Deer Hunting – Hutch Has A Little Hope

Hunting is always exciting, especially when you are training your own kids. Casey and Hope Hutchinson are promoting some hunting brands while sharing their hunting experiences with their own kids. Taking your kids out hunting and incentivizing it trains them not only to responsible at home but also in the field. They explain the points they have for their bucks and elks, and how the system varies from one state to another.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Deer Hunting – Hutch Has A Little Hope – Casey & Hope Hutchinson

We’re here with Casey and Hope Hutchison and they’re good friends of mine from Colorado Springs. We’re doing a lot of new things because there are a lot of exciting things coming up for Whitetail Rendezvous, which we’ll be talking about. First off, Casey and Hope, people are starting to recognize Hutch Has A Little Hope on social media and they are getting a lot of inquiries about having them be on their Pro Staff. The question we were talking about on Facebook Live and Instagram live was when somebody offers you a Pro Staff position, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to you to be offered these and what fits into your brand?

I think at some point it’s an honor to have a company think that much of you and your content that they want to be part of it. It’s a little different game when in order to rep a company for free on our social media platforms or in life, or on my truck driving through town or on our hunting grounds out in Kansas and people ask, “What are these stickers on your truck? What is this outdoor company or that outdoor company?” You have to really believe in the product and be able to describe it and tell them what it is. These companies that have requirements as far as your social media platform goes and they want one or two posts per month about their product on your social media platform. I’m not 100% sure that that’s the direction we want to go. We’re having a lot of discussions about that because at some point it becomes a job.

Years ago, when I had the county’s competition level, I wouldn’t say professional level, but pretty close, it became a job. We were expected to go to so many tournaments every year and so many shows every year and it zapped the fun out of it. I took about a five-year stint of not, representing any companies and just doing our own thing. Instagram brought it back for us. Right now we’re representing small companies, OnX Outdoors, Mount Epic, Uptight Gear, Shield Mountain Outdoors elk calls and it’s really a cool relationship with those people. They’re small companies. They don’t have a big name. They’re out there. We got picked up as a brand ambassador for onX Hunt and that opened a few doors for us, which is cool. We’re excited about that. It’s the first big company that we’re representing. Their requirements weren’t out of line at all or we’re going to scratch your back, you scratch my back relationship that you should have with these companies. A lot of companies want the posts, they want their product on your page because you have the followers or the content. It takes the fun out of the hunting. It takes the fun out of the field is a good way to put it.

You were telling me about your turkey hunting. You were hunting and all of a sudden, you were taking more pictures. What’s up with that, Hope?

It gets annoying because he has to have the right angle and the right lighting and I’m trying to focus on hunting and he’s everywhere taking 50 pictures so we can post the right one. I totally get it but I have my brain on other things than taking photos.

It is a job. If any of you’ve ever seen Holly shoot a video or do a photo shoot for any product, it’s a lot of work. To get good quality photos for the products that you’re repping, it isn’t a one and done. It’s a lot of photos and you might get one out of 100 that tells a story about that product. There’s a lot to this game in the outdoor world. With Hope and Casey, they truly love to hunt together. They have a blast together and it’s hard to figure out. If you’ve got any suggestions for them, please reach out to them.

Reach out to us, @HutchHasALittleHope on Instagram.

That’s the best place to reach out to them or send me an email and I’ll make sure they get it at WhitetailRendezvous.com. Tell us about your hunts. What happened, what didn’t happen and what are you looking forward to?

Our archery hunt in Colorado was eventful to say the least. We had horrible weather and wind. Every time we were out in the field, we had swirling winds on the mountain. We had what I call snakes. The trees that have been dead for 40 years are coming down in the forest. In my wildland role, we wouldn’t be in the forest at that point. They’re called widow makers for a reason. It was a little different when you’re hunting and Hope was with me. It didn’t make for a fun time at all. We ended up bailing out of the archery elk hunt. We had a run in with our magic bull one morning and he winded us before the sun came up. I tried to keep him around. I called to him a little bit. I stuck around for a little bit and as soon as I felt that I had a shot, I stepped into my shooting lane and he was looking directly at us and he bounced out of there.

