J.J. Kolesar - Redemption!

Well, if you have tuned into Dream Season 6 Redemption you would have witnessed Kyle and I flying a remote control airplane to help take pictures. Needless to say, it didn't work very well, but it was fun. However, it did force us to look at a 2-acre piece of timber in a new light.

Last Halloween Kyle and I had an encounter with a buck we call "Redemption", but when he sauntered by our stand we were out of legal light. We never saw him on stand again. The Reconyx picked him up for the last time on Dec. 12th. We feel the buck might be one of those monarchs impossible to kill due to his minimal daytime movement. The bad news is we have taken only 1 picture out of 12 in which he is moving during the day! The good news is HE'S BACK FOR MORE! Here are some cool pics in which we have him in velvet and hard-horned, and accompanying it is a pic of him in velvet this year. Hopefully the next picture has one of us sitting behind him.

This is where you come in!! Please comment on this thread on how you might hunt this deer. We hunted him hard last year and didn't get it done. We have some new ideas this year, but would love to hear your suggestions. Remember, its only two acres, which is pretty much surrounded by fields. Good luck getting your game-camera pics and be safe while food plotting. -Team Illinois (Kyle and JJ)

Kyle Lamore - Plantin' A New Plot

Summer...and the living is good for a teacher this time of year! Despite the fact that deer season closed here in Illinois 6 months ago, JJ Kolesar and myself have been working towards the upcoming season ever since.

This past off season, we started putting in a new 2.5 acre foot plot..while that might sound easy, the fact that over 600 trees called this home for the last 15 years didnt help matters. We spent every spare minute cutting, dragging, and burning trees since neither of us owns a bulldozer!

Last week was the easy part--the planting. With plenty of rain latey, we are crossing our fingers that this "buffet" of a food plot, with Biologic's Maximum and Full Draw, along with some soybeans will be the ticket this fall! Trail cameras are out and season cannot get here fast enough for us!

Steve "Coon Dog" Coon - Burnin' Up!

Ok boys weather broke from the extreme heat and it's time to get back on the food plots. Missouri farm is done and now it's time to head to Illinois. Joe and I have our food plts tucked away in the CRP fields, but that just makes it a little extra work.

Once the fields were sprayed, the dead grass is so high, so before you can put a disc to them, it's time to burn. So with the weather cooling down a bit, what else but turn up the heat. With a little breeze it was time to put a match to work and it didn't take long and we were on the tractor turning dirt.So the game plan this year is to work the dirt June, July and in August disc the dirt one more time and put the Bio-Logic in the ground and then watch them come. It's a lot of work throughout the summer, but once you're in the Big Game Tree Stand and that shooter buck walks in, you know all your hard work has paid off.


Joe and I will try to keep you up to date on how our planting season goes and with any luck the 2009 Deadly Combination Team will have another deadly year.

Thank you from Joe and Coon Dog for supporting us at Drury Outdoors.

John O'Dell - What To Do In The Offseason

One of my other passions besides hunting is fishing. On Father’s Day weekend we headed down to Cary, NC to visit family and we decided while we were there to do some bass fishing. Well to say that the trip was a success would be a huge understatement! Of course it is always great to spend time with family and to mix in some of the best bass fishing I have ever experienced wasn’t bad either. The weather was hot but the fishing was even hotter!! My dad, Jacob, and Madison caught their biggest bass ever which weighed 5, 5.5, and 6.5 lbs respectively. Of course Madison caught the biggest fish as usual. It is becoming harder to drag her away from the water than it was for me when I was her age. These are just a few of the pictures from our awesome family day at the lake.


As we head into July Dave and I will soon be getting some great velvet pictures on our Reconyx cameras of deer we know well such as “Young Stud” and “Crabby” two deer which should easily gross B&C! Hopefully we have some surprises waiting that we have not seen yet so stay tuned as I will be posting our pictures throughout the late summer and into fall.

We are also gearing up for our mule deer/elk trip to Pack-n-horns Outfitters in New Mexico coming up in September. Time can’t go fast enough so until then Dave and I will be shooting every chance we get with our PSE bows.

John O'Dell - Spring 2009 Update

Well it’s been a busy spring so far. Dave and I were lucky enough to be invited to go down to sunny South Florida in late March to hunt Osceola turkeys with our good friend Scott Crippen who owns White’s Tackle in Fort Pierce FL. Having hunted with Scott in the past I knew that Dave and I were going to have a fun time in FL and we were in for a great hunt! Well the hunt was very successful with Dave and I both harvesting great turkeys and capturing some good video along with some great memories. My Osceola was actually my best one so far. We are already planning to head back down south next spring for some more Osceola hunting with Scott. For more details on the hunt check out the March section of the journal page.

Following our turkey hunt in South FL I took the family on our annual pilgrimage to the Sunshine State for spring break in Mid April. We were headed to beautiful Fort Myers Beach. We really look forward to this trip every year as Suzy, the kids, and I get to spend lots of time together looking for shells, swimming in the ocean/pool by the ocean, and fishing off the beach. This year was one to remember for great fishing as Madison caught her first ever slot snook at 28.5” and Jacob caught his first snook ever which we released right after this photo was taken. We caught 14 snook total as well as many other species of fish including a giant sting ray. We saw lots of dolphins and just had a great time relaxing and hanging out together on the beach.

