Who says you can’t spread God’s word through hunting and fishing? Certainly not Wesley Caruthers, whose company Grunt Gobble and Gills TV tries to get the word of God out to hunters that don’t normally go to church. Wesley leads this group of outdoors-men in West Virginia that have all been called by God to do an outdoor ministry, where a lot of the churches hold functions in their area.

In these so-called sportsman’s dinners or critter dinners, they usually serve up a lot of wild game and exotic game. It’s a good way to pull hunters in and bring them to church. They get to talk about God through a specialized hunting program. Wesley tries to bring lessons and stories learned through his group’s activities, always trying to include God in the joy of hunting.

Listen to the podcast here:

Grunt Gobble And Gills TV With Wesley Caruthers

Wesley Caruthers, field staff of Grunt Gobble and Gills TV, hails from Liberty, West Virginia. He lives there with his wife and two daughters. Wesley says being raised in a hunting and fishing family that serves God is what has molded him into who he is today. Talking turkeys in the spring, taking float trips or small mile bath anytime he can, and stalking the wiley whitetail bucks in the fall are his favorite things to do. Being in God’s country with his family and friends, hunting and fishing are always a blessing. He lives his life for God. 

We’re heading down to West Virginia with Wesley Caruthers. Wesley’s on the field staff with Grunt Gobble and Gills TV. He’s a heck of a guy and I’m happy to have him on the show to talk about Grunt Gobble and Gills TV, but most importantly, to talk about catching up and hunting those whitetail deer. Wesley, welcome to the show. 

Thanks for having me, Bruce. I appreciate being here.

I found that some of my listeners don’t go listen to the whole show. When I put how to contact you at the end, they miss it. Tell people how to contact you or Grunt Gobble and Gills TV, website, Facebook, or Twitter. 

You can find me on Facebook, Wesley Caruthers, Grunt Gobble and Gills TV on Facebook. We do have Instagram and Twitter but we don’t keep up with those very much. It’s mainly Facebook and our webpage which is www.GGGOutdoorsTV.com.

Thanks for that. Give us just a little background. Let’s talk about Grunt Gobble and Gills TV and what you guys are all about. 

GGG is what we call ourselves. We’re a group of outdoorsmen here in West Virginia that have all been called by God to do an outdoor ministry. We try to get the word of God out through hunting and fishing. It seems to be something that a lot of people have in common. What we do mainly is a lot of the churches have functions around our area. They call them sportsman’s dinners or critter dinners and they usually serve up a lot of wild game and exotic game. It draws in a lot of people that like to hunt that don’t normally go to church. It’s a good way to pull them in and bring them to church. We get to talk about God through our hunting program. We try to bring lessons and stories learned through our activities and we would try to include God in that.

Thanks for sharing that. How’d you get involved? 

I actually went to one of these events back in January and spoke with the founder of Grunt Gobble and Gills which is Zach Lucas. They founded GGG about four to five years ago. They’re a great group of people. I have a lot of respect for them, very good, very ethical hunters and great pillars of the community. I was asked to join and I was very honored to join and glad to be a part of them.

Are you just in West Virginia with Grunt Gobble and Gills TV? 

Yes, sir. We’re all local West Virginia natives.

What stations are you on? Do you have a YouTube channel? How could somebody watch your TV program other than your website? 

We have some on YouTube. If you go to our webpage, we have quite a few of our episodes on YouTube right now. We’re currently in the process of producing five spring turkey episodes. It should be out and complete by next month. I got to watch a couple of the rough drafts and they looked really good. We’re very excited to get the rest of them out. We’re not sure if it’s just going to be another DVD. We have one DVD now. It just depends on what God wants us to do. We’re just waiting on that to see if we can get on cable TV.

Thanks for sharing that. Talk about your hunting tradition and how Wesley became a whitetail deer hunter. 

I started off pretty young early in my life. I started to shoot at eight years old. I started hunting at nine years old. I killed my first year and it had me hooked ever since.

Who were the important people that got you a field when you were just getting started? 

Definitely my family, my dad, and my uncles. It’s definitely a family tradition with us. They’ve always been around and always showed me and taught me a lot of what I know. I have to give them a lot of the credit.

I’m sure a lot of guys out there might not have had the opportunity to have a good mentor when they were grown up. What are three to five things that your father, friends, uncles, and other relatives helped you get off on the right foot?

I’d say the number one thing, especially for young hunters who start off so young, it’s being taught patience. I have two young daughters and I take them in the outdoors with me now. Patience is hard for young kids but you try to make it interesting. I keep them focused on why they’re out there and make it fun for them. Don’t take the fun out of it. Just keep them interested and don’t be too hard on them. Just have fun with it. Just enjoy your time with them.

Let’s talk about your 365 hunting plan. I know you hunt hard. What’s your plan starting right now all the way through next fall?

Right now, start pouring the mineral to them. Especially this time of year, they’re are dropping their antlers and trying to gain their weight back. Big bucks they like to run and they wear their selves down. Food and minerals right now are the key elements in keeping your buck healthy and staying close to where you like them.

Do you have a favorite mineral company? 

