LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Bruce: Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to another edition of Whitetail Rendezvous this is your host Bruce Hutcheon. Today I have a very interesting gentleman Gary Zager pro staff with Relentless Addiction Outdoors. Gary say hello to the listeners.
Gary: Hello there how are you doing today?
Bruce: Gary let’s jump right into it. Let’s talk about Relentless Addiction Outdoors.
Gary: It’s a great idea; it’s a great concept it’s going to be a great show. What we’re going to do is we want to capitalize on utilizing our family members, our friends to get back to the basics of hunting get back to the original reasons why we did it for the fond memories and the tradition just spending time with each other in the outdoors.
Bruce: You mentioned something that’s really core to Whitetail Rendezvous; family, friends and tradition. Let’s start with the traditions of hunting where did that come from with you?
Gary: I was born and raised in Central Wisconsin. I’ve been in the country my entire life. My family has a tradition of hunting. I remember as a very young child our deer hunts and our falls were filled with a lot of people coming over, big groups for deer hunting getting together waking up on those cold mornings and having that big group together around the kitchen table making the plans for the day and just the excitement of sharing all those things with everyone. It was something [inaudible 01:32].
Bruce: Is there one central figure that helped you get into deer hunting or was it a collection of aunts and uncles and grandfathers, moms and dads?
Gary: It was definitely a collective effort but the one that sticks out really is my father. He’s very old school and he is the basics, the traditions. If he didn’t have to work for it, it really didn’t seem like it was a…nothing is given to you and he instilled that in me and tried to follow in his footsteps as much as I can.
Bruce: Well I think you’re doing a pretty good job based on the head shot we got…is that a musky or a pipe?
Gary: That’s my [inaudible 02:21].
Bruce: Yeah he is known. Listeners you’ll be able to see that when we put Gary up on his release date. Let’s talk about lessons learnt. We all learn lessons when we are in deer camp or not in deer camp in the pre stands. What are couple lessons learnt last month and probably last year that you are going to take forward and implement this year?
Gary: One of the big things that I worked with and I really learnt last year was to have a multiple stand set up. In other words have different areas that I can go to on different nights based on wind conditions, based on weather based on patterns. Here in Wisconsin where I’m hunting you have to deal with that fall harvest and Deer patterns are going to change as far as what they are going to eat how they are going to travel when they are in the process of that harvesting. So it started out last year with only one or two options and I quickly found out sometimes those aren’t the best things, and you’ll spend lovely days out in the outdoors but you won’t be feeling that in a inaudible 03:24].
Bruce: All right let’s stay right there. How do you know that the Deer’s behavior has changed?
Gary: Thorough the use of a lot of different things. Through time in the [inaudible 03:37] obviously, through trail cameras, through citing during the day or in the evening as far as when you’re not hunting just driving around.
Bruce: Tell me how you deploy your trail cameras?
Gary: Usually I try to deploy my trail cameras on non-travel routes something that’s easier for me to get to and get out of without trying to disturb the area too much. Trying to catch deer in and out like a set of their vetting areas, their feeding areas and trying to use that type of situation scenario to use them to my best advantage.
Bruce: When you’re setting up a stand you said lessons learned that you had a multiple sets. Let’s talk about that specifically, you get a block of ground…how many acres do you hunt?
Gary: Lucky enough I have several farms that I hunt so on average there’s probably about 80 acres.