Planning before starting your move in hunting is a huge thing. It is also vital to observe on public land when you don’t know the ground well or you don’t see where the deer are in that given time. Hayden Krimmer, product specialist and product manager at Legendary Whitetails, shares his success story of spotting, stalking, and putting down a deer. Hayden points out the importance of speed in hunting and shares how you can beat a whitetail’s nose without depending on scent control. He likewise shares how Legendary Whitetails is promoting hunting to get more people involved.
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Early Season Success 3 DIY – Spot and Stalk Deer Hunting Secrets – Hayden Krimmer
I’m with Hayden Krimmer. He is a Product Specialist, Product Manager and Product Team Member at Legendary Whitetails in Slinger, Wisconsin. If you haven’t heard about Legendary Whitetails, you need to because they sell the hunting tradition and they sell apparel. It’s an online apparel company. Hayden, welcome to the show. I’m excited to hear about your early season success with Mr. Wonderful.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
I’ve had a number of people, Josh Honeycutt from Realtree has been on. I had Ryan Nordahl was on from Osseo/Hixton Epic Whitetail Habitat. They’ve had early season successes. Talk to me about yours in Southeastern Minnesota.
I went to college out in Southeastern Minnesota and hunted the public land out there for the time I was there. It was my first year out of college and I didn’t hunt Minnesota for that year. I mainly focused on Wisconsin. I had a plan of going back to Minnesota to hunt some of the old stomping grounds that I explored while I was out at college. It turns out that the Hunting Public team ended up planning a public land deer tour that they were going to do in Southeastern Minnesota, focusing on the main piece of public land that I’ve hunted while I was going to school there. Naturally, I was excited about the trip and said I’d tag along for sure. It was with Hunting Public, DIY Sportsman, The Hunting Beast, myself and Alex Comstock from Whitetail DNA. It’s a big collaboration of a bunch of YouTube DIY public land hunters who know how to get it done on public land.
I went out two weeks prior to the season opening with one of my friends that still goes to college there, Parker Holmstrom and he was talking to me about this property that he found that he was excited about. He knew of people who had trail camera pictures on neighboring private properties that had very big deer on them and asked if I would go scout that specific piece with him. I went out that day. We went way back to this piece, got to the top of the ridge and ended up finding this big flat full of apple trees with apples all over the place. Thick cover, good bedding, we knew it was a good location. We backed out of there. We didn’t mess around in there too much. We jumped a couple of deer and found some beds but backed out of there. Immediately, I knew it was one of the better areas that I’ve found while out there in terms of the number of deer beds and sign and overall good habitat for a big buck to live.
My plan going into the deer tour was, “I’m going to go there my first morning.” Originally, I had planned on going in there and hanging a treestand on the top of that ridge back there. When I got in the camp Thursday night, Zach and I were hanging out around the rut wagon. He was talking to me about his approach to ground hunting and trying to convince me to be more open to ground hunting as opposed to going in and hanging a treestand in there. I was listening to what he was saying and took it to heart but still had in my mind when I fell asleep and when I woke up in the morning that I was going to hang a treestand out there. When I got up in the morning and I got to the parking lot, I was a little concerned about being able to set up before daylight broke with how far back the location was.
The wind was ripping, it was windy that morning. It was good conditions to still hunt and hunt from the ground. I decided to sleep in my truck until daylight broke and started still-hunting my way back to that ridge top. When I woke up in the parking lot, there were three trucks of small-game hunters parked behind me. There was a number of other people in that piece of property and I saw them. They got out of their truck, one of the groups and started working to the south. I was going to head north. If they would have walked to the north, I probably would have backed out of there and went to a different piece of property. Thankfully, they went to the south. I started still-hunting my way up towards this location that I had in mind. I was going slow. It was windy. I wasn’t making a lot of noise.
