ATA Day 3 – 4: Killer Food Plots – FieldTorq Knives – Convergent Hunting Solutions

Killer Food Plots – Killer Food Plots was established based on the visions, dreams, and passion of owner Nick Percy. Introduced to Whitetail hunting in 1990, his passion for the outdoors and developing premier whitetail habitat has been growing for over 28 years. Killer Food Plots approaches each new challenge with a genuine passion, love, respect and knowledge for whitetail deer, their nutrition, and creating premier habitat.

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Listen to the episode here:

ATA Day 3 – 4: Killer Food Plots

Nick is a guy that I got to know him and I would do a class a couple years ago. He’s one of the good guys in the business. He’s a great guy, got a great product, Killer Food Plots. I’ve been waiting a few days to get down. Nick, tell people why they should check out Killer Food Plots.

We’re very unique in the product offerings we have from our screening products, which are nineteen years that we’ve been doing in developing whitetail habitat, implementing the products. I raised here in high fence for several years. I understand the nutrition, the digestion and the absorption factor for whitetail deer. Our products are designed to maximize that. In addition to that, the specific seed species that we have are for peak digestion for complementing each other in the ground to make sure that you have success and your dollars go to work for you. In addition to that, we have products that grow and from full sun down to only a couple of hours of sun.

Our Deepwoods is a perfect example, that will grow in as few as two hours of sunlight. Those tight tucked away spots that you like to sneak back into and have a little food to stop your deer, Deepwoods can be a great option for you as well. We’re excited about some new products that we’ve developed and released this year. The soil is a big factor when you’re doing food plotting. Food plotting is a soil test, understand, fix the soil, plug a few holes, you’ll have a lot greater success for a $20 investment. That’s where everything that we do starts with education, making sure the customer understands what they need to do and then make sure they apply the right products, plant the right seed product so they have success and maximize their time and money.

You mentioned some new products, I want you to show me.

Re-Tain is not necessarily brand new but in 2018, it’s been a new product that we’ve got into our customer’s hands. Re-Tain is designed to absorb moisture, nutrients in the soil while breaking up compaction, allowing oxygen flow to the roots of the plant maximizing again that growth. If you live on the East Coast, it’s where you live in Seattle. It will not stop raining and so our customers who when we did some of the Virginia show and some of those that we spoke at ATA, some of the dealers that started carrying Re-Tain got their customers put this in the ground. Those customers have had some of the best growing they’ve ever had. That excessive moisture did not devastate their plots. Some of the folks that put in food plots that did not have the Re-Tain, their food plots either got washed out or they drowned. The water table has kept rising and rising. Each one of those individual pellets is capable of holding 300 times its original weight, moisture and nutrients. Grabbing it when it’s available and then storing it for that drought or that dry period. When you have this big influx of water, they grab to make sure that you don’t wipe out all your hard work and your money.

Simply by using that, I’m going to keep more of my product on the ground.

You’re going to keep your nutrients in the ground. These pellets are about one-fifth of what their capacity is for moisture and nutrient absorption. What they’re doing is they’re storing up that water and nutrients and as they do, they swell. When they swell, they displace the soil, breaking up compaction. Oxygen is as important as moisture in a parallel path for growing food plots and especially important in that hard time of the year in August, September, October when your dear start to hammer the food plots. They need moisture and oxygen to recover quickly so they don’t go down to nothing and you’ve got no food source. That will help dramatically.

What else you got to show us?

We’re very excited and this has been seven years coming is our new product called Crop Duster. A lot of our customers are dealing with properties that they either owned themselves or they lease. They have the property that’s being farmed, beans, corn, any type of standing crop that will be harvested later in the fall. What you can do is you can overseed Crop Duster. It’s made to go every fourth or fifth row with a broadcast seeder. You walk through the corn and broadcast that over your standing beans, you’re able to broadcast this out as you walk depending on the width of what your seeder is spreading the seed, and simply go back to watching the football game. You don’t have to do anything more. Mother Nature will take care of it and Killer Food Plots will take care of the rest. Once the crops are harvested and that sunlight hits the ground, they have established a route they’ve established themselves, they will blow up from that extra sunlight. At that point, if you want to fertilize them to keep them going throughout the winter months, this is designed to help replace the natural browse, the necessary carbohydrates and the protein with our crimson clover that those whitetails are going to need during the pre-rut, rut and post-rut time to help bridge the gap to spring.

