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Bruce: Five, four, three, two, one. Howdy, everyone out there in the Whitetail Rendezvous community. Today I’m really excited about having Jim Campbell on the show. He’s from C4 Outdoor and, Jim, why don’t you give us a little background?
Jim: Okay. I live in south central Wisconsin. I’m 53 years old, married, with two adult sons and we just are a hunting family. We always have been and continue to pass it along.
Bruce: Thank you. Jumping right into the interview, what’s your best hunting tip that you give your boys, your best friends?
Jim: The best hunting tip. Detail. It’s just all about detail and, for me, probably the biggest detail is the wind. I don’t pay as much attention to moon phase as a lot of guys but getting in and out of the stand and being in the right wind location at the right height is probably the biggest detail for me.
Bruce: When you set up your stand, just talk, let’s talk a little bit about just setting up your stand.
Jim: Mm-hmm. Well, because I’m primarily now a videographer versus the hunter, I only pick up a bow probably 5% of the time anymore, but setting up with a camera is no different than setting up with a bow or a gun and when we set up, if we even have a small field, we’ll set up multiple stand locations for different winds. Some people think it’s overkill if you’ve got a tank or field and you’ve literally got a double set on each side of the field but if you want to be able to hunt that field, that’s what you really need to do.
Bruce: When you take a look at, say, the 10 acre, now is that a food plot or natural croplands?
Jim: That’d be natural croplands. We rely a lot on natural ag fields. We’ve experimented some with food plots and I don’t know whether it’s geographically where we are in southern Wisconsin or what the deal is but if we can utilize the corn and the beans and the switchgrass, I guess we’ve just, we’ve grown up hunting that way and that’s how we continue to hunt.
Bruce: When you set up your stand, how do you scout the field so you know the entry and exit points of the bucks?
Jim: Well, this time of year is a great time to be doing that. The runs, the major, predominant runs are really obvious right now and, in fact, we’ve learned that some of these runs right now that we’re seeing might, in fact, go away as we get closer to opening of September season. However, as the season progresses they’re going to come back to these major, annual runways that they’ve been using for years and years and years, especially escape routes. If you’re bumped, they’re more than likely going to take one of these major trails that has been there forever. We consider those. As far as other scouting, it’s trail camera work, lots of trail cameras.
Bruce: How many trail cameras do you put out on a, are we talking 100 acres, 200 acres, 50 acres?
Jim: Well, we have a number of different places and we have a little cabin north of where we live and that’s only 18 acres of woods. We have, I think, eight cameras on that 18 acres. For me, it really boils down to how many trails you have coming through. If you look at it from an aerial and you dissect it, you can really pinpoint your camera locations based on the major trails coming through.
Bruce: So I hear that you do some scouting on, possibly, Google Earth or topographic maps?
Jim: Yes.
Bruce: Then what do you look for when you are setting up your trail cameras?
Jim: You know, we look for pinch points. Pinch points are water, seem to be the biggest elements for us. Anyplace you get a natural neck down in the terrain, whether it’s the field widens it and then it looks narrow or you’ve got a creek bottom or something like that that’s really going to concentrate the movements in the woods. We tend to look at those first.
Bruce: So when you have a map in front of you, you’re looking at it, how do you determine camera number one through number five or, in this case, eighteen?
Jim: Well, again, it’s how many spots do you think they’re going to go through. You might set up five cameras at first and you’re really only getting a [inaudible 00:04:57] and set of pictures off one or two cameras so you might readjust those. Then you want to start working backwards. If we’ve got deer going east to west on this camera every single day, then we’re going to start moving it back to the east and find out where they’re actually coming from because that’s what we want to do. We want to get them, in the afternoon in particular, you want to get them coming and staging it before they go out in those fields. The closer you can work that to a bedding area without invading their privacy, that’s what we want to get to.
We want to be set up in the woods when these deer start moving through and holed up on the edges before they come out into the field. I learned that if you just sit on the field edge in the afternoon, certainly the deer are going to come out, but more often than not the larger bucks are going to be hanging back in the timber until it’s too dark.
Bruce: Let’s talk about the staging area. I know there’s a lot of articles out there but more and more that I talk to people just like you, they bring up the aspect of staging areas. Let’s talk about that for a little bit.
