- Hello everyone.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

We're so glad you're here this week.

I'm Jenny Ciolek, and we've got a brand new show headed your way.

We're gonna take a look at Gabe Van Warmer's late season antlerless deer hunt with his two young daughters from a rather unique deer hunting blind.

You won't wanna miss that story, and Jimmy and Jordan have some other action in store for us this week.

- Well, that's right, Jenny.

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

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was able to spend some time in the mid-Michigan area at a really cool archery event for kids.

You won't wanna miss that, and if you've got some venison in your freezer, I'll tell you what, we've got a great venison recipe, a sausage gravy recipe that is out of this world.

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 ♪ ♪ Some day our children all will see ♪ ♪ This is their finest legacy ♪ Wonder and the love of Michigan ♪ ♪ As the wind comes whispering through the trees ♪ ♪ The 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] "Michigan Out of Doors" is presented by, by Country Smoke House, 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, 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 lifetime warranty.

More information available at gfallc.com, by Angler Quest Pontoons, offering fishing pontoons designed by anglers for anglers.

Angler Quest pontoons are built with a multi-functional layout to support a variety of fishing adventures.

Learn more at anglerquestpontoon.com.

(water bubbling) (relaxing music) (grass crunching) - Well, we're inside the Killin' Kabin here, and this is a gravity bin wagon that I set up last year and it has turned out to be an unbelievable place to take kids and do that late season hunting.

We're out in a tree stand for two months in the elements in the cold.

This is a perfect opportunity to take those late season does, and let me walk you around this thing.

First of all, you had to have a urinal.

Take a look at this.

There's my urinal, and then up here we got places to hang your coats up here, and then when you shoot a deer, it goes on the wall right here, and then the cartridge goes up here on top.

We're all set up to shoot, and so, and then if you come back over here, this is the card table.

I bought a laser engraver last year and so, so that makes a nice little card table while people are hunting back here.

It's just fun to be out here and hunt with a bunch of people.

We've had up to eight people in this blind together.

All the cousins were in here.

The girls who are behind the guns tonight, they had all their cousins up from Florida and some that live here.

They were all up last year, shot a nice doe on camera and this is just a fun place to take your kids to hunt and get in the camaraderie that we don't get when we're sitting in a tree stand.

It's easily trailerable down the road.

I'm able to take this down the road, no problem.

Tonight we're gonna be sitting over this cornfield.

We've had those coming out here almost every night.

So the girls are behind the gun tonight.

We're shooting the .41 Great Lakes with a suppressor, a GSL suppressor.

That stuff all is made right here in Michigan, which is really cool.

The suppressor, the cartridge was designed here in Michigan and the bullets that we're shooting are actually made right here in Michigan as well, so that's really cool.

(jerky snapping) (calm music) - There's spike deer here.

It's right out there, it's walking around, and it was just a bit ago, it was eating.

I'm so excited and hoping that a doe is following him.

I think I could shoot it, - [Gabe] But I, he'd have to turn, wouldn't he?

- Yeah, but I would still be able to shoot it.

- [Gabe] Yeah, if like on shoulder, anything?

- Yeah, I think I can shoot something with this.

What's that?

- He's looking.

Oh, he's scared.

- [Gabe] He was spooked.

Something spooked him.

He didn't seem like those turkeys out there, did he?

- Yeah, he came on eating, buzzing, looking at the turkeys, like, directly at the turkeys.

It's like he was saying, "Hey, get off, I'm eating here," and he probably just didn't really like that, but then he moved, (birds screeching) but I'm hoping we'll see some, especially a doe because I only have a doe permit.

- [Gabe] When the doe started moving, they came in from behind us, so we would have to wait patiently for them to move around to where Brooke could get a shot.

- There's does, a bunch of does over there, and we think they're gonna walk right in front of us, and then I can shoot them, and then if there's some left over and none of that gets spooked, then my sister Finley, she can probably shoot her.

- They're all walking towards over here, and that's really good, and I think it would be great if Brooke can shoot another doe.

- [Gabe] There is the big one, the one out front.

Yeah, you can see it.

You see her?

- Yes.

- You can't shoot her there.

- Yeah, I can.

- She's coming.

She's coming.

- Oh yes I can, I can.

- Okay, just a minute.

Just a minute.

Stay.