Every now and then if I crossed a place where it seemed like there would be some good deer traffic, I would slow down and sit down for a little bit. At one point, I even took another little nap out there. I was slowly working my way through this piece of property. I got to the top of the ridge where these apple trees and thick bedding cover was. The wind was coming out of the northwest. The ridge runs east to west. It was coming over and creating a leeward side on the south side of the ridge. That was the leeward side of the wind. I figured bucks would be bedding on the south side of the ridge overlooking that valley where human access could come from and having the wind blow over their backs.
I swung around and climbed the ridge on the far east side. I started working from east to west on the south end of this ridge, working slow, glancing a lot and looking to see if I could see something bedded. I checked a couple of spots where we did find beds when I was out scouting before and slowed down around those areas and took my time. I didn’t end up jumping anything. I worked pretty much through the entire portion of that ridge. I cut through some of the bedding to go up to the north side to see if I could find some fresh buck sign. I found some rubs within the bedding cover around the apples. The fence line runs up to a neighboring private property. I was checking what crops were planted and there were alfalfa and corn. There was a mix of agriculture right neighboring by.
At this point, it was around 11:00. I’d made the decision to start working my way back to the parking lot. I was going to go do a similar strategy on a different piece of property nearby. I came around the ridge and I crested this knob. Down to my right, I could see a big body of a deer. I knew it was a mature buck right away because of the size of the body but I couldn’t see its head because it was behind a tree. This was around 11:15. There was a mature buck on its feet feeding on acorns was what I believe. There was a number of oaks in the area. I’m assuming he was bedded somewhere near that little knob on the ridge. He was standing up out of his bed, browsing a little bit and having a midday snack. I crouched down quickly while his head was behind the tree. He never saw me, never heard me and never smelled me. I nocked an arrow quickly and drew back. He was about 30 to 35 yards when I first saw him, I never had the chance to range him because it happened so quick. I left it on my twenty-pin. I use an HHA single pin and held high. Within seeing him and releasing the arrow was probably ten seconds. It happened super quick. I felt like I made a good hit on him.
Planning before starting your move is huge in hunting. Share on XI gave it some time. I made a few phone calls to my dad and a couple of the guys from The Hunting Public trying to let them know what happened. I went up to the impact site to try to find blood or the arrow. I couldn’t find blood or the arrow right at the impact site and started getting a little nervous. It felt like it was a good shot in my head. As you go through and you’re not finding what you want to see you get those doubts about what happened and replay the whole situation in your head. I ended up finding blood about 25 yards away from where I first hit him. Right after that, I backed out because the guys, Zach, Jake and Logan, were on their way to come to help me recover him. I was going to back out and give him time to lay because I wasn’t sure where I hit him or how hard he was hit.
I circled way around and backed out. On the way out, I ran into some of those squirrel hunters that were right in the bottom of that valley from where I shot him. I went and talked to them quickly and said, “Do you mind staying out of this area? I shot a deer over here and trying to let him lay. I’d appreciate it.” They were cooperative with the whole thing and started working the other direction. I ended up meeting The Hunting Public guys in the parking lot. We worked our way back and went way wide of the deer again to be cautious. I got to the top of the ridge and took up the blood trail. He wasn’t 60 yards from where I shot him. He piled up against a tree right there. It ended up being a good shot. We were quite a way back there. We ended up quartering him out and packing him out of the woods because of how steep some of the ridges were. That was a cool experience as well.
Did you double-lung him? Tell me about the shot. Where was the shot placement?
It was a little bit quartering away. I definitely double-lunged him. It was pretty close to hitting his heart but missed it. When I was a little concerned and playing the shot back in my head, my only thought was, “If anything, it was a little back.” The height seemed perfect and it seemed a little back, but I thought he was quartering away. It did enter right on probably the back end of his lungs and came out right behind the shoulder where you want it to. It ended up being a perfect shot.