Elk hunting wasn’t very successful. We moved on to the Kansas whitetail hunt. We’re not big trophy hunters. I don’t know if anybody knows that about us, but we like to fill the freezer. We have three kids and I don’t like to buy meat at the store. We’d go out to Kansas for the doe season in January. We were successful out there. We brought home about four or five whitetail does. We were unable to take the kids because there’s school, but after that was turkey season. We had some really cool hunts in Colorado where we got the turkeys fired up and they came running in. Right that last second when you’re squeaking the trigger and it’s starting to come down, you’re about to hammer that bird. If that bird sees something he doesn’t like, they’re fast.

They boogied out on us. Colorado in the early season was rough. We went to Kansas and tried some new public ground that we’d never been on. There was a lot more pressure that I’m used to it. It made for an exciting experience. We have birds across the road from us on private land. Usually I don’t have too much trouble calling in turkeys, and those birds, they’re the smartest birds in the nation. There’s a lot of pressure from Arkansas hunters. In Kansas, the bird population is low, so Kansas saw a lot more hunters. We eventually found a spot and we were able to get on some birds. It was our two first Easterns. We had planned on going to North Carolina on a Turkey hunt. That fell through just because of the cost of getting there and hunting and everything else. We were able to go down to Southeast Kansas where Hope’s from and make it happen. That was a lot of fun.

It sounds like you have a good plan. You talked about not drawing, so what are your plans for big game hunting in Colorado?

Hunting isn’t just pulling the trigger. It's the whole experience and the journey. Share on X

I had big plans. I was sure I was going to draw my elk tag in a popular unit. I almost gave that away. I almost told my unit, “I’m not going to do that,” and I didn’t draw. It was really a disappointing year. We drew six deer tags for a different unit for archery. We’ll get out and hunt. We’ll buy some over the counter tags for elk and see what we can get done.

It’s Colorado. If you haven’t paid attention to any of the journals, Colorado is suddenly very interested and they opened up applications for $3. You could apply for any limited license in the state. If you got it, then you have to pay for it. In the past, you have to pay for it to apply for it. It’s not so and that created a lot of problems. Go read the explanation of it. They do a lot better job than I do. Plus, they don’t get emotionally involved because I live here. Point Creep is one issue. Now we have a whole new issue. Hopefully, Colorado Parks and Wildlife sees the errors of their way or they basically destroyed limited access hunting in Colorado. They might as well open it up, we get the preference points and just have a lottery.

We don’t want that. You have thirteen points for mule deer. I have nine points now for elk. That counts towards something. In the unit that I’ve been putting in for nine years, it should take seven points to draw. You typically see about 700, 800 applications for that unit. I think it was close to 6,000 applications for those two units.

It has the same number of tags vote. The tag numbers did not go up.

It made it really difficult. Hopefully, Colorado Parks and Wildlife changes that. It’s definitely frustrating.

The other thing, you talk about Point Creep, the cost of hunting out of state, even whitetail hunting gets expensive. Even if you have family farms to hunt on, buying licenses and traveling, it’s not as easy as it used to be, I would say that. Everything goes up and I get it. “Gas is not $0.25 a gallon anymore, Bruce. Get over it.”

To explain the Point Creep, a lot of states that don’t use the point system don’t understand. You might have a better knowledge of it than I do, but let’s say my unit wants to draw a tag there, it’s going to take seven points. You have nine people that have thirteen points that are tired of putting it for the unit they’ve been putting in for. They put it in from my unit that takes seven to burn their points and that makes my seven look like nothing.

That happens and it takes for any unit in Colorado that’s a well-known good unit. Every year, people that have more, just as Casey said typically in the past, seven points that I’ll look at it with my thirteen and I’ll go, “I’m going to go to unit X and draw the tag.” His seven points are thrown out the window because anytime I can choose to use my overage points, so it takes more points numerically. We’re talking about statistics to math. The whole thing comes down to you’re never guaranteed a tag. When I drew my sheep tag, there are two people with 21 points. I got the tag and the other guy didn’t.

