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Bruce: Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. And welcoming to the community today is Fred Butler, Owner/CEO of Elusion Camo. Fred, welcome to the show.
Fred: How are you Bruce?
Bruce: I’m well. I’m well. Fred tell us something about Elusion Camo. I know you got a military background. I know you have TV shows and you’re developing something that I think is revolutionary, if not unique, in the industry. So take it away for a couple minutes.
Fred: Visionary, exactly, I was approached with this company actually three years ago by the original owner. And at that point in time, I did a lot of studying and researching on the product over the last three years, and recently purchased it in August of last year, because it really does revolutionize the hunting industry. And what it did for me as somebody who understands the importance of camouflage, and not knowing my military background but in the hunting world as well, camouflage is important. If you’re in camouflage, you should be hidden. You shouldn’t have to hide in the woods. You shouldn’t have to hide your human silhouette and outlines. No, you should be able to walk around the woods like the animals or sit anywhere you want to sit on the ground in the wide open, in a wide open field and be perceived as a natural element. And that’s what we do here at Elusion Camo.
Bruce: I’m just making a note. The perception of you’re not a human.
Fred: Exactly. Well here’s the thing.
Bruce: Let’s talk about that. Just chat about that.
Fred: Game animals don’t have reasoning centers in their brain. They don’t even know what you are. They just know that you don’t belong in their environment, a two-legged animal running around the woods. But when you replicate nature, you look like something that they see daily. They perceive you as something that belongs. So now when you take away the visual acuity of game animals, the only thing they have against us now is their smell.
Bruce: So how do we beat that? I’m not going to say were invisible but we…
Fred: Well nothing is invisible, you know? So every…
Bruce: Right.
Fred: Everything we see, what game animals don’t have, like I said, they don’t have reasoning centers in their brain that says, “That’s not supposed to be there.” The only thing they know that’s not supposed to be there is something that doesn’t look like what they look like every day. So we’ll take forest oaks for example, and it’s an exact replication of a white oak tree. I replicate that tree so accurately that game animals look at me the same way they look at the tree. They don’t see me as something that doesn’t belong. I now belong in their environment.
Bruce: How about the set part of it? Because if we eliminate their shock factors of seeing a blob or a shape that doesn’t belong there, but all of sudden they’re not seeing that, how can we protect ourselves as hunters from winding us?
Fred: Well, I feel one of the key things, although for one, you always have to play the wind. That is a key factor. There are some products out there that I believe work. We use various products. One of my buddies, a blood brothers, we utilize his products and he has his own scents and stuff that he’s going to be coming out with. Phenomenal product that we use on the scents outdoors on our TV show and stuff. I personally sat downwind from big mature bucks utilizing this product, and they have not smelled me at all. On film, we’ve proven this. There’s stuff floating air on [Inaudible 00:04:12] Outdoors on the sportsman channel this year. We’ve done a lot of things.
I’ve always played the wind too. I’ve done things. But I do think the wind is a factor. You must play the wind in all your hunting, especially with mature whitetails. If you’re trying to kill a big mature whitetail, you have to be on your game with the wind and his patterns and utilizing my camouflage, being able to actually get in his bedroom, unseen. You can’t do that with any other camouflage. It’s just impossible to get inside. I actually filmed last year, I walked into a bedroom of a four-year-old eight-point. On film, I walked right into that bedroom, to get to that. I put a tree stand in his bedroom. I walked right by him, on film, hiding in my tree stand, and filmed him for 20 minutes before he got up. I didn’t even put an arrow in him. I was amazed by what was going on.
Bruce: Now is that available for someone out at BMO or YouTube? Is that available or on your website?
Fred: It is available, if you get on our website at www.elusioncamo.com. We have tons of video footage. There’s a link to our YouTube page. You’ll be amazed at some of those videos that you watch.
Bruce: Let’s go back to just the gear. So they have your camo on. They have a scent reducer or eliminator on. What about their foot gear? What do you recommend people wear on their feet?
