- Well, hey everybody, welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

Thank you so much for joining us this week.

We are glad that you are here, and we have a brand new show for you.

We're gonna things off in West Michigan, doing some steelhead fishing, and I tell you what, we had a beautiful day, and we had some great fish action as well.

You won't wanna miss that.

And then Jenny's gonna take us to a sportsman's club that gets together to do competitive Red Ryder BB gun shooting.

It's really cool.

And we're gonna have a great recipe for you this week, doing a little venison pasta dish, and I tell you what, it is out of this world.

Make sure you stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger.

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" What a beautiful day in the woods.

♪ Some day our children all will see ♪ ♪ This is their finest legacy ♪ Wonder around 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 ♪ - [Announcer 1] "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.

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(upbeat music) (wind blowing) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer 4] Jay's Sporting Goods.

Trust the tradition.

(water flowing) (gentle guitar music) - Well, today, I think we're gonna let things warm up a little bit.

We'd like to, hopefully, we're gonna fish this top section up here and see if we can't find them in the buckets, in the gravel.

And hopefully, we can get onto a couple early ones for us.

- There's few in here?

- There has been.

There has been, it's been good.

Water went a little low and a little slow this week, last couple of days.

But it's just that time of year.

And we should be in good shape, I think.

- [Jimmy] Nice, and we're bobber fishing?

- [Aaron] Yep, bobber and beads, yep.

- [Jimmy] Today, I was hitting the water with Trevor Johnson and his buddy Aaron Musial.

Trevor owns an outdoor shop in Grand Haven, and Aaron, well, Aaron is on the water several times a week this time of the year chasing steelhead.

But this drift boat, well, that's fairly new to him.

- Just a year, I've had this one just for a year.

- [Jimmy] What do you like about those center pin reels?

- So I like it.

There's just no resistance on them.

I feel like I get a much better float when I'm going down river.

But there was a lot of learning curves getting to this point.

- Oh, yeah?

- Yeah.

Unrestricted bearings going, yeah, you can get yourself into trouble in a hurry.

Basically, you've got two and then you do a leader, and then you go up to that, and then inline weight, adjust your float for different depths.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

Well, it didn't take long for us to find some fish.

Our very first hole looked like it was gonna produce for us.

(water flowing) (water splashing) Woo-ho-ho-ho-ho!

Look at that fish.

- [Trevor] That's a good one.

- Nice job, young man.

- Thank you, brother.

- Hey, welcome back, buddy.

(Jimmy laughing) (speaking indistinctly) - [Aaron] There we go.

- It's good for those two, isn't it?

- [Aaron] Look at that.

- That's a dandy.

- Thank you.

I think he's ready.

- [Jimmy] You think?

- [Trevor] Yeah, I think so.

- [Jimmy] Well, pretty much our first spot.

That's pretty good.

- Hey, got the skunk out early, so I get paid today.

Oh wait, no.

(all laughing) - [Jimmy] Most of the West Michigan rivers have seen a lot of pressure over the last couple of weeks.

We were seeing quite a few anglers so far today.

But steelhead, well, they're not the only thing spawning in the rivers right now.

- [Aaron] I think it's a walleye.

Yep.

- [Speaker] Nothing like real (indistinct).

- [Aaron] Oh, Walter.

- [Jimmy] Oh yeah, that's a good one though.

That's a pink, dude.

Awesome.

Got a mixed bag here, I think, on the juggernaut.

- Juggernaut.

(water splashing) - [Jimmy] Wow, good one.

- Not the species we are going for, but as Willie would say, it's got a head and a tail.

(both laughing) They're just up here doing their thing too.

- [Jimmy] Hey, (laughs) nice fish.

- [Aaron] Yeah.

- [Jimmy] Aaron is just a guy just really enjoys fishing and has been fishing steelhead for as long as he can remember.

As the sun began to rise on his gorgeous morning, it seemed to fire up the fish a little bit in this hole while it was treating us pretty well so far.

(indistinct chatter) (water flowing) - [Aaron] That's pretty, he's pretty too.

You wanna get out and at him?

(water flowing) (speaking indistinctly) (soft thudding) (water flowing) - There we go.

- Hey.

Holy smoke.

