The home range of deer, bucks especially, is a square mile – equivalent to 640 acres. Even if you can’t see bucks on your property, you still have to understand where their habitat is located in those surrounding acres. You might ask: How will deer use those acres at different times during the year? Dan Schmidt, editor-in-chief of Deer & Deer Hunting magazine, says that if you keep hammering that same little piece of land over and over again, you pigeon hole your hunting potential. And no aspiring hunter wants that, right?
Deer & Deer Hunting magazine publishes ten issues a year. Everything they do is geared towards whitetail hunters: whether you’re a bow hunter, a gun hunter, muzzle loading hunter, a handgun hunter. Whether you like to manage your own property or hunt public land. Dan Schmidt admits that he leads a company of deer geeks and he’s proud of it.
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On our episode, Dan Schmidt, Editor in Chief of Deer & Deer Hunting shares some traditional hunting stories, whitetail behavior, as well as tips that’ll help you find that buck of a lifetime this fall.
Listen to the podcast here:
Deer & Deer Hunting Editor Dan Schmidt
We have a great guest. Mr. Dan Schmidt. He’s Editor in Chief of Deer & Deer Hunting. He’s also co-host of Deer & Deer Hunting TV. He hosts Deer Talk Now on Deer & Deer Hunting. Dan, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Bruce. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Share a little bit about your background. It’s extensive. I believe you have over seventeen years at your present post?
Yes. I’ve been down here at Deer & Deer Hunting for twenty years. I celebrated that anniversary here and it’s been a lifelong dream come true. Just to give you a short background, when I was in the states myself, it was in April of 1981 when I was in eighth grade and we were about to graduate eighth grade. I went to a parochial school down near Milwaukee, Wisconsin and our English teacher had us write an essay. The essay was what every kid writes about, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I did not know that I had penned this until a long time after that. My mom had brought it out fifteen years later, but I had written, “When I grow up, I want to be the Editor of Deer & Deer Hunting magazine.”
I did not know that I had written that, my mom saved it all those years. It was written in cursive then. I couldn’t believe it but it is a dream come true. I went to school for Journalism in Wisconsin and got my degree. I worked in newspapers for a couple of years until I got enough background. I’ve always wanted to work in the deer hunting industry and writing and editing are my passions. It’s a dream come true. I’ve been here for twenty years. I’ve seen everything change since then but now we’re a 360 company. We have the magazine; we have television shows on almost every network you can think about.
Deer and Deer Hunting TV is on NBC Sports. We have Destination Whitetail on Sportsman Channel. We have Land Of Whitetail on Pursuit Network. We have DeerAndDeerHunting.com. We have a half million followers on our Facebook page. It’s everything that you can think of related to deer hunting. That’s what we do. That’s fortunately what I get to do for a living. I grew up on working construction for my dad. I always tell people I could be working for a living again. I don’t complain when I have to talk about deer hunting with you or anyone else at any time of the day because it’s something that we love to do.
How did you know about Deer & Deer Hunting? Are you right from the Ola area then?
No, there’s an interesting story there. Deer & Deer Hunting started in Appleton, Wisconsin which is not far from Green Bay. In 1977 was when the magazine first came out. They started as The Stump Sitters, incorporated in 1973, and their forte was deer research and biology. When it was Stump Sitters it was popularizing other hunters’ journals, what they were seeing, how they were approaching the hunt, and learning more about deer. That morphed into a newsletter which morphed into a magazine. That magazine was distributed locally in Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, and all the way down into Milwaukee which is closer to where I grew up. They started it on newsstands in ‘77. I probably got my first copy two or three years after that when I was a teenager.
I thought it was the coolest thing because I loved deer hunting. My dad, brothers, and uncles they went into northern Wisconsin every fall for gun season and would come home. I was fascinated by whitetails and how to hunt them and when I saw this magazine it was something very professional, very serious, and very educational. That’s what drew me to it. The magazine at that time was local. It went national newsstands in 1980 and it created the whitetail industry. I could tell you stories upon stories on a lot of the technology and things that we know today that can be traced back to the Founders Jack Brauer and Al Hofacker from their days in Appleton, Wisconsin. That gives you a little bit of idea there. Thankfully, Deer & Deer Hunting was a local thing back then, I became exposed to it, and that’s where my interest grew from there.