Fred: Well I personally use a couple different style of boots. Being in the military, I like LaCrosse and Danner for both hunting and my everyday wear. Really, they’ve proven to me that they’re top of the line. As far as comfort, fit, and warmth, during the winter seasons, I use a seven mil LaCrosse boot.
Bruce: Like the burly, it’s not the Burly, they’ve changed their numbers, their brands. Go ahead.
Fred: I use a Neoprene boot in the winter, made by LaCrosse.
Bruce: Okay.
Fred: It’s an all green boot. I use the seven mil, because it’s going to be cold. There is really not a boot out there to keep your feet warm in the winter. So they’re probably the best boots that I’ve used over my years of hunting.
Bruce: Now how your face mask, gloves, and beanie/hat/cap?
Fred: I use a fleece beanie. I found that fleece really does a wonder at keeping the head warm. I use, for my gloves and my face mask, I utilize… I have a buddy who owns a tough Manzella gloves. Ron, he’s a great guy, and his company actually will be offering their products on Elusion Camo. We’ll have gloves. Well actually, it will be [inaudible 00:07:20] for our boots on, we’ll be working with Pro Line, actually for our boots.
Bruce: So answer me this, is there any carbon or scent absorber in your camo gear?
Fred: Not in my gear. No, not in my gear right now. I am in the works in China right now with a manufacturing company called Shooterking. And once I get my patterns developed in China where the paper is available, I will have my product on ScentLok’s gear.
Bruce: Okay, so you’re going to brand with ScentLok, is that what I’m hearing?
Fred: Yes, yes, that’s what you’re hearing.
Bruce: Okay. Okay. So folks, we’re getting a lot of good information from Fred and we’re going to switch it up right now. Fred, why do you like whitetails? What’s the magic of whitetails.
Fred: I love whitetails. If reincarnation was real and I would love to come back as white. I think they’re the most amazing creature that God created. They’re so majestic. I love to just be out amongst them. There’s times I go hunting and I don’t even kill anything, because I love to enjoy them, their lives. They seem so simple, and so peaceful at times. But then their lives get hectic as well, with predators and things chase them around the woods. But it’s so fun to learn their techniques, their patterns, and how they live. And how they can actually from one day, and then all of sudden, they can switch their whole lifestyle around in a day, just because somebody messed up their patterning.
Bruce: Why do think that they’re that smart to know that somebody just was in their living room and they’re going, “Uh-oh, I’m not gonna go there?”
Fred: They know three things: Eat, survive, and sex. That’s it. That’s all they do. That’s it. That’s their life. So when you mess with their survival skill, you’re a done deal. And that’s what we prevent at Elusion Camo [inaudible 00:09:42]. What we’ve done at Elusion Camo, we give you the ability, that mistake that you normally would have made, by being caught in his bedroom, is no longer there, because he no longer sees you as something that don’t belong. He perceives you as the elements that we replicate.
Bruce: Now has anybody tried to do what you are doing, and continue to do with your patterns? Because it really sounds like you’ve created or replicated what they’re seeing very, very well, giving you the outcomes that you’ve had and you have testimonials and everything.
Fred: We’re being aired right now on Forever Wild Outdoors on the Sportsman Channel. They’ve done some amazing things in our camouflage, helping us prove our point and what we’re talking about. I have a bunch of people on Lethal Instincts. You can watch them guys on YouTube. They’re a young group of guys that are trying to come up in the industry and they’ve been putting down some killer footage. I have two guys down in Virginia, Marshall brothers, who have a YouTube page and they actually landed 750 geese in a field on their page and no layout blinds, no nothing, just in my airborne stock pattern, they were sitting among their decoys and landing 750 geese on film.
Bruce: Folks, if you heard the references, go check it out. Part of what we do here at Whitetail Rendezvous is talk to people in the industry, talk to hunters, other personalities, authors, and now we have somebody that’s got a product that’s being proven every single season, in the field, in the tree stand. So you might want to just kind of check this out and see what you think about it. Hey let’s talk about a couple of a-ha moments in the hunting, where you suddenly the lights come on, you couldn’t figure something out, and then all of a sudden you go, ah, there it is, there’s the answer.
