Joe Shults - 'Tis The Season

With all the Southeast states archery seasons getting
ready to open in less than a month Pam and I are busy at the
store! Bows, arrows, treestands, scouting cameras,
broadheads and getting bow strings changed and bows tuned
are all at the top of the list. While Pam has me in my
corner of the store working on and setting up bows she is
busy up front on the phone and waiting on customers at the
register!

Even with the economy in the shape that it is in people
are still getting outdoors as their release valve and for us
that is a good thing. Some days there are not enough hours
in the day to stay caught up on the bows and arrows. So Pam
and I are a little behind on getting our own selves ready for
the upcoming season.

With getting Pam into the outdoors and hunting has been
very helpful in her acquiring knowledge in order to help
customers with their questions on the products that we sale.
We are both pumped about the upcoming season with having
high hopes of filling our tags as does everyone!

We hope that everyone has had a great summer spending
time with their families and friends and getting their
children ready for school. We also hope that everyone has a
safe and successful upcoming season! -Pam & Joe Shults

John O'Dell - Less Then 1 Month Away

I hope everyone’s summer is going well. Dave and I are less than a month away and counting for our first hunt of the fall. We will be in New Mexico hunting elk, mule deer, and black bears with James Coppedge of Pack-n-Horns outfitters www.packnhorns.com for Bow Madness TV Season 3. We have both been shooting our PSE’s a lot in anticipation of another great hunt with James!

We have also been collecting pictures of some nice bucks in velvet that will be on the hit list for this fall. I have attached a couple of the good bucks we have captured on our Reconyx cameras so far this year. Hopefully these pictures will lead to some up close encounters with these deer when the season gets started!

Also Dave and I will be at the Bass Pro Fall Classic this weekend. My schedule is listed below so if you are in the area feel free to stop by and say hello.

I will be in Memphis TN Friday August 7th 5:00PM – 9:00PM. I will be in St. Charles MO Saturday August 8th 12:00noon – 5:00PM and on Sunday August 9th I will be in Columbia MO from 12:00noon – 5:00PM.

Dave will be at Bolingbrook, IL at 8 pm on August 7th. Portage, IN at 4PM on August 8th and Gurnee, IL at 4PM on August 9th.

My next blog will be when Dave and I get back from NM so until then enjoy the rest of the summer!
John and Dave

Ben Rising - Last Year Or So

Well where do I begin?? My life has taken on sooo many changes since competing in Dream season TV season 5. About a week after returning from our group hunt at Tara, I was offered a job 2 hrs south of where we were currently living. After great consideration, we decided to take the chance and see if our house would sell which would have allowed us to make the move. Would you believe after 2 weeks of hard praying our house sold!! So within exactly 2 months of getting that job offer call, we started the moving process. I moved in April of 2008 and my family joined me in July. It was a long 3 months of visiting my family only on the weekends. Especially considering we had a 2yr old and 6 month old at the time. (We decided to let our kids finish out their school year before relocating them.)

I am currently a logger/timber buyer for Hawkins Lumber. My work partner Jarod Hawkins and I started up a new outfitting business last fall called Wolf Creek Outfitters. It has always been a desire of mine to do this and couldn't pass the opportunity up. Last fall was a very busy one for me. I had to put my own hunting time on hold so we could focus more on getting the outfitting business up and running.(I finally was able to harvest a great buck late season but was not able to get it on film.) Now after less than a year we have established over 6,000 acres of hunting land and still searching for more. This summer has been a busy one working on these properties brush hogging, planting food plots, strategically watching deer patterns and deciding where our stand placements will be located. The Reconyx trail cameras have been a great assett to us. We are off to a great start with this fall almost fully booked. Still looking for a few hunters for our late season. We also just started providing timber & deer management consulting for land owners to help them establish a plan for their properties.

I think the biggest draw back right now is the fact that I am now seperated from Tim by 2hrs. He has been able to come down several times with his family and has been helping us with stand placements. It's always great to get the kids together. Combined we have a 15,11,9,5,4,3,2&1yr old. Mel & Candice were able to take the little ones out Blackberry picking. I think the kids ate more than they brought home. It sure showed on their clothes and faces, but we were still able to salvage enough for a Blackberry Cobbler!!


Our whole summer so far has not been all work and no play though. We have taken several family trips including an animal park where we got to ride in a wagon and feed exotic animals and waterparks. Though the highlight of my summer was when Jim Thome called me and invited me out to watch him play in Chicago playing against their biggest rival for the weekend. So Jarod and I hoped in the car and headed out. What an awesome weekend to get to hang out with Jim's family and friends. The greatest was when Thome hit a hommer. Have to say the absolute best 2 games I've ever been to. My family and friends were also able to make it up to Cleveland to see Thome play against the Indians a couple weeks later. Thanks Jim for everything!! Well it's time to hit the woods and get back to work!!! -Ben Rising

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.