What a compelling story and I believe you said you were eight years old and you just said, “I want to go to work for that company,” because it represented something you were passionate about. Talk to me about your first deer camp.
I wasn’t twelve years old. That was the actual age for being able to hunt. When I was a kid, one of my dad’s rules was you had to work in the summer and earn enough money in doing construction to earn your deer rifle before you could go deer hunting. It took me a while to do that. My first deer camp was in Northern Wisconsin, I believe in 1983.I could be wrong on the year. It was a traditional deer camp. Uncles, brothers, cousins, all jammed into a very small little one room cabin. It was everything that anybody can think of when you think of the classic deer camp. Waking up early in the morning, huge breakfast, everybody going out, and to be honest not really knowing what we were doing. The old timers did but they were always guarded at the spots that they had to go in.
It was big woods, north country, it was cold, and for me it was a platform chained to a tree and my dad said, “Were going to call you and sit you up there and do not move until I come back to get you.” I was sitting there petrified, it was dark, I didn’t know what was going on. As a kid, you’re sitting there bright eyed not knowing what to do. Fortunately for me, if I can finish that story, I was sitting on that platform and a pine squirrel had come down a tree jumped on my shoulder, freaked me out, jumped off the tree because I thought I was getting attacked by a squirrel. As I stood there on the ground and not knowing what to do. My dad had given me two things before I went out that morning, he had given me a bubble compass that was on my jacket. He said, “Walk a certain direction and you’re going to get to the logging road and blow on this whistle,” it was a ball whistle, “If you have trouble.” I walked out to the logging road, I blew on the ball whistle and here comes my dad and my brother and it had been maybe an hour after first light.
They were both annoyed because it was opening day of gun season and they said, “We’re going back to camp because you scared everything out of the woods.” We were walking down the woods and I saw a deer standing in the woods, I said, “There’s a deer,” and they didn’t see it and they said, “You don’t see a deer.” I said, “Yes I do.” They said, “Does it have antlers?” I said, “Yes.” My dad said, “Shoot,” and I shot. They still didn’t see it. I didn’t see anything happen after that. We started walking around, my brother was really annoyed and lo and behold I walked up and there was a huge eight-point buck laying there dead, shot through the neck. It was 200 something pound buck. That was my first day ever in a deer camp and out in the woods.
What a first time experience where, “I’m not sure about what I’m doing here, I’m going to do what I’m told to do.” Some people probably weren’t really happy and so you’re walking back to camp and there it is.
It’s always like that. It’s what they say is beginners luck. You never expect these things to go down. Even today I’m amazed that when I see hundreds of photos come in every day of people with their deer from all across the country, invariably there’s a kid with a huge buck. I think it’s a lot of first time hunters, they don’t have all those preconceived notions pounded into their heads and they go out there and experience hunting for what it is and lo and behold, they enjoy success.
They’re in the right place at the right time. Some of my best deer hunting memories is doing exactly that. Getting to a place that you sense it’s really good, nobody else is around and all of a sudden there’s a wonderful buck and you go, “Holy Fred.” The hunt’s over and you go, “What’s that all about?” Then you unsort it and you try to figure out. The older you get, the more you really want to understand what’s happening and sometimes there’s no rationale. A couple of times somebody else from a neighboring farm had bumped them because I found out later. We had never seen that buck on our farm and there he was, and there I was, and game over.
I never get tired of hearing stories like that because it’s something brand new every time, it seems.
You’ve been in the business a long time. You’re part of the industry. If somebody was interested in getting into the industry, what should they do? Guy or girl, what should they do?
