LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Bruce: 5,4,3,2,1. Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. And guys and gals across Whitetail Rendezvous land, we are in for a treat with Michael Hyle, Business Development for Kill Cliff Incorporated and a former professional baseball player with the Chicago Cubs and Marlin Organizations. Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael: Thanks, Bruce. Thanks for having me.
Bruce: Michael, in the warm up, we talked about cutting up with the guys and gals after hunting all day and sitting around camps. So let’s just bring up our stools and put our feet up and talk about camp fire stories and why that’s so important to you.
Michael: Yeah. It all started with me back when I was playing baseball. The game of baseball, itself, is great, but the brotherhood and the camaraderie and those relationships that you build, throughout your years of playing is what makes you come back every single year. And when I decided to leave the game of baseball that was the hardest part about me leaving was leaving that camaraderie and that brotherhood. One of the biggest things that brought me back into the world of hunting was that ability to reconnect with a lot of those friends and a lot of those baseball friends in the hunting world. Because, as you know, the baseball season ends and deer season begins. So it runs perfectly as a parallel to major league baseball players and that’s why so many of them do hunt is because the seasons run up. So I’ve been able to connect back with a lot of my old teammates and buddies even as I’ve been out of the game through the hunting season and being able to share that time with them again at the [inaudible 00:02:06].
Bruce: What’s a couple of funny camp stories that you would wanna share or can share?
Michael: Oh, I don’t know if there’s any in particular. The biggest thing I think that always gets brought up around a camp fire is, you wouldn’t believe it but this is what happened. Most of the time I think it’s in some way shape or form there’s a little bit of exaggeration going on there as we can all attest to. But just sitting in the tree and having that alone time and then coming back and hearing what everybody else saw and talking about what were the deer doing, how were they moving, what were they seeing, that’s just all about it. And it’s never really anything too crazy or over the top. But when you see certain things when you’re sitting in a tree stand, you wanna share that with your group of friends and with that brotherhood. And it just makes it cool to be able to have that time where you have dinner, have a cold beer and sit down around the fire and just enjoy each other’s company.
Bruce: Where did the hunting tradition start with you?
Micheal: For me, it started in my late teen years. We had a family friend that had some land. It actually started in bird hunting. So I started off doing quail hunting, and that evolved on that same piece of land into hunting whitetails. And I remember . . . Eric is the guys name. I remember talking to Eric and kept telling me, “Oh, we got to get you down here to do a deer hunt.” I said, “Well, I’m all on board.” And it started with a . . . I was using a 270 rifle and I shot my first doe. And there was no turning back for me. I was like, “Uh oh, this is gonna be a problem because I’m addicted.” From that point on, I was hooked. And Eric, good family friend of ours, was the guy that introduced me to that. And it’s just been . . . I haven’t looked back. And then the second phase of that whitetail hunting life for me, my rebirth into whitetail hunting was about eight or nine years ago. One of my best friend called me and he said, “Hey, we just got a track of land and I want you to come down here and hunt it.” He’s actually stilled involved in baseball and so he gets back from the season in October time frame. He said, “Well one thing, you can’t bring your rifle, this is bow only.” I remember my response being, something along the lines of, “All right. I’ll come down and give it a shot. I don’t know if this is really gonna be my thing but I’ll come down and try it out.” Well, I went down there one afternoon and the first night that I sat, I saw probably eight or nine does, they’re all does. And I got one shot off, completely missed. But from that point on, after that, I remember thinking to myself, “I’m never picking up a rifle again, I’m only bow hunting.” Basically from that point on, besides a few late season weekends here and there, I exclusively bow hunt. It’s just a completely different experience, for me at least. Having the bow in your hand and getting that close to the animal and really being strategic with your scent and your game plan and traveling patterns, food patterns and how all those things work together in order to get that perfect shot.
Bruce: Let’s stay with your evolution. Started off bird hunting, put a rifle in your hand, harvested a few deer, then something happened that you said, “Wait a minute.” Tell us that story, bring this up. Put us in the tree stand with you.