You were still-hunting. You weren’t set up in a blind. You hadn’t put a ghillie suit on. It’s amazing how close you can get to deer if you do it right. A couple of things from my experience, one, if you think you’re moving slow, you’re moving fast. I know a gentleman, Marv Clyncke, a tremendous traditional archer. He would say it might take him an hour or more to go 100 yards. If he instinctively knows he’s in the game, he might move inches. The biggest thing that I can tell you about still-hunting for whitetails and for elk is that slow is your friend. If you think you’re going slow, you’re going fast because there are no time constraints. That’s the hardest thing and I want your two cents on this because everything we do is fast. Social media, texting and instant turnover, you’re at work, you got to do everything. We do it way too fast. When you get in the woods, everything has to slow down. Your thoughts?
There are cases where you have to slow down a lot. There are also cases where you can move fast where the initial goal when you first start still-hunting is you want to find a fresh sign or you want to find where the deer are now. If you’re moving not fast but at a decent pace and you start getting on some good, fresh sign, you slow down like you’re saying move very slow and methodical with what you’re doing. Especially on public land when you don’t either know the ground well or you don’t know how other people are affecting where the deer are in that given time.
They could be here one week and the next week because a squirrel hunter came through that area, they could be a mile away over here. It’s locating the deer first because you got to find where they are. After that, you slow down, like you’re saying move step by step and be observant, too. Know what’s going on around you and use your ears a lot. People underestimate how important it is to listen to what’s going on, be observant to what’s going on and take your time. Find that fresh sign, slowing down, knowing when you’re in them and you find that sign is key.
What about a strategy of setting up underneath a tree, brush in a blind or ground blind? What did you find from Alex or any of the other guys that you were talking about?
As long as you have a good back cover, I feel like you’re in a good spot. When you’re still-hunting through a piece, too, if there is a generally open area, you want to map out the cover that you’re going to head to moving next. You see a good bush or a lot of underbrush that you can tuck into well and observe that area for a little bit before moving on to the next place. It’s important to find good back cover is the main thing and planning that out before you start your move is huge. You could start moving in a direction. You see a deer and all of a sudden you have nowhere to hide around you. You have to be able to find cover quick is the biggest thing.
My two cents in that is always stay in the shadows. Never get in the sunlight and never cross an opening where the sun is. Go around, stay in the shadows and always have something breaking up your silhouette behind you. In my career, I’ve had deer and elk almost walk up to you and all I’m doing is I’m tucked in underneath a big spruce, a bush or whatever. They don’t know I’m there because the wind is in my favor. I’m not moving, there’s no movement. They can’t see me. They can’t smell me so they don’t know I’m there. Trying to get a shot is difficult because you can’t flick your eyes on that. Congratulations on a successful early season hunt. Let’s switch it up to the hunting tradition. Your dad started you off when you were ten or twelve years old. You headed up north in Wisconsin. That alone is a hunting tradition to the family cabin. Let’s talk about that.
As long as you have good back cover, you're in a good spot. Share on XI grew up in Milwaukee, which is not a rural area. There wasn’t a lot of opportunities to hunt around where I was. My family has a cabin up in Tomahawk, Wisconsin on Somo Lake. When I was ten, I started going up there and hunting with my dad, my uncles and my cousins. They all both gun hunted and bow hunted. Gun hunting was obviously more numbers but pretty much everyone in my family did bow hunt as well. I started off sitting with my dad during gun season initially. I started hunting when I was twelve when it was legal in Wisconsin. I started bowhunting when I was thirteen.
Once I started bowhunting, I immediately fell in love with that just being able to get a lot closer to the deer. As we were talking, up in Northern Wisconsin when I first started hunting the deer numbers definitely started to decline. It was a good weekend when you saw a deer or two. That was how you could tell if you had a good weekend if you saw a deer. That helped grab me into the passion for hunting because when I did see those deer on those unique occasions, it was special and it got me fired up. That was something that I attribute a lot to my passion for whitetail hunting.