That’s an excellent question and one that I get a lot these days especially when people see the TV shows and things like that. The first thing that I tell them, especially young kids that are in school, I say, “Don’t think that you’re going to be the next Michael Waddell. If you want to be the next Michael Waddell, you’re not.” They get this idea that, “I’m going to be a TV star.” Those jobs don’t exist. I’ve seen Michael Waddell, he’s a tremendous celebrity in the industry, but he came in the industry as a videographer and he worked that for years and years and became very talented at it.
What I always tell somebody is, “If you want to get in the industry, you have to have some kind of skill set,” whether that is an editor, a writer, a photographer, a videographer, you’re in ad sales, you’re in marketing. People ask me, “How did I do it?”“I found a nationally accredited journalism program, it was a four years bachelor’s degree, I got that and then I jumped into this job. I worked four years in newspapers covering police feeds, city council meetings, sporting events, taking photos, laying out newspapers, and that’s how I learned journalism to be able to function in a job like this but you can do all sorts of things.” I always tell anybody who wants to get into the industry, “You have to identify a job that you could do,” whether that’s marketing, ad sales or something along those lines related to whatever part of the industry. Learn that craft and then earn your stripes, maybe working a different job in another industry before you can maybe get your foot in the door in another position in this industry.
To give you a quick example, I applied and was turned down four times at Deer & Deer Hunting before I got here while I was still at the newspaper. I applied for every possible associate editor’s job that they had. When I was in college I offered to be a free intern, they said, “No.” I was turned down over and over a course of seven years, from 1987 to 1994 to when I finally got here. It’s something that you don’t jump into overnight and something that you have to have some kind of skill set. You aren’t going to be a TV star, nobody pays anybody to go hunting, and that’s a big myth. They think, “You get paid to go hunting.” No, I go on some hunting trips but 60 hours a week the rest of the year I’m in the office in front of a computer screen. It’s not everything that it seems but at the end of the day it’s not hauling shingles up on a roof and it’s not hauling drywall into basements, which is what I did when I was younger. There’s nothing wrong with that and actually there’s something to be said about that it’s good hard work, but the hunting industry is fun but you got to put it all in perspective.
If you want to get in the industry, you have to have some kind of skill set. Share on XLet’s talk about the one or two a-ha moments, the light bulb went on, you’ve been struggling, trying to figure something out in the world of whitetail and all of a sudden you figure it out. Can you share a couple of those with us?
I’ll give you an older one and then a more recent one. The first one I had I was actually in the first year in this job and there’s an outdoor writer, one of the best that there’s ever been, Gary Clancy from Minnesota. I was in a hunting camp with Gary Clancy and he said, “If you really want to become not only a good deer hunter but a good big buck hunter, you have to take your scent control tactics to the extreme.” He said, “You have to have a total scent control approach.” Back in those days, twenty years ago, some of these products were on the market. Activated carbon suits were just starting to come out and some of these things which helped a lot. We were washing our clothes in baking soda and hanging them, putting them in plastic bags with pine boughs back then, occasionally. He said, “You have to do this all the time.”
Back then it was a very foreign concept to keep your hunting clothes in a bag and not get dressed until you’re out in the field. People didn’t do that, they thought you were weird for doing it. When I started doing that, it was my a-ha moment for the fact that I was starting to get winded much less by deer, actually to the point where I wasn’t getting winded at all because I was using utmost scent control tactics and playing the wind at all costs, not going hunting in a particular stand unless the wind was right for that stand. That was my first a-ha moment. My second a-ha moment was recently when I first started using ozone generators. Ozonics makes one and that was going to allow me to take my scent control to a new level. Not that I can be sloppy, but I can get away with some things I couldn’t get away with before. Scent control for me, for deer hunting, scent control is what it’s all about. When you finally get it, you have to be very meticulous, that’s when your odds really are increased.
To our audience, I really hope you took some notes on that because every type of technological gear, carbon imprinted gear from many good, different, great companies, the gear works if you take care of the gear and use it correctly. Dan, what do you think holds back most hunters that are not getting it? They might see a deer one year, and not another year or they hear their buddies at school, at the bar, at work and they’re talking, “I saw a wonderful buck the other day,” and they’re not seeing deer. What advice would you give to those guys and girls?
