Northeast Outdoor Newsletter: Fall 2024

The shot before the shot

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not all that great with staying current on these blog posts.  It seems like every January I have a head of steam and I’m able to write a few posts leading up into the spring and then my attention is pulled away, and before I know it I’ve missed like 6 months of posting.  Oh well.  It would be pretty sweet if someday a whole bunch of people would hop on here to read this, but right now my efforts are almost fully invested in making videos for YouTube, where over 100,000 people have tuned in over the last 8 weeks as opposed to the dozen or so that click on these posts here.  

To mitigate that, I think I’m going to switch this from a monthly post, to a quarterly post, one for each season.  I think it’ll help with some of the repetitiveness I inevitably end up writing for months in the same season and I’ll be able to stay more current with four posts a year instead of a dozen.  I’m going to try and write more than these “northeast outdoor newsletters” as time goes on, but for now, I digress.

Seeing as I haven’t written one of these since May, I figured I’d update you all on what I’ve been up to before I divulge which outdoor adventures I’m currently working on.  Since we last spoke here, a ton has happened.  In late June of this year, I embarked on the most insane trip of my life to film a one-of-a-kind fishing video in another country.  I spent a week in south-central Ukraine with a delegation of Americans from my home town of Burlington to establish contact with the Kuylalnyck Community in the Odessa Region of Ukraine.  I was the group's videographer and agreed to provide my services for free if I was able to film a fishing video while I was over there.  Like I said, it was an insane experience and I believe the video speaks for itself.  I won’t provide any spoilers here so I highly suggest heading over to the Woods North YouTube channel and finding out for yourself.  

In July, I had another epic saltwater adventure with two good buddies I filmed with in the summer of 2023.  Instead of striped bass in the Cape Cod Canal, this time we found ourselves on the sandy beaches on the south shore of the Cape in search of something much larger.  Over the course of two nights, we landed four unbelievable brown sharks, with three of the four taping out over 70 inches and weighing close to 100lbs.  I’ve already dropped part one of that adventure, but I think I’m going to wait until the late spring to release the other two videos we filmed down there to be a little more seasonable for folks scrolling around online.

I didn’t get to much as far as filming goes in August, but towards the beginning of the month, I was invited to one of the larger regional trade shows in my area.  Huntstock is described as “the world's biggest deer camp” and takes place every year at Wildwood Farms in Westminster, Massachusetts.  Not only was it a ridiculously fun weekend, but we managed to meet so many like minded people that live in the area who had already heard of Woods North and that was pretty dang cool.  Not to mention we were invited to be part of the content creators team, alongside much larger brands like Big Woods Bucks, Rodney Elmer and Mountain Deer and Just Hunt Club.  I have to say it was pretty unbelievable to have guys like Hal Blood and Tom Miranda walk by our booth and give us the subtle “ ‘sup “ head nod as they were on their way to give seminars and sign autographs.  I already can’t wait to get back down there next year.   

September brought us back to a familiar place.  While the consensus was that this year’s salmon run in Pulaski, New York was slow, I still managed to have a blast, as I always do.  Over the course of a couple days I managed to put two beautiful male king salmon in the net, even though the hook ups were not as plentiful as they generally are.  

I shot my first deer of the year in October, a small button buck that walked by my treestand on only my second sit of the early archery season here in Vermont.  That was, in my opinion, some of the best hunting footage I’ve ever shot and I think the whole video came out great.  I’m hopeful over the next few months the views take off and more and more people tune into it.  I also shot a different video back on top of Sterling Peak in Jeffersonville, Vermont, to chase the highest brook trout in the entire state.  I go up there every year to film “Above the Clouds” but for whatever reason this year’s iteration turned out to be immensely popular, and right now it has been viewed almost 6,500 times, the fourth highest viewed video on the Woods North YouTube channel.

So that brings me into November.  Today is November 27th, and tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  While a lot of folks have aspirations of eating turkey and watching football on the couch, I’ll be in the big woods up in the mountains chasing a deer with antlers.  I’ve given it a pretty damn good effort thus far and have nothing to show for it.  Those of us that rifle hunt know how quickly a skunk-session can turn into an unforgettable hunt, and I’m hopeful that my luck changes either today or Sunday, as those are my last two chances to fulfill my rifle tag.

After the season ends, I’ll be after it with the muzzleloader the Saturday following the end of the regular rifle season.  I was fortunate enough to pull a J1 anterless permit this year, which means Sprague and I will both hold doe tags in the same zone, and I’m hopeful one of us can bag a late season deer while the other one films.  Fall is easily one of my favorite seasons here in the northeast, and while I don’t find myself on the water as much, I will never get sick of chasing whitetail deer in the hardwoods.  

If you’re reading this please know you’re one of about four folks that will ever do so, and when you finish the last sentence of this paragraph do a little deer dance for me.  I need my luck to change here pretty soon if I want to throw some more venison in the freezer.  We’ll talk again in a couple months.