The cereal grains are made to stimulate the digestive system in the deer, keep it functioning properly so they can keep their stamina, energy and keep maximizing what they’re taking in. Utilizing and absorbing it into their bodies so they don’t get run down too far. We’re very excited about this product. The entire lineup of our Premier Killer Food Plot seed products are available at KillerFoodPlots.com and several retailers. We’re excited to have signed some great contracts, Family Farm and Home and A-Team, those are continuing to grow and branch. We’ve got a new announcement coming up soon. Stay tuned to that. Hopefully, I can announce that with Bruce live but we’re very excited about some of the things we’ve been able to do here at ATA and pre-ATA arrival for new outreach to multiple states so that you have access to Killer Food Plots without having to pay that shipping.

Tell people how they can get in touch with you or buy your product.

You can reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, @KillerFoodPlots. You can also go to KillerFoodPlots.com, reach out to us through that. We do property consultations, we do timber management for that, do-it-yourselfer or who wants to take their property the next level. You can set up a consultation with us, service we offer. We come out to the property in either half day or full day. You can also reach us at (616) 550-8483 or KillerFoodPlots.com. We look forward to hearing from you, if you guys have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask them. We’re here to educate and we’re here to help you be successful. Thank you.

Thank you.

ATA Day 3 – 4: FieldTorq Knives

Chris is from Neenah, Wisconsin. Chris and I spent a little time together talking about Wisconsin, deer hunting and all that but he developed a knife. That’s why we’re talking about it because he is talking to folks at ATA, manufacturing stuff, about his new life. I wanted to give him the opportunity to present FieldTorq. Chris, take it away.

I came up with the idea of the FieldTorq Knife a few years ago and have been adjusting it. Making the right curves to it, design and making sure that it’s functional in all the ways that it was anticipated to be made. Making a safer experience for all hunters. What we want to do is make a safer type of experience as well as to improve the efficiency that you can field dress an animal, all big game animals. Actually, with this particular knife holding it, you have a zip blade. This is a ski type of tip and that will glide over the stomach wall and basically, you will not cut that stomach wall at all. You can unzip it from sternum all the way down to the tail end. If turning it over like this, you have a pelvic bone cutting and a sternum bone cutting device. These are both optimally shaped in terms of unzipping as well as cutting bone.

We have a piece called the Torq Assist. What you do is slide that on over the top of that blade and what that does is creates a fulcrum point which is uncuttable. It does break under extreme pressure but that is because we want it to act as a relief valve in case there’s too much pressure so we don’t damage our knife. When you’re using it to cut bone, you would slide it on there, go ahead and use like a ratcheting motion. What that’s going to do is cut through that pelvic bone, that sternum bone. If you do cut through that, it makes it a lot easier. You don’t have to, it’s an added functionality of the knife.

Underneath, you’ll see that it’s not sharpened. It’s not going to impact the bladder at all unlike any other cutting device, like a hatchet perhaps or a saw. They have some disadvantages there. Taking that off, then we can go ahead and use the little bit longer blade on top. Three-quarters of an inch is approximately all you need to cut through the diaphragm and the windpipe then remove all the internal organs from there very quickly. When I started field dressing deer, I was very slow. I was using a regular traditional knife doing this and fifteen minutes is what it took me. That’s probably about average for your average hunter.