The advice I would give to anybody who’s having trouble like that, two things. One, what I just talked about is scent control. You have to really understand scent control and tirelessly work that angle. You’re not going to do anything that’s going to compromise you when you’re in the field, that’s the first thing. The second thing is a larger picture thing and that’s about truly understanding how deer behave. A lot of people get too caught up on, “I just want to see bucks,” and they don’t know exactly what their property holds and what their property could hold and how the deer are actually using that land. An example that I give people to understand it better is take yourself out of your normal comfort zone. What I mean by that is saying put an X on the map where your favorite tree stand is and then back it up like you’re looking at a bird’s eye view at a square mile, 640 acres.
You might only be hunting ten, fifteen, twenty, 40, or 50 acres but you have to understand what’s going on in that square mile around you because that’s how deer basically live, bucks especially. Their home range is a square mile, 640 acres. You might not be seeing bucks on your property but you have to understand where is its habitat in that 640 acres around you and how will that deer be using that at different times during the year. Once you understand this, then you adjust your tactics as to when you hunt and how you hunt and maybe you have to adjust where you’re going to hunt. Maybe you’re going to say, “I’m not going to get it done on this small, little property. I need to find another place to hunt during the rut or I need to find another place to hunt during the early season or I need to stay out of here during a certain time,” to give that property that you’re hunting enough time to be natural for the deer.
If you keep hammering that same little piece of land over and over again, you pigeonhole yourself into those. You educate those deer; it doesn’t take much to educate a deer to know where you’re at. Once you’re patterned, then your odds are going to go down. The best advice I can give somebody on that is truly understand deer behavior, understand how deer use that, and you can learn that through various ways which we can get into. I always say, “The more you know about deer, the better deer hunter you’re going to be.”
Let’s unpack the statement that you just made, that deer are patterning you. I think a lot of people really don’t grasp that statement. What are your thoughts?
100% of people don’t understand it because what I find year after year is people get comfortable in routines. People are like deer. They get comfort in routine, especially gun hunters, and there’s nothing wrong with that because I grew up being a gun hunter for the longest time before I came a bowhunter. Once you become a bowhunter, you understand it better. You keep hunting the same spot over again and you don’t have to do that many times, especially mature buck. A mature buck knows his home range intimately and the second he senses something is wrong, he adjusts. He doesn’t leave the county. He doesn’t change his home range, he doesn’t change his core area. The best way I can describe that is you’re going into his house and you’re moving his couch into the basement.
If you do that, he immediately picks up on it and he’s not going to go into the living room anymore because he knows that you’ve been in there. It’s the same thing when you’re walking out to that spent stand you had in the old oak and you’ve been hunting it every year and you hunted every single day. You go up there in the morning and come back at noon, you go in at night, that deer knows that you’re going to be there during the daylight and you think he went nocturnal. He didn’t go nocturnal, he’s just not going to be on the property that you’re hunting during the day. He’s going to be on the neighbor’s property during the day because they’re not doing the same thing or the neighbor next to that. That’s what I mean by that. Deer, especially mature bucks, they’re adept at picking up on human presence, knowing when things are out of place, adjusting their behavior accordingly, and then moving off to another area where you’re not going to be during the day or during when you happen to be hunting that particular spot.
To our audience, do some research. Other than you’re offering a product, are there any other books that you read or YouTube videos that you like or subscribe to that you like one specific person, whatever tools do you use other than what you generate there yourself at Deer & Deer Hunting?
Most of it is what we generate, but we work with people from across the country. I can say this with all honesty, some of the best hunters out there are Steve Bartylla. He’s another guy out of Wisconsin. He has a show, it’s called Grow ‘Em Big. I would recommend people checking that out. You can find it on YouTube. He also writes books, he does seminars, just a vast knowledge of information. His latest book is called Big Buck Secrets. Another guy that I admire is out of Michigan, his name is John Eberhart and he is a diehard bowhunter who does it mostly on public land and or small private parcels. He has numerous books. One of the best ones is called Bowhunting Pressured Whitetails. If you can find it, get your hands on a copy of that, I would highly recommend it. John also has DVDs out there.