- That's a toad.

How big we got there?

Wow.

(Jimmy laughing) - What a fish.

- That's a good one.

Yeah.

- What's that one weigh, you figure?

- He's probably pushing 12 pounds somewhere in there, you think?

- [Jimmy] This was a dandy fish.

And I asked Aaron on these darker fish, how long did he think this has been in the river?

- Everybody's got their theories, but I think a lot of us are under the same scenario, that the darker the fish is, the longer that he's been in the system.

I mean, some of these dark fish that we caught, they could have followed the salmon off in October and November who entered in slower water.

And then just came up here.

Now, they're just getting up to their spawning grounds here, where they're gonna spawn and slip back to the lake and start the cycle all over again.

Yesterday, we fished some lower water, some slower water closer to Lake Michigan, and we caught several fish that were very clear.

We call 'em bluebacks 'cause they look blue when you're fighting them in the water and they're chrome.

So they had clearly just shown up and got into the system.

This winter has been long and cold, and the water is still pretty cold.

So it makes sense that the fish are just starting to get here, and they're a little later than they were last year, but every year's different.

(speaking indistinctly) (water splashing) - There you go.

- That's how you do it.

- Go do your thing, fish.

(Jimmy laughs) - Nice job.

- Yeah.

(gentle guitar music) (guitar music continues) - [Aaron] Yay.

(laughs) (indistinct chatter) - [Jimmy] Where is he at?

Come on out.

(guitar music) I need to just swing 'em right here.

(guitar music continues) - [Aaron] There we go.

(laughs) It's a hen.

- A good morning.

- Yeah, not so bad.

Really starting to come alive.

(guitar music continues) It all depends on how much rain we get.

The water temperatures, if it stays cold, they'll stay in the system a little longer.

If not, if it warms up, they'll just kinda do their thing.

They'll pair up, they'll spawn, and they'll shoot right back to the lake.

Some rivers, I've heard guys catching them well into May before.

It's usually the month of April, and it pretty well tapers off.

- [Jimmy] What do you like about this bead kind of fishing?

- [Aaron] So two things.

One, I don't like to kill steelhead at all.

I just like to catch 'em.

Trevor and I always say, all we want is your picture with you, and we're gonna let you go.

So we don't have to kill 'em.

And it's a lot cleaner.

Like you go to Trevor's shop, you buy beads, hooks, you don't get your hands dirty, and they catch fish.

That's the important part.

I like not having to tie a spawn, and I especially like not having to kill a steelhead to get the spawn.

(gentle guitar music) I know you wanna tell Trevor- - There you go.

- There you go.

Got a little pepper to her, don't she?

- [Jimmy] There we go.

Just raise your tip up.

(guitar music continues) - There we go.

- There we go.

Good scoop.

Today couldn't have gone much better.

Two great guys, perfect weather, and the fish, well, they cooperated today.

This bead fishing tactic with the float will work on any river holding trout, and it may be worth putting in your arsenal right here in "Michigan Out of Doors."

Well, over the years here at "Michigan Out of Doors" Television, we have highlighted a lot of shooting clubs here in the state of Michigan, and there are a lot of them.

But I don't remember one ever doing competitive Red Ryder BB gun shooting.

- We are shooting in the Clinton County Red Ryder BB Gun Club.

This is our second full year.

Just a bunch of guys sitting around, and we were all used to be on bowling leagues, and we thought, "Well, let's try something different."

And we got some Red Ryders together and started shooting, and it's grown from like 15 guys to over 40 people shooting now.

That started out with just 12, 15 of us, and oh yeah, word travel fast, how fun we're having, and yeah, do some potluck dinners and stuff like that.

So my grandkids will be here, and a bunch of other people bring their kids, and they run around in the shop in there and fire around.

It's a big family.

Family event, yeah, pretty fun.

So we shoot 10 rounds at 25 feet.

So if you have a gun, you can bring a gun and just lay it on the table.

I go and number all the guns, then we draw poker chips, and that number, that's the gun you have to shoot for the 10 rounds.

And a lot of times, we have more shooters than we have guns, so we have to share guns.

So you shoot your shot, go put your gun back on the table, and then the next person grabs it and walks up and shoots their shot.