Okay, now listen, take off the safety.

Now listen, right on her shoulder.

Slowly, slowly.

(gunshot popping) Watch, watch.

- [Gabe] Oh, what just happened?

- I just shot it and then she went right back there and now we're gonna go track it down.

- [Gabe] Shooting, nice job.

- Yes, I'm so excited to go see what my fourth deer looks like, and I'm so excited to see how good it looks.

It looks, I think I shot her right perfect.

- After writing her name on the door, it was time to recover the doe.

Although we knew where she fell, we always like to track deer anyway to keep skills sharp.

- Right over here.

- I see some blood there.

Blood, blood.

Blood there.

There she is.

- [Gabe] You see her?

- Yes.

Wow.

She's huge.

- [Gabe] What you think?

- I like it.

Why don't deer always die with their eyes open?

- [Gabe] I don't know.

Look at that shot.

Where'd you hit her?

- [Brooke] Right there.

- [Gabe] Oh, nice shoot.

Towards the end of December we decided to head up north for Finley to get a chance to hunt.

The girls had got a four-wheeler for Christmas and wanted to use it to drag out a deer.

After a quick stop at Jay's, we hit the woods and set up in a good spot between a cedar swamp and a cornfield.

Finn wanted to hunt with a new gun we had, a .400 legend.

Although my son had taken a couple does with it already, nobody had shot anything with it on camera.

Within minutes we could already see deer moving way back in the bedding area heading our way.

(calm music) - Okay, okay.

- [Gabe] Kinda looks like a fawn.

She's gonna come right across here.

Can you see her, Finley?

- [Finley] Yeah.

- The big doe was coming in much closer than we expected.

In an effort to help my daughter, I accidentally turned the scope up in power instead of down.

So unbeknownst to me, she was trying to find the doe at 30 yards on 10 power.

She handled it like a champ.

See her?

- No.

- [Gabe] Ready?

See her?

- [Finley] No.

- [Gabe] Put it on her shoulder.

Take the safety off.

- [Finley] I can't find her.

- [Gabe] You see her?

- Oh yeah.

- [Gabe] Right on the front of her.

Slowly squeeze the trigger, right in the front.

(gunshot booming) That was quick.

I think she was pretty big because.

- [Gabe] A big one.

- Yeah, I mean I couldn't figure out where she was on my gun, and then I noticed she was closer than I thought.

I shot her and when she was running I could see the blood coming outta her.

- [Gabe] I think you made a good shot.

- Yeah.

(gunshot booming) - [Gabe] With only one doe tag in hand, we got out of the blind and the girls quickly found the doe all by themselves.

(grass crunching) - [Finley] Oh, there she is.

- [Gabe] You see her?

- [Finley] Yeah.

Big one.

- [Gabe] What's that?

- She's a big one.

- [Gabe] That is a big doe, isn't it?

- Yeah, big doe.

- [Gabe] That's huge.

Good shooting.

Wow, holy moly.

What do you think?

- I think it's great.

(tender music) - [Gabe] As always, we made some awesome memories hunting together this fall and can't wait to do it again come next season in Michigan's out of doors.

(tender music) - There are a lot of great programs around the state aimed at getting kids into the out of doors, and there was really a great one just a couple of weeks ago in the mid-Michigan area where some kids not only are getting exposed to the world of archery, but even hunting as well.

(upbeat music) Just a week or so back found me at the Central Michigan Sportsman's Club near Stanton.

Today, around 100 kids would be participating in a really cool archery program.

- [Ashley] We are having our second regional tournament for indoor archery today for the 2024 season.

- [Jimmy] And how'd you get involved in this?

- I got involved, some friends were doing this ahead of us and my kids were really excited about it.

So my kids started shooting.

I have two boys that shoot this year and so I was originally just an archery parent, but now I'm a coach and super involved.

So S3DA, it's a statewide organization.

We have teams from Jackson, Midland, Muskegon, Rockford.

- [Jimmy] Kids were coming from all over this weekend, and the Central Michigan Sportsman's Club was a perfect spot for this, and I was able to talk with one of the shooters, Conner Strouse.

- [Conner] We're running a S3DA tournament indoor.

- [Jimmy] And how did you get involved in this whole thing?

- I had a couple buddies that did it and my dad shot tournaments when he was younger.