Michael: Yeah. When I was rifle hunting, those were probably 100 to 200 yard shots. And while they were exciting, when I got in that deer stand with a bow and I literally had deer walking underneath me and had to wait for that perfect opportunity. I had to plan my shot. You have to plan your movements around what that deer is doing. The fact that there was other deer in the field and they could get spooked . . . just the strategic nature of it in general was so much more intriguing to me. The fact that everything had to go perfectly for you in that one instance and in that one time, that really drew me to the bow hunting itself. As I started evolving more as a bow hunter, starting to get different bucks on trail cams and realizing that, A) I must not ever have the opportunity to shoot this guy or, B) the likelihood of him giving me an extended period of time to get a shot off is going to be slim to none. And so I’m gonna have to have everything planned out perfectly in order for this to happen. And I really was drawn to that whole planning side and patterning the deer. Basically, the intimacy you that you have with the animal and the closeness is just . . . it’s unique for me at least. It was a little bit different from the rifle side because that’s what really drew me to it was the planning, the preparation, and the intimacy with you and how close you get with that animal. Pretty cool thing.
Bruce: Talk to us about your specific hunt plan, not your hit list for X buck or Y buck but what you do pre-hunt to make sure you’re covering all the bases. Because it really sounds like you got this down to a science and understand exactly what you need to do, how you need to do it and when you need to do it.
Michael: Yeah. It varies from area to area that I hunt in. But generally speaking, the number one thing is making sure that before I travel, I do my gear check and I’ve got everything that I need. Number two is checking the weather. What are the weather patterns be like? What’s the wind doing? What’s the moon phase? Where is the temperature? And a lot of the times I’ll be basing the temperature especially here in the south on what they’re primarily gonna be feeding on. And then I try to call if I have people down there. I try to call and get even further information on that. What are they really hitting right now? Is it the open fields with the clover? Are they hitting the acorns? And that’s gonna dictate a lot as to where I sit. So am I sitting in a food plot or am I sitting in a wooded stand and really trying to drill down as to what they’re feeding on and where we’re at in the moon phase and the wind. After that, to get a little more detail, we’ll check trail cams depending on how many days I have to hunt. I don’t typically spend more than two or three days hunting just because of my work schedule. So I’ll see if some buddies can pull cameras. If not, when we get down there, we’ll pull cameras, have a look and see what’s going on as far as what their travel patterns are, what time of the day, what time of the night they’re traveling and really get a feel for their movement and when that movement is happening. And I think between the wind, the movement patterns, the food and the weather, that’s gonna give me a pretty good idea on where I wanna sit and exactly what it is that I’m looking for for that particular hunt.
Bruce: Talk to me how you mitigate or quasi eliminate your scent.
Michael: Yeah. Listen, I’m a huge proponent of spraying myself down and that’s worked great for me. But then I have a lot of my buddies that I had come hunting with us. And one of them is one of the best hunters I know and he’ll spend all day working out on the farm and will come back. He won’t shower, he won’t do a thing and he’ll be the only one that’s covered up in deer all night just because he’s got the right wind. So here we are . . . I’ll shower before a hunt, wash down with the scent free soaps and then spray down and make sure my clothes are all treated and everything. And then I won’t see a thing. And then here he is, the vet out there, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s got the right wind and he’s been sweating all day and he’s covered up in deer. Scent, for me, it’s a peace of mine, spraying down and doing all the other stuff. At the end of the day, it’s gonna come down to the wind and what the wind’s doing. That’s my honest opinion. If you can stay and always have that wind in your face then I think that you’ll be all right.
