- Well, hey everybody.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

Thank you so much for joining us this week.

We have a brand new show for you and we're gonna kick things off in the deer woods.

Gabe VanWormer was able to get out with stick and string during the first week of the season.

We'll see how he did.

Then Jordan Browne's gonna take us to the east side of the state and do a little perch fishing on Saginaw Bay.

And then I'm gonna take us to the Grand Rapids area, where we're going to visit with a taxidermist who does a really good job of capturing those memories.

I tell you what, you won't want to miss this week's show.

Lots of great stuff.

You stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger.

It's time for "Michigan Out of Doors."

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(dramatic music) (gunshot banging) (epic music) - The first few days of this year's bow season started out pretty slow for me.

Although I saw a few deer on the first few days, the warm weather really stifled the movement after that.

It was still nice to get back out into the tree stand, nonetheless.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) Well, this morning might be more of a recon mission than anything.

I've had a really tough time seeing many deer, except for one piece of property that I have that's really small that I can only hunt in a certain wind.

But other than that property, it's been really, really slow this year.

There's corn on basically this whole block, and there's beans all around it.

And it seems like those deer are on the beans right now, which is understandable.

I'm sitting where I can see into a bedding area this way, and I can see into a bedding area that way, and I'm looking to see if these deer are going into those bedding areas.

I'm not necessarily thinking that I'm gonna get a shot from this tree stand.

Sometimes they have a beat-down path right here in front of me.

It doesn't look like that this morning.

I haven't been in here, so this is more of a scouting mission than anything.

That's why you gotta do weird stuff, like just go sit in a scouting stand in the morning, trying to see the deer come back to their bedding area and get a game plan from there.

So hopefully we can lay eyes on something pretty good.

It's a little tough with all the foliage still, so I can see pretty good.

It's kind of an open woods here, so hopefully I'll be able to see what's going on and get a good idea of maybe where there's a shooter box, so.

That old girl has been through some hardship.

She has a big old chunk taken out of her back.

I imagine somebody backstrapped her.

I don't know if I'd shoot her, she'd be missing a third of her backstrap right there.

(Gabe chuckles) It was a crisp, cool morning, the kind you hoped for in the early bow season.

Deer were moving well, and I decided if a big doe gave me an opportunity, I'd take it.

It wasn't long before I had a couple big does headed my way.

(foliage crunching) (foliage crunching) (birds tweeting) (drawstring creaking) (arrow thwacking) (foliage crunching) Oh, she's down.

She's down.

Like I said this morning, I'm on a scouting mission.

I'm just kind of looking over this bedding area.

I didn't expect to shoot one.

They just came in, and one got spooky, and it kind of ran or trotted off the way.

So they kind of went around behind me even further, and I couldn't get the camera around.

I just couldn't get it to where I needed it to be.

And finally, I got out at the edge of my tree stand, got the camera where it needed to be.

I think I got on her fine and drew back, took my time, hit the clicker, and boom.

And it was sticking out the other side.

It was angling forward, probably high lungs.

And I couldn't get the camera on her as she ran.

It was just too thick over there, and I was just so handcuffed backwards that I didn't get any of her running away, so that kind of stinks.

But so I decided to take that opportunity.

When you hunt with a long bow, you take the opportunities you get because you may not get another one.

So perfect.

Big doe on the ground.

Watched her fall.

I can get in there really easy.

Perfect.

I love it.

Look at that doe.

Oh, that's a big one.

Yeah.

Look at the size of that.

There's my arrow right there.

Look at that.

Big old doe with the long bow.

Man, I wish I could find the other part of my arrow because that's the expensive part.

It has the broadhead on the end.

Shooting that razor broadhead, double bevel.

It went through her shoulder over here on the far side.

So as the arrow was flying, I'm shooting a slow bow, and I aimed a little low because I know they're gonna drop, but she even moved forward just a little bit, but it came out right in her, right in her shoulder, so perfect shot.

We've got new digital tags here in Michigan, so I just did it online, grabbed my phone, filled it out, and she's all tagged.

So first time doing that.

Nice big doe with the long bow on a day I didn't think I was gonna get a shot.

I was just out here doing some scouting and perfect.

- Well, here it is, third week in October.

I'm back in the tree stand tonight.

I've been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in the bow stand this year filming hunters from all over the state.

With that being said, there's a lot of other great things going on right now.