Did pretty good, and I kind of wanted to, you know, get into it, see what I could do.

- [Jimmy] And how long have you been doing it?

- Competition, this is my first year, but I've been shooting bow since I was three or four with my dad.

- [Jimmy] Nice.

- [Conner] When he used to pull my bow back for me and do all that.

- [Jimmy] And what do you like about doing this kinda shooting?

- [Conner] The competitiveness, meeting new people.

Most of the kids are pretty nice.

- [Jimmy] There were three different flights of shooters today, and I have to say it was pretty cool to see just how many parents were here for the entire day.

- [Alex] Both my boys shoot for the S3DA league, and I help coach and we're just here hosting a shoot for all the kids.

- [Jimmy] Does some of this lead into bow hunting for a lot of these kids?

- [Alex] Absolute, absolutely.

Most of them bow hunt.

- [Jimmy] What do the kids seem to like about this kind of a thing?

- They just like shooting, you know, and they make friends and they all make new friends it seems like every week, and there's clubs from all over the state that bring teams and they just like getting together and shooting with their friends.

- [Jimmy] Oh, that's a good group of kids, eh?

- [Alex] Very much.

- [Jimmy] And it seems like the adults are pretty involved for the most part, a lot of parents.

- [Alex] Yes, there's a lot of parents that help coach and contribute to the club in lots of ways.

- [Jimmy] During the different rounds of competition, the kids will shoot 30 arrows, five at a time, and they also help each other score the rounds.

It was really a very well run event.

- The white inner circle here is five points, and then if it's in the X, we also keep track of X's.

That would, is also worth five points, but then they use that for a tie breaker if needed, and then each ring goes down by one point.

So this would be four points, three points, two points, one point.

So this is a great target here.

We got two X's.

This one's on the line, but if it's on the line, it goes up to the higher value.

So he's got two Xs and three fives.

So that's the most points you can score in an end.

25 points he got on this end.

So great job, Colt.

- [Colt] Thank you.

- [Jimmy] Like most of the coaches today, Kara got involved basically to spend more time with her kids doing something they both enjoy.

- I got involved because my son loved to shoot archery.

We grew up in the outdoors and loved doing a lot of bow hunting and stuff and then he, we always shot in the yard as a family shooting at targets, and then we, he wanted to do it more, so he wanted to shoot competitively and we started with S3DA shooting.

He started shooting with 'em at West Michigan Archery Center, and then he got involved and then I got involved, and so now I'm the state coordinator.

When he started, there was a handful of teams and a handful of kids.

Now we're up to 10 teams, we just had a new one join this week, all across Michigan, and I we're gonna, we probably have 200 kids or more statewide that participate.

- [Jimmy] Awesome.

How long have you guys been doing that now?

- He started in 2017, I think.

Now he's aged out.

The Central Michigan Gold Stars here at our club, we started in 2019.

I've been the coordinator since 2019, the beginning of 2019.

- [Jimmy] And why do you do this?

- I do it for the kids.

I do it for the kids and I do it to get 'em outdoors.

So many of our kids love to fish and hunt and this just helps promote that and gets 'em off their iPads and electronics and we have a lot of fun doing it.

- What a great thing here today.

Not only does this get kids outside and off of their devices, it promotes a great sport and archery and is a gateway to getting kids into hunting as well, and I have to say, to see so many kids enjoying this at a variety of ages was really cool too, and there was a lot of families here today.

Starting in only three states at their first national tournament, S3DA is now active in over 30 states and growing, partially because this is a entirely afterschool program that can be run through schools, archery shops, churches, fire stations, and sportsman's clubs.

Thanks to all the folks that made today possible, just another example of sportsmen and women giving back to the outdoors right here in our great old state.

Well, we are here in Mount Pleasant at the Wood Shop Social with Jim Wood, chef extraordinaire.

What are we doing today, Jim?

- We're gonna make venison breakfast sausage.

- [Jimmy] Okay, sounds good.

- And then we're gonna turn that venison breakfast sausage into a sausage gravy.

Oh, it's gonna go over a sand, open-face sandwich type deal.

- Is this kind of easy to do or pretty advanced?

- No, I mean, breakfast sausage is a very basic starter sausage for somebody who hasn't done anything.

It's not very intimidating.

It's not like bologna.

It's just, it's an easier sausage to make.