Bruce: Listeners, take notes on this and take the information shared because there’s a lot of information out there. There’s a lot of great companies that put out great products both in sprays and lotions and soap and hair and then the carbon impregnated clothing and then you got your rubber boots. But more and more I listen to . . . we’re getting close to 100 podcasts. If you don’t play the wind, it’s difficult, not impossible, but it’s difficult to bring that mature in. Yeah, you’re gonna see does and yearlings or two and a half year old bucks. But where talking about putting three and a half, four and a half, five year-old bucks on a hit list and hunting those deer. Not saying that everybody has to do that. Whatever you wanna do when you’re hunting, whether rifle, bow, muzzleloader, it’s your hunt. But think about the wind and I would say that if you play the wind 100% of the time, your odds and your success ratios gonna go up. Do you agree with that, Michael?
Michael: A hundred percent. You’ll see a lot of doe and some of the yearlings and those younger bucks. But if you’re going out there for a specific buck and he’s a four and a half, five and a half year old deer you have to play the wind. Because they are spooky and they will not even come into a field if they as though they’re catching any kind of scent that’s not something that they’re used to.
Bruce: Do you have a hit list?
Michael: I do and I was fortunate enough last year to get the number one guy on my hit list. He was my first Pope and Young and I was ecstatic. He was actually a South Carolina low country deer, which I could not believe that I got him. I nicknamed him Junior, because we had one on the property named Goliath and this one was called Goliath Junior. But it actually turned out, which I’m sure a lot of your listeners have seen if they’ve hunted before and used trail cameras. It actually turned out that Junior ended up scoring higher than what we though Goliath was. Which we thought he was gonna score out bigger. Pictures don’t always tell the full story when you see the deer in real life. And it sounds so cliché but this actually happened on my last day of hunting, my last morning of hunting. I was gonna have to leave that day at lunch to get back home. And he came walking out and his antlers were so loud coming through the brush that I didn’t think that there was any way on God’s green earth that that was a deer coming through. Normally when something’s that loud it’s not a deer. So I just looked up casually and here he comes walking through the brush and everything happened so fast. I honestly wasn’t even sure if it was Junior or not when I released the arrow. I knew that it was a big, large male mature buck and let the arrow fly and thankfully he went down within 50 yards. So there’s was very, very minimal tracking. And got to him and I said, “My God, this is Junior,” and said a little prayer to the big guy upstairs for letting that happen for me. Couldn’t believe it happened. Went back and got some of my buddies and took them all out there because I to get their help to drag him out of the woods. That was a great morning for me.
Bruce: Why did you pick that stand on that day?
Michael: It was stand that I was hunting as a result of seeing Junior’s travel patterns. I had been following his travel patterns through different people that had driven on the property and then through trail cameras. At the time, it actually happened two days after Thanksgiving this past year. And I wasn’t sure if he was still in the area or not. I know that he had been held up with some does in the area. Basically it was a matter of me not having anywhere else better to hunt because I knew that this was the area he was in. And if I were to move my stand any closer to the actual physical area that I knew that he’d been basically bedding in, I was afraid of getting too close between my stand and his bedroom. Getting in and getting out of the stand, I thought might bust him. So I put it right on what I consider to be the outskirts of where his travel patterns were. And I happened to get lucky that morning.
Bruce: Let’s talk about the wind. Where was the wind?
Michael: The wind, that morning, it was actually in my face and it was coming a little bit from my right to left. It swirled a hair and I was right on a wood line with a power line directly behind me, about 30 feet behind me. So I was right on this wood line. The wind was coming in of the power line and then it would swirl a little bit but then it would come down in off the trees. But I got lucky because that early part of the morning, which is when it happened, the wind was actually coming in, like I said, from my right to left and that’s where he came in. He came in from my front right and was walking in toward me there. So the wind, it was perfectly in my face for his direction. There’s a few pieces that all came together in order to make that shot happen. It was definitely a good bit of luck on my part.
Bruce: Listeners, that buck, as I understand what Michael just said, was coming down wind, correct?
Michael: Yeah. Wind was in my face and so he did not have any . . . he couldn’t have gotten any of my scent.