I said we didn’t put in for sheep just because I’m not a trophy hunter, I don’t care to spend the money on a hunt like that. That tag cost me $3 to apply for it. We put in for everything. We were part of the problem.

It’s even harder if you’re a non-resident. Colorado’s plan that you put in place hurts you even more because there’s not an expanding number of tags. Now, instead of having a certain percentage of out of state people putting in for that tag, that went through the roof. Colorado needs to clean up its act. Let’s settle on that.

Tell me about your trip to Wisconsin.

We’ve been going on with Casey and Hope and we talked about being Pro Staff, we talked about their hunts and we talked to them a little bit about the frustration we have with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. We’re going to change it up. That’s why I asked him to come over. I want to talk about where Whitetail Rendezvous was going but before we go there, we’re going to talk about October 30th of 2017. Casey, ask the question again.

Hunting is a way that you can sustain a lifestyle that people do not want you to sustain. Share on X

What happened? I caught wind that you didn’t even get to hunt.

No. It’s been an interesting last few years. In 2015, I started Whitetail Rendezvous and January, February of 2016, I had a total hip replacement. That was nice. I went through that when I was sheep hunting actually that summer. That was crazy. I came off the mountain and I had to have my shoulder pinned. I didn’t whitetail hunt in 2015 or 2016. In 2017, my hand blew up and I rolled my truck three times. In October 30th, 2017, my left hand was all swollen. I was on Highway 51 North of Eau Claire, Wisconsin heading to KO Farms. A good friend of mine has a nice farm where he has free-ranging whitetails. I went across the Chippewa river and hit black ice. I ended upside down three times and walked away.

I don’t think you walked away though.

I actually did walk away. I walked up to the hill. Adrenaline’s a good push, but I had five busted ribs, a four-inch hole in my lung and that wasn’t good.

What time of day was this?

I hunted in Buffalo County three days before this because I love to hunt in Buffalo County. I was down there hunting, and then I knew I wanted to get it from my buddy’s house for Halloween. He had this gorgeous buck. If you saw pictures of them from trail cameras, it’s a gorgeous 10.0 frame. It’s the biggest buck we’ve had ever on that farm. We were all wanting to hunt him. I forgo Halloween in Buffalo County, hunting out of the house. I left Mondovi probably 3:30, 4:00 in the morning and I wanted to get to the farm, have breakfast, then start hunting and go to my stand. It was probably 4:30-ish, 4:45-ish in the morning with a little drizzle and 40 degrees out. There was no indication there was ice. I went over the Chippewa bridge. The ice wasn’t on the bridge. It was in an overpass just past the bridge and my back end went and I rolled three times. It was in the dark.

Did somebody find you right away?

Yes, because it was getting near time people were going to stand. A lot of people in Wisconsin hunt. I had stopped rolling. I was checking myself out for bleeding and breathing. I was still breathing because I could see the lights flickering off the trees in front of me. I never hit a tree. It was an open bank. This guy yells out, “Mister, are you okay?” I go, “Tell them to bring a saw to cut me out of here.” Little did I know, because then I could get out the passenger side, but the driver’s side was completely collapsed right down to the top of the seat. When I rolled, I wasn’t there. I had ducked out of the way or thrown out of the way. The guy comes down and he opens the passenger door and I unbuckle and literally rolled out onto the ground. I hurt with five broken ribs. He just said, “Let’s check you out.” He had a flashlight and I go, “I’m breathing. I’m not bleeding. I’ve got broken ribs, but other than that, I think I’m okay.” Basically, I was.

No whitetail hunt again. You’re cursed.

I am cursed truly. I went to Mayo Clinic. The second night after being in the hospital, my blood pressure went to zero. I flat lined. That was fun. They had to resuscitate me. The hard part was because of my lungs, I couldn’t fly home after being released. They said you could not fly home for at least a month or two. You have to get through all the breathing protocols. I had to go to my friend’s lake house about 100 miles away. Every week, I had to go back to Eau Claire and go through the rehab thing and they checked my lungs. They don’t do anything for busted ribs, just my lungs. They finally released me, so I got home in time for Christmas. I was home sometime after Thanksgiving. On the farm, I hunt along the Baraboo River. We had the worst year in 35 years. I think we killed two, eight-point bucks. This is the farm that every so often we’ll take a 170 or 180, but we’ll take mature bucks. Everybody’s pretty clued into mature buck hunting.