Jim: Yeah. I think staging areas are really important, I guess, for a couple reasons. Obviously, it’s a staging area so it’s where all the deer get out and come and browse and hang out and might bed down for a short time again before they go out for their evening feed. It concentrates them to some degree. The other advantage, I guess, of hunting a staging area is those deer you’re hunting there because the deer are going to come past you during daylight hours so that means by the time they get to the field and see that it’s getting dark or already dark and if you’re hunting on that field edge there’s a good possibility that you can bump those deer out of that field getting out of your stand. It’s another area, it’s sort of a medium area to get in between bedding and feeding. Get in and get out quietly and don’t disrupt the woods.
Bruce: Thank you because that’s making more and more sense. You and I both know that sometimes the only place to set up is closer to the field but, as I listen to people, these staging areas are becoming more and more prevalent for all the reasons that you just said. Thank you for that.
Jim: Yeah. I don’t think the deer are nearly on as high alert when they get to the staging area. That’s sort of where they go to relax, just kind of hang out, check things out. Then they walk out off the field edge and everybody’s seen deer walk right up to their wood blind and stick their head out and look around. There’s definitely a heightened alert when they come off the field edge.
Bruce: Talk to us about your why of whitetail hunting.
Jim: About my –
Bruce: Why do you whitetail hunt?
Jim: Why do I whitetail hunt? Oh gosh. I don’t know. You know, I was raised in a non-hunting family and not that they were anti-hunters but both my parents worked for the state and never did hunt their entire lives. One of my neighbors, an old fellow, when I was 12 years old took me on my very first deer hunt in northern Wisconsin, up in the traditional deer camp. That was about all I needed to experience. When I got home from that, that was my first experience with a gun. I was 12 years old out at deer camp. I got home and I told my parents that I wanted to start hunting. They had no problem with that whatsoever. They bought me a little .22 and I spent the next four years getting rides out into the country with them. They’d go out for a few hours and drop me off and let me go shoot squirrels and rabbits.
Then they’d come pick me up and I’d get to take them home and learn how to clean them and mom would cook them. They were very willing to let me grow into hunting but that was, that’s how I got my start in that.
Bruce: What was the gentleman’s name that took you on your first hunt?
Jim: Fritz Wolfe.
Bruce: Is he still with us?
Jim: No, he’s not. He would be about 130 right now.
Bruce: Oh my goodness.
Jim: Maybe not quite that but back when I was 12 he would have been, probably, in his late 70s.
Bruce: Wow. How did you know him? How did you know him?
Jim: He was a mutual friend of a neighbor that we had. Dave Ohmstead [SP] was my parents’ age and this was, Dave and Fritz would go up to this deer camp every year and they heard me expressing interest about hunting and they asked my parents if they could take me.
Bruce: What a wonderful moment.
Jim: Yeah.
Bruce: I have a couple gentlemen that did a very similar thing for me and I’m appreciative of it, that’s for sure.
Jim: Right.
Bruce: Let’s spend a couple minutes talking about your ah-ha moment, when you just know that you know the answer to a question or a situation that’s been bugging you for weeks or months.
Jim: Mm-hmm. Oh boy. I guess from, I have two of them. The first one, from a hunting standpoint, I was about 18 years old, probably, no. I was 19 years old. I had never shot a deer with my bow and I had a little Volkswagen Beetle with a little single place snowmobile trailer and I was out in Spring Green, Wisconsin early in the year walking in the middle of the woods one afternoon. Walking down the trail coming towards me was a little [inaudible 00:10:20] 6-point buck. I knelt down on the trail and the deer walked within, probably, 10 feet of me and I shot him. I recovered that deer and I took him home behind that little Volkswagen Beetle. That was the beginning of that addiction, right there. I guess the other one comes from a videography standpoint.
A few years ago I got to go video a youth hunt in, up by Eau Claire, Wisconsin and the young man, Carson Wheeler, had never shot a deer and I was filming him and his father. That afternoon he shot his first doe. I was able to step back and record that interview within minutes of him shooting that deer and it’s the first time I ever recorded an interview with a father and son talking. I literally started to cry just at the joy they were expressing. That moment, to capture that moment of those two together, that’s probably been the biggest ah-ha moment of my life is to be able to say, “Okay. This is what I need to do.” This is what the videography, this is where it all comes together with the videography and the hunting and capturing those moments for other people. That was a life-altering experience for me.
Bruce: If our listeners want to view that specific interview, is that up in public domain?
Jim: It is. The entire video is on Vimeo. If anybody’s not familiar, Vimeo is a site like YouTube so you go to www.vimeo/c4outdoorproductions and I have a host of videos on there. This would be the Carson Wheeler hunt.