Fred: Involved in hunting?
Bruce: Yeah, involved in hunting whitetails.
Fred: Oh, man, there’s…
Bruce: There’s a bunch of them.
Fred: They’re such an amazing creature. Man, they can change up on you in an instant.
Bruce: Yeah.
Fred: It’s a challenge to figure them out. But I go to what my dad always taught me, like I said, their brain capacity is so small. They can’t think like we think. We can pattern them, they can’t pattern us. We can figure out what they’re doing, how they’re moving here and we utilize those things daily. Man, I should have had a trail camera right here because this is the trail he’s using. I know this is the trail he’s using. And now you put a trail camera there. Now you set up. And you’ve been hunting this buck for all year long and you kill him on the last day. It’s like, a-ha, you finally found him, like, you’ve just been setting up on him wrong that whole time.
Bruce: They teach us. I think whitetail deer teach us more than we ever can read or view or whatever. Because when you’re out amongst them, they will teach you what not to do. And if you learn, then you’re gonna be able to close the deal.
Fred: Exactly! And that’s the thing. And we can. Like that is exactly the point. They will teach you how you can move through the woods. They will teach you what they will allow and what they will not allow. They do that daily.
Bruce: Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Talk to me. If you just took over a hundred acre-plot or a hundred acres of hunting land. What are five things you’re gonna do between now and hunting season.
Fred: Number one, find major trails. I need to find out where they’re bedding. So I’m looking for heavily trafficked trails. Usually you find those in intersections. When you’re looking for deer signs and stuff and you come across trails. When you come across an intersection, usually you can find a major trail that leads you right to a bedding area. And then I’ll look for, because now, if food plotting now-a-days is huge. So now I look for a spot where I’m gonna put in a food plot, and we use Horny Buck Feed for our food plot plot. And a food plot and I’ll set up stand locations based on that. And then it’s going out and putting up trail cameras and starting out. If it’s legal in some states that we hunt in, it’s legal to put out mineral lick and stuff like that, so we’ll those out for nutrition and stuff. That’s basically how we start to gear up for our season. We’ll actually start doing that here in, actually starting this month, we’ll start doing that though.
Bruce: How about your trail cameras, when are you gonna put those out?
Fred: Actually, I put my trails camera out yesterday.
Bruce: Are they the same location that it’s gonna be in September or August or?
Fred: No, I just put, I know I put them in different feeding areas, because we had a very, very bad winter. So right now, I have them in just certain feeding areas and I want to see what’s out there. Come closer to season, I’ll start putting them in different areas, move them in more locations, and different trails that are close locations that I know where bucks hang out. And we’ll get ready to set up on them then. Right now, we’re on a feeding pattern, you know?
Bruce: Now, come summer, what would you do with your hundred acres in the summer time?
Fred: Well I’d just make sure it’s properly watered. Keep it clean. I do go through where my tree stands are. I’m always cleaning, because growth is always coming up on our property. So I’m always out making sure trail is to my choice, my tree stands are clean. Nothing is growing up in my shooting lanes. All summer long, I’ll just be prepping the property coming up for deer season. So we have no malfunctions. There will be no reason I’m gonna hit a limb because my shooting lane has been cleared out. I do all that stuff preseason. I don’t want to go into my location two weeks before deer season hanging stands and screwing up their patterns.
Bruce: How many stands do you set up on your, how many acres do you have, I should ask that, how many acres do you hunt?
Fred: I have a 300-acre plot in behind my house.
Bruce: And how many stands do you have on that?
Fred: I actually have 32 stands on that plot.
Bruce: For wind, for time of year, help us out to understand?
Fred: They are for wind. That are mainly for wind direction based on my food plots and then I have a lot of ravines and big swamp on my property. Every one of my stands, it’s been okay, the winds blowing to south, I’m gonna go sit over here. I’ve got different locations for different scenarios on the property.