May has finally arrived and Dave have just returned from a trip to hunt with our good friend James Coppedge of Pack-n-horns Outfitters in New Mexico. He and Curt Richey had a great turkey hunt with James and most importantly they saw and filmed lots of mule deer and elk. They also found some nice sheds. Dave and I both have NM tags for mule deer and elk this year to hunt with James so to say that we are pumped for this fall is a huge understatement!

On May 2nd I was finally able to do some more turkey hunting and Dave had done his homework. He took me to one of our favorite farms and long story shot even though the toms were pretty henned up I was able to harvest a giant gobbler that was just less than 28 lbs and had 1.5” spurs. The giant gobbler was a true movie star and made for a very memorable hunt. I have been extremely fortunate this year in that I have only turkey hunted two mornings and I have been able to take two turkeys with 1.5” or better spurs!
In two weeks we are headed to Central FL for a hunt to spot and stalk wild hogs with our PSE’s for an upcoming episode of Bow Madness. Rick Malik, Dave Reisner, and I will be hunting with our good friend Bobby Mathews. The ranch that we will be hunting is truly incredible and we are all looking forward to the hunt.

Until next time safe hunting and take care!

John

Mark & Terry Drury - Commercials & Radio Ints

Hey Everybody,

Hope all is well! Hopefully those turkeys are working better for you guys then they have been for us. It has been a tough couple of weeks in our Missouri Turkey Camp. Rainy, windy weather has really cramped our style this spring! We have managed to get a few birds along the way, but it has been pretty tough!

Well, we wanted to send out an update and let everyone know what we have been up to the last month or so. When turkey season rolls around it always seems as though we end up shooting a couple of commercial spots for our sponsors during this time as well. It is really good timing because everyday in Missouri the season ends at 1 pm so we can shoot for the remainder of the day. We had a Mossy Oak spot, an Energizer spot and a few misc. items for Scent Blocker and Bow Madness to shoot.

This year we have a brand new sponsor in Energizer Night Strike Lights and Energizer Lithium Batteries. We are very excited to be teamed up with them and they have a pretty spectacular product hitting the shelves this summer around the end of July. They asked us to shoot a commercial for them to air inside our show. It was a big deal for us and we wanted to make sure and produce it right so we rented a production truck from a local company out of St. Louis and two of the editors drove it up to the farm to get ready for the shoot!

Once they showed up we knew that the weather probably wasn't going to cooperate with our plans of shooting it on Monday and Tuesday so we set up Sunday afternoon and got ready to shoot once the sun went down. We ended up getting 3 trucks stuck, a trailer and we broke the winch on our Bad Boy Buggie (after the buggy pulled one of the trucks out luckily!). It was so muddy on the property we were shooting on! We were fortunate that Coon Dog, Aaron Bennett and the production crew of Colin Hartin, Mike Johnson and Matt Drury were there to help get everything ready.

This shoot was so different for us because we had to film a night scene, but yet light it well enough that you could see the product being showcased. It was neat to see our production crew do their thing and we were very proud of how hard all the guys worked to make it go smoothly! Now it is time for the post production house (Media Grabbers) to put the final touches on it and really make it shine.

Outside of that we also just got done shooting a Reconyx commercial in our studio with good friends Greg Miller and Dan Perez. Jeff Simpson from Fence Post Media came in to shoot the green screens of these guys. Jeff's company does great work and we are looking forward to seeing the finished product on this spot as well!

We have also put up a link to a radio spots that we have done on the American Outdoorsman show (You need itunes to listen). Check it out!

Safe hunting out there! -Mark & Terry Drury

Steve "Coon Dog" Coon - NWTF 2009

The 2009 turkey season started a little early for Chris Comstock and myself. We decided to travel to Nashville Tennessee for the 33rd annual National Wild Turkey Convention and Sports Show on February 19th-22nd.

It’s terrible to admit, but this was the first NWTF Show that Chris and I had ever attended and with both of us being longtime members of the NWTF and as much as we’re both ate up about turkey hunting it’s really a shame that this was our first.


I can tell you after this trip….it’s not going to be our last! The show was held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center and let me tell you it was a magnificent place.

After setting up the Flambeau booth with Tad Brown and Joe Shults’ booth (who is my new Team partner), it was time to walk around a little and see the sights. The most impressive to me was all the awesome turkey mounts that just got your blood boiling. They were so real, you could just close your eyes and when you open them back up you were looking for the safety!

As Friday rolled around it was time to work the show, the crowd was unbelievable. I even heard several people say that it was one of the biggest crowds they could remember for the first day of the convention. So with everybody checking out the new Flambeau Hen Decoys and the new Cherry Bomb Slate Calls…..I believe there is going to be some turkey breast in the freezer.

What was so cool about working the booths is how many people came up to you and commented on how great our hunting videos were and how they enjoyed seeing us on them…so that made you feel really proud to be a part of the Drury Team!

Speaking about being part of the Drury Team, on Saturday Mark had set up an autograph session with some of the other Drury Team Members that attended and let me tell you we were busy!

Also on Saturday Chris and I attended the Grand National Calling Contest and if you ever want to hear real turkey sounds coming from a human you need to attend. So Mark…this spring you better be on your toes, I think Chris picked up some pointers ☺

Another good thing about the show was you were able to meet with some of the other hunters that are in the industry and what was most important to me was that I was able to really thank Toxey Haas for the award that I won last year from Mossy Oak.


So if you ever thought about going to the convention, make plans now because you will not be sorry. It’s an experience you will never forget!!!

So from Chris and Coon Dog see ya and have a safe Turkey Season!!