Here’s a golden age of opportunity for the outdoors community: companies can now reach out to future hunters through any medium. A 45-year-old man browses the Backwoods Life page on Facebook and says, “I want to give this hunting thing a try.” A kid, or a woman, all being introduced to the backwoods lifestyle on laptops and iPads. And no sane person would dare waste this chance – certainly not Michael Lee, co-owner of the Backwoods Life TV show.
Described as a “high-tech redneck at its finest”, Michael Lee used his background in computer information to upgrade the way the backwoods lifestyle is marketed. He formed Southern Backwoods LLC with Kevin Knighton – a company that has produced eleven seasons of Backwoods Life on Sportsman Channel and Wild TV. The show goes into detail with each episode about a place, about a person, about an outfitter, to show how they relate to the backwoods lifestyle. Whether you’re hunting or you’re just out there dragging through the mud and walking through a creek bottom, just enjoy the backwoods as they are. It’s not all about the kill; it’s about the hunt, about having fun, and about the power of hunting to unite the tribe as one.
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Michael Lee comes with us from Georgia. He’s the co-owner of Backwoods Life. After high school, Michael went to college and graduated from Valdosta State University with a bachelor of science degree in computer information. “A high tech redneck at its finest.” After graduation and getting a real job, he began pro-staffing for a few companies where he met Kevin Knighton. Soon after they formed Southern Backwoods LLC that now produces Backwoods Life that airs on Sportsman Channel and Wild TV.
Listen to the podcast here:
Backwoods Life With Michael Lee
I’m excited to have a gentleman from the south, Michael Lee. He’s the owner of Backwoods Life and he’s got some great stories to share with us. Michael, welcome to the show.
Good to be here. I’m honored to be on.
Let’s jump right into the Backwoods Life, how it started, why it started, and where are you going with it?
With Backwoods life, this will be our eleventh season on TV. It started around July 2015 on Sportsman Channel, Wild TV up in Canada. It started about ten, twelve years ago. Kevin Knighton, my co-host and co-owner, we met in hunting store actually in Florida. A random sequence of events fell into place for us to cross paths. We brainstormed on this idea. We had another co-owner and co-founder, Trey Wetherington, with us back years ago and we started what was called then Southern Backwoods Adventures and that got hard for a lot of people to remember and say.
We were Southern Outdoors and Southern Backwoods Outdoors and every other combination of stuff you can remember. We’ll say the name, Backwoods Life, about four or five years ago. That did a lot of good things for us and as the brand grows, Trey switched places. When he saw one of our co-host, he trades places as the co-owner and co-host. Trey is still involved with the show as well, but we got a good team of folks around us. We have a lot of fun. We chase whitetail, elk, mule, deer, turkey. You name it, we get after it. We try to have a lot of fun and show what we do. Little Southern Georgia rednecks get out of the woodwork every once in a while and go have fun.
If you had to encapsulate the main theme of your show, what would that be?
Backwoods Life goes into detail with each episode about a place, about a person, about an outfitter, to show how that relates to the backwoods life or that person relates to a backwoods lifestyle. That’s a broad term. Backwoods life is all across the board with what anybody can interpret that, but for us, it’s getting out there, away from the real world, and enjoying the outdoors and the peers as long as possible, and then having a good time.
Whether you’re hunting or you’re just out there dragging through the mud and walking through a creek bottom, just enjoying the backwoods as they are, that’s what our show is about. You’ll see a lot of different scenarios in there from our crew members that help us make the show possible, ourselves, things in our lives, and then the people we help with and the locations we go to, to see more about those things. It’s not all about the kill, it’s about the hunt and about having fun and showing who we are and what we do.
Let’s stay right there and talk about the hunting tradition because you just talked about the hunting tradition. We all like to put the buck on the ground, the turkey on the ground, no question about it, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?
Back to when I first started hunting, I was probably eight or nine years old or whatever as far as deer hunts, I go with my dad. I remember those days and we saw a deer that was just an added bonus. The good Lord knows if we killed one, it was a great day, but just remembering those times of us sitting in the stand together and that tradition being passed on to you, you get that appreciation for the little things in the outdoors. As far as the animals you see, the deer you see, the turkeys you see, just knowing that you’re a part of something greater than what you are, that to me is what it’s all about. Having that feeling of, “I am right where I’m supposed to be right now.” It’s hard for some people to understand, but those that get what I’m saying, you know what I’m talking about.