Yeah. Actually, it’s one of our sponsors, Brow Tine Industries. They have some good minerals.

How many mineral sites are you putting out? 

On my property, I got four places. Two places are just your regular average salt blocks that have dissolved into the ground. I have two others in some pretty high traffic areas that I know is close to the core area of where some of my nice bucks stay.

Are you between the bedding area and the feeding area or where they go to get the water? What terrain do you put down places? 

Close to the water source. The salt and stuff is salty and they like to have a drink after that, so pretty close to a couple of creeks on the property.

When do you start looking at your food plots? What are you doing as far as planning your food plots or working them? 

We’re always trying to find new places and new spots to put stuff, clearing land and just keeping the property ready for it. What we plant depends on when we do it. We’re big into Spring Gobbler hunting so we like to put stuff with some chicory and brassicas that the turkeys like and the deer love as well.

How many cameras do you put out on your private lands? 

I don’t have a number between all of what we put out. We all like the pictures. Zach, the founder, pulled one of his cards and he’s got an albino Turkey on it. They’re very pretty. It’s a very pretty bird.

Have you already done shed hunting? Has that come and gone? Where are you at in that process? 

Work’s been pretty busy lately. I don’t have a whole lot of time to shed hunt. Months ago, I went out and found the left side off of one of our eight points.

Coming on June and then July in the summer, when do you start thinking about putting together your hit list for the coming hunting season?

July, August. It gives you a good idea. They changed our opening date to the later end of September for us. It was usually always about the second or third week of October. We got to start a little earlier now.

How do you decide what stands to change? Do you every year set up different than the previous year?

A lot of my stands stay the same. I don’t change a lot. I’ve got them set according to wind and morning stands and evening stands.

How many stands do you have that you rotate? 

I’d say six right here on my property where I live now, not counting the other properties. They’re just sporadic.

Patience is hard for young kids but you try to make it interesting. Share on X

What are some of the lessons learned that you’re taking from last season into this season so you won’t repeat them? 

I don’t know if I would call it a lesson in a bad way. Last year made me very comfortable using scents and mock scrapes. I had a big eight-point the year before that I had rattled open and grunted in during both seasons. The last week of October, it was the day before Halloween. He was big for a reason. He got down before I could get a shot on him. I located him again this past year and was able to capitalize on him through using his scrapes.

Walk us through that. Everybody brings a different amount of knowledge to our listenership. How did you use his scrape line or his sequence of scrapes to put him down on the ground?

Our rifle season here in West Virginia season comes in the week of Thanksgiving. I’ve noticed we have a lot of your less mature deer. They start pushing those and running those in early to mid-November. A lot of the activity that I see around here is made by the less mature deer. Around the week of Thanksgiving, I start to see a lot of the big mature deer up on their feet. Daylight hours, trail cam pictures of daytime deer, I find the fresh and new big scrapes. You can determine an immature buck and a mature buck when they rub and scrape. I find the bigger ones, the fresher ones, and I keep on those. I’ll watch the trail cameras and I’ll watch the moon. The moon was a big part of me killing the deer that I was after last year.

It was our second day of rifle season. I noticed that the moon was already full and almost overhead at about 4:00 PM. I knew that the deer were going to be out at night and they will be feeding. I’m going to have to come in early and catch them coming from their feeding area and pushing the does back to the bedding areas. I got in between them, on his rub line and a scrape line. I used a dominant buck spray as I drag my whole way through to my stand. He was pushing the doe step first light. I see her come up. She crossed the path where I walked through and he comes through and didn’t even make it. He was probably ten feet from the trail and there was a scrape just right up on the next flat from him. I guess he got wind of it. He was downwind. He stopped and it was the first time I got to see it in person. He did a snort, grunt, wheeze and was stumping his front hooves. He was a little upset. He could smell another buck in there in his territory. He comes straight up on that next flat where that scrape was. He’d come up to investigate and gave me a perfect 30-yard shot.

That’s the one you sent me for your portfolio for your show, isn’t it? 

I believe so.

Let’s share the moon phases. There’s a lot of information is written every year. I fish and hunt moon phases myself. What’s your take on it?

I see the moon no matter if it’s full or not. If I see it during the daytime hours, that’s when I want to be hunting. I’ve noticed so much more activity. For some reason, when the moon is out, it doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, I always have better luck and see more deer.

Does it matter if it’s the morning, the afternoon, or if the moon is visible during the day?

I’ve not noticed the difference between morning and evening. If that moon’s out, I want to be in my stand.

You mentioned something about a drag. Some people use them, other people don’t. Tell me how you learned that and how you set it up. Is it ten feet long and cotton? Just walk us through your whole drag setup.

I’ll wait until I get a good ways into the woods where I know there are the more traffic areas. I’ll have to make my belt loop. It’s about a six- foot, eight-foot piece of line. Sometimes I buy them, sometimes I make them. You can just make them out of cotton, like a cotton shirt, a bunch of strips and tie a rope to it. Just spray or soak that part of the cotton. I’ll go X amount of feet and I’ll refresh it, especially in the heavily used trail if I got across it, then I’ll get to a scrape line. I’ll walk the scrape line and I will spray this scent into the scrapes as proceed to my stand.

