Keep the fort down while I’m gone!!! I’ll be up in Manitoba for 9 days of bear hunting. We’re going after them with the bow so hopefully I’ll have some good stories and photos!

Take Care!

Had to go down to Georgia and T-bone’s brand new Casa and do some behind the scenes filming. Man what an awesome guy. I enjoy getting to know these guys personally. T-bone just got finished building a beautiful house for his beautiful family. My friend Chris Douglas had to do the shoot with me and we decided to drive instead of flying. It was a fun trip and we even went over to Waddell’s Casa and hung out for a couple of hours!

Recently my daughter, Rachel, asked me to take her fishing and I was excited to get to spend some father daughter time having some fun. I had a place in mind and I talked it over with the wife to make sure our trip wouldn’t conflict with any of Rachel’s school activities. 

Everything worked out so Rachel could miss classes on Friday so we loaded up the truck and headed to the mountains of Virginia for three days of trout fishing. Rachel was excited. She was getting to miss a day of school, going fishing and she was getting to see the mountains for the first time in her young life.

Our weekend was filled with a lot of trout action and hopefully it is something that can turn into an annual event for us. 

Below is a picture of Rachel and a very nice Rainbow Trout!

While filming at Ralph & Vicki’s I got to participate in an amazing thing they do, it’s called Quiver of Dreams. It’s their version of a Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes.

Basically they get all their viewers to fill out a questionaire and then they draw one lucky viewer to recieve a thousands of dollars worth of prizes. The cool thing about it is that Ralph & Vicki themselves deliver the prizes to the winner.

It was truely an amazing event and fortunately Ralph & Vicki posted a clip on their web site so you can see the lucky winners reaction. 

http://www.archerschoicemedia.com/fl/history.html

The last part of April I went to Western Illinois to do some behind the scenes filming of Ralph & Vicki Cianciarulo. I had a chance to meet them briefly the month before when we were filming interviews for Whitetail Country down in Atlanta. 

I was excited about getting a chance to hang out with them for a couple of days. It was neat to get to see their day to day life. These two are great to be around and it doesn’t matter if the cameras are rolling or not, what you see is what you get. They are fun to be around and there is never a dull moment around these two.

Be sure to check out their shows on The Outdoor Channel!

For more information, check out their web site  www.archerschoicemedia.com

My son, Kolby, and I went for a haircut this morning. Being a former Marine, I usually get my hair cut very short. Kolby, age 5, said he wanted to get a short haircut too. My wife likes his hair and didn’t want Kolby to get his head shaved. I’ll let the pictures below speak for themselves!!! 

The After Picture!!!!!!

Recently I was in Illinois doing a shoot and I had the best help a guy could get.

Meet Dani! She’s 6 years old and loves the outdoors. Her Dad, Joe, works for Archer’s Choice Media and I was in town getting some behind the scenes footage. After school she came and helped me tote my gear around while I was filming. Thanks for the help Dani!!!! I don’t think I could have gotten all my work done without you!

By the way, Dani loves to hunt. She took her first hog down in Florida last summer with a crossbow and will headed back next month to try it again. Good luck this year with the hogs!

After Allen tagged out he got his dad to come over to Manhattan, KS and try his luck with the turkeys. His Dad made the drive over to and got ready for his hunt. Allen went out the evening before his dad’s hunt and roosted some birds.  The next morning was cold. It was 26 degrees and we made our way to the area that Allen roosted the turkeys. It was a cut corn field bordered by a creek. We snuck in before light and set up along a fence line that ran along the banks of the creek. As the sun started to rise, the gobbles began. We knew we had snuck in close to the turkeys, but we didn’t know how close we were until it got light enough to see. We were less than 50 yards from 3 different birds. We could see them strutting on the roost and we were hoping that they would fly down to the field we were set up on. 

On ce the birds started flying off the roost, they started coming from all directions and they were coming to the field we were set up on. We had a total of 9 longbeards and 3 hens in the field. They were a little over 100 yards from us and we were hoping they would see our decoy and come our way.

Allen started to call and this got the birds all fired up, 4 were strutting and 5 were fighting through a barb wire fence. After a few more calls, two of the toms noticed our decoy and started strutting our way. Allen’s dad got ready as the birds kept coming.  Once the birds got in range Dave sealed the deal!!!!

Great Job Dave!!!! Below is a picture of the happy hunting party!!

Well after the close call earlier that morning in Kansas we decided to go get some lunch and come back to the same ground blind we had set up on public land. We got to the stand about 2:30 and got our camera gear set up. With all the turkeys we had heard that morning, we were hoping for a quick afternoon hunt.  Since it had quit raining, Allen decided to put out a hen decoy.We sat for about an hour and waited. Allen got up to stretch his legs. When he leaned down to look out the blind he froze!!  He told us to get ready because there were turkeys less than 30 yards from the blind. Once again we turned the cameras on and sprang into action while Allen eased back down and grabbed his bow!One of the big gobblers saw the decoy and came in for a closer look. It came within 13 yards of the blind and Allen once again drew his bow and let his arrow fly!  He hit his target and he had his second Kansas gobbler on the ground within 24 hours.    Not bad to be hunting with a bow!!!!   

Since the hunt the afternoon before went so well and we only spent 20 minutes in the blind, our guide asked us if we wanted to try hunting some public land for our first official morning hunt!. Of course we were up to the challenge and we went and put up a Double Bull blind in the middle of a CRP field where the Outfitter had been seeing plenty of turkeys.Once day started to break we began to hear 8-10 different gobblers towards the west end of the field and then there was one gobbling to the north of our blind.  Once we heard the turkeys flying off the roost it started to pour down raining and we did not hear any gobbles for an hour.  Just as I had given up on getting a turkey that morning we heard a gobble less than 60 yards behind the blind. Matt and I fired up our cameras and Allen grabbed his bow to get ready for a shot. Due to the rain we had not put out any decoys so we were hoping the gobbler would come in close enough for a bow shot and he did not disappoint us. He came to within 24 yards of our blind. Allen drew his bow back and found his aim point, then he let his arrow fly. But there was a problem!!!!  The arrow lost momentum during it’s flight. When it stuck the turkey we heard a dull THUD and then we watched the turkey fly about 500 yards to the hills. Once landed he hit the ground running!!!!!We later found out that Allen’s arrow had hit some brush before reaching the turkey.  After our failed morning attempt we decided to head out for some lunch and come back to the same location for an afternoon hunt!