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Bruce: Hello, everybody out there in Whitetail Rendezvous community. I’m really excited today to introduce AJ Gall. He’s the Community Content Coordinator at Legendary Whitetails. Welcome to the show, AJ.
AJ: Hey, thanks for having me Bruce. Yeah, well, go ahead.
Bruce: Go ahead.
AJ: Like you said, I work here at Legendary Whitetails. Basically I’m the in-house whitetail addict, so to speak, and I spend pretty much my time learning, teaching, and sharing my experiences with other hunters through our community page of the website. For those of you that have never heard of Legendary Whitetails, we are a family-owned, direct-to-consumer catalog and Internet retailer, selling casual lifestyle apparel and gifts for the whitetail hunters.
Pretty much, as a hunter would sum it up, “We offer awesome clothes for those who want to celebrate the hunt every day of the year.” Our whole company is centered on deer hunters and their lifestyle.
Bruce: And specifically, what is your role there as Community Content Coordinator?
AJ: I have a unique job within the company. While everybody else is diving into data reports, or working on products, and shipping out orders, and stuff like that, I’m able to sit at my desk and write an article on how to kill your next buck or something like that. So basically, our company is focused around the hunter, so it’s my job to relate to them, to share with them, and to teach them a little bit about the sport and just some of my experiences, so we can keep that context going between the brand.
Bruce: Thanks for that background.
AJ: Sure.
Bruce: Let’s just jump right into our content here, our interview. Share with us, AJ, your best hunting tip, that’s in story form. So some place along the line, something happened, you get a story about it, and it ended up being one of your best ideas for whitetail hunting. So share that with our audience please.
AJ: Okay. I would say my top hunting tip — of course there’s a long list of them — if I had to rank the top one, I would say the first one or two times hunting a particular stand is probably your best chance at killing a mature buck. I learned this within the recent years. I would say in the last three to five years is when it really became evident and clear.
It was when I was spending, after college I was able to land an internship down at Midwest Whitetail in Iowa, and pretty much spent the entire season hunting, so, being around a bunch of guys that were able to hunt every day, and setting up stands and all that. Then came November, the rut, and that’s when we all hit it hard. But we had stands all over and we were primarily hunting public land. Out of the four people that were successful, including myself, every one of those bucks that were shot was within the first two stints of sitting on that particular stand.
Since then, it’s been a pretty evident story, moving forward. The following year I was filming Dr. Woods down in Missouri and we were hunting a seven-year-old buck. It was the first seven-year-old buck and they had never seen it in daylight in years past. They knew where it was through trail cameras and stuff, never were able to lay eyes on it, until I think it was October 24th or something. We snuck into the one stand that we had hung the previous August and it was the first time ever sitting in that stand. Two hours into the hunt, all of a sudden he showed himself, walked five yards under the stand, and that was that story.
And then, it worked for me one time last year, second time in that stand. I had a nice shot at one of my top three bucks. Unfortunately I blew that one, but we’ll probably talk about that a little later.
Bruce: Lessons learned, right?
AJ: Yeah!
Bruce: Lessons learned.
AJ: Yeah.
Bruce: Let’s dig in a little bit more about that seven-year-old buck, because everybody knows there’s a big buck on their property, or they wouldn’t be hunting the property. But they never see them. So let’s unpack that 170 buck a little bit more.
AJ: Okay. So, it was kind of a unique situation down there. Obviously I don’t know if everybody is familiar with Dr. Grant Woods, but he’s got a big chunk of property near Branson, Missouri, and it’s highly managed for deer, because that’s his career and that’s what he’s done. So we had the advantage of having probably 50 or so trail cameras on the property, and had this pattern on them.
But for the number of days that we would sit and hunt, and people were out on the property, not a single time had anybody seen it. So we kind of had this idea of where he was bedding, and where he was likely to work and feed. The acorns were kind of dropping at this time yet, so we got into the timber on the top of a ridge. We had the right wind, and primarily this was one of the locations that this buck was. And probably the only hitless buck was in this area, so it was going to be either that we saw this buck or we didn’t see another shooter.
He just happened to show up, plenty of daylight left, and the rest is history. But that was just one of the cappers. I think deer just survive based on fear, so anything you can do to hunt them smartly, and avoid giving them the fear and telling them that you’re in that area, just aids to your advantage. And whether it was luck that we were there that night, I don’t know. But we did everything right leading up to it.
Bruce: Let’s talk about that, because the deer didn’t know you were there obviously He’s been through seven seasons, so he knows when man is around. So how did you get into your stand without him realizing you were in his playground?
AJ: All right. So his property is in the Ozarks, so it’s extremely hilly terrain. We had the perfect wind for that day. A lot of times what we’ll do is we have one of the guys take the truck and drop us off, so we’re limiting our walk. Where we were driving the truck, based on how the wind was that day, if we were to walk that same path, our wind would have been blowing out towards him.
