- Hello, everyone.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

I'm Jenny Ciolek and we've got an exciting show in store for you this week.

I'm here with this group of friends and family on a pheasant hunt.

You won't want to miss it, it's a beautiful fall day.

And then we're going to head inside and cook up some of those pheasants.

So make sure you stay tuned for this story.

And Jimmy and Jordan have some other excitement in store for us this week.

- Well, that's right.

We do have a few more things on this week's show.

We're actually going to kick things off by doing a little deer hunting.

Jordan Brown was able to tag along at another deer camp on this week's show to see how they did, you won't want to miss that.

And we're going to have time for a bragging board as well to see what you, the viewer, have been up to.

Make sure you stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger and it's time for "Michigan Out of Doors."

♪ From the first spring rains to the soft summer breeze ♪ ♪ Dancing on the pine forest floor ♪ ♪ The autumn colors catch your eyes ♪ ♪ Here come the crystal winter skies ♪ ♪ It's Michigan, Michigan Out of Doors.

♪ - [Jimmy] What a beautiful day in the woods.

♪ Someday our children all will see ♪ ♪ This is their finest legacy ♪ ♪ The wonder and the love of Michigan ♪ ♪ As the wind comes whispering through the trees ♪ ♪ The sweet smell of nature's in the air ♪ ♪ From the Great Lakes to the quiet stream ♪ ♪ Shining like a sportsman's dream ♪ ♪ It's a love of Michigan we all share.

♪ - [Narrator 1] Michigan Out of Doors is presented by.

- [Narrator 2] By Country Smokehouse, a sportsman's destination since 1988, featuring varieties of homemade sausage, jerky, brats, and gourmet entrees.

Holiday gift boxes can be assembled in store or online.

Details at countrysmokehouse.com.

- [Narrator 1] By Great Lakes Firearms and Ammunition, a family owned and operated firearm manufacturer in Sparta, Michigan, offering a wide variety of calibers and colors backed by a lifetime warranty.

More information available at glfalc.com.

By B&T Logging.

Forestry management is about protecting your forest for the future while maximizing timber value.

Through sustainable practices, B&T Logging works to improve forest health, wildlife habitat, and the long-term value of your land.

For more information, visit btlogging.com.

(sparks crackling) (gun fires) (bright music) - Well, got the truck loaded up, getting ready to head back to Northern Michigan for the second weekend in a row, second deer camp in a row.

This camp I have filmed before, but it's been a couple of years and these guys kind of move all over Northern Michigan.

So this camp is in a slightly different spot than the last time I was up there.

I am familiar with this area though.

We actually did a spring scouting segment up there earlier in the year, kind of a public land scouting thing.

So I'm curious to see what it'll look like in the fall.

I'm going to be rolling in there pretty late tonight, but we'll be hitting the woods first thing in the morning and hopefully have some luck.

It's been a little bit of a tough year behind the camera.

Spent a lot of time in the tree, but bow hunting is just tough to film sometimes.

So hoping things change this weekend.

(water tapping) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - [Jimmy] After coffee and a morning campfire, we hit the woods for our first sit.

And despite high expectations for this spot, things didn't exactly go as planned.

- Our optimism on getting a deer this morning has faded to reality and we actually didn't even see a deer aside from the deer that were in the.

We knew we were going to have some challenges getting in here this morning with the deer probably already being in there feeding and they were bedded right up exactly where we went and sat.

We thought some of those deer would filter back in this morning or we'd just have some deer move through and feed, but didn't happen.

It was a beautiful morning.

There ended up being, sounded like maybe somebody hunting on the other side of us.

We heard some grunting, and some rattling, that didn't sound very authentic.

So now we're moving on.

We're going to go check out a couple different spots and look for acorns and apples and see if we can find somewhere maybe a little more secluded this evening to set up.

The whole day is going to be beautiful and we're going to go walk around the woods and take advantage of it right now so.

- [Jimmy] Not only did we find lots of deer sign, we even stumbled on the nice buck in the timber.

We decided that we would hunt the same area where we saw the nice buck that evening, but not before we spent a little time back at camp.

- I think this is the fifth year that we've done this October bow camp and it started collectively just kind of a group of friends and a handful of us that work in the outdoor, you know, and hunting industry, specifically in the deer hunting space.

And we love to get together, and spend a bunch of time together and do product testing this time of year.

And as far as the camping goes, October's just so easy.

We can do a tent.

You don't need a ton of gear.

Enjoy the nice weather.

It's not a high pressure hunt.