Another big thing of why I fell in love with it is hanging out with my uncles, my dad and my cousins at camp. My family is big into food. We always had great food when we were out there. That was one of the highlights, “What’s for dinner tonight?” That was a big focal point of the camp and hanging out with them and talking about old stories from when they had been hunting in the past. Even not hunting, just stuff that they’ve experienced over their lives and sharing those stories with us is what it’s all about. It’s having a good old time at camp.
Hunting traditions, that’s how they’re passed down. I’ve spent some time with the Inuits and their history is passed down by words and by conversations. The elders share and everybody shares. It’s like our grandmothers sharing their best recipes with their daughters. In the hunting community, it’s the dads, the grandfathers and the uncles sharing about the various stands and how the deer move and everything. It’s the camaraderie. It’s something amazing. That’s part of hunting that people who don’t understand hunting or have never hunted. They don’t get the tradition of hanging out with a bunch of family and friends, being together, having those great meals and spending the time.
My situation with the food being such a big aspect of it, too. Those recipes being passed down. You’d take those recipes and go share them with other people you hunt with in the future. That’s a big part of the tradition that goes along with it. A lot of people that don’t hunt don’t understand the real connection there is to when you eat venison of a deer that you harvested. There’s something special about it and it makes it mean a lot more.
What’s the one big thing that you know now that you wish you knew years ago when you started hunting that would have made you a better hunter?
I would say the main thing and this is a new theory to me too is that scent control is not as important as we’re led to believe. The guys at The Hunting Public and The Hunting Beast are big proponents of this. I’ve followed them for a while and known that they were successful on public land without caring about scent control. I shouldn’t say caring but not having that be the first thing that they worry about when going into hunting. A lot of the industry is full of people who are pushing scent control and saying, “If you don’t have scent control, you’re not going to be able to kill big bucks.” I don’t honestly believe there is a true way to fool a whitetail’s nose. I don’t think it can be done. With ozone, some of that stuff, there may be something there but as far as truly being able to fool a whitetail’s nose, I don’t think there’s a solution for it. You have to use the wind to your advantage and think about how the deer bed based on the wind and not so much worry about trying to beat the deer’s nose because that’s a battle you’re going to lose every time.
The Benoit brothers out of Maine, they were trackers. How they hunted, they knew a mature deer’s track and they got on it and stayed on it. They wore plaid wool and that’s how they hunted. They stayed on the track until they got the deer because the deer will circle. Once they know somebody is on their trail, they’ll start looping. They’ll go up, they’ll go either left or right and they’ll let you walk by. If there’s snow, you can see when they start looping. If there’s not, you got to be able to read sign. You get into the science of deer hunting. It’s unbelievable because the deer are there. It’s guaranteed, the deer are there. It’s our job to figure out, “Where is ‘there’?” It’s such a wonderful chess match and you get schooled. I get schooled every year. I hope I continue to get schooled by mature bucks.
You go, “He got me.” He was right there. He knew you were there. You knew he was there and you can’t close the deal. The good hunters are closing the deal more and more. Why? We’re getting smarter. There are podcasts. Alex Comstock, WhitetailDNA, a great young kid that is doing a great job in learning and sharing it. Like this podcast, one of the missions of it is to share the hunting tradition and bring the tips and techniques to the public. Everybody becomes a better deer hunter. They enjoy it more and that’s good for the sport. Let’s talk about Legendary Whitetails. You went to college and you’re working for a great brand. Tell people, one, how you got into it and two, why you love it and where do you think your career can go?
I got into it because coming out of college I knew I wanted to do something in the outdoor industry. I had been a fan of Legendary Whitetails. They made great apparel. I noticed they had a job opening right around the time that I was looking hard for jobs. I put in an application. I wrote a good cover letter about why I am so passionate about hunting and why I thought I would be a good fit for the job. I got offered the position. It’s been great ever since. My roles here are mainly to be the product representation when working with the marketing teams. I work closely with the catalog teams, with Marc and Darcy, to put catalogs together.