So we were able to drive past where he was likely bedding, from where he came from, and then dropped off, sprayed down, did all that stuff pretty close to the stand. And then we just finished our walk, which was about 50 yards to the stand. So we were kind of able to move around a bit on the access road and stand location, and then use the wind to our advantage once we were up in the stand.
Bruce: Were there any trail cams that told you he was in the area? I think my notes say that nobody had ever seen him. So was he on trail cams or not?
AJ: Yeah, yeah. Trail cams was how we had him patterned and knew his core area, based on, I think we were running a Reconyx. They come with some cool software, where you can put a specific buck and tag photos, and it will give you a pattern on exactly which camera sites he’s showing up. So from that we were able to kind of determine where he was bedding and where he was going to be feeding. But the closest camera to that specific tree stand was probably 100 yards.
Bruce: It takes a lot to bring down a seven-year-old deer. Congratulations.
AJ: Sure.
Bruce: Tell us about your whitetail ah-hah moment, when some place, sometime, the light bulb went on and you went, “Oh, my goodness, that solves a problem.” Can you share that with us?
AJ: Yeah. Let’s see if I can pin down a specific one. I would say, spending more time actually scouting than hunting, even during the season. As soon as season opened, it was always tough for me to spend a few extra days during the season when I could have a bow in my hand and get into the good area. To trade those in for a day where I scout, where I stay back either in the truck or get up on top of a hill where I can see a lot of the property. That certainly is probably one of the biggest things I’ve learned, especially for late season in hunts, when they’re primarily focused on food-bedding patterns.
Bruce: Now is that public land or private land that you’re scouting?
AJ: Both. Well, you’ve been to Wisconsin. So northern Wisconsin, that’s a little different. It’s a little tougher to sit back and oversee a large area I would say, because there’s a lack of ag fields. And generally ag fields are on private lands. When I’m hunting close to home I have the ability to hunt probably what I would call a “60:40 ag to woods relationship,” so I can scout really easily from a distance if the fields are either picked or if they’re beans. But going up to the public land, then it’s more on the ground scouting, walking, finding the trails, finding the rub lines, finding those interior edges.
Bruce: Now, are you going up to the Chequamegon? Is that how you pronounce it?
AJ: The Chequamegon.
Bruce: The national park? Yeah.
AJ: I have hunted that before. Primarily we’re heading up towards Mercer, which is not all that far from Lake Superior, so we were pretty far up there in Iron County. And most of that is public county land. But then also throughout school, being at Stevens Point, there is Mead Wildlife Area. There’s a couple of public wildlife areas around there as well.
Bruce: Yeah. Is that close to the Wisconsin River there?
AJ: Yep, yep.
Bruce: Well, thanks for that insight. Let’s talk about the one thing that you personally think is holding you back from being more successful than you presently are?
AJ: All right. Probably money.
Bruce: That’s fair.
AJ: You know, money and time off. From looking back at how sport used to be, then people kind of scoff when you say money is a big deal. But now it’s like, I put so much into the number of stand placement sites you can have, and tree stands aren’t all that cheap. So when you’re a recent college graduate or whatever, and you’re spending all your money on tree stands and about to get married, things don’t always go so well. So you kind of have to go the mobile route, and buy a few cheaper stands, put them up in the good spots. Maybe save your vacation for the one or two weeks during November, and then hopefully strike gold during that time.
Bruce: What’s the best advice you ever received? And second part of that is, “Who gave it to you?”
AJ: All right. I would say the best piece of advice would be that deer live on fear. That kind of ties in to how you’re most successful o your one or two first sits on a particular tree stand. But fear is the number one thing. That impacts how a whitetail reacts and also how you hunt them, because pretty much fear for them is the difference between life and death, and they’re going to act accordingly.
That piece of advice was kind of learned when I was working down in Missouri with Grant Woods, traveling to all these properties across the US, developing hunting management plans for them. You can have the best property, the best food, the best cover, the best water, anything, but if you are constantly out there, bumping to scaring deer, it’s not going to matter. They’re going to act accordingly.
All of a sudden they’re going to become nocturnal. There’s even been a study from I think it was Auburn one or two years ago, or I was at a conference and heard it. They showed, based on collared deer that were being hunted, that they were much more likely to avoid a stand site area for days following a specific hunt. And then it was pretty much they came back to normal after five days.
So one to three days following that hunt it’s like they had a learned behavior to avoid that area, and then they start coming back. So you could clearly see that they know when the hunter’s out there, and then they’re going to act accordingly because they’re scared and they know that there’s danger out there.
Bruce: Thank you for that information. I just took some notes.
AJ: Sure.
