DIY Sportsman - Sportsmen's Empire

On today's episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett sits down with Mike Funderburk out of South Carolina to talk about the Hunt Better platform. This new content platform puts a focus on teaching and preserving woodsmanship skills through livestreams, detailed video hunt breakdowns, and long format video conversations. Mike explains what initiated the idea, what people can expect, and where things are headed. In addition to ta...

In today's episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett lays out a short and sweet planning method to help you scout efficiently as we get closer to early spring and prime-time for most post season scouting. It's key to remember what the main focus is for post-season scouting, what you can learn, but also what you can't. Then use the amount of available time combined with goals to methodically pre-plan routes and loops and adjust ...

On today's podcast Garrett speaks with guest Rendell Erik. He's been on the podcast now a few times to talk about scouting and hunt recaps. Based in Iowa, much of his focus is on finding and targeting the biggest and oldest bucks that he can find across a variety of public land pieces that he keeps tabs on. Today's episode is a little different. It's more about calling audibles, dealing with challenges, trying to make the best deci...

In this episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett recaps his recent trip down to Alabama for the second annual Veteran's Hunt put together by Spartan Forge. This event helped raise money for two organizations supporting vets as well as provide a fun hunt atmosphere for everyone involved. Prior to the actual hunt starting, Garrett had driven down from Minnesota to do a day of scouting and still hunting a vast area of public land...

Today on the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett discusses five of the best things you could be doing right now related to hunting. Seasons have ended in most midwestern states, and if you're towards the northern edge of that you've still got 1 to 2 feet of snow on the ground. Seems like ice fishing could be your best bet. But there are some pretty valuable activities that you can still do during the winter months. Some of the items inc...

On today's episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett does a strategy review and analysis as a baseline for how to improve next year. He doesn't review any of the specific hunt details because those already have their own hunt breakdown episodes. This exercise is one that Garrett does each year with to help review and analyze what did or didn't work to try and improve for the following season. That action is something which can ...

On today's episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett sits down with Troy Fowler (aka the Ranch Fairy) and Darrel Barnette, who some of you may have also seen on either the Ranch Fairy channel or watching the Hunting Public. Garrett put together a string jump timeframe dataset corresponding to arrow speed and time of flight for discussion. The data was derived entirely on video footage Garrett had from deer shot at inside of 30 ...

On this episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett breaks down his archery hunt success out of state. This hunt was during a firearms season as well. That pressure did play a role in strategy, but so did timing in proximity to the peak breeding timeframe of the rut. Garrett describes the thought process and strategy going in, how that changed over the first several hours in the woods, what type of sign he found to trigger settin...

In this episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett reviews the hunt strategy and breakdown of his Wisconsin buck. In addition to discussing terrain features, setup relationship to bedding, and the actual hunt unfolding, he discussed some unforeseen challenges through late October that required a change of plans, strategy, and goals heading into the rut. This was also the first deer in a long time Garrett had shot using a lighter...

In today's episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett breaks down clothing for the rut. The rut entails two major considerations - wild ranges of potential temperature and weather along with sitting all day. In just the last couple of years in the upper midwest, temperatures have ranged from as warm as 70 degrees to below zero. True all day sits don't give much of an opportunity to recharge your metabolism throughout the day, me...

On today's episode, Garrett talks about bowhunting in the month of October, which has become his favorite month overall to hunt in the Midwest. September can be nice because of the mild weather and of cover to help hide you in the tree. Bed to food patterns can be easy to identify, and deer can be less on edge. And of course November can also be incredible, though the second half of that month is usually the heaviest hunting pressu...

In this episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett discusses his mobile hunting gear along with key considerations to make when choosing between popular styles. While weight, noise, and bulk are items hotly discussed, a very key influencing factor for Garrett is versatility, function, and ease of use in a wide variety of scenarios, habitats, and states.

Some of the main choices discussed are platform size, platforms versus ring o...

On this episode of the DIY Sportsman Podcast, Garrett sits down with Bill Thompson, owner of Spartan Forge, and Johnny Stewart while at hunting camp in North Dakota. While Garrett's done this trip a few times of the past couple of years, a bunch of members all got together this year to share camp near some of Bill's old stomping ground. Garrett and Johnny recap what exactly they've been keying in on in terms of sign while the prima...

On today's podcast episode I have Shane Simpson on as a guest. While Shane has hunted a ton of different public hunting properties over the years, in the past two years he's begun a focus to try and learn a new, large piece with the intent to build a library of information and continue to focus on it for years to come. It's somewhat similar to what I've done on a couple properties. So the episode focuses mainly on the multiyear str...

In today's episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett talks about some of the items you should do your best to check or do prior to the season actually opening. With some exceptions, your first tag might be starting as soon as three weeks from now. Or it might be a little less than two months if you have an October opener and aren't traveling. Regardless, it's right around the corner, and checking some of these items as soon as ...

On this episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett discusses results from an in-depth round of testing different arrow weights and speeds for hunting. These ranged from setups shooting over 315 fps down to setups shooting around 200 fps. Test data included energy and momentum readings both out of the bow and at 40 yards, time of flight to the target, bow noise, arrow noise, broadhead grouping with both fixed and mechanical heads...

On today's episode of the DIY Sportsman podcast, Garrett has a part-two discussion with Rendell Erik. They talked about summer work in the last episode, but this one focuses a lot more on early season hunting and strategy. It's a conversational format, where they just talk and throughout the process dive into quite a few specific rabbit holes. The recording starts talking about hunting fresh sign versus hunting spots that you found...

On today's episode of the DIY Sportsman Podcast, we're talking summer scouting and strategies once again. This time, I'm talking to Rendell Erik who hunts primarily public land located in Iowa. This is a good contrast to the episodes I posted with Steve Sherk since the terrain is different. However, you'll still see similar tendencies in many cases for what deer are doing throughout the summer months and how to capitalize and maxim...