Do you keep it frozen or just in large plastic bag?

Sometimes I keep it frozen. I will keep parcel glands from the previous year’s bucks, depending on how ready they are, how active they’ve been. I will freeze those and I will use those sometimes. For the most part, I just use synthetic scents.

Any favorites?

I like Black Death Scents. They’re actually one of our sponsors.

They do pretty good?

Yeah, I have to put them up there at the top.

Then what do you do? You got your stands so you have this drag. Do you leave it on the ground, put it in a tree, take it on the stand with you? What do you do with it? 

I’ll hang it off the ground a little bit. If I’m going up in my stand or even if I stay on the ground, I’ll hang it up about four feet off the ground. That way, the wind will pick it up. It will carry pretty good for me.

Folks, if you’ve never tried using a drag, if you do it right and by right, keep your scent off the pad or whatever you’re going to use to hold the scent in. You’d be surprised because yours truly has witnessed a buck coming across the trail 90 degrees. All of a sudden, he hits that drag mark and he came right underneath the tree. He wasn’t a shooter, but it didn’t matter. There’s proof of concept and the right application at the right time. We all know that it takes the right time to put Mr. Wonderful down, but it’s another tip to use. Do you also bow-hunt? You gun hunt. Do you bow-hunt also?

Yes. I usually get the bow hunt a little more than I do get the guns on just due to work leading up to later in the year. It seems like my work gets busier and I get a little less time to hunt during gun season. I try to take advantage of early season bow hunting as much as possible.

What are some of the key techniques that you use so you can see a lot more deer than the next guy?

Scouting is everything. Second is scent control. The longer that I hunt, the more scent control freaky I get about it. I’m getting big into the scent control. With scent control, a head to toe shower, the soaps, everything that plays a big key part.

When you say showers, do you have to buy the X brand that says, “You got to shower with this to kill all the microbes or the scent,” or are you talking about you use scent free soaps? Help me understand and listeners to understand what you say when you go 100% scent control.

Get up extra early, shower in the morning, use specialty body wash and shampoo. I like to use their scent-free laundry detergent and their dryer sheets also. I will put it on my boots, depending on which ones I wear. I like to wear the knee-high rubber boots. I think they send off a lot of scent. I’ll use the Hunters Specialty soap, and a special tote that I have. I’ll use soapy water and I’ll scrub them down and I put them in another special container that I keep all my clothes and my boots and I pack everything in.

It gets down to just about everything goes in a tote and it goes into bins. I have bins for every single pre-rut during post-rut, depending on how warm or cold it’s going to be. It gets crazy because I have rubber boots that are five mill and some rubber boots are just rubber boots and no insulation at all. Be careful about how you spend your money. It all helps. I firmly agree that the more you can reduce your scent, the better luck you may have. Now let’s talk about how many times you have a stand.

I don’t generally like to burn out stands. I’ll hunt a stand a couple of times, and if I feel like the deer are starting to notice me or if I’m starting to see less activity, then I’ll move to another stand according to the wind. I try not to burn out stands unless the conditions are just right and I know that the bucks are cruising, then I might spend a little more time in a specific span after a specific deer.

Do you go with the three strikes and you’re out, three sits in one stand, and then you don’t hunt it?

No, not necessarily. If it’s along activity and I’m not getting noticed or if I’m having a lot of deer go downwind of me, they have no clue that I’m still there. Then if the conditions are right, I’ll use it a few more times than that. I don’t like to spend a whole lot of time in one.

Don’t burn out your stand. That’s basically what Wesley’s sharing with us. Let’s just end up the show talking about getting the youth involved. What is Grunt Gobble and Gills TV doing to get more youth in the field?

Through church organizations and stuff. Once you get the kids out, we’ll go to churches and stuff. We’ll have an archery day, trying to get kids involved, get them shooting. Even if they don’t take up hunting, if they like to just shoot for recreational activity, having the kids out outside doing things is way better than having them locked up in a room on their phones or on video games. Just getting them out to do anything outdoor-related is a big goal. We really want to see more of them out hunting and fishing. For a lot of us, the hunting and fishing is a family tradition. Carry that on. Pass that onto your kids. Keep them happy and keep them out.

Hunting and fishing is a family tradition. Pass that onto your kids. Keep them happy and keep them out. Share on X

Wesley, thanks for closing the show with that. On behalf of Whitetail Rendezvous Nation, thank you for bringing Grunt Gobble and Gills TV to our listeners today. I wish you a great season. I can’t wait to catch up after next season and see how it all goes.

Thank you for having me on here and letting me represent our team.

As your host at Whitetail Rendezvous, I want to thank each and every one of you for spending your time with us. I look forward to sharing with you in the next episode more white tail hunting tips, techniques, and storage. 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.

Important Links:

• Grunt Gobble and Gills TV
• Grunt Gobble and Gills TV – Facebook
• GGG Outdoors’ Instagram
• GGG Outdoors’ Twitter
• www.GGGOutdoorsTV.com
• GGG Outdoors’ YouTube
• Brow Tine Industries