come onto our farm more than 40 or 50 yards to feed.
Why do you think that is?
For one I noticed this year, this was the first year I’ve seen him before the rock came in where he wasn’t chasing does.He’s got a very distinct limp and we’ve got some muscle loss. Either he was hit by a car or he was shot at one point in his front shoulder, but he’s got a distinctive limp. I think he’s old enough to where he probably does not want to fight. He probably doesn’t have it in him anymore and stick it out with some of us are here. There’s a lot of good three year old deer on his farm and a lot of them have bad intentions when it comes to other deer. He stayed to himself and takes whatever does he can take in that core area.
We’ve been listening for a couple of minutes about Mike’s intimate knowledge of where the deer lives and his behaviors and history. That’s pretty good stuff, Michael, because a lot of people just go out and hunt. You’re focusing, you’re drilling down, you’re understanding the deer and you know his characteristics. I would say you’ve got a good chance if you choose to take him out this year because seven and a half years old is getting near the top of his lifetime.
Correct.
He’s probably worn down pretty good. He’s getting slower and slower and sooner or later, a very aggressive or dominant buck’s going to come in and want him to be out of there.
That’s my main concern. That deer this year was number one on my hit list. I saw him three times. I gave up on all my other farms. I’m lucky enough I have about close to 6,000 acres in Wayne County, Southern Iowa that I can hunt. I gave up on all my other farms from October to November and I sat in observation stand about 500 yards away from us, this core area, knowing full well that I was not going to get a shot at a deer unless it was luck. I didn’t have good trail cam pictures down here, not a lot of activity, but I can see exactly where these deer come out. I saw him probably three or four times and by the time I had a tree stand, probably fifteen or twenty yards from the property line right in an inside corner of the cornfield, the deer traffic there was just phenomenal all year.
I watched it from that stand and I have seen five or six different deer that probably would have went around 140 to 160 inches come out and use that, browsing that cornfield. As the season progressed, they started getting closer and closer but it was great during that last light that they would be within shooting distance of course. I passed until I got a shot with a bow but the camera would have been made film. November 2nd, I ended up saying, “It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. I had a week of vacation.” I hunted that morning. It was November 2nd, it was a Monday. I hunted that morning and I hunt at a farm that I hadn’t hunted all year. I didn’t see a deer. I was down. I had a lot of high hopes for this spot and I rattled, called, there was nothing there. I packed up a stand, all the camera equipment. By the time I got to the truck I had some lunch and drove to the farm where I knew this deer lived. I pulled into the drive and I called some friends of mine. I was chatting with him and I said, “I don’t even know if I’m going to hunt today. It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Is it worth going back there and potentially blowing one of these deer out of there?” They all said, “You might as well hunt.” I’m on vacation. I’m away from my family. I need to be back there.
I made the mile walk back and stopped, I checked one of my trail cameras that was set over a Wind Pro Mock Scrape. I just walked right out and never even checked it. I’ve got to the tree stand. I think it was 2:45 when I got up in the tree stand, had the camera set up, getting everything settled in and I heard something. It didn’t notice it right away. I thought it was a squirrel. All of a sudden I hear branches breaking. I looked up into the field or into the woods a little bit and I can see the tree top shaking back and forth, and I’m thinking, “This is a good deer.” I grabbed the horns, the rattling horn. There was a limb in front of me and I raked it a couple times and was pretty aggressive with it, broke some branches and grown it twice, turned around. I hung everything up. By the time I had turned, I see the deer come across the fence at ten yards, straight in front of me. It starts pawing the ground and I instantly knew which deer it was. It ended up being a deer I called The Laidback Ten. I’ve been out in that farm for three years. I had trail cam pictures of him for three years and I knew he was number two on my hit list. I turned on the camera, the camera was standing behind me and I start panning it across and once it gets over center there, it creaks. I didn’t have my strap tight enough. That deer looks up at me from ten yards and I’m thinking, “That was good effort, but this is gone,” and I just stood there.
The Flat Tops have the largest herd of elk in the United States. Share on XSomehow I picked up my bow in between this and I don’t know how or when I did it. I had my bow in my other hand. That deer just looked up and I never moved. The whole time I’m thinking, “If I had a garment verb on right now, if somebody was watching the heart rate on this, they probably thinking I’m having a heart attack here because I could feel everything. My heart was beating, I was breathing heavy. After what seemed like forever, which only ended up being about twenty seconds, the deer turned broadside at eight yards and started walking. I committed to my shot, drew back. I didn’t know if it was on film. I drew back and ended up getting a great shot on the deer and in one bow, 75 yards and I heard him crash but ended up getting it all on film. It took lot of patience for something like that to happen. That was my biggest buck I’ve ever harvested. I was pretty happy with him.
Congrats and this is amazing. We’re at the point in time when you get to share, shout out to sponsors, to people you work with, to friends, neighbors and family. You’ve done a great job, Michael, sharing some awesome stories.
Thanks. I have to say thank you to HHA Sport Optics, I’m a staffer for them. Definitely thank you to my wife for being understanding. Thanks to Cory Smith at CS Outdoors and everybody at CS Outdoors. You are all great to work with. I can’t say enough about working with everybody involved with that staff.
Michael, I can’t wait to see if you get that seven and a half year old when we talk again soon. I’d like a short follow-up on that. On behalf of Whitetail Rendezvous nation, thank you for being on the show.
Thanks for having me, Bruce.
As your host at Whitetail Rendezvous, I want to thank each and every one of you for spending your time with us today. I look forward to sharing with you in the next episode, more whitetail hunting tips, techniques, and stories. Until then, keep the sun to your back, the wind in your face and always be patient. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions or what we could do to improve, because we’re here to serve you, let us know. Thanks for listening to Whitetail Rendezvous podcast.