I could go on and on. There are many resources that even though I had been over twenty years, I know just about anybody who’s got something out there. I go back and time and time again in books, there are many good ones out there. Charlie Alsheimer’s got great books. He’s out in New York. He’s one of the top deer behavior experts in the country. Leonard Lee Rue III, he used to be a contributor for Deer & Deer Hunting for many years, but he was into deer behavior, probably the first guy to popularize deer behavior.
John Ozoga, one of the top deer researchers in the country, retired but lots of great insights. Anything from any of those guys I would highly recommend. There’s plenty of TV shows and plenty of websites that you can find good information and especially now video as well, with YouTube. There are a lot of good programs out there that not only teach hunting tactics but also habitat management, how to deer escape, create a property that’s more attractive to deer. I would recommend getting on and surfing around and seeing some of the various things that are out there.
What’s one funny thing that happened to you in the field last time that you’d like to share with our audience?
One funny thing that happened to me, it wasn’t so funny as it was almost, but it turned out to be funny. I was rifle hunting out in Eastern Oregon and there was a storm coming in. We’re filming a TV show. I had a cameraman with me, a guide with me, and we’re hooking up and down these mountains. I can say that was funny in hindsight, we’re coming down the face of very steep rock ledge and I went feet overhead down the rock ledge, probably about a twenty-yard drop. Not to laugh about it after the fact but I basically looked at my cameraman, I said, “That’s what happens when you hurry, you’re going to slip and fall down.” We had a good laugh about that. I brushed myself off and we did wind up shooting a nice buck at the end of that day. It was a little bit of laughter, a little bit of sore ribs on my part, and then some happy times there at the end of the day.
Dan, you have the opportunity to share with our listeners whatever you want to tell us about your company, Deer & Deer Hunting, products that you like and people that you think are worth the investigation and the research to find out what they’re thinking.
Thanks, Bruce. Check out Deer & Deer Hunting magazine. We publish ten issues a year. You can find out more about the magazine at your local newsstand or online at DeerAndDeerHunting.com. There are ten big issues of America’s first whitetail magazine. It’s still very highly regarded across the country. We have a paid circulation of over 100,000 people. For only $19 you get ten issues a year. It’s a fantastic deal. Our website, DeerAndDeerHunting.com, we have tons of resources, articles, videos, anything you can think of is there at DeerAndDeerHunting.com.
We also have a store called ShopDeerHunting.com. You can buy any of the books I talked about on that site. You can buy videos, you can buy downloads. We have products, some of the products that we use and approve at ShopDeerHunting.com. Our TV show, Deer And Deer Hunting TV on NBC Sports, that starts in third quarter again. We have Destination Whitetail on Sportsman Channel. We have Land Of Whitetail on the Pursuit Network. We have Deer Talk Now which is a weekly show, online at DeerAndDeerHunting.com. We have another show with the Steve Bartylla that I mentioned called Grow ‘Em Big, our land management show, that’s on DeerAndDeerHunting.com.
The more you know about deer, the better deer hunter you’re going to be. Share on XDeer Talk Now and Grow ‘Em Big, they come out every other week. You have a brand new show online every week at DeerAndDeerHunting.com and we have more shows coming at the viewers this year as well. I can’t divulge those yet but we have more specific online shows there. Everything we do is geared towards whitetail hunters, whether you’re a bowhunter, a gun hunter, muzzle loading hunter, a handgun hunter. Whether you like to manage your own property or hunt public land, we have it all right there. We’re deer geeks and we’re proud of it. We like to share that with anybody else who also likes to chase whitetails around.
Thank you, Dan Schmidt. On behalf of Whitetail Rendezvous community, we thank you for sharing the information, some stories, techniques and research information about what it takes to be a successful whitetail hunter. Dan, have a fantastic day.
Thank you, Bruce. I appreciate it and I appreciate all your audience checking on what we have to offer as well. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
As your host at Whitetail Rendezvous, I want to thank each and every one of you for spending your time with us. 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.