The Lindsey Way - Jeff Lindsey

Growing up in the South, the Lindsey’s learned early in life that hunting is an important part of their heritage. It gave them a chance to combine some of their favorite things: family, friends, and nature. The Lindsey Way features David and Jeff Lindsey as they share their way of life, passion, and stories about the whitetails they hunt. In this episode, Jeff shares some of their promos as well as what to expect from them for the Iowa Deer Classic. He also lets us in on what they are up to at The Lindsey Way, guiding us behind the scenes with their plans for the show that the viewers can expect in the following months.

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The Lindsey Way – Jeff Lindsey

This is a special Whitetail Rendezvous in Iowa Deer Classic episode and I got Jeff Lindsey. He’s on the Sportsman Channel. I’m excited to have you to give a little promo for Iowa Deer Classic coming up and for your show. Let’s jump right into it and let the folks know what you are going to be talking about at the Iowa Deer Classic.

Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be promoting the Iowa Deer Classic. That is the greatest show on Earth. That’s our favorite show of the year. Me and my dad will be talking about food plot strategies and we’re talking about five daily trail cam tactics. Those are two things: food plots and trail cams that we’re both passionate about. We’re looking forward to talking about both of those.

Did they run for about an hour or 45 minutes?

It takes about an hour. We’re not real windy. We’re 30, 45-minute type guys but we try to keep it interesting. We do that and then the questions seem to take up the rest of the time.

Tell the folks what booth you’re going to be at and what they can get at the booth.

I believe we’re in booth 916. We’re right here at the main entrance. We’re on the next aisle right on the corner. We’ll be selling our DVDs, season one through three, DVDs, Blu-rays, our hats, our hoodies, our new t-shirts and our God family deer t-shirts.

You’ll be able to give autographs and everything.

We’ll have the whole booth there, signing cards. Whatever people need.

Let’s talk about The Lindsey Way and how you and your dad got this cranked up and had some successful runs on the Sportsman Channel.

We were with Drury Outdoors for about eight years. A couple of years ago, we decided to start our own thing to tell our own message and tell our own stories. The stories about our bucks and going a little more in-depth with those. We hunt our own farms. We start off in Georgia and then Iowa, Mississippi, Illinois, Kansas, mainly centered around the Midwest. We will do one or two elk hunts a year. That’s something we’re passionate about in September. Besides that, it’s pretty much meat and potatoes, whitetail hunting and trying to take the viewers along chronologically as we travel around hunting deer on farms that we manage year-round.

There’s nothing meat and potatoes about your show because you bring out the hunt and the people behind the hunt. You give a lot of tips out to folks so they can become better hunters.

If somebody can watch an entire season and pick up one thing that’s going to make them a better hunter, we’ve done our job. That’s what we preach. We preach to have fun.

We get so wrapped up sometimes in chasing the big bucks and the mature bucks, which I love to hunt mature bucks. Score side, not so much but just the age of those suckers because they’ve been on the farm that we have more time. It’s nice to get within feet, forget yards. Because of my accident, I’m hunting off the ground. I was ten feet from a nice ten-pointer, about five-and-a-half-year-old deer. I wasn’t able to get a shot because it was during the rut and he was running.

Elk hunting isn't for the weak-kneed. Share on X

He was getting after it. That’s fun. Hunting on the ground is always a different rush. It’s something people have always done for turkeys, but when it comes to deer, we don’t do a lot. You get a deer within ten to fifteen yards on the ground, blind or no blind, it’s awesome.

It’s a little different. Since I’ve been doing it more and more, I’ve found out that a lot of people did it. Dan Smith over at Deer & Deer Hunting talks about the Stump Sitters and that’s how deer and duck hunting began. That’s how I started hunting whitetails. We weren’t driving them. We were laying down behind a log or sit in our backs to a tree and picking the right spot. Some low spots now, we’ve got lots of stands up. The exact same spot. We’re elevated fifteen to twenty feet up in the air. We haven’t moved the spot. What I’ve done is modified that and get the best cover and so I still have a shot. I’m shooting a crossbow now, not a compound. It’s a little bit easier because it is like hunting turkeys and getting set up on the turkey because you know which way they’re coming in and then you set up. I get bipod or a monopod and I set it up and they come in and if everything’s set up, I get them.