After developing this knife, I have the field dressing process. I’m down to three minutes and I can actually go faster than that if I wanted to but I’m stopping for photographs, videoing and things like that explaining that as I go. It has improved the efficiency, safety, and effectiveness of field dressing. It works on all big game animals from your deer all the way up to elk. Cutting pelvic bone on elk is as the same methodology as cutting it on a deer. The pressure that it takes in order for it to cut bone was about 28 pounds of upward handle pressure. It doesn’t take a lot. The thicker the bone, the more pressure that you’re going to have to apply. An elk is going to be probably about 40 pounds of upward pressure. Making this field dressing process is a lot safer, faster and combining the number of tools that it takes into one.

Why did you create it?

There was a guy in Northern Minnesota who had a fatal hunting accident. He took his traditional drop point style knife and was field dressing his game animal. He went ahead and was doing the field dressing and slipped and it accidentally punctured his femoral artery in his leg. With a drop point style blade, a lot of them have that. That is a puncturing type of point. This is more of a blunt point so you can run this into a leg, an arm or anything like that. It’s not going to have that same effect. It is going to bounce off and you’ll be completely safe. Had he been using a FieldTorq knife, there would have been a different outcome to his situation.

Where did you get the idea for the design? Where did that come from?

In the deep corners and recesses of my mind. I look at things from a process improvement engineer point of view. What I do is I look at things to improve them. The way my mind works is I’m able to take something, a concept, visualize it and visualize how it will work. That same evening that I heard about the injury or the fatality, I sat down at the kitchen table and designed a knife that essentially looks like the one that you’re seeing.

The design, you have a pattern and a patent on it, is that correct?

That is correct.

How do you sharpen that?

I do have a sharpener here with me. That is the number one question that I got when I was first starting to show people the knife. “How do you sharpen something that has that distinct unique shape to it?” It is simply replacement sharpener. There are two stages, one is coarse, the other is fine and you hold with a long blade down is probably the easiest and drop it. Bring it to the back and you turn it like you do a key and it gets the entire blade angle, the entire inside radius is sharpened.

Ceramic sticks.

Ceramic sticks plus the correct blade angle on it every time. You have a very sharp knife and it’s ready to go. It actually holds an edge extremely well. That’s another question that I get all the time is, “How well does it hold an edge even cutting through bone?” To answer that, we went to a game farm and I gave one of my knives to the owner of that game farm. I said, “Use it the way you’re supposed to use it. Cutting through bone, cutting hide, flesh that sort of thing.” He was able to use it on 28 deers before it was dull enough to the point where he was like, “We need to sharpen this.” I recommend not going that far of course and probably every couple of animals, touch it up. It’s so easy to do.

Is there any competition?

There is none in this space. There are separate products, of course, that you can get. You can have your hatchets, saws and that sort of thing. Add that weight to your backpack and purchase that in a store. Then also you have the knives, which are multifunctional in terms of separate blades. They might have a saw blade, they might have a gut hook blade, they have a regular drop point blade but there is no product out there that has all of that functionality built into one tool.

There are a lot of blades that will do all the jobs that you’re saying that this is FieldTorq knife will do. What was the reception down here at ATA?

People as soon as they see it, they wonder what exactly it is. It isn’t exactly an intuitive product. You need to be able to get a grasp of the concept of how you use and be thinking about that. When you’re thinking about field dressing and then you see the knife, you can put the pieces together. If I were to show this to somebody, a hunter out on the street perhaps and then maybe he’s not in the mindset of field dressing a deer, he would probably say, “I’m not sure what that is. Maybe it’s a bottle opener.” Without the aid of maybe getting the correct mindset, it’s hard to get that concept into your mind. Once they do have the reception that is, “That’s amazing. Why didn’t somebody think of this before?” We also have reviews online that say basically the same thing. They take it out field dressing and they’re amazed by how well and how fast it actually works.

Thanks for mentioning online. How do people find you online?

You can go out to FieldTorqKnives.com or FieldTorq.com, it results to the same URL.

How about Facebook, Instagram?

We’re on Facebook and look for keyword, FieldTorq. We’re on Twitter and Instagram. We do post videos and as well as images out on Instagram. People really enjoy seeing those instances of that. We have two types. One is Pakkawood, the top one here that you see as mosaic pins Pakkawood. It is 5/32 of an inch thick or about four millimeters. Both of them are made of the same material, it’s 8Cr13MoV. It’s a high carbon stainless steel. They both have the same blade design, very effective tools. The orange one has some checkering on it as well as thumb jumping on the back. This material is fiberglass reinforced nylon, extremely tough stuff.