Bruce: Share with us where you get your information today. Is it off the Internet? Is it off talking to your buddies? Reading books? How do you gain more knowledge about whitetail hunting?
AJ: Yeah. It’s pretty much everywhere. Whether I’m researching new topics here at work, and off the Internet, and articles. Even on the Internet, sometimes you’ve got to be careful what you read, because what one person sees is not always how it’s going to be in your area and vice versa. It was shortly after, well, through college and then following that, I had a lot of scientific background.
The scientific research department was always cool because it was like diving into the behavior, and there’s scientific evidence that they were changing, or feeding on something else, or avoiding a certain area. So those are always cool, but they’re also harder to find. So I would say, never think you’ve learned enough because anybody you talk to can give you a new, smarter tip. I certainly don’t know it all by any means. I love the habitat aspect of things, so I’m always there. I love doing food plants, love just the farming, and making it a year-round project.
Bruce: So whitetail hunting is a year-round adventure or journey, however you want to frame it.
AJ: Yeah. It’s kind of funny. I was telling my fiancee that once November is done, things will get back to normal. And then it turns to January and I didn’t fill my tag yet, so I was out there every late season, nice that I could because I had such a good pattern on him. I never ended up closing the deal, so now it’s shed hunting, so ever day after work I’m like, “Hey, you want to go walk? You want to go walk?”
Bruce: Great segue way, AJ. On your community page, let me get this right, Living Legendary, the hunting community, you have something about 50 shades of shed antlers. Talk about that for a little bit.
AJ: Oh, that was just kind of a side project you know. Not everything has got to be super serious on our Web page, so we like to dive into the humor side of things, that hunters find amusing, as well as share tips. Because not every hunter out there is going to have food plots. Like nowadays, you’re inundated with food plot tips, and while I certainly will write about it, I understand that probably…
Geez, I don’t even know what a good ratio would be, but I would say that almost 80% of people that hunt, or you know, the daily hunters that go out for the rifle seasons probably don’t have food plots, or are hunting public land. So we like to dive into the humorous side of things. This one is just accumulating different pictures from the Internet that antlers have been used to make. So you have anything from cans, toilet paper holders, to grill handles, just some unique things that antlers were made out of. So if you ever need any ideas with your shed antler, you can go on and visit it.
Bruce: Yeah, I thought it was great. One of the questions I ask is, “Share with us one of your funny moments.” And everybody, “Just go check that out, because there’s some unique utilization of shed antlers.” That’s for sure.
AJ: Oh, yeah, yeah, I was surprised by a lot of the things. For me myself, I prefer to just keep them in a pile. That way I can pull them out and hopefully I shoot that one next year or something like that.
Bruce: Hey, moving right along. AJ, you just picked up, yesterday you just closed on a 100-acre parcel. We’ll put it in central Wisconsin. Tell us what you’re going to do, starting today through the fall. And then, what are you going to do next January with it? So just take it through a year on that new, brand new, 100-acre parcel.
AJ: All right. Is this a hypothetical then?
Bruce: It’s hypothetical.
AJ: All right.
Bruce: You just closed on it yesterday and it’s in central Wisconsin. Or you can put it wherever you want.
AJ: Sure.
Bruce: Just kind of frame it, tell us where it is, and tell us about the topography, and go from there.
AJ: All right. All of central Wisconsin, if we go there, well a lot of Wisconsin I guess, unless you kind of border the Mississippi, and if I saw your site, you’re got land out in Buffalo County, or have hunted there before.
Bruce: Yes, I have,
AJ: But that is kind of the anomaly of the state. Most of the state is pretty flat and farm country. They call it the “driftless area,” up towards central Wisconsin. It’s really sandy, but I would say it’s probably close to a 50% mix of forest and ag. So first thing I would do, well, if I bought it, I would be talking to the neighbors beforehand to make sure its a decent property for what goals I had in mind, whether it’s QBM, or if I just wanted a nice piece of recreational property that had a chance to shoot some deer. But let’s say it’s a property made for the sole purpose of deer hunting and we have unlimited funds.
Bruce: That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
AJ: Yeah, it would be. And I’ve worked with some people like that in the past, and it’s pretty nice what they can do.
Bruce: Yes.
AJ: Yeah, so I love going on Google Earth. That’s probably where I would start. I would pull it up on Google Earth, get some ideas in my head. Then I would confirm some things on the ground. I would try to put access around the entire perimeter of the property. That way I can get to certain facets that I add later, without… Or being able to get to them with any wind direction.
Then I would probably shoot for close to 10% of the property in food, high quality food. Of that, the majority of it would be soybeans, and then, depending on the deer density, but the first year is always kind of a learning curve. I would probably do mostly soybeans and whatever gets browsed over, I would overseed it with a brassica mix, or something like that.