I started hunting with a crossbow. I shot my first deer ever with a crossbow. I’ve always shied away from it because it typically was for disabled hunters or people who had an ailment or something and then it started becoming more prevalent. Now, it’s just about legal at some point of the season in every state. I can’t remember a time that I had more fun shooting a deer with a weapon than I did shoot those two or three does with a crossbow this light season.

I enjoy it while it allows me to still hunt “archery season” and without it, I couldn’t. When you think about hunting the various state that you do, what are some of the tips that guys say, “I’d like to hunt multiple states.” What are a couple of things that you’d say, “Guys and gals, if you’re going to hunt multiple states, make sure you do this?”

With multiple states, you have to plan it out because some states are more of a draw system. How I got started was I would always get a couple of buddies together. I’d find a Kansas lease and this is back when I was only finding leases through hearsay. Back then, it was just word of mouth. We get six to eight guys together and we’d find something we could afford. We do that in a couple of states. We did that for a while in Illinois. We do that for the gun season and we did it in Kansas. We ended up killing some good deer that way and it wasn’t near as expensive as going with an outfitter or something like that. Plus, you could go at your own schedule however our work allowed. That’s how we got started. We still have a couple states we do leases. It seems like there’s a lease for every budget nowadays if you can’t hunt public land. Public land is great but it’s not as prevalent in the Midwest as it is out West.

I live in Colorado, so we have millions and millions of acres and those elks you like to chase, they live in it. It’s an interesting hunt. Elk hunting isn’t for the weak-kneed that’s for sure.

WTR Classic 4 | The Lindsey Way — The Lindsey Way: Hunting on the ground is always a different rush.

I love November but there are about two weeks in September that I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else than chasing elk with my bow. I love it.

Do you film those hunts and put them on the shows?

We do. We usually have one or two elk episodes a year. We’ve actually hunted in Southeast Colorado. I’m out in the plains though. That’s a little different. It looks like a place you should be mule deer hunting or antelope hunting. We’re hunting elk out there and I got some pretty big bulls there.

They have a lot of big bulls.

It’s an interesting part of Colorado, that’s for sure.

It’s different. The biggest thing I’d say the people that hunt and have hunted those places is it’s different. It’s like the first time you come out to Colorado when you get up into the Rockies and you start chasing the elk as if they were whitetails. They are assembler actually. Some of their behaviors up in the mountains, you can pattern them and that type of thing. You get in the Eastern plains, all of a sudden you’re definitely in antelope country and you say, “Where are the elks?” What I learned early on is you find water because then you’ve got the chance of seeing them and then once you see them then you can figure it out.

I always tell people, “If you can hunt and kill a turkey, you can hunt and kill an elk. It’s just a turkey with horns.”

If you can hunt and kill a turkey, you can hunt and kill an elk. It’s just a turkey with horns. Share on X

Someday I’m going to have to start turkey hunting. I’m not a turkey hunter. I’ve killed one turkey in Wyoming and that’s about it. I never got into the turkey hunting.

You get to pick your battles. You can’t do it all. That’s what my dad always says. You can try to but if you were to succeed, you just got to pick and choose and do what you really love and leave the rest for the other people.

I had Dan Infalt on the show and we were talking about public land in Wisconsin. Some of the biggest tiers that I’ve seen outside of Buffalo County are on public land in just a couple of hundred acres. It’s sectioned and it has some humongous deer that are taken and are seen but not taken on public land. That’s one thing that I know in Wisconsin. There are plenty of opportunities but it takes a lot of work.

To get away from crowds. That’s what I always tell people. I have a better plan. I’m going all the way. I don’t want to say to the back, but they’re going to be as close to the road as possible. That has always been my rule of thumb. Get as far away from the crowd as you can.

The one thing I took away from Dan’s show was he scouts for killing trees. He’s not looking for deer. He’s looking for a tree in the right place that he can a deer out and put a stand-up and the odds it’s going to take. A lot of these public lands, especially in Wisconsin, are marshes. There was one place in Buffalo County, you have to be an otter to get in there. Then you can’t take Argos and you can’t take that type of stuff and the farmers will not let you trespass and they have it locked down. You have to put in waders and be like a beaver or an otter and try to get in there. That makes you earn it. I was talking to Bill Winke because he hunted the same public land than I was. He said he had to figure out some kind of contraption to get his buck out. It’s like a cart but with big floaters. He did, he went in there and he was successful. It takes some ingenuity. That’s one thing that I like to tell people all the time is just like public land out West, these patches, bucks don’t need a lot of room. They need food, cover, and water. If they get the food handy and it’s a tough cover, the bucks are going to find it. How long have you been coming to Iowa Deer Classic?