Bruce: So some people think bucks always walk with the wind on their nose. In this case, not so. And this is a mature buck, four and a half, five and a half years old, Pope and Young quality, Pope and Young class deer. So think about that. Take that note and think about it when you’re hunting a mature deer. They’re sort of different than the younger age class deer. So put that into perspective. Michael, tells us about your set up. What type of tree stand do you use? What type of arrow, compound or traditional?
Michael: Yeah. So my tree stand I think that I was using that morning was a Family Traditions tree stand. Great, great deer stands and great company. It’s just really well made and very, very comfortable. I had put it up in an area . . . we have a good amount of people that hunt this land, it’s a pretty good size track of land. I had put this stand in an area that was nowhere near where anyone else was hunting. So there’s very little pressure in this area and that’s probably why Junior was over there. I had very little pressure in the area. What pressure was there was not hunting related and he had become accustomed to it basically and the does were there. Using a Family Traditions deer stand, I was shooting and still am shooting the Matthews Chill R set at 70 pounds. So that’s an unbelievable bow. I love that bow. Great bow, smooth. Shooting the Maxima arrows from Carbon Express. And I was using a range extreme that morning and I was wearing my Sitka forest pattern gear. I don’t know how many of your listeners use that Sitka gear but Sitka gear is the real deal. I love that stuff. I love how they use it as actually gear. You can layer up so well and it’s a gear system that’s . . . I never leave without it.
Bruce: Let’s switch it up and talk about your day job at Kill Cliff. Michael is the Business Development Manager at Kill Cliff. How does Kill Cliff cross over into the out of doors and specifically hunting?
Michael: Yeah. Me and another guy in our company, we absolutely love the outdoors and hunting. So one day, I had this idea that we needed to become involved in this outdoor world. I didn’t know exactly what that looked like but I know that I wanted to make it happen. So we created another branch, if you will, called Kill Cliff Outdoors. I happened to have a good network of friends and a few of those friends were involved in the outdoor film world. We kind of progressed down that road and started and outdoor TV show that was shown on the Pursuit Channel. That was a lot of fun. First experience doing that and what a blast. I knew that a lot of my baseball buddies had been on outdoor TV shows before so it was an exciting time. But from the drink standpoint, I realized that… So our beverage is a recovery beverage. It was created by former Navy SEAL to help his body recover after BUD/S training. And after I’m out all day hanging stands, scouting, planting food plots and doing all that kind of stuff, you can put in, it’s a good days work. And you can get some aches and pains after doing all that work, especially climbing up and down trees and hanging those stands. So I thought, man, Kill Cliff is perfect for this because it’s a recovery drink. It can help reduce inflammation in the body which is perfect for that. And if we can get hunters turned on to drinking a recovery drink like this what’s the harm in at least introducing it and seeing what happens? After doing that and introducing it to a lot of my buddies and having Kill Cliff Outdoors out there, we had a great reception and it’s just grown from there.
Bruce: One thing that Baker Leavitt shared with me was the Naval SEAL Foundation. Tell me how, and tell the listeners how Kill Cliff and Kill Cliff Outdoors is involved in that.
Michael: Yeah. Todd is our founder and he’s a former team guy, a former SEAL. And one of his biggest goals, before even really creating and finalizing Kill Cliff as a beverage was his company becoming the largest contributor to the Naval Special Warfare Foundation. It’s just something that’s near and dear to his heart. And it’s something that he has instilled in all of us even though not all of us are former team guys. All of us can at least appreciate what those guys do for us and the sacrifices that them and their families make for us and our country. That was something that we very, very easily all adopted because it’s something that we all can at least appreciate. I don’t know if we can fully understand it but appreciate it. As a company, that is our goal to be the largest contributor to that foundation. And that foundation, basically what it does is it helps give back to SEALs that are wounded, injured in any kind of way or have passed on as a result of being in the line of fire and duty and help their families and their children continue on with education funds and whatever that might look like from a financial standpoint and support standpoint with those families and with those SEALs. Their work is just unbelievable. The amount of people that they have been able to help is just remarkable. So any kind of organization that gives back so much to a community that we hold so dear is something that we’re gonna definitely get behind 100%.