I always use the utilization cages, or some people call them “browsing cages” in your food plots. That way you can kind of gauge the density of deer on your property. That’s how I would manage my property, based on the number of foods. So if the food inside the cage is way taller than the outside, then you know you’ve got to do some work on the doe population.
If you’re working on building that population, which on a 100 acres, there are most certainly going to be a few venturing on the neighboring properties and such. Hopefully you’ve got a few of them that are willing to cooperate, or are practicing the same thing as you. But then, yeah, manipulating property, just changing it.
Changing how deer act, that’s my ultimate passion. I mean, hunting is fun, but when you can watch stuff grow, and put it in the ground, and all of a sudden it’s paying off…. Like this year, I was able to get a three-acre food plot in. We had it in for two years now. Last year was kind of a learning curve, with being brassicas and stuff like that. They don’t always hit that the first year. Now this year we just got hammered, and we found three sheds in it so it certainly paid off. We didn’t kill any deer from it, but antlers I’ll take.
Bruce: Yeah, it’s all part of the story. You mentioned a word that I haven’t heard before, “Manipulating” did you say “the land”? Or “the deer”?
AJ: I guess a little bit of both. I’m trying to think if it is ultimately manipulating the land or not. So deer, I would say more so deer, because they’re so conditionable, kind of like Pavlov’s dog. When he would come and salivate when the bell was rung, even when there was no food, after just being conditioned to getting fed every time the bell was rung.
So you know, I don’t really believe in the “plant it and you will come,” you know. Being in the business, food plots are not like a magic ticket to awesome killing deer. But if you practice quality management on the land and also hunt in a proper way, where you’re not constantly spooking them. You’re hunting smart, maybe giving them a break. Maybe you’re only hunting during the rut, depending on if you have certain structures built in the property. That all really is the puzzle and still doing different properties all the time today, it’s my favorite part.
Just pulling up that map on Google Earth, you know, without even being on the property. Just being like, “Hm, I wonder what we can do here? Where are the natural funnels? What’s all going on?” And then improving that ultimately, usually you try to look at what your neighbor’s got, and whatever they’re lacking, you try to make better on yours.
Bruce: Well, everybody out there in Whitetail Rendezvous community, I’m going to vote to have AJ back on the show again, because we’ve only scratched the surface. This man knows something about whitetails. If you took notes, as I’ve been doing, he gave us a lot of nuggets. He really did. Some of the things I heard was using maps, not going on your land every week, just staying away from it. And utilizing the topography of course, but thinking about, “How can we best manage the herd?”
He’s got the browse cages as an indicator of just what’s on the ground, and he can adjust their hunting practices to fit that. AJ, thank you so much for being on the show. And now, tell us about Legendary Whitetails and your role there, and the contact information. Time is yours, so go for it.
AJ: All right. Thanks a lot, Bruce. Yeah, no, I appreciate being on the show. I would love to come back. I could talk hunting for days on end I guess. It’s kind of what I do at work, so I kind of take my conversation and put it on paper. Just any time I think of an idea, what would make a good blog, or tip, or whatever, I’ve got a whole spreadsheet going.
But anyhow, yeah, like i said earlier, Legendary Whitetail is a great company and I get kind of a unique job here, where everybody else is building the business, making that function run. And I’m able to share my passion and what I love to do with our readers, kind of in a way building a brand for the people that we represent.
Bruce: Now, contact information? Website? Or is there 800-numbers people can call? How do they get to your statement, your community on your website?
AJ: Okay, yeah, sure. You can check out all the awesome clothes, and specials, and stuff like that. We got 65 new products this spring. DeerHere.com is where you’ll find us. Probably the easiest way is just go into DeerGear.com and then, if you want to check out the community page, there’s a little tab on the top right that will take you to all the stuff we were talking about, that dives into the deer hunting and sport, and all that. Sign up, get our catalog. You can sign up for that online. It’s pretty neat and we’ve got some pretty awesome clothing.
Bruce: Now, can you sign up just for a blog reminder, or something new is on the blog for the community? And I’ll get a notification of that?
AJ: Yep, yep, you can sign in. Usually we’ll share almost everything we put up on our social page as well, so Legendary Whitetails on Facebook is where you can find most of that stuff being shared. And then also, if you sign up, there’s a log in and register on the community site as well.
Bruce: Okay. And on the site, I see you’re on Facebook, Twitter, on Google+, LinkedIn, and then Yahoo. Any other social media sites?
AJ: Yeah, Instagram, pretty much everywhere on social you can find us. We’ve got something going.
Bruce: Under “Legendary Whitetails,” is that correct?
AJ: Yeah, yeah. Go to DeerGear.com, or search “Legendary Whitetails,” and you will pop right up.
Bruce: Excellent. AJ, thank you so much for sharing with our community today. And folks, go out and make it a great day. Thank you again.
AJ: Hey thanks a lot, Bruce.