It's kind of one of the first camps of the year where everybody's just, you know, getting your feet wet, getting used to being a tree again, shooting your bow and kind of getting ready for, you know, In a couple weeks here we'll be knocking on the door of the 2026 white tail rut.

And so the October timeframe always made a ton of sense for us because once the rut comes around, everybody gets real serious, kind of has their own things going on this time of year.

We utilize it to get together and do more of a social deer camp.

- [Jimmy] After spending a few hours in camp, which included celebrating the first deer of the weekend, we decided to head back out and hang a set in the same area we had scouted earlier, hoping we could bring the second deer back to camp later that evening.

- It took a little bit to kind of get up in this spot.

It was a little bit challenging, but I think that's why it's a really good spot.

Maybe a very difficult little area to hunt.

We've got this bench coming out of this bottom and we found a bunch of apples under the apple tree that the wind blew down yesterday, and we came in here earlier to look at this, and we actually had a really nice buck walk right out, come within 30 yards of us.

I didn't have my bow.

We were in here just poking around and we got confirmation that there's a really nice buck in here.

We also saw a handful of does.

Makes sense now.

There's a bunch of apples on the apple tree down here.

There's acorns all around us, there's deer tracks everywhere, but we have kind of a high swirling wind, and our wind's actually blowing, like, right, the wrong way, but we're going for it.

We know the deer in here, and it's like all or nothing we got tonight and tomorrow morning to make it happen.

It's kind of tight and it's windy, deer going to end up right on top of us.

It might get western, but we're going to have fun.

It's going to be exciting and if that deer comes back through, that particular buck, he looked like he was at least a three year old, maybe a four year old and that's what I'm in the market for alongside a nice venison extraction, whether that be a doe or this nice buck, but we saw both.

We got confirmation both of those were in here earlier, so.

- [Jimmy] Well, we ended up seeing a different buck than the one we were after.

And although we had him within 50 yards for close to an hour, he never really gave us a great look to evaluate him or even consider taking a shot.

So Kevin decided to pass on the opportunity.

This style of hunting leads to lots of surprises.

You really never know what buck might step out, and that's one of the many things that this crew likes about hunting in this part of the state.

- If you go on Facebook or social media these days and you read the way that people talk, you'd think that everything here hunting deer wise in the state of Michigan is a mess and you're not going to find any of the guys at this camp in any of those forums and Facebook pages where people are complaining.

We love the ability to basically do, like, scaled down western hunts here in our home state of Michigan, travel over to this corner of the state, travel over to this corner of the state, hunt all these different areas.

There's so much diversity in the landscape.

There's deer everywhere, and it just makes for a really fun time.

And I think Northern Michigan this time of year is impossible to beat.

(fire crackling) Well, it's early in the morning on Sunday, October 18th, and we're back in.

We left our equipment in the tree last night and snuck right back in here at daybreak.

We've already had a buck come working up out of the bottom.

Unfortunately, he came right up our track.

We know our wind's not ideal for where we are, but we're where the deer are right now and we already saw one buck this morning.

We had a really long, great encounter with a buck last night.

We think was three years old.

He was within like 75 yards of us for an hour, hour and a half.

We ultimately didn't shoot him.

It was just never perfect and we were trying to get it perfect.

But there's a bigger buck in here.

That other buck, now we just saw a third buck, so we're where we need to be this morning.

The winds are a little high, unfortunately, but it helped us cover up our sound getting in here.

We've got a couple hours that we think is going to be very productive this morning, so here we go.

- Although we did see a couple of small bucks, things were relatively slow on our last hunt together.

And although that meant the end of camp, that didn't mean Kevin was going to stop hunting this area.

And a week later, he was able to fill a tag there with cameras rolling.

(soft music) (soft music continues) (crossbow fires) (soft music continues) Late October and early November is as good as it gets if you're a bow hunter here in Michigan.

Good luck to all of the bow hunters out there, whether you're on public or private, in Southern Michigan or bouncing around the UP.

Make sure to stay safe and enjoy your time in the outdoors.

Well, we're going to transition from the deer woods to the pheasant fields.

In this next story, Jenny was able to tag along with the family doing a day of pheasant hunting and a little pheasant recipe as well.

(bright music) (people chattering) - My name is Giulio.

That's my son, Mario.

That's my grandson, Jesse.

- Yes.

- Doug Steadfeld.

- Nathan Steadfeld.

- Tell me about this.

- Oh, that was a very good friend.

We used to hunt for 40 years and he just passed away.

So we got to celebrate the memory of him.

- [Jenny] And what's happening when we get back from the hunt?