And for our next segment on this week's show, I was able to spend a morning over on Saginaw Bay to do a little perch fishing.

(boat engine rumbling) (gentle music) - We are going out of Linwood Beach Marina on Saginaw Bay, and we're gonna go attempt to get some perch.

Fishing's been pretty decent the last week, week and a half, and been getting some really nice fish, so hopefully we can get us on those today.

- [Jordan] The fishing this fall on the bay has been good.

The weather, not so much.

And with wind in the forecast again today, we left the marina early in hopes of finding a few perch before things really picked up.

- So a kind of pretty simple setup.

We're just running kind of perch rigs, the double spreader and the infamous sleeper hook, which is a snelled hook right off of the eye of the sinker.

That one there catches a lot of fish.

You gotta kind of keep in contact with it 'cause a lot of times a fish will have it in his mouth, and you don't realize it.

I'll double hook this one on the Sleeper rig.

Good size middles from Frank's.

I got good, good bait right now.

And from here, we're gonna single hook these.

The other ones just might have to double hook 'em.

We'll see how effective we are at catching them versus the fish stealing 'em.

And hopefully we can get on some fish.

There's a lot of fish on LiveScope.

That's looking really good.

So in a nutshell, that's what we got right there.

We're gonna get one down there and see what happens.

- [Jordan] It didn't take us long to land our first perch.

The fishing out here has been very good through the first few weeks of October, and although it can take some time, limits of perch have been common.

That is when Mother Nature allows it.

- Well, you know, this fall is taking a little bit to get going this year.

Generally on the bay here, once we get into September, even August, a lot of times, we have really good fishing.

This year we really didn't have the good perch fishing set up for a couple weeks.

It's just so windy nowadays.

It's a lot of the challenges, the getting a good day where you can get out.

So the fishing's been real strong out here for about the last week.

It's been really, really strong.

So I was out a couple days ago and got a beautiful limit with lots of nice jumbos.

So we're hoping to emulate that today.

It's a little choppier than they're calling for, which is a challenge in the fall is just getting good weather.

It's just windy so often nowadays, so hopefully things won't build too much today and we can get a school of them in here underneath us.

And what I'm seeing on LiveScope, there's a lot of bait down here.

The other day when I was out here, there was a lot of, lot of bait.

Big schools of minnows right up on the surface, down in the water column, and I can see why the big perch are here.

So hopefully you can get a few to show everybody.

All right, that's what it's about right there.

- That's a little something right there.

Oh my.

Little something.

- I'm telling you, it took an hour to get any keepers there Saturday, so it takes a little time to get them going.

- He was hungry.

- Yeah, what a beaut.

- 13 incher?

- Yep.

Little 13 and a halfer about.

Yep.

- Dandy.

- You guys got work to do now.

I personally like to bounce my sinker off the bottom and run different colors, of course.

It's usually pretty easy to catch fish when you're out with the Angler Quest.

What would Mike Avery call him?

Mr.

Angler Quest.

His boats usually do pull in a lot of fish.

Other than that, it's just be patient and keep fishing.

- You better than you think.

There you go.

Broke the ice.

- You get one, Brent?

- Yep.

- [Brad] All right.

- [Jordan] When it comes to perch fishing in the fall, it's all about finding the bait.

And although LiveScope is certainly not a necessity for this style of fishing, it does help you find the right area.

- Well, you know, as far as perch fishing, the one thing it does tell you is that the fish are there.

It doesn't mean they're always gonna bite, but what is really astonishing to me is the amount of life that you see down in the water column.

There's huge wads of bait right now on LiveScope, big fish on the bottom, which got the earmarkings of perch all day long.

It's just, hey, it gives you that element that you know they're there, that's for sure.

Like I said, doesn't always mean they're gonna bite, but it takes that one piece of the equation out of the picture, so.

It is just mind-boggling all the life down there.

When you get in the right areas where these perch are, there's just so many things happening down there.

So it's nice to see them come in, get aggressive, and get bites, and kind of see the status of how they're, how they're feeding that particular time, point in time.

So pretty neat tool.

And I like what I'm seeing on there now.

It looks great.

Oh, there you go, Brent.

Gotta like that.

Good double there.

Beautiful Saginaw Bay fish there.

- [Jordan] We caught a handful of really nice perch, but the bite overall was tough.

And after a few hours, we decided to head back in.