So we shoot one time, and then we have some girls that go through and score and write your score down.

And that's round one.

And then we have round two all the way through 10 rounds.

And then score.

And then at the end, whoever has the high score obviously wins.

Just throw five bucks in the pot, and yep, winner take all.

So yeah, for the high scorer.

I wanna, I guess, give a little shout out to our scorekeeper, Mindy, who, yeah, she does a great job for us, and she's just taking it up on herself and said, "I'm not gonna shoot."

She's a really good shot too, but she said, "No, I'm not gonna shoot.

I will keep scores for everybody every week."

And so yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks to her.

- [Jenny] In a community of crop farmers, the competition will wrap up next week just in time for planting season to get underway.

- [Steve] Majority of us are farmers and just looking for something to do in the winter, and fun, and yeah.

And then we've got everybody from ex-chief of police in here to city managers to farmers to bankers.

And it's a wide array of men and women and children.

Shoot, it's, yeah, it's a good time.

- [Jenny] Steve enjoys hosting this weekly shoot.

- [Steve] Oh, just the camaraderie, getting all the guys together and talking smack, and everybody says how great a shooter they are, until you put a Red Ryder in their hand, and it really changes.

Changes their shooting, yeah.

Every gun shoots differently, they sure do, yeah.

We have a standing joke in here that you'll be shooting pretty good.

All of a sudden you'll shoot, and you won't even hit the target.

You'll have a flyer, and the joke is everybody says, "Who put a square BB in my gun?"

That's just kind of a fun joke that everybody says, yeah.

- [Jenny] Lots of laughs here and some great shooting over the weeks.

- [Steve] Yeah, this will be our last shoot before I, so next week will be our championship shoot.

So I have a board in there, and if you've won the 10 round, or we have a long shot too, if you've hit the clay pigeon on the long shot, your name goes on the board.

And if your name's on the board, you get to be in the championship shoot for next week.

And yeah, that'll determine our champion.

- [Jenny] And does it help sharpen your shooting skill?

- [Steve] It does actually.

It actually does.

- It helps you, you know, the older you are, the harder it is with the eyes working like this.

But yeah, it definitely brings out the best shooter doing it the way I do it.

We have yet this year to have a repeat winner.

So it's, yeah, it's definitely challenging everybody every week.

- It's awesome.

It's like, it really reminds me of like growing up '80s and '90s, and like the wholesome, like we're getting together every week and doing something fun and good, you know?

- It's different, which I think is what we need.

Different is good.

It brings the people out.

It gives us something to do in the wintertime.

And honestly, super fun.

- It's unbelievable.

It's kind of like similar, people have their poker nights in a way, right?

So we're coming here and shooting Red Ryder BB guns, and you never know what's gonna happen.

- Love coming out, just hanging out with everybody, shooting, having fun, talking a little smack, being competitive, yeah.

- It's just a fun night.

You come out, you see people you know, people you don't know, conversations, and just food.

Can't go wrong.

- I love it.

It's a great thing to do on a Friday night.

It's a good family event.

My wife and kids all come here.

We have a blast.

- I like the competition.

I'm going most improved after last week, which I'm not sure they have, but I'm trying to lobby for that right now.

- We're making a new award this year.

- [Jenny] Speaking of awards, Justin Keebler won the prize for high score after the 10 rounds tonight.

And Mike Voisinet won the long shot round, breaking a clay pigeon at 120 feet.

Special thanks to Steve Lonier and the entire gang for hosting a great event here in- - "Michigan Out of Doors."

- Woo-hoo!

(all cheering) (light music) - Well, we are here once again in Mount Pleasant at the Wood Shop Social with Jim Wood doing a little wild game recipe.

Jim, what are we gonna cook here today?

- So in the States, what gained a lot of popularity over the last 5-10 years is Bolognese.

- Okay.

- Which is a tomato-based pasta sauce.

And about as old as that recipe from the same area in Italy is Bolognese Bianco, which is a meat sauce without the tomatoes.

- Okay.

- So we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do it with venison, with ground venison.

It's getting to that time of year where you're looking at your freezer, and you've been eating the same ground venison, like tacos and meatloaf and whatever it might be.