- Oh, we're going to have spaghetti and pheasant a la cacciatore.

- [Jenny] With a delicious Italian meal cooking up in the clubhouse and a gorgeous morning outside, this was shaping up to be a great day.

As our hunters got ready, I caught up with Mark June, longtime friend and guide for today.

- [Mark] October 26th will make 44 years I've been guiding for a living.

- [Jenny] You start when you were 12?

- 15.

That tells you my age, that tells you my age.

- [Jenny] Now tell me about which dogs you got with you?

- I got four of them today.

Four Brittanys.

We'll hunt two at a time.

It's kind of going to get a little warmer today, so we're going to hunt two at a time.

Got all my girls.

I left the boys home today, so I got the girls.

So they're excited, as you can tell.

- [Jenny] Tell me about hunting on a preserve like this, why it's maybe different than hunting wild ones here in Michigan anyway.

- [Mark] Well, it begins at.

It's short season, right?

When you own a dog, you can hunt.

We hunt from August 15th to May 1st, so it can extend a period of time.

It's like a big question.

Everybody talks about like, "How long does it take to train a dog, Mark?"

And I tell him, "You have to wear out a pair of boots."

And so if you look at all the old books that you read, like years ago books, they say, don't judge a dog till he's like two or three years old and that kind of stuff.

Nowadays, you can get one started training, get it to preserve, put the birds over, and keep the birds going, keep the birds going.

And next thing you know, he's got 50, 60 birds at him, he's an experienced dog at an earlier age.

So that's where the preserve part is really nice.

Plus, in the corporate world, people like to, you know, they like to.

There's nothing better than going down the field, talking to your friends, family, customers or whatever, and talking life in general, shooting pheasants, right?

So it's a great day.

- [Jenny] And you know you're going to see birds.

- [Mark] You're going to see birds.

Yes, of course.

And we need.

I feel like in my eyes, doing it so long from when I started to now, we need to see more younger kids involved.

And in today's age, nothing against the kids, they need instant satisfaction or stuff like this.

At least you know, now I feel like when a kid comes here, he's going to see all the action.

He wants to come again.

It seems like we're getting a lot more repeat business this way.

You take a kid out to the wild and you're working, working, working.

I understand that's a lot of fun, but also it can be a little hard too on a youngster.

In my years of doing this, I've seen more younger kids starting and more older guys continue hunting, which is really nice.

I'm all about that.

- [Jenny] In our group of hunters today, we had three generations hunting together, Giulio, his son Mario, and his grandson, Jesse.

Jesse says there's definitely something special about spending time in the outdoors with family.

- It's being with everyone.

It's being out here, all of it.

I just love being out here.

I love this time of year when the weather, when the temperature drops and you can just walk out here in a nice cool breeze, enjoy all the sounds you can see out there.

I love every second of it.

And then being out here with Dad and Nono makes it even better here and I'm with Nono's guy because he's finally retiring this year, so now he's got nothing more to do.

So hopefully we can get out and do more of this because I love it.

I love just being out there with all of them.

- [Jenny] The guys were having a fun morning with lots of flushes, some great shooting and some not so great shots.

I'm friends with Giulio's wife, but had only met him this morning.

I learned quickly he's the comic relief of the bunch.

(gun fires) - Don't film that.

- Yeah.

- Don't film that.

- How's it going so far?

- Oh, beautiful.

(Giulio laughs) I just got my miss out of the way.

Now I'm okay.

- Okay.

After the first pass through the field, I caught up with Mark and Doug to see how the game bags were looking.

- A little down and back.

We're figuring we're shooting about 500, close to a passing grade.

- What do we have?

- We got five.

- [Jenny] Oh, nice, okay.

How long have you guys been hunting together, you think?

- Oh.

Well, we started.

- [Giulio] Me and them close to 30 years?

- Yeah, close to 30 years now.

So Speedway Island, we used to hunt the small game, partridge and woodcock every day, every weekend when his grandpa was alive, when Pete was here.

We hunted every weekend.

- Cool.

- [Doug] It's nice to do it with these guys.

- [Jenny] Awesome.

I'd like to say the shooting improved as the guys got warmed up and, well, I'll let you decide.

(gentle music) (gun fires) (gentle music continues) (gun fires) - I got to return them.

Take them back.

- Bad shells?

- Yeah, bad shells.

They don't have no- (Jenny laughs) (gentle music continues) (gun fires) (gentle music continues) (gun fires) - [Jenny] Hey, you put in a real shell, huh?

- Gee.

The sun was on my eye, okay?

- [Jenny] You got it.