That’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing at all. The less I say, the better the show is, I guarantee of that. Let’s think about the future of hunting and how Backwoods Life and Whitetail Rendezvous get kids involved and get the fastest-growing segments in the industry involved, that being women.
Right now we have an opportunity from a technological standpoint. If you read my bio, I got a little bit of technology in my background. The thing with it is today’s era, no matter where you’re at, where you’re going, what you’re doing, and especially the younger generation, they all have one thing in common. They are always on a cell phone or an iPad or something, on a mobile device online, on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, whatever. You just pick the medium, there’s an outlet there. I’ve had this conversation with a lot of people who are in the industry. I don’t care what medium we use to reach kids or women or future hunters, whether that’s a 45-year-old man that sees the Backwoods Life page on Facebook and says, “I want to give this hunting thing a try.” No matter what medium we use to reach everybody that we can.
We’re at the point now where we have these things at our fingertips to utilize as tools to help grow what we all have done. I’m 37 years old. I’ve been hunting since I was four or five years old and fishing sooner than that. I’ve got years and years of experience, and now I see these opportunities and it’s not just me, it’s the whole industry. We’ve got to seize the day to this modern era of technology. We need that to enhance what we’re doing, educate people, and grow the sport, the industry. We have that chance right now to reach people through medium we’ve never had before.
When we first started, we had our television show ten years ago or so, there was no Facebook or Twitter or anything like that. This all evolved through the years and now it opens new doors. Some of the largest demographics on these social media sites are the younger generation and they don’t get a little long winded with this answer. Thank you for a great avenue for us to use these opportunities to reach people and educate. That’s the biggest thing too. There are a lot of people out there that don’t know about hunting but they want to learn. We need to be out there reaching out with those people, giving them how-tos that we used to get by reading magazines and watching Realtree and those guys when we were growing up.
You’re into high tech. You graduated CIS. If you have all the money that you needed, what would you do to draw the youth to the outdoors? Let’s include women too.
To be honest with you, if revenue was not an issue, I would honestly take anybody that wanted to go hunting any day, any time, because once you get that out there, that’s the key. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, but when you get them in the outdoors and they’re drinking the Kool-Aid, then you got them, you’ve got them in that environment. If they have a fun experience, a pleasurable experience, they’re going to want to do it again. A good friend of mine the other day, probably one of the best bow hunters in the world that I know, Anthony Dixon, he’s just getting into turkey hunt. He’s a little bit older than I am, but for somebody like him, he called me.
We have that chance right now to reach people through medium we've never had before. Share on XHe’s like, “I went turkey hunting other day. This is awesome. I really like this.” That’s my example of somebody that’s even older that has never done a particular type of hunt getting out there and giving it a try. Now he’s hooked on it. He was like, “I want to turn it on again. I want to shoot a bird,” which is great. He has turkey hunted some in the past, but it captured him this time. He really got into it. That’s the same way, if we can get somebody out there that’s never done it and ease them into the water, they’ll really like it. They usually don’t, but at least have an appreciation for it or they won’t be against it.
To flip back to the technology part of this thing, it’s reaching people. If money’s not an object, having all the resources available for somebody, right now we’re winding up turkey season here in Georgia. They can go online and they can learn how to turkey hunt, they can learn these techniques, they can learn things. We have huge resources available. They’re out there, but to push that message is key. To get out there and educate people on what we do already, what they can do, and how they can be successful. When you go outdoors and you’re successful, it’s just like playing the sport. You make a good golf shot or you hit a home run, you want to do that again. It’s a high feeling, and that’s how you get people hooked on. That’s how people get involved in. It consumes you at some level.
Thanks for that, Michael. Talk about deer hunting. Let’s switch it up and talk about whitetails. Let’s talk about lessons learned over the last couple of years that you’re going to implement this year.
Patience and some more patience. That’s the best thing about whitetail. The longer you can stand to be out there, the more successful you’re going to be. Early season it’s tough to sit down here because it’s so warm. The weather is really hot, mornings can be muggy and be miserable. When you first get that cool weather to come in or you’re traveling somewhere that the weather’s better, you just have a lot higher level of confidence and you’re able to get excited with a rut coming and those things like that. A lot of people miss out on late season success because they may get burned out. They think the rut is over and they’re not going to kill that big buck.
To me, the post-rut, the downhill side of the rut, is the best time to hunt. That’s when those big bucks are not locked down with does anymore. They’re ready to go for round two. That’s where a lot of people have been going so hard. They don’t have the patience to make it through some of the best towns where the weather gets colder and conditions get tougher. A big thing to me is here in Georgia, our peak ruts are in about mid-November, so from Thanksgiving to Christmas is usually a good time. You get those bigger bucks on their feet and moving around.