Any last words to my audience?

Check us out online. Do your research, they’re also on Amazon.com as well as Amazon.ca. You can look at the reviews out there as well as on my website. Stay safe out there and hopefully, you are successful next time you get out in the woods.

Chris Stuckel, thank you so much.

I appreciate it, Bruce. Thank you very much for having me on your show.

ATA Day 3 – 4: Convergent Hunting Solutions

Byron, welcome to the show.

My name is Byron South. If you never heard of me, google me. Some people say I kill more coyotes and anthrax. I don’t know about that but I have a good time doing it, loved it and never get tired of killing coyotes. We kill hogs, coyotes. With the Convergent system, we built apps to cover any space that’s legal to call with electronic calls. We also make a line of hand calls. Our flagship product is called the Bullet HP. It clamps down here. All goes inside, you open it up, turn it on, got a little stick. It goes into the bottom when you stick in the ground so it doesn’t fall over. What that does, by expanding like that it gets that speaker up off the ground and gets this decoy up where you could see it. What’s neat about this system and what separates us from other game calls in the industry is we run off of Bluetooth. We take your $600 smartphone that you already own and we use that for your remote. How we do that is we built an app. I can connect to that caller and that decoy up to 300 feet away. I can operate it all. It’s a very intuitive app. You’ve got all your sounds here.

Choose a sound, hit play, comes out through the speaker, turn your decoy on and off. Of course, you can’t see that. I can operate that all up to 300 feet away from a cell phone. It needs no cell service. It’s all connected between the call and your phone. What’s neat about this phone mount, you don’t have to hold your phone or remote control in your hand, it is mounted to your rifle. We make the phone mount and we make it to where you can use your camera on your phone to record your hunt. I can not only call in a coyote and film it, but I can also have it on YouTube before I get up, if I have cell service. I’m on Instagram within minutes, that’s really cool. I can zoom, two power, four power back to one power at the touch of a button. It is mounted to the side of my gun. You mount it to the top, wherever you have a Picatinny rail, you can mount this. It keeps you from having to move very much or ever having to look down into remote. It’s a very handy system. It has a lifetime warranty made in Euless, Texas. All of our products are made in the USA. This is actually made in Salt Lake. It’s a neat product and has a lifetime warranty made in the USA.

We use a 3.7-volt lithium ion battery. The reason we use the lithium-ion battery is every other game call in the industry uses double-A battery, where they use one or twenty it doesn’t matter. That’s only going to put out 1.5 volts. Even if you have twenty in there, it’s still only going to put out 1.5 volts. Ours starts at 3.7 volts so that gives us enough power to where our speaker options are a lot better. We have higher quality speakers than anybody else in the industry. Enough power to run them, this system will run over ten hours of continuous use, which translates into over a full weekend of calling between battery charges. You’ll never have to buy a battery again. You have more power than anybody else in the industry. You have better sound quality than anybody else in the industry. Best thing, it’s made in the USA and has a lifetime warranty. Our customer service is second to none. If you ever bought Convergent product, you’re a part of the family and we’ll take care of you. If you have any more questions, go to our website.

We’ve got another sample we got to look at.

This is a new product. We’re releasing it at the show, this is actually a prototype that will be available to buy in March. This is a tiny little call and it uses the same system as our app. You plug your app to it or plug your phone to it, direct to the speaker. This weighs 9.6 ounces. A lot of people when they see this they think, “What about sound quality? Is that a toy?” It’s absolutely not a toy. We get over 100 decibels of volume. Not just volume, clean, crisp audio out of this thing. It sounds incredible, we have people waiting on this. They going to use it for tailgate parties. It sounds phenomenal. You can plug into your computer to use it for an external speaker for your computer. What’s really handy about this is it’s a weapon mounted deal. You guys are hunting, a lot of tournaments and stuff. That way you don’t have to set the call out, you’re ready to go as soon as you get on sticks, fire your app up, turn to call on. Those coyotes are coming right to the end of your gun. Handy product, we’re excited about that. This is a prototype; these will be shipping in March.