This is something a little different.

- Okay, how do we get started with this?

So traditionally, you would start with pancetta, but I'm trying to do something where I know most people will have this around at your house.

So we're just gonna use bacon.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- And traditionally, you would use veal and pork.

So fat is important.

So we're gonna add a little more bacon than you would traditionally, just because venison doesn't have a whole lot of fat.

- [Jimmy] So it's gonna be a sauce basically to go over some sort of pasta.

- Yeah, it's a ragu is what it is.

So it's a super hearty meat sauce that actually braises in stock and milk.

Now that we've got this rendered down pretty good, then you add our mirepoix, which is a finely diced onion, carrot, and celery.

So this is a super important part, right?

Like you have to cook as much of the water out of these vegetables as possible.

So this is gonna take a little while.

- Okay.

- You don't wanna burn it.

You're not looking for color.

You're just looking to cook these down.

And the reason for this is the more you cook them, the more you release the water, which the more you condense your flavors.

For instance, the carrot is very sweet once all of the water's gone.

- Okay.

- Once you remove a lot of the water content.

Same with celery and onion, it takes on a sweet flavor.

You want that sweetness in this without having, that's why you'll see in a lot of, you look at the back of some store-bought tomato sauce you buy, it will have sugar in it.

This is the way to properly do that so you don't have to add the added sugar.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- All right, so we've got this good and cooked down for the most part.

Now we're gonna add our garlic, which you just wanna cook briefly, 'cause you don't wanna cook all the flavor.

Garlic's not designed to be sautéed for a long time, 'cause you'll cook a lot of the flavor out.

Now we're gonna add our venison.

Oh, throwing stuff everywhere.

And then we're gonna hit it all with some salt and pepper.

- [Jimmy] Nice.

- Okay, so now that we've got the meat good and cooked, we are now gonna deglaze with our white wine.

- [Jimmy] Does it matter which kind of white wine?

- You want something dry.

You don't want something super sweet.

And while that's reducing, we'll add those herbs in there.

We've reduced a lot of that wine down.

- Okay.

- Now we're gonna add, this is beef stock.

If you happen to have venison stock, great.

And then this is the milk.

- Just whole milk?

- Just whole milk.

Yep.

- Okay.

- And it looks like a lot 'cause it basically looks almost like a soup now.

- Yeah.

- But what's gonna happen here is it's gonna reduce down over a couple hours and- - Thicken up?

- It's going to, yeah, lot of the water and all this is gonna reduce, and you're gonna concentrate the flavors.

- Okay.

Okay, so Jim, what do we got?

We've magic-ed that in a couple hours later.

- Yeah, so you can see that, you don't see any milk in there, right?

Like it's all- - Correct.

- [Jim] Evaporated for the most part.

And you're left with nothing but the milk solids, and then all that stock and all the wine has evaporated.

So now we're gonna finish it with just a little bit of heavy cream.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- [Jim] And then a touch of lemon juice because, like I said, there's a lot of fat, and this helps balance it.

And so now we're gonna add our pasta to that.

A little more cream.

- [Jimmy] And this, the actual title of this one is?

- [Jim] This is "Venison Bolognese Bianco."

- [Jimmy] Oui, oui.

It's French, isn't it?

- No, it's Italian.

(Jimmy laughing) I was just like, "Did that just happen?"

Well, you should definitely put that on there.

- (laughs) I thought all your fancy ones were French.

All right, dig in here, Jim.

(upbeat music) Hmm.

Man.

There's a lot going on there.

- [Jim] Yeah, that's what slow cooking will do.

Brings out a lot of flavors.

(upbeat music) - Well, hey everybody, thank you so much for watching "Michigan Out of Doors" this week.

If you missed part of this week's show or last week's show, you can always check us out online.

You can do that at our website at michiganoutdoorstv.com, full episodes of the show there, some great new merchandise, all sorts of good stuff there.

And you can check us out on social media to see what we're up to on a day-to-day basis as we travel this great state trying to tell your story, the story of the sportsmen and women of Michigan.

Thanks for joining us this week.

And if we don't see you in the woods or on the water, hopefully, we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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(bright 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 hidden streams ♪ ♪ 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 ♪ (light music)