When their hunting buddy Piero passed away a few years ago, the crew stopped hunting, but thankfully, found another reason to start again.

- We stopped hunting about a couple years ago, 10 years ago, and then my son, we took him to Hunter Safety and he won a free hunt.

And so me and my dad went and we went hunting.

We were behind him watching him hunt.

And when the birds came up, we kind of like got that excitement, you know, We got into shooting position, but we had to just watch and it got us that bug.

And once that bug happened, the next year we called up our buddy and said, "Hey, you want to go back out in the field again?"

And we did, and we've been doing it ever since.

So it's good tradition that we brought back and it's good.

It's camaraderie, had the thrill, everything about it.

Hang out with your friends that you haven't seen in a while.

We're having a great time shooting a lot of shells, getting quite, some birds, we're getting some birds.

But yeah, we're having fun though, making memories, and we have three generations doing it so.

- [Jenny] In Mario's family, the oldest generation here today is his dad, Giulio.

Giulio immigrated to the States as a young man and started his family here.

- Well, originally, I'm from San Marino, the Republic of San Marino.

And today we are all over here.

When we go back, we going to have pheasant a la cacciatore and spaghetti a la bolonesa and homemade wine.

That's me.

- You make the wine.

- I make the wine.

- [Jenny] And the ladies make the peasant.

- [Giulio] Yeah.

See those kids over here, they want beer.

You don't eat dinner with beer.

You got to have wine.

- So of course we have to have pasta since we're all Italian here, and Linguini happens to be my favorite, so we decided to do that.

And then we wanted to incorporate the pheasant, so we have the pheasant cacciatore, which I have never made before.

So I got my sister-in-law, Joanne, to help me with the cacciatore, and it turned out excellent.

I wish we had Smell-A-Vision here because this place smells amazing.

So we're going to have a really good meal in a bit here, and it's all thanks to Piero, who, I mean, without him, we miss him so much.

So we did this for him.

This is in memory of Piero so.

- [Jenny] That's what it's all about here.

Keeping a hunting tradition alive, cherishing an old family recipe, honoring the memory of a great friend, and making new memories in the outdoors with friends and family.

There's no better place to make that happen than in Michigan's Out of Doors.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) Thank you so much for joining us this week for Michigan Out of Doors.

Make sure you come back in upcoming weeks because fall is in full swing and we've got all sorts of hunting and fishing excitement headed your way.

If you'd like to see where we are on a more daily basis or even interact with us, you can always do that online.

- Yes, online is a good way to see what we're up to.

Probably Instagram and Facebook are the best ways to see what we're up to on a day-to-day basis, but you can also check out our website at michiganoutofdoorstv.com.

Full episodes of the show there.

Some of our new merch, lots of cool stuff there as well.

So make sure that you are getting out and enjoying everything our state has to offer.

And hopefully if we don't see in the woods or on the water, we'll see you right back here next week for "Michigan Out of Doors."

- [Narrator 1] Michigan Out of Doors is presented by.

- [Narrator 3] Get away from it all, to your own place.

With Greenstone's recreational land loans, we'll help you finance acreage of any size so you can own your own place in the great outdoors.

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- [Narrator 1] By Morgan Composting, a family business located in Michigan, Morgan Composting offers a variety of products all powered by Dairy Doo Organic Compost for homeowners and farmers.

To learn more about all the product options available for your food plots, visit dairydoo.com.

(bright music) - [Narrator 4] At Boss Shot Shells, we make all our shot shells right here in Michigan and deliver them direct to your door.

- [Narrator 1] By Saab, providing defense and civil security products and services for over 85 years and now part of the Grayling community with our new advanced munitions facility, career opportunities are available.

More information at saabinc.com.

(bright music) (bright music continues) ♪ When I wander far away ♪ ♪ A dream stays with me night and day ♪ ♪ It's the road that leads to my home state ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ ♪ Changing seasons paint the scene ♪ ♪ Like rainbow trout in a hidden stream ♪ ♪ The whitetail deer, the tall pine trees ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan Man ♪ ♪ I am, I am, a Michigan man ♪ ♪ Ask where I'm from and I'll show you my hands ♪ ♪ Lord above, I love this land ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ ♪ From the Keweenaw down to St.

Joe ♪ ♪ Kalamazoo east to Monroe ♪ ♪ Sault Saint Marie and back again ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan Man ♪ ♪ I am, I am, a Michigan man ♪ ♪ Ask where I'm from and I'll show you my hands ♪ ♪ Lord above, I love this land ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ (bright music) (soft music)