If you’re a kid, if you shoot anything, it is legal. Other than that, we killed I think six or eight goats that were taken off the farm, but it was just benign of bucks. I got into side by side and I said I’m going hunting one day, took out my crossbow and I didn’t even cock it because I really didn’t want to shoot anything. I get on one of my neat spots and I heard a buck come down the hill. I never saw him. He winded me because of the wind going down the hillside and the way it was set up. He stood there for five minutes. I never saw him and then he took off. I was pretty well hidden. I was on the ground and near a log and stuff. That’s the closest I came to a deer. I wasn’t going to shoot him anyway because the doctors told me, “If you go out in the woods, you can do one thing. You can pull the trigger. You cannot do anything else.” I had five broken ribs.

You can’t field dress it. You can’t pack it out. You can’t hold the head up to take a picture.

Different states have different point systems. Share on X

I can’t do anything. I wasn’t really going to shoot anything anyway. My good friend Dick and Nicky Rogers put us up at the lake house and I had one downstairs room. I had the whole den, the fireplace room, all to myself. That was the infirmary. For 22 days, Kath flew out and that was it. That was my hunting. I’m still recovering. I wish I could tell you that I’m back up walking. I was in the gym and there are still some residuals. Seeing all that, that’s a backdrop into a couple of things. One, even through it all, this show has gone out. Whitetail Rendezvous has persevered and I want to thank everybody that’s been a guest since October 30th, 2017 because you helped me heal. It’s simple. I love what I do. I love each and every guest that’s on the show because you help me vicariously live the hunt. It’s no fun being busted up. A lot of people have situations and hunting keeps me going. My wife asked me, “Why do you keep doing it?” “Because I love it.” What else am I going to do? I’m not going to go out and play golf now, that’s for sure. It keeps me going. Because of it, we’re going to have over 250,000 million downloads. Denver Stadium, I’ve been there a bunch of times. There are only 80,000 people there. I fill Denver Stadium three point whatever times. Put your head around that.

I’m not trying to be braggadocious, but I’m proud of that fact that I’ve filled Denver field over three times. I’ve had over 500 guests at which Casey and Hope have been guests twice. They’re some of the greatest people in the outdoors. Nobody knows their name. They fly under the radar. Fred Eichler was on the show and you can’t be Fred. Fred is amazing and everybody knows them and what he does. For every Fred Eichler, I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people that are like you and me, that love hunting and love the traditions of hunting. They love the stories of hunting and love to be around people who love hunting and Fred Eichler is all that and more. He’s the fun guy. His enthusiasm is infectious. Kudos to you, Fred.

Having said that, I’ve been contacted by a couple of TV companies. We’re in discussions with them to have my podcast be on TV shows. Who, what, where and how to remain to be seen. I’ve been contacted by somebody else, a major company. They want to be my premier sponsor. I’ve been contacted by Outdoors with Bryan Ritchie to do some work with them. A lot of things are coming, but here are the nuts and bolts of what I’m trying to say. It took me three years to get here. Three years of doing the same thing day after day. Calling people, touching people on social media, setting up the show, doing the show, editing the show, publishing the show and then promoting the show the day it’s published. That’s five hours of show times 530-some shows.

I do that because I love hunting. I would ask each of you to take a kid hunting, take a single mom hunting. If you’re a woman, find a gal that you’re friends with and take her hunting. Take her to the outdoors. Take a kid to the outdoor, but not just on a hunt. Here’s the big thing about that. Here’s truly the deal. To take your kid hunting, put them in a blind and have them shoot a deer is great. Take them turkey hunting, hunt and shoot, they can catch a fish. The thing is to have them get out that deer. Have them clean that turkey or that fish. Say, “Johnny, the next thing is I’m going to help you cook it.” You’re going to help them make a meal. You’re going to say, “Johnny, do you want to do this again?” “I’d love to go next year.” “Here’s the deal. You’re going to come out and go shed hunting with me.” You’re going to go out and put in food plots. If you don’t put in food plots, clear shooting lanes, do something that you’re going to go out and help me with the stands. You’ve got to become a 365-day hunter to understand what it means to hunt.” Hunting isn’t pulling the trigger. It’s the whole experience. It’s the journey.