Thanks to Brad and the guys for inviting me out, it was a fun day on the water here on Saginaw Bay.

- Well, whether it's in the woods or on the water, I think when all of us get out and get to do a little hunting and fishing, we're all hoping in the back of our mind anyways that we get something big enough to put on the wall.

Well, what we're gonna do right now is visit with the taxidermist to kind of get a glimpse behind the scenes of what goes into making a quality mount.

(gentle music) Whether it's a buck, a duck, a bobcat, or a brown trout, we are all hoping we take something nice enough to put on the wall.

Well, just last week I spent some time with a guy who sure knows how to make a memory that will last.

- Basically when I was younger, like any other kid, I was, you know, into hunting and fishing, and my mom would take me and bring me all over the place to hunt and fish.

And when I got to be about 10 years old, I caught a bass one time, and I wanted to get it mounted.

And I didn't know what to do with it, so my mom took me to Al & Bob's, which isn't there anymore, down on South Division.

And we asked them, you know, what would we do with this fish, 'cause they had a bunch of fish mounded in there, and they pointed us in the direction of a gentleman by the name of Dale Cornett, who's passed away now, but he was a phenomenal taxidermist.

Long story short, we went down in his basement, and it was filled with, you know, all kinds of different taxidermy mounts.

And from then on, I thought, "This is what I gotta do," you know?

As a, like I said, as a 10-year-old kid, it was the greatest thing ever.

And I knew that's kind of what I wanted to do as I got older.

So I went to school in 2002 out in Montana, lived out there for a while, and basically did everything, but I knew I wanted to focus on just a specific sort of thing.

I was big into trapping and hunting, so that's kind of where I gravitated towards small to medium mammals, for one, because I love trapping, but two, the taxidermy aspect of predators and, you know, bobcats, fox, is pretty rough in general.

So I thought if I could become, you know, good at my craft, that I would have a good chance at, you know, kind of cornering the market that way, so.

And then obviously whitetails.

I love, you know, whitetail hunting, so that's been a big part of my business too.

- [Jimmy] I was excited to see behind the scenes on just how a mount comes together.

- Like I said, I just painted this piece yesterday, and I haven't cleaned anything off of it, so you can see, obviously, when it's done, it's a little bit goofy-looking.

There's overspray all over the eyes and inside the ears.

So we wanna come through, and I'm cleaning off all the overspray.

I use lacquer paint so it sticks to the skin, but it doesn't stick to the fur at all.

So I'm gonna come through, and I'm gonna brush out all of the overspray of the lacquer paint.

And at the same time, I'm also brushing it in a way where the hair patterns are where they need to be.

And I tell people that all the time, like in competition and stuff, that, you know, when you're looking at a mount and you're looking at a good mount and you're thinking, "Man, that looks real," there's a lot to it other than just the eyes.

Everybody wants, oh, the predator, it's got the good eyes, you know, the shape and stuff, but there's a lot more to it.

Like the ears, you know, you can have a predator mount with the best eyes, but if his ears are bad, if the hair patterns are bad, then it kind of stands out like a sore thumb.

So when I'm teaching people and stuff, it's I'm telling people everything has to be right, not just one thing in particular.

So, for example, like the hair in the ears on a predator, you'll see a lot of predator mounts with the hair all up like this, and you'll have this big gap in the ear right here where somebody's got to paint it very heavy.

And all that is, is this hair in here is dried wrong, and somebody hasn't, you know, paid attention to it while it was drying or when the ear was put together.

So this is one of those things right here that I teach people, like the hair pattern, this ear hair has to go horizontal, and it goes across the ear.

Not only does it aesthetically look like it's supposed to, but it serves a purpose.

It keeps the dirt and stuff out of a real cat's ear.

That's what it's there for.

- [Jimmy] Good taxidermy is really a work of art, and to see a piece kind of come to life is really something special.

- [Mike] This is called a fixative, and this just basically seals it.

Little spritz here or there, and you can see that just come to life right there.

So there's a lot of depth, it looks very soft, and that's a cat basically all cleaned up right there from where it was, you know, painted, and it had a lot of overspray on it, yep.

- [Jimmy] Well, before the hide is ready to go on the form, most good taxidermists have a lot of trimming and fleshing to do.

- It's about that much lip skin.

This skin right here is gonna get tucked into the form.

You can see the edge of the lip right there that's actually gonna be shown when you see the actual mount.