What are you most excited about in Convergent? What’s the thing that has you most excited about the company?

I’m one of the owners. I’ve been in the industry for over twenty years. What’s so exciting to me about Convergent are the things that I’ve always wanted to help other manufacturers do that always said, “Yeah, but.” I don’t have that, “Yeah, but,” now. I own the company, me and a partner actually own the company and when do they want to. As a caller, that means a lot to me. I’m not a manufacturer building a call for the industry. I’m a manufacturer building a caller for a caller. The caller that I want after 30 years, 40 years of calling coyotes, I have a pretty good idea of what a guy needs. It’s all in here and that excites me because I don’t have to settle for what somebody else thought I needed.

He’s excited, he’s passionate about what he’s got going with Convergent Hunting Solutions. How do they find you on the web?

Go to our website at ConvergentHunting.com. You can call us, our phone number at the office is (903) 636-4222. Somebody is there to answer the phone 9 to 5 every day, Central time. We have tons of video and information on there that will show you how this product works. Actual hunts in the field, some instructions, all that kind of cool stuff.

Thank you, Byron.

Important Links:

• Killer Food Plots
• Deepwoods
• Re-Tain
• Crop Duster
• Facebook – Killer Food Plots
• Instagram – Killer Food Plots
• @KillerFoodPlots – Twitter
• KillerFoodPlots.com
• FieldTorq
• FieldTorqKnives.com
• FieldTorq.com
• FieldTorq – Facebook
• Twitter – FieldTorq
• Instagram – FieldTorq
• Amazon.com
• Amazon.ca
• Bullet HP
• ConvergentHunting.com

About Killer Food Plots

Killer Food Plots was established based on the visions, dreams and passion of owner Nick Percy. Nick has been developing premier whitetail habitat for over 20 years. He was first introduced to hunting Whitetails in 1990 his passion for Whitetail’s and the love of the outdoors has been growing ever since. At Killer Food Plots we approach each new challenge with a genuine passion, love, respect and knowledge for Whitetail’s, their nutrition and creating premier habitat. We spend time educating ourselves about the best nutrition, habitat and current issues regarding whitetails. At Killer Food Plots we are passionate about creating excitement in today’s youth about the outdoors and hunting while giving kids a chance to get into a tree stand and teach them about habitat. Through many trials, victories, losses and hours of education we have gained the knowledge and experience to understand what works when enhancing habitat and planting Whitetail deer food plots and what does not. “You Reap What You Sow” are words to live by, shortcuts are not allowed. If you are ready to improve the overall quality of your land and the health of the wildlife on it, Killer Food Plots has the experience and knowledge to make your vision come to life! Centrally located in West Michigan we are the Midwest’s Premier Food Plot and Whitetail Deer Habitat Management Experts! Servicing the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania.

About FieldTorq Knives

Chris Stuckel, the inventor of the FieldTorq knife, saw a need for cleanly, easily, and safely field dressing big game animals and was tired of carrying multiple tools to achieve the task.  The final motivation was the tragic accident of a hunter who accidentally stabbed his femoral artery while field dressing his deer. He was using a traditional hunting knife with a pointed tip and exposed blade.

Being a hunter and process improvement engineer gave Chris the right skills and now the motivation to design the best field dressing knife in the world for all hunters to enjoy.

The result was the innovative FieldTorq knife – The Field Dressing Super Tool!  It’s 5X faster, easier to use, infinitely safer, and field dresses all big game cleanly. We are so confident you’ll be satisfied with your FieldTorq knife that we offer a money-back guarantee and a lifetime warranty.

About Convergent Hunting Solutions

Where Experience, Innovation and Passion Meet. Convergent Hunting Solutions is dedicated to bringing you the most advanced hunting products available.