- We'll get us started here.

What do we got here?

See some bacon, it looks like.

- Yeah, so right here we've got some straight venison grind.

- Okay.

- And then you always want to, you don't have to, but to keep it moist, we want to add some sort of pork product, and a lot of recipes will call for, you know, pork butt, pork back, pork belly.

Here we're actually using raw pork belly bacon, or just bacon, which is gonna give it a smoky flavor.

So that's how I like to make my breakfast sausages.

- Okay, - So we're gonna grind the bacon.

(grinder whirring) - [Jimmy] Now, do you tell people to mix their burger with pork or beef or anything?

Or do you just like straight venison?

- [Jim] I like straight venison.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- I never add anything to it, (grinder whirring) because I always, you can do that later if you're making sausage.

Okay, the burger is in there now, the venison burger.

All right, so we have black pepper, we've got some nutmeg, salt, paprika, fresh garlic.

- [Jimmy] Do a little bit of everything.

- [Jim] Yep, and then we have ground thyme and ground sage, you can use fresh.

I just want to do something that people probably have lying around their house.

If you're gonna use fresh, you want to, you know, probably times this by three.

(mixer whirring) All right, so that's that part.

- [Jimmy] Okay, Jim, we got our burger kind of all mixed together.

What are we doing now?

- So now we're gonna brown this up with some onion, and then I always like to add a little bit of jalapeno.

- Nice.

- Which gives a little bit of heat.

This is seeds in or seeds out.

I like to leave the seeds in it.

- Okay.

- There's not a whole lot of seeds in this one.

Obviously, you don't have to do that.

It's 100% optional, and we just let this cook away.

- All right, so we're about done with our concoction here.

- Yeah, so now we're gonna add our flour.

- [Jimmy] Now you just keep adding that just to thicken it up, or how do you know?

- Yeah, so we're making a roux, which is gonna, which is fat and flour, and then once that kind of gets itself together, then we can start adding the liquid, which will thicken up as it starts to come to a simmer or boil.

- [Jimmy] And that's a fair amount of onion you put in there.

What was that, like two cups?

- [Jim] Maybe, it's like a half pound.

- [Jimmy] Okay, what do we got there?

- This is just chicken stock.

Once that thickens up, then we can start adding our cream.

If you don't want to use cream, you can use whole milk.

I know it's not that healthy, but it really makes a much better product.

- [Jimmy] All right, so we're getting close to the end.

Kinda walk us through what we did here today.

- So we made our venison breakfast sausage, and then once we made the sausage, we turned that sausage into a gravy.

And once it's done at this point, like you said, you can put it on a biscuit or you can really, you know, do anything you want to with it.

But we actually are taking some focaccia that we make here, in-house focaccia bread, and we're putting ham on it, some Swiss cheese.

We're gonna top it with the gravy and hit it with a couple eggs.

- [Jimmy] Nice, so this is just a good basic venison sausage.

- [Jim] Yes, sir.

- [Jimmy] Gravy.

- [Jim] Gravy.

- [Jimmy] Ooh, baby.

(cheery music) - Thanks so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out of Doors."

Make sure you tune in in upcoming weeks.

We've got a lot of great things headed your way, including some winter steelheading, a little bit of squirrel hunting, and of course some ice fishing.

If you're missing us in between episodes, you can always check us out online.

- Well, that's right, Jenny.

Online is a good way to kinda keep tabs on us.

Probably the best way is our social media platforms, both Instagram and Facebook.

You can kinda see what we're up to on a day-to-day basis and make sure you are joining us over the next several weeks.

There's a lot going on around the state of Michigan right now.

Get out and enjoy it, and if we don't see you in the woods or on the water, hopefully we see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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

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You can get there with Greenstone.

Whether you want to hunt, fish, hike, or just watch the sunset, we're ready to help you own your place in the great outdoors.

To learn more, visit greenstonefcs.com.

- [Narrator] By SCI.

SCI helps protect, promote, and preserve wildlife through conservation practices, which include hunting.

SCI supports and funds conservation programs in the state of Michigan.

Learn more how you can get involved at a chapter near you, by Showspan producing consumer shows, including Outdoorama at Novi's Suburban Collection Showplace.

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(lively music) ♪ When I was far away ♪ A dream stays with me night and day ♪ ♪ It's the road (cheery music)