But I need this to be as thin as possible to tuck in for two reasons.

I want it thin for easability when I'm tucking it, but most importantly, any of this excess flesh, I guess you'd call it, after it's been tanned, when it dries, see, it has a lot of moisture in it.

And when we tuck this lip in, if we have a lot of thickness here, when that dries, the moisture leaves that skin, and that's when you get like a lip that pulls out.

So if you see a mount and the lips are kind of pulled out and they're not where they're supposed to be, generally it's because somebody left too much stuff on here and they didn't thin it out properly.

So when it dries, like I said, all the moisture gets sucked out of that, and it's pulling the skin with it as it goes.

- [Jimmy] Mike will have a few mounts he works on each day, all in different stages, and some will make their way to the home of the hunter, and some of his work is used for competition here in Michigan and all over the world.

- I did very well through, you know, quite a few years at the Michigan state level, traveled to some other states, Ohio and stuff.

Then I started competing at nationals and, you know, started doing pretty well at nationals.

I won some pretty good titles there.

And then I started competing at the world level, which comes around every other year.

The odd years, it's different countries, but every other year, the world show's here in the USA, and I started competing there.

In 2017, I won third best in the world for, like, a Bobcat, and that really lit the fire of, you know, doing competition stuff, getting as good as I possibly could.

And then, you know, fortunately, in 2022, I did a small Bobcat, and I ended up winning best in the world for that.

So from there on out, it's just basically took off from there, the career.

And then I even got into the whole judging thing.

Once I had those titles of Best in the World, North American Champion, I started getting a lot of calls.

And so over the last four or five years, I've judged a lot of state shows.

This past summer, I was asked to judge the nationals.

I got to judge the national show.

So it's kind of come full circle, you know?

All the years of competing at state, national, world level, and now I'm judging those shows, which to me is just a blessing, so.

- [Jimmy] The habitat that some of the mounts are on or in can really be a work of art all by themselves.

It was cool to see how much time and effort goes into a quality mount.

- So when that wolf gets put together, it'll be in the same state as this, where it'll be on a makeshift base that we'll build rock around it, and then they will dry.

For about two weeks, they're gonna sit there and dry.

Most animals have about two weeks of drying time.

The Wolverine, for example, he's got about two weeks, and then he gets an extra second at the end of it, you know, so a little bit of a football joke there, but.

(Jimmy laughs) (Mike laughs) Sorry, I had to throw that one in there.

I know you're a Michigan State fan, so.

But no, they take about two weeks, and then once they're dry, I'll take them outside.

If it's nice out, hose them all down, give them a good bath, and blow them all dry.

And that right there is where they really come to life, is once you give them a good secondary bath and really suds them up and wash them up and then blow them all dry, then they really fluff up and they come to life.

Like the wolf is gonna be just beautiful once it gets a good washing, so.

- It was fun to spend part of the day with Mike and learn a little bit more about what goes into good taxidermy.

You can find Mike on both Facebook and Instagram for more information.

And here is hoping that we all have a good enough season that maybe just maybe we'll be putting something on the wall this year.

Well, hey everybody, thank you so much for watching "Michigan Out of Doors" this week.

I hope you're getting out there and enjoying everything our state has to offer.

What a great time of the year to be a sportsman here in the state of Michigan.

And what we're gonna do on next week's show and the upcoming shows, we got some pheasant hunting coming up, some more deer hunting.

All sorts of good stuff that we're gonna be up to, so make sure you are joining us.

And if you miss part of this week's show or if you want to see something again, you can always check us out online at michiganoutofdoorstv.com.

We have full episodes of the show there.

And we are running some really cool new merchandise right now.

We're doing a limited edition fall hoodie series.

We got a deer and a waterfowl hoodie.

You might want to check those out.

It's a great gift for the upcoming holiday season and a good way to support "Michigan Out of Doors."

Thank you so much for watching this week, and hopefully we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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(cheerful music) ♪ 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 scenes ♪ ♪ Like rainbow trout in a hidden stream ♪ ♪ The whitetail deer and the tall pine trees ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ ♪ I am, I am, a Michigan man ♪ ♪ Ask where I'm from ♪ ♪ Ask where I'm from ♪ ♪ And I'll show you my hand ♪ ♪ And I'll show you my hand ♪ ♪ Lord above, I love this land ♪ ♪ Lord above, I love this land ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ (gentle music)