It’s like Casey and Hope that I’ve met through Whitetail Rendezvous, through Instagram. We’re building a relationship and hopefully, we’ll hunt together and that will be a blast. The biggest thing that I want to leave as my legacy the last time Whitetail Rendezvous doesn’t produce a show and that’s going to be a few years from now, unless I’m dead, is that everybody who comes on thinks about them as being an ambassador for hunting. Not a basher for hunting, but an ambassador for hunting. We’re all in it together. I don’t care if you drive a Ford or Chevy. I shoot a crossbow because I’ve got a pinched shoulder. I shoot rifles and I like Rugers. I don’t care what you do, but if you’re participating in the greatest journey that we have in North America. We have a North American model, not a European model, and check that out. In Europe, you have to be flippant rich to hunt. You have to pay to hunt any place you go to. You have to do those things and it’s very expensive and very regulated.

You think regulators are tough here, go to Europe and it blows your mind. In some places, you can’t even hunt. We’re very fortunate in North America to have the model that we have, but it’s up to each and every one of us to be the best ambassador for hunting. Somebody comes up to me and we talk about hunting, “I like to kill stuff.” I don’t say that anymore. I say I harvest stuff and I hunt. I bring stuff home and we eat it. I’m a meat hunter like Steve Rinella. If you don’t know Steve Rinella or read his book about the American Buffalo, you need to read that book. You need to read that book because it will tell you how we’re all tied into this together. That’s where the Native Americans really understood how they were tied into the whole ecosystem and environment. They were the first conservationists because they just knew what they had to do to sustain life and we’re soft. How many of you right now, if you ever, watched Naked and Afraid, could get fully naked with a flint and a steel and nothing else, and could get dropped off and make it home alive?

I’m a ginger. That wouldn’t happen.

One hundred miles from your home, could you make it home alive in the woods? I don’t know. I used to think I could. I knew I could. With my body the way it is now, it’s a 50/50 stuff. It’s nice. Those are skills that have to be transferred like the Inuits. I spent time with the Inuits. The elders are elders for a reason because they transfer knowledge. I know I’m on a big rant, but it’s my time. You can shut me off. The traditions were shared with the people coming up and there were rite of passages. Everything about hunting, you can bring everything that people have been doing for thousands of the years right to your home, right there in Tupelo, Mississippi. You can do exactly the same thing the elders did because you’re going to teach your kids.

Hunting is important. It’s a way we can sustain a lifestyle that people do not want us to sustain. They hate us. Some of my friends, lady friends, have told me hideous things that they’d been called and told what they’d like to be done to them just because they hunt. Those are women telling other women ugly things, as ugly as you can think. That’s wrong in my mind. When I get the hate mail, send it to [email protected]. I got pinched shoulders and I do kill a wolf. I’ve had a great time in North America hunting. I haven’t been to Africa yet. I will get that. It’s a great time for Whitetail Rendezvous. It’s a great time for my guests. It’s a great time for my readers and I can’t wait for all the things that are building to come to fruition. That’s all I can say. Any suggestions, tips for the people or what do you want to share? Give your two cents on my rant.

I agree 100% with getting your kids involved. We get our kids involved from field to plate. We use hunting and anything outdoors as an incentive to keep their grades up and their behavior in the house. It works. It’s the same as playing sports for the kids. If their grades don’t warrant it, then they’re not going to go. It kills me when your kid draws a tag and you can’t take him because they have two Ds. Use it to your advantage. Get the kids out there and teach them. Teach them all the way through. From field to plate, processing, making summer sausage, making the pepperoni sticks, however. Get them involved. If you go back in our Instagram, you can see our kids are knee-deep in whitetail hamburger, making a burger. They love it. If that’s something that you can see that love in their eyes for what they’re doing, that’s something they’re going to do as adults. They’re going to keep the tradition going. That’s not something that either one of us had. This is all open-eye. We’re all self-taught. We didn’t have parents that hunted. We didn’t have those opportunities as a kid. It’s all self-taught.