Bruce: How do our listeners find out more about the foundation?
Michael: They can go to the Naval Special Warfare Fund. Their website is . . . If you just Google, Naval SEAL Special Warfare Fund, I’m sure it will come up for you. There’s an opportunity to give there as well as every time people buy Kill Cliff products we give a portion of the proceeds back to that fund. And then they have a number of different events that people can become involved in. Not even just volunteering monetarily but donating their time and helping with charity events and things that they do for the community. If they Google Naval Special Warfare Fund it will obviously give them a link to that website.
Bruce: Thank you for that. And listeners, just check it out because men and women in this country do something that preserves our freedom. Can’t say it any other way. And they go in harm’s way, they’re all in, and some of these guys and gals do not come back. So think about it. Hey, one last thing, share with us one ah ha moment that you took away from the last couple of years from the whitetail stand.
Michael: Oh, man. I feel like every time, and this is one of the joys for me, I feel like every time I go and I sit in the stand, I see something that I’ve never seen before. Or I hear a sound that I’ve never heard before. So it’s always something new. People are always asking me, “Don’t you get bored just sitting there?” And yeah, don’t get me wrong, you have your slow days. But there’s always something new that’s happening out there. I think one of the biggest ah ha moments for me was just the true preparation that you can put into and my coming full circle on getting Junior, my first Pope and Young with a bow. That was a big moment for me and all the preparation and time that I put into hunting him and hunting him hard. That was a big, big moment for me and when that finally everything came together and the perfect storm that morning, that was a big morning for me. I don’t know if that’s considered an ah ha moment but in my past few years, that sure is heck is one of my best moments.
Bruce: Michael, we’re at the time in the show that you got a minute or two to give a shout out to Kill Cliff, to the Special Warfare Fund, any guys from around the camp fire and anybody else you just wanna give a shout out to.
Michael: Yeah. I would say that if you guys have any interest, go check out www.killcliff.com. That’ll tell you a little bit more about our beverage and what we do out there in the world the different athletes that we support and how we’re involved in different kind of markets. And then definitely check out the Naval Special Warfare Fund with as much as they do for our guys out there. I think that that’s a must that you go out there and check out and try to help them out as much as you possibly can. Some of my favorite guys to be around and I that you had them on there but I wanna thank Baker Leavitt for connecting us and getting us together for this show because he is, to say the least, an entertaining man.
Bruce: That’s an understatement.
Michael: Yeah. He’s one of those guys that I honestly don’t care that when we’re sitting around a fire, if what he’s telling me that he saw that day is the truth or not because one of the things that I would tell him, that go in line with his stories is that I said, “Baker, you have a gift for never letting the truth get in the way of a good story.” So he’s definitely gifted at the campfire stories. And then all of my hunting buddies around South Georgia and South Carolina, those guys are what makes it what it is. It’s been a fun time and it’s something that I’ll be able to have with me for the rest of my life. And as I see all of my friends and their dads and their hunting groups and how they have . . . one of them have a thing call Man Week where they hunt for an entire week together no matter what each other’s doing. And these are guys that have very, very, very busy schedules. They carve out this week and they make it all about Man Week. And it’s all about just hanging out with your buddies and hunting. Those guys and my friends out there, the fact that we have the ability to do that is something special. I think that’s one of the biggest things and taking that away with him is just what it’s all about.
Bruce: Michael Hyle from Kill Cliff and supporter of the Naval Special Warfare Fund thank you for joining us on Whitetail Rendezvous today. It’s been an honor and a privilege and thank you for what you’re doing for, again, the men and women who go in harm’s way for this country. So with that that’s another wrap for Whitetail Rendezvous. And again Michael, I look forward to someday, if the stars aligned, sitting around those camp fires and listen to Baker spin some yarn.
Michael: Well, thanks for having me on Bruce, I appreciate it.
Bruce: All right talk to you soon.