That’s how Legendary Whitetails started, we were a catalog apparel retailer years ago. We’ve transitioned more to eCommerce models but still creating multiple catalogs every year. I’m the merchant representation in creating those. As far as putting email campaigns together, I select products and promotions for email campaigns, decide where to put products on the website and I’m that utility man when it comes to where there are different product needs within other departments and working with other departments and making recommendations based on product.
I also work on other random off-the-path tasks. The Hunting Public, who I’ve talked about, I’m handling their apparel line. That’s been a fun adventure. As well as our HuntGuard line, it’s something that I’m the manager of. We’re mainly a lifestyle apparel retailer. Our niche is the clothes you don’t wear when you’re hunting. To support the tradition of hunting, display it to other people that you are a hunter. You love whitetails and that helps you connect with other people. I’m in control of the technical hunting apparel line. We have a small grouping of base layers as well as a jacket and bib set. The whole vision with the line and how I positioned it is to be the simplest line you can buy where it’s not you have ten different shirts to choose from and ten different pants. It’s, “This is what you need to wear early season. This is what you need to wear late season.” We don’t want to make you have to buy a bunch of different pieces.
Our jacket and bibs are some of the warmest jacket and bibs I’ve ever worn. I’ve been a real fan of that. That was the product that was here when I got here. I was always the guy who’d bundle up 100 layers underneath a light jacket that I’d wear all season. Once I started wearing the jacket and bibs from Legendary, I was impressed. You don’t have to wear more than two or three layers underneath it and they’ll keep you warm in subzero temperatures. The main goal of Legendary Whitetails and our mission is to promote hunting and get more people involved in hunting. One of the cool promotions we have going on is the Hunt On Us promotion.
Anyone who has a deer license of any kind can submit a photo of their deer license at HuntOnUs.com and Legendary Whitetails will send that person a $25 gift card to spend on our site. We’re trying to reimburse hunters’ license fees up to $1 million. For this season, it’s the target. We’re trying to take some cost that people are putting into hunting and allowing them to spend that, whether it’s on themselves or on a gift for a loved one for the holiday season. We’re trying to promote people to get into hunting and support conservation because a lot of the license fees are contributing towards our conservation efforts here. We’re trying to get people involved and make it easier and more attractive for people to start hunting.
That’s a 25% discount on $100 of product. Visit Legendary Whitetails and talk about visiting, how do people get a hold of you?
You can Google LegendaryWhitetails.com and you’ll find our website there. We have a great customer service team. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to customer service. They’re a great help. We are only online. We don’t have any brick and mortar stores. We’re all eCommerce retailer. One of the great features is we offer free returns. That’s one of the big hurdles for people buying apparel online is they’re worried about whether it’s going to fit or not. We’ll return anything completely free on us if it doesn’t fit. Even if you bought it two years ago and you decided you didn’t like it two years later, we’ll still accept that return. One of our policies is satisfaction guaranteed, like it or send it back.
Are you on Facebook? Where are you at in social media?
Our Facebook following has been around for a while. Instagram is something we’re starting to get into a little bit. It’s still in the infancy stages but it’s starting to gain some traction. Facebook is the main place to find us. Instagram is an avenue that we’re looking to pursue more in the near future.
You can go to Legendary Whitetails on Facebook. You’ll see over a million people have touched their page. With that, we’re going to wrap up another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. We’ve been talking with Hayden Krimmer from Legendary Whitetails. Thanks so much for being on the show.
Thanks for having me, Bruce. I appreciate it.
Important Links:
- Legendary Whitetails
- Josh Honeycutt – past episode
- Ryan Nordahl – past episode
- Facebook – Legendary Whitetails
- Instagram – Legendary Whitetails
- Whitetail DNA
- HuntOnUs.com
- LegendaryWhitetails.com
About Hayden Krimmer
Results-oriented marketing associate with proven expertise in e-commerce retail, driving projects from conception to resolution through building relationships across diverse functional teams while always focusing on profitability and consumer experiences.