Bruce: Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just burned almost 25 minutes of our show, and Fred’s got a wealth of knowledge and he’s excited. You can hear it in his voice. He’s not just excited about his own products. He’s excited about the whitetail industry which we’re all apart of. So Fred this is the time of the show that you get the mic. It’s an open mic for you and after we’re done, I’ll wrap up the show and we’ll go from there. But Fred the mic is yours.
Fred: I’d just like to take a moment, and I give God thanks for all he’s done for my life. Without him, none of this, I firmly believe, none of this is possible. He showed me his realness and who he is to me in my adventures in this camouflage business where people were like, “This industry is so tough man, you’re not going to be able to make it, you’re not going to be able to make it.” And here we are. I took over this company in August and it’s April. It’s my birthday. I turned 32 today.
Bruce: Happy Birthday, guy.
Fred: I’ve locked down some major, major deals since yesterday. Elusion Camo is gonna be on the map. Amen to that. Don’t go back into my past. I’ve been hunting since I was three years old. My dad’s been taking me hunting. Actually, we used to skip school, my dad used to let me skip school when I even got to school age. The first week of hunting season, it was like tradition in our family. This was something that was passed down generations and generations. And that’s one of the catalysts of Descendants Outdoors is as well. It’s passing it down to generations. I have four kids. I have two daughters and two sons. And my kids have been hunting since they were three years old. Actually my daughter killed her first animal when she was five. And she killed a 50-pound bore with a perfect, perfect heart shot with a crossbow and it was just a beautiful time. I had a blast. It was probably one of the best hunting experience I had in my life while taking a kid out hunting. Being my daughter as well and watching take her first animal, it was a blessing.
Other than that, I served eight years in the military. I was a combat engineer, did some time in Afghanistan. And really than was I started understanding the importance of what camouflage is and how it’s important to us hunters, and how it even benefits us when we’re taking our kids. Usually when you take your kid out hunting, you put him in a brown blob, because they move too much. Well, we need to take the kid out hunting now in Elusion Camo and not have to worry about your kid because that one little movement he made doesn’t make a difference because things move in the woods. When the wind blows, tree, limbs move, so all that stuff is gone. To defeat the visual acuity of a game animal is, that right there is the catalyst of camouflage. I’ll tell you, I was told by the pinnacle of camo, and I bet everybody probably on this show knows who Jim Crumley is. Jim Crumly is the originator of camouflage, came out with a tree bark camo way back in the day. And he specifically said these words to me, he said, “Fred, you’re lightyears ahead of everybody.” He said, “What you have created here is the best thing I have ever seen in the camouflage industry. You’re well on your way to the top.” [Inaudible 00:21:10] Coming from him, that’s a big, hard deal, he’s not just somebody in the industry. You know what I mean?
Bruce: Yes, sir.
Fred: So you understand my excitement in that. And then I get to bring my family along with this. I mean this is rough road. We’ve had some bumps in the road. I tell you, my family is growing stronger over this. But it’s a good deal. We’re gonna have a good life with this.
Bruce: Tell the listeners again, your URL for Elusion Camo, how they find you on Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram, if you’re on that.
Fred: Yep, I’m on Facebook also, some media sites and just look up Elusion Camo LLC, you’ll find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Our webpage is www.elusioncamo.com. We have a customer service that goes directly to a few of our guys we have working for us. There’s emails on there. You can email all of us. Our YouTube links are on our webpage and you can find out all of our affiliates and who will be dealing with us.
Bruce: Fred Butler, thank you for your service to our country. And thank you for your excitement and passion about bringing something, as we said before at the top of the show, revolutionary, that may change the way we hunt in the future. And I just wish you all the success. And again, thank you so much. And by the way, happy birthday again.
Fred: Thank you.
Bruce: And Whitetail Rendezvous Community, that’s a wrap on another show. Thank you for listening. And we’re excited to have you part of our team. Thank you so much.
Fred: Thank you, bro.