Probably for the last ten or twelve years I would think. We moved out. I heard talk of it and then we started coming and then it’s just like a staple of the calendar circle. That’s one of those shows that I wouldn’t miss for anything.

Their wall of fame is just flat out amazing. The number 200-inch deer that are on display.

It’s mind-boggling. There are some giants that were taken in Iowa. There are a couple in particular that I really want to not get my hands on, you can’t touch them but you can get pretty close to them. You just dream about being in the timber and a fall on the doe by you at twenty yards and that’s what dreams are made of.

It keeps me going because on the farm that we hunt, we know the big deer there. It’s just a matter of getting on them. I’m talking 180 class deer and they’re magicians. They hide and seek and they know the farmers well better than we do.

We’re full-time deer, we’re part-time hunters.

Jeff, one tip that you would give hunters? I know we talked about traveling or leasing land, but what’s something that you’ve learned and you know now that you wish you knew five years ago?

It would probably be how much you can find out on deer travel patterns right now. Right now, we got a light dusting the snow and you can go out and trails are extremely visible. A lot more than they would be in August through November. You can learn so much and it’s so easy to go out now and you’re trying to pick up sheds, but you can learn so much about deer and what they have been doing in the last three months right now that it’s almost mind-boggling. You can go and you can see the trails. I love to find spots where trails interact. If I can find a spot where two or three trails are coming together, I’m looking for that tree. That’s probably why I have evolved to be a better shed hunter. When I first started shed hunting, I was just walking through the woods, looking up and trying to find the next tree that was going to be where I’m going to hunt that fall.

Now, I try to do both. I go a lot slower. I’m walking through the woods. I’m scanning for sheds and when I see that sign, those beds or those trails that intersect, I’m starting to look for a tree that I can hunt on the Northwest wind. I’m a little removed from my climber days, but ladder stands and a few permanent stands when it’s gun season, but mainly hang on and throwing them up. With a camera guy, you got to make sure there are enough covers. I like it when you can get climb up a tree. Two or three trees, side by side or get some type of cover like a cedar tree or something because you’re hiding. One guy in a bow is tough. Two guys, one bow, some camera gear and a couple backpacks, you’ve got to be hide and seek champion then.

When it comes to hunting, you got to pick your battles. You can't do it all. Share on X

Frankly, I don’t know how you do it. When I used to hunt up on trees, I got my crossbow, I got my pack and then me. I’ve got three pieces of whatever you want to call it that’s up in the tree and it wasn’t there yesterday. When is the Iowa Deer Classic, Jeff?

It’s the first weekend in March typically every year. It starts I believe after lunch on Friday and we’ll be there the entire time. We only live about an hour away, but we usually stay Friday and Saturday night. We stay at the Marriott right there where we can come and go because there are some late nights. Hanging out and talking deer.

There’s nothing better than that. Jeff, thank you so much and I appreciate you taking your time. Folks, make sure you listen to The Lindsey Way at Iowa Deer Classic coming up March 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Thanks again, Jeff.

Thanks, Bruce.

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About Jeff Lindsey

Growing up in the south, Jeff learned early in life that hunting is an important part of his heritage. It gave him a chance to combine some of his favorite things: family, friends, and nature. Jeff got his start filming turkey hunts in the spring as a teenager and later spent 8 years with Drury Outdoors, 4 of those years on the award-winning TV show Dream Season. These roots spawned Jeff’s desire to do more than just have a camera in the tree to capture the hunts. He wanted to document the stories behind the bucks and show his family’s lifestyle that revolves around God, family and whitetails. Jeff now resides in southern Iowa with his wife, Ashley, and son, Cash.

They also own a construction and real estate business which keeps them busy throughout the year. Growing up in the south, Jeff learned early in life that hunting is an important part of his heritage. It gave him a chance to combine some of his favorite things: family, friends and nature. Jeff got his start filming turkey hunts in the spring as a teenager and later spent 8 years with Drury Outdoors, 4 of those years on the award-winning TV show Dream Season. These roots spawned Jeff’s desire to do more than just have a camera in the tree to capture the hunts. He wanted to document the stories behind the bucks and show his family’s lifestyle that revolves around God, family and whitetails. Jeff now resides in southern Iowa with his wife, Ashley, and son, Cash. They also own a construction and real estate business which keeps them busy throughout the year.