My experience in the woods comes from Scouts. Get your kids involved in Scouts. It’s invaluable, especially if you’re going to be in the field. We had a friend come from the flatlands of Iowa and we had to leave the elk hunt. Our vacation time ran out and he said, “I’m going to stay.” I said, “Okay.” He’s going to stay at Crystal Mountain Range. I said, “If you go down, you hit the Rainbow Trail. If you go up, you hit timberline, you’ve gone too far. You go down and hit the Rainbow. You go left and it will take you back to where you need to go.” He called us the very first evening. We left around noon. He went out for an evening hunt. He called us around 7:00 in the evening and said, “I’m lost.” It was fourteen texts that said, “I’m lost.” I tried calling him and he didn’t answer. The cell service in the Colorado Mountains is horrible. You need a satellite phone. We had a friend that was still on the mountain in a different part of the mountain. We were able to get ahold of him, send him up and I finally found him, but he was legitimately lost in the woods. The whole thing with the onX Hunt, get the app. If you’re going to take your family out, get the app. It’s not that expensive for what you get and completely worth it. It works with no cell service. The next time he comes out, the next time he invites himself to come out, we’ll make sure that he’s set up for success a little better than he was.

Everybody knows your phone has GPS.

You put your phone in airplane mode, it will work just fine as GPS.

I’m not saying you don’t have to go buy a Garmin or whoever makes the best GPS in the world, but you have a smartphone, put it in airplane mode and get the app. There are onX maps. What I’m trying to say is there is no reason for everybody, even people like me that know the way around the mountain, but it’s dark. I’ll throw the scenario. You know the back of your hand, I know the Mosquito Range really well. If I fall, break an arm, break a leg, if something happens at dark, I can go to my phone, I can ping my phone, then I can get a copy of that and I can send it to Casey and he’ll come to get me. They’ll call, search and rescue. I can say exactly where this trail comes in and the creek comes through and Seven Mile Creek comes in.

Even for those hunters that are living off the grid and they don’t have the money for a smartphone. Get a compass and get a map for the area that you’re going to be. Get good topo. There are plenty of books on navigation and plenty of YouTube videos. You can learn how to navigate with enough practice. Even on our fire crew, we still use a map and compass for large complex fires. It’s almost a necessity. You lose power, you lose whatever. Up until recent, the cell phones didn’t work. If there’s no cell service, it would mean all the way back to the black forest fire. We didn’t have accurate maps. Knowing how to navigate on a paper map with a compass is invaluable as well. There are a lot of things you can do to make yourself successful in the field. Being successful in the field doesn’t always include harvesting an animal. Being successful in the field is taking my wife out and seeing the most beautiful scenery Colorado has to offer. We don’t have to harvest an animal to enjoy that time. That goes back to taking your kids out. Teach them that you don’t have to fill a tag to be successful in the field. All you have to do is smile.

I’m smiling now because this is a great couple and you’re going to hear a lot about them in the years ahead. With that, we’ve been rolling for a while and I’m going to say thank you all. Thank you so much for reading the blog with Casey and Hope Hutchison of Hutch Has A Little Hope. Thanks so much.

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Up next is one of the best episodes for specific detailed information about what it takes to build an arrow that’s going to do the job to minimize wounding game or game getting away. Bruce “Hoss” Ritter-Clark works with Ethics Archery. He and I got chatting on Instagram and found him unbelievable. If you don’t know what FOC is, you’re going to find out. If you don’t know how to read a spine shot, you’re going to find out. He’s going to give you some nitty-gritty, detailed and specific, how to get your arrow to the heart of the matter, to the vital zone with mass and momentum. Tune in. You’re not going to want to miss the show if you ever wondered what am I using and why when I’m hunting with my bow.

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Deer Hunting – Hutch Has A Little Hope – Casey & Hope Hutchinson

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Deer Hunting – Hutch Has A Little Hope – Casey & Hope Hutchinson

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