Let’s talk about your post-season strategy. Walk us through it.
I’m a big fan of food sources for late season. We do a lot of food plots on our farms down here. We find a lot of Antler King, products and they do real world out here. We may have dry conditions, wet conditions, whatever, so it’s all over the board. Having that late season food source is the key. I’ve always been a big advocate. Kill off the does, you kill the buck too. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. I try to concentrate on areas that I know a lot of those are coming into, especially towards the end of the rut where we have the last few does there.
They’re not bred yet or even at secondary rut kicks in 20, 30 days later so you get those big boys. Once they get on their feet, that’s the low if you believe in October Low. Once that low is over, they’re out there for the next couple of bucks. You just got to be out there and be patient. Food sources are a huge thing, especially if you’ve got a food source close to a bedding area or travel route from a food source to a bed area. I’m being a little stereotypical but it doesn’t matter. They’ve worked for years and they’re going to continue to work and you got deer.
Talk about your set ups, ground blind, tree stands, climbers. How do you set up?
We have a little bit of everything and it’s all conditional. We were out in Kansas doing a little turkey hunt and out there’s a prime area that ground blinds worked well. There’s not a lot of trees to get into the straight. You could put good lock on sets or stands or whatever you’re into. Ground blinds have worked really well. Here in Georgia, we have a lot of good straight trees. We have a lot of fine trees so you can take a climber and you can cover an area. If you want to cover some real estate, climb 20, 30 feet up the tree and look over the whole hillside. I guess the best answer to that is we’re pretty versatile, pretty adaptive, and get a little bit of everything. It’s dependent upon the terrain setup, wind direction, and things like that.
Preferably, I like hunting a lot with my bow. That’s my personal preference because from that position I can see good. I don’t make the noise associated with using a common stand. I have my ground blinds in certain condition. I’m not a big fan all the time because I feel claustrophobic and I can’t see. I’m a big person where I like to see the deer coming as far away as I can see them. That gives me time to get ready and what we do with video, the camera guy ready and get things rolling. That’s all personal preference.
You mentioned two things, be versatile and be adaptive. Why don’t you expand on that a little bit?
In the whitetail world, you’ve got to have always a plan B, C, D, and E. You can say, “This is plan A. I’m going to go sit on this food plot, the deer is going to walk out over here.” Most people are the weekend warriors. They’ve got maybe a Friday afternoon, Saturday, in some states you can have Sundays, so you’ve only got a limited amount of time to maximize what you should do. You’ve always got to be strategizing and thinking, “If this doesn’t work, what’s my next move? I know a lot of guys are on hunting clubs. A lot of people are fortunate to have private ground. Deer are moving targets. That deer in September is not going to be the same thing in November. Learning those positions throughout the season on your piece of property is key.
Like myself, I may have one spot religiously in September and October, but November, I’m going to move somewhere else because I know that’s what we’re doing. That’s what this bigger bucks should do. Unless there’s travel routes or changes, feeding patterns change, the whole environment change, you’ll hunt acorns for a while. Those change throughout the season. Your food plot establishes then exchange season. We plant different crops in there that basically have early season, mid-season, and late season, and those are all adaptive to the terrain and what the deer do throughout the season. You have things that change so that’s something you’ve always got to think about, these variables. The one thing that changes all the time is your wind direction. The month of September here in Georgia will have maybe an east wind or southwest or south wind. In November we’re going to have a north, northwest wind. Those are variables too. You’ve got to have new setups change throughout the seasons.
Talk to me about the early, mid, and late season food plots. I’m not saying you’re rotating your crops, you’re actually putting the crop in the spring, then you get your summer, and then you get to fall winter. Is that correct?
That’s pretty much right. I’ll start out like this. Usually spring going into summer, spring is basically our leftover plots from fall. You’re going to have your clover, maybe some of your winter wheat or rye, those things that carry over into turkey season and into the spring. Antler King have a turkey clover mix that we use. It’s a phenomenal thing for deer and turkeys because it’s going to get that late season. It can handle the cold, handle a lot of grazing on there, plus its annual. You can get three or four years out of the same plot, but turkeys love it. We will hunt turkey on there. We’ll hunt deer during the fall and carry that over. Right now, everything out here’s greened out. It’s been nice and warm for a while, so those plots have grown up.
We’ve gone in and already mowed those down. That keeps a palatable food source throughout the summer until the heat gets to it. It knocks that down, we’ll go in and then we’ll plant another Antler King mix called Red Zone. It’s great. It got buckwheat, porridge, soybeans, a lot of warm weather things that deer can graze upon and get them through the summer months. Down here it might be 90 degrees still in September during deer season all the way into October. There’s a chance you get a 90-degree day, so we wait and then we’d go back and either we over seed on top of our plots with that and have the summer mix because that’s going to start dying back when the weather gets colder. We’re going to put in that clover, brassicas, radishes. You have all these different mixes that we’ll put in to get into late October, November, December, January and they can handle the graze. That’s the biggest thing on our properties. We will plant early season. By the time it’s ready to put that next round in for the late or mid-season, late season and, and spring, the deer have already grazed it down pretty good.
I’ve got some pictures. We do a lot with Antler Kings, I plug them a lot. They do make great mixtures and stuff. I’ll send them seasonal photos throughout each month and they see what grazing they can handle and stuff like that. I have a plot that in October is going to be the prettiest, lush and greenest plot that you can see. By January, it’s like carpet out there because deer just grazed it down. It helps them get through those winter months. When the spring weather starts kicking back in and take it on into turkey season and stuff, that’s our cycle of our food plots.
It’s amazing when you talk to people in the industry, pretty knowledgeable about the industry, the information they share that we all can learn from. Audience, you might be somebody that goes up to the cabin on the weekend and you hunt nine days a year or you might be a person that is whitetail hunting year round and there’s more and more people that are hunting whitetails year-round. No, they don’t have a gun, they might have a camera or certainly a bow, but they are out there and they’re improving their land, growing a balanced herd. Do you have any on your land age class restrictions?
Everybody likes to shoot big deer and you can't shoot big deer if you shoot the little deer. Share on XWe got a couple thousand acres here in Georgia that we basically try to shoot mature deer. It’s a hard call for the average person. I’ve made mistakes, don’t get me wrong, and I’ll probably make more. Down here we try to let them get at least four-years-old if we can. It’s a judgment call and there are a lot of things that happen pretty quick, especially during the ruts. You get bucks coming and going and have to make that call. That’s what we tried and that’s what we aim to do. At the end of the day, anybody that we take hunting that shoot a deer they’re proud of and they’re going to put it on their wall, I’m happy for them.
Going after 6 point or 36 point, that’s fine with us. We don’t try to be overbearing with the management standpoint. Everybody likes to shoot big deer and you can’t shoot big deer if you shoot the little deer where you have a year and a half, two and a half years old, but if that’s your tractor, go for it. Who am I to tell you not to shoot the biggest deer that you’ve seen because he’s not old enough? That’s our philosophy. That’s our mentality. I don’t want to be the guy that says, “You’re the worst hunter ever if you’re not shooting five-year-old deer.” I’m not going to do that to anybody.
Do we have a right to do that?
Not in my opinion. I’ve been around a lot of guys and I’m not trying to chastise or criticize anybody. If that’s what you want to do, that’s your dirt, go for it. I’m supportive of it. If you invite me to hunt and you say you don’t shoot a deer unless it’s five years old, I’ll honor your wishes, I promise. At the same time, if you’ve only got 100 acres to hunt and you want to put some meat in the freezer to feed your family and you shoot a spike, a year and a half old buck, who am I to tell you not to do that? That’s the biggest jerk in the world that would do stuff like that. It’s about the hunt. It’s not the size of the trophy; if the size of the hunt. That’s what I always say and that’s what I believe. I’ve made as many memories not killing stuff.
Let’s talk about one of those not funny moments that turns funny later. You’re out there and X, Y, Z happens and you’re laughing now because you just saw the one that’s out there for us.
It was a bad day for me in the woods, but at the end of the day, I’ll explain it as I go. I’m in Pike County, Illinois and everybody’s heard of Pike County or ever heard of a whitetail deer there, people kill big deer every year, 200-inch splinters. I’m up there hunting with a good buddy of mine in Kansas. Mark put me on this piece of property and he said, “This is a big piece of property. I may not even have it next year. Shoot what you want to shoot, something that’s going to look good on video for you.” I’m like, “Okay.” I’m trying to do the 140 minimum, that’s my goal. We get it in the stand that morning. Right away, I’ve got some good bucks moving around. I see this real nice 8 point pushing the doe. I looked down and there’s a 10 point and he’s pushing the doe pretty hard through this bottom, and this is a 150-class buck. I’m like, “If he comes back by, I’m going to throttle him.”
Sure enough, I look up in front of me and here comes the buck over this hill. I looked long enough to count ten points. I said, “That’s him,” I get up and the cameraman gets on. It happened really quick run. I walk over there and they’d all got mixed up. This is a different one. This was probably 120-class deer. I’m about to throw up. I said, “I know this is not the deer that I saw five minutes ago.” I’m pretty disgusted and at the end of the day I felt bad. I’m appreciative of the deer. I took him home with me. I got him right here in my office. At the end of the day, it was my bad. I didn’t mean to shoot that deer. It wasn’t what I thought it was. I got caught up in the moment and just made an assumption and went from there. That’s one of those, “I made a mistake” moments, but at the end of the day, that’s a nice buck. I wasn’t proud of it after it was over. It was a hard pill to swallow.
This is Michael Lee saying something extremely important. Sometimes we mess up. You might be disappointed for a second or two, but we have a tradition of this country that’s called hunting, and we get the right, millions of us, upwards to 18 million of us have the right each fall to go out and chase whitetails and it’s an honor and a privilege to do that. It’s a privileged to out there and hunt the deer.
If you mess up, you mess up. It happens and you learned from it and it’s called lessons learned, but what Michael Lee shared with us is very important to take forward into next hunting season. Michael, this time of the show where you can sell up and promote and tell us what you want to tell us about your company, about companies that support you, your sponsors or anything. Why do you give up a couple of minutes?
People that watch outdoor television get frustrated with advertising and commercials and stuff like that, but it’s a necessary thing. We have to do that or we don’t get to show you anything at all. Nobody gets to show you any hunt. You could be sitting at home watching gardening or something and not have the option to watch outdoor TV.I look at that too. That’s the privilege for some of us to be able to bring it to you and we’re very honored to do that. I get a lot of questions about my setups, a lot of time on what I hunt with and as far as optics go, Hawke Optics, they have been a great partner of ours for several years. They’re also the optics for the money. You can’t beat them. Check those guys out. As far as food plots, I probably don’t need to answer that. You know Antler King already.
When it comes to the archery set up, we shoot G5 Prime Bows. Their new lines, they do great. I’m really happy with them. We shoot Hunga Munga broadhead. It is an expandable broadhead that fly like darts. They’re probably the best flying broadhead that I’ve ever shot. We’re proud of those guys. We shoot Quality Archery Designs air rest. We have Realtree camouflage. We use Hunter Safety System every time we climb a tree. We lock on and use that. Covert Scouting Cameras spot hog sites on our bow. We use Lethal for scent elimination. We shoot Trulock Chokes. We just finished up a great turkey season. We killed 28 gobblers this spring so far.
You probably haven’t heard about C-EZ reflective product and those are great for putting on the arrows, putting on your tree stand and marking your trails under your tree stands. They reflect your flashlight and stuff like that. Those work really well. I’m going to stop now. I don’t like pulling shamelessly stuff like that. I had to work it in there and different tips and stuff. One more, spring and summer is here. Everybody’s going to be cutting their grass. Check out Big Dog Mowers. They are a new partner of ours. We just got back from Kansas touring their plant and all those are made in the USA. Support a great American company.
Anything about the crew at Backwoods Life?
We do have a great crew. My co-hosts, Woody Sullivan and Kevin Knighton, we’ve been together for years now. I talked about earlier our co-founder, Trey Wetherington. He’s a good friend of mine and he helps with us. The list goes on. Justin Moore, Jeremy Johnson, Davie Ferraro, and Kathy Whitaker. We just got a solid team that we got a good core group of folks we enjoy hanging out together and being together and have fun.
Michael Lee, Backwoods Life, it’s been a privilege to listen to you. The 30 minutes went really fast, but on behalf of the Whitetail Rendezvous community, we thank you and honored that you shared some time and some insights with us that we can take out and implement. On behalf of the crew, thank you.
Thank you for having me here. I hope I didn’t ramble on about too much stuff on tangents, but hopefully somebody heard something in there that are helping them out. Remember, no matter what, go out and enjoy the outdoors. Have fun and don’t worry about what anybody else thinks.
I want to thank each and every one of you for spending your time with us today. I look forward to sharing with you in the next episode, more whitetail hunting tips, techniques, and stories. Until then, keep the sun at your back, the wind in your face, and always be patient. If you have any tips, comments, or suggestions or what we can do to improve because we’re here to serve you, let us know. Thanks for listening to Whitetail Rendezvous Podcast at www.WhitetailRendezvous.com.