The Legacy Vault
Real hunters. Real stories. One legacy at a time.
Every episode features everyday hunters sharing unforgettable experiences, hard-earned lessons, and the traditions that keep our hunting heritage alive. Pull up a chair and join the conversation.
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First Generation Hunter Who Built A Hunting Life Worth Passing Down With Chuck Gray (Iowa)
Chuck did not grow up in a hunting family. His dad was not a hunter, nobody in the house was, and the closest he got to the outdoors as a kid was fishing. That changed when a friend invited him along on a deer hunt in his late teens and he killed a doe on his first sit. Something clicked that day that never unclicked. He spent the next several years borrowing gear, hunting permission ground, and learning everything he could from anyone willing to teach him. By the time he had kids of his own he was the one doing the teaching.
Chuck hunts whitetails and turkeys across Iowa and has built his access network the old fashioned way, knocking on doors, maintaining relationships, and treating every piece of ground like it could be gone tomorrow. He talks about mobile hunting setups, why he switched from a climber to a saddle, and how hunting pressure on public land pushed him to get more creative with private access. He also gets into the father and son dynamic, what it looks like to raise kids who actually want to be in the woods, and the morning his son shot his first deer while Chuck sat in the same stand he killed his first one from years earlier.
This episode covers Iowa whitetail hunting, turkey hunting, permission access, saddle hunting, and what it looks like when a first generation hunter builds something worth passing down. A Hunter's Legacy is built for stories exactly like Chuck's.
From Building Sketchy Homemade Stands To Running The Ultimate Mobile Setup With Kyle Smith (Ohio)
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How Tracking Dogs Replaced Hunting As The Best Part Of His Season With John Sturtevant (Iowa)
John grew up with no hunting family and no mentor, just a buddy, a .22 LR, and some creek bottoms to run around in. They trapped muskrats and coons before school, shot anything that moved, and figured it all out the hard way. That foundation turned into decades of bow hunting across multiple states and continents, all with bows he built himself from Osage wood he split by hand. He has made hundreds of bows, harvested hundreds of animals, and still will not pick up a compound.
These days John runs a certified blood tracking operation using wire-haired dachshunds bred in Europe specifically for this work. He does not charge. He just shows up with his dogs and tracks until the deer is found or it is not. He has found deer with zero blood, zero arrow, and zero sign other than what his dogs told him. He talks about how dogs read declining health pheromones, why a good tracking dog will find deer a drone never will, and what it feels like to walk up on somebody else's dead deer and get more excited than the hunter does.
He also bear hunts in Canada every fall, hog hunts in Texas every winter with traditional bows, and once tracked a wounded bear through thick brush wearing flip-flops while his rescue party walked into a yellow jacket nest on the way to help him. This episode covers traditional archery, self bow building, blood tracking dogs, bear baiting in Ontario, and why John gave up deer hunting most days just to run his dogs instead. A Hunter's Legacy is exactly where a story like his belongs.
How A Bad Neighbor Turned A Great Hunting Spot Into A Safety Hazard With Nathan Kopp (Missouri)
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Hunting The Same Dates On The Same Properties For Decades With Nelson Chandler (Georgia)
Nelson has been hunting the ridges and valleys of northwest Georgia since 1974, when he was ten years old and his dad handed him a single shot sixteen gauge with buckshot and said let's figure this out. Neither of them knew what they were doing, but Nelson missed a buck that first morning and has been chasing deer every season since. Fifty years without missing an opening day. He went from hunting off the school bus every afternoon after class, to working twenty-six years as a Walker County sheriff's deputy, to now finishing out his career at the county road department and planning his retirement around hunting season.
Nelson hunts a mix of leased ground, permission farms, and family property in the ridge and valley country just south of Chattanooga. He has been bow hunting Illinois for whitetails since 2004, killed a 138-inch buck in 1986 that still ranks in the county, and came within ten steps of what he describes as the biggest deer he has ever seen anywhere, only to watch a limb deflect his arrow in Illinois in 2020. He talks about the rut happening on the same dates on the same properties year after year, why he does not trust anybody who says temperature shifts the rut, and why finding a place to hunt is the single biggest threat facing hunters today.
He is also getting his grandkids into it, mailing out permission letters every offseason, and hitting the weight room fifty years into a lifting habit he started in 1978. A Hunter's Legacy is built for stories like Nelson's, fifty years of Georgia whitetail hunting from a man who has never stopped putting in the work.
The Shotgun On The Bottom Of A River And Five Ducks Still In The Boat With Hunter Childs (Wisconsin)
Hunter Childs goes by Rooster, a nickname his grandpa gave him for quoting John Wayne lines from True Grit so well it just stuck. He grew up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin near Webster, where the county forest system runs for miles, the dirt roads are sand and gravel, and the duck hunting is as good as anywhere in the country if you know where to look. His grandpa taught him to road hunt grouse from a Tahoe on snowmobile trails, his dad dropped him in a canoe with two boxes of shells and told him to figure it out, and somewhere in between he became one of the more passionate duck hunting guides in northern Wisconsin.
Rooster shot his first duck at six years old, his first wood duck at fourteen, and has spent the years since learning every bend of river and shallow slough in Burnett County worth knowing. He floats the river with a canoe instead of a big duck boat, times his hunts around frozen interior lakes when every bird in the county piles into the moving water, and guides people into spots most hunters will never find on a map. He also talks about Wisconsin's wolf problem, bear hunting with hounds, the reintroduced elk herd at Clam Lake, forty-two coyotes in three days in North Dakota, and the time his shotgun flew out of his hand and sank to the bottom of a river in November.
This is a northern Wisconsin hunting story about ducks, wolves, grouse, predators, and a guy who would rather float a river alone all day than sit in a blind waiting for something to happen. A Hunter's Legacy is built for stories like Rooster's, from first-generation guides learning