Bruce: I’m making a note here so I’m going to go sign on. How do you spell that last name?
Jim: W-H-E-E-L-E-R.
Bruce: So Carson Wheeler, is that correct?
Jim: Yes.
Bruce: Well, that, to me, I could put myself right back to when I shot my first buck and I was the only person there but what a feeling of elation. Now, be able to take that feeling that we’ve all had when it’s the first time and there’s your animal and you’ve done everything, basically, right and the success and you’ve captured that. I’m making notes here that that is an ah-ha moment that will stand in your memory forever.
Jim: Well, you know, I wish I could get more people, I guess, to realize that is you only get one chance to catch your first fish or to shoot your first duck or to shoot your first deer. As a parent, you only get one chance to experience that with your kids or your nephew or whomever it might be. Sometimes we look at videography as maybe we don’t want to spend the money to hire somebody to come out and do this. Well, 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now when you’ve still got that footage to look at, it’s priceless. It’s simply priceless.
Bruce: Agreed. What’s holding you back from being a better hunter or a more skilled hunter?
Jim: Probably myself. I say that because we all live busy lives. I have a full-time job and being able to get away from that job or making myself more available to get away from that job and go pursue it, it’s nobody’s fault but my own. The technology is there. Any information you could possibly want is all there. It’s simply a matter of how bad you want it and what are you going to spend on it to do it. I think, if I could retire today and do nothing but hunt and film that’s what I would do but you’re not [inaudible 00:14:16] that luxury.
Bruce: Following up to that, what’s the best whitetail advice you ever got and who shared it with you?
Jim: Well, I don’t think it’s whitetail advice. I think it’s just advice. I think it applies to the whitetail and to hunting and to whatever you want to apply this to. A good friend of mine, a mentor of mine through business, we were having breakfast one day and this is probably 10 years ago already. He’s 20 years older than me and I asked him, ” What’s the secret to your success?” At that point in time, I said, we were being very successful in our company. I said, “So why am I being successful? Why are you being successful? What are we doing right?” He looked at me and he said, “You know, all you have to do is wake up and do the right thing.” It’s just that simple. Just do the right thing and that’s always stuck with me. Whether it’s putting up tree stands, which sounds silly, but just do it the right way and things become easier or taking a kid hunting or fishing. You just do the right thing and everything else seems to fall into place.
Bruce: There’s a tremendous amount of information, and you alluded to it earlier, on the internet. Do you have any go-to internet sites, blogs, videos? What do you use when you’re looking for something about whitetails?
Jim: You know, probably my go-to is [inaudible 00:15:53]. I’m a member of different groups on Facebook, other videographers of whitetail hunters and all these different little groups but just Facebook in general, I guess. So many friends that are hunters across the nation, just hearing different opinions and just listening to what they’re saying and maybe why they’re saying it and how can I apply that? Somebody shooting whitetail out in Wyoming, for instance, is not going to hunt the same way that we hunt in Wisconsin. Most of our shots in Wisconsin in the woods are 30 yards, max, whereas these guys out in Western states are scouting deer from three miles away. Well, where I hunt, that’s 17 different landowners.
There’s a lot of difference between things throughout the country but some things are constants: the wind and the water and scent and all these different things. I just try to decipher all this information, pick out the bits and pieces and a lot of what’s on social media is maybe not exactly accurate or truthful but you can tell when you’ve got some guys that are giving some good, honest information and insight. That’s just what I try to pay attention to. Every once in a while you just pick up one little thing and I think that’s probably key is you don’t want to go out and try to learn it all overnight because it’s just not going to happen. If you can pick up one or two little things then it’s, you’re on the right path.
Bruce: Do you hunt with a bow and a rifle or what weapons do you use during the hunting season?
Jim: Primarily just bow. I shot my bow this last year or so, last fall, and that was the first time I shot a deer in probably the last five years because I’ve been doing nothing but film. We grew up being gun hunters and I still like the tradition of the gun hunting but I like the challenge of the bow hunt. I like everything about the bow hunt. The connection to nature is so much greater bow hunting that it is gun hunting, in my opinion. I just tend to gravitate towards bow hunting.
Bruce: Let’s talk about the connection to nature.
Jim: Mm-hmm. Well that’s, I asked somebody the other day, actually one of my, one of our friends that he’s never been duck hunting and I said, “Until you go out into a marsh in the morning at dark-thirty, way before sunrise, and you sit in that marsh when that marsh wakes up in the morning, you guys have to [inaudible 00:18:29] bunch of cattails in the water. As you sit there in that marsh and let the ducks come to life and you let all those little birds come to life that are living out in that marsh, that’s a special moment.” For me, deer hunting is also that way. I can literally remember having a chickadee land on the brim of my hunting hat. I’ve had them sitting on my armrest. I’ve had them on my cameras. You don’t get that anywhere else.
Unless you’re sitting up in a tree, completely camoed and being as still as can be, you don’t have a squirrel come up and sniff your cheek right next to the tree. That’s a, I love that aspect about it. I love watching the animals.
Bruce: Let’s talk about videotaping. I know there’s a lot of listeners out there that have some buddies and they’re using various types of equipment but kind of walk us through what’s the basic equipment that you need and how best to set up above an archer.
Jim: Okay. That’s a long answer. I’m a member of different videography groups on Facebook as well and I try to reply to as many people as I can and I get asked that same question, “I’m going to go buy a camera. What do I buy?” I see so many guys that are going out there and buying really expensive equipment, which is fine. The problem is they don’t have a clue how to use it. Let’s say you have a $3,000 budget for a new camera. In my opinion, you should probably spend $1,500 on a camera and $1,500 on camera school. I’ve been to camera school at Rusted Rooster Productions over in Michigan. They produce all the Keefer Brothers productions. Keefers are owners of that production studio. I’ve been there before. I’ve been to their editing school. I’m actually going back to another film school there in April.
I don’t care if you have an iPhone or a $20,000 camera. If you don’t know how to use it, you don’t know how to use it. I guess that’s the point, is you can buy an inexpensive camera and really learn how to work that camera. It’s going to have limitations but it’s not just about pushing the red button. It’s about shot composition, it’s about storytelling, it’s so many elements of making a good video beyond just hitting the record button. That’s what I think people need to concentrate more on.
Bruce: Thank you for that.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: When you think about the future of bow hunting whitetails, what do you see?
Jim: You know, I think I see an improving front on the hunting side of things. I think it’s going to improve because of how many people are getting into videoing. I think it’s introducing more and more people who might be more into photography and videography than they are into hunting but it kind of gets them hooked up with a buddy and then they start experiencing these things together. If you think about it, anybody that goes out hunting with their buddy and they’re buddy is going to come out and film, well now you’ve got two guys that are in the tree. That’s [inaudible 00:21:52]. Not necessarily two of them are buying a license but you’re getting that many more people out there. That’s why I’m being so proactive in trying to help all these younger guys along on their videography side. Let’s get everybody out there.
It’s certainly evolving as a sport to some degree. It used to be a completely solo hunting application. I mean, a guy went out bow hunting, he was always by himself. Well, now there are so many guys who are going out as partners or as teams. That’s good for everybody. It’s good for the entire sport.
Bruce: Good advice. Let’s share, as we’re wrapping up here, let’s share just a couple of funny things that have happened to you in the stand in the whitetail woods.
Jim: Well, I’d say probably two years ago I was down in a lease that we have in Kentucky filming my youngest son, who at the time was 24. We’d hunted in the morning. We’d gone out for lunch. We came back down to the afternoon set and we were in two different trees that were right next to each other. Both these trees were only six or seven inches in diameter, very thin trees. They were swaying in the wind and any movement that you would do the trees would start bouncing. When we got up, set up in the trees, I went to have him do the interview, saying, “Okay. We’re back on hunting this afternoon.” He was stumbling for words and it was just, it was funny. The more that this went on, the more he stumbled, the more I started to laugh and the footage is just bouncing so erratically in the tree because I’m laughing so hard.
But it’s those moments that you look back on it and it just makes you laugh so hard you cry. It’s the little person, it’s the fun part. It’s taking the seriousness of the moment out of it and actually just letting it go and just letting it be natural. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of fun. Probably those moments where I’m filming people that otherwise would have no problem talking and you push the record button in front of them and all of a sudden they can’t even say their names. That’s, those are the funniest stories.
Bruce: What I heard you just say, life isn’t perfect and the most unexpected times brings us some of the best joys and the best memories.
Jim: Absolutely. It really is. Again, it’s priceless. We didn’t put that into a video but I still have the footage and every once in a while I’ll just play back through it and I just laugh just remembering how funny that was because he was trying to be so serious. He just could not get it done.
Bruce: I’m laughing about it because I can see those trees swaying.
Jim: Oh yeah.
Bruce: The camera is rolling. The red light is on.
Jim: Yeah.
Bruce: One last thing, if you had, you just bought a new 100 acres.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: What are the top five things you’re going to do with that property?
Jim: First of all, meet my neighbors and I mean personally go shake hands and figure out who’s doing what. Who hunts? Who doesn’t hunt? How they hunt, are they gun or bow or both? Are they meat hunters? Are they trophy hunters? Meet the neighbors, very first thing. Second thing I would do is remove all the no trespassing signs. In Wisconsin, unless you know it’s public land you must consider it private land so we don’t need to post anymore. We don’t need fences. You, as a person, walking onto land, it’s your responsibility to know whether it’s private or not. I think getting rid of the no trespassing signs because, obviously, they’re a negative. They don’t say anything nice to anybody other than just keep off and that’s just not a nice thing so that would be the second thing.
Third, bust out the topographical and the aerial maps and start trying to pinpoint where do we think we want to go and watch these deer from afar? Fourth would be, let’s go set up [inaudible 00:25:59] from a long distance. In August, probably starting in August, is good for me. That way we can get deer pattern and the bachelor groups by September. From all the information, that’s going to tell you where to put your trail cameras and stands.
Bruce: I’m taking a note here.
Jim: Yeah.
Bruce: How often do you go into the woods after August?
Jim: To check cameras, if it’s really early in the year, every 10 days. If it’s, if we’re bearing down to Halloween, we’re going to run cameras hot and heavy up until that beginning of the last week of October. We’re going to check them and we’re going to know where our does are at. I don’t really care where the bucks are at. All you need to do is find the does at that time of year. October, November it’s find the does, set up on the does’ trails, don’t bother the does, and the bucks are going to come. Then just stay the heck out of there. We don’t go back in until it’s time to hunt. There’s no point. There’s no point in it. You’ve got a cruising buck that came from five miles away, you take a picture of him today and go back tomorrow, that buck is going to be five miles away again so there’s no point in disturbing that until you’re ready to go kill something.
Bruce: Thanks for that advice. Now it’s the time in the show that we’re going to turn Jim loose and he’s going to share with us what he does, how he does it, how you can get in touch with him, and anything else that he wants to add on. Take it away, Jim.
Jim: All right. Thanks. Well, I’m a full-time home designer. I was born and raised in south central Wisconsin, here around Madison where I still live. I’ve been a carpenter my entire life. Most recently, I’ve designed and built custom homes. I started this company called C4 Outdoor Productions here a while ago. I started with the intent of filming my own two sons and my wife and quickly realized that I have an incredible passion for filming. Now we do some freelance work and we’re always looking for more people to come out and film their hunts and share that experience with them. I can be found on Facebook, C4 Outdoor Productions on Facebook. You can find videos of mine on Vimeo, V-I-M-E-O, C4 Outdoor Productions on Vimeo. It’s become a whole different sport for me. People say, “Why do you enjoy filming more than shooting something?”
I tell people, “If you consider it just sitting up in a tree, I need to film the hunter making the shot. I need to film the deer getting shot so, in my opinion, I’m getting two kills per shot, which is more than one kill if you’re just shooting the bow.” I just find it to be much more challenging and I like the challenge. I like learning new things and being creative. I’m creative by nature and I think I like bringing that through a lens to people in a different way. I just hope to continue with that. My goal is to eventually have enough freelance clients and outfitters that would consider hiring me to come film their special hunts to where I can actually quit my daily job. You know, we’re not quite there yet but that’s where my heart is definitely at.
Bruce: Do you have a personal website that you’d like to share?
Jim: It’s going to be coming. I don’t know when he’s going to launch it. He’s been developing it and we did not want to prematurely launch it and, you know, especially links that aren’t done yet. I would say the website will be up within the next week, possibly even by the weekend but it’s going to be c4outdoorproductions.com, I believe. If you search C4, if you go to C4 on Facebook, it will more than likely link.
Bruce: Jim, thank you on behalf of Whitetail Rendezvous community. Thank you for sharing just another aspect by the other aspect is Jim spends his time in the woods making memories that last forever. Next time you’re out there and you’re thinking, “Boy, I wish I had this on video,” think of Jim and give him a call. This is Bruce Hutcheon, your host for Whitetail Rendezvous, saying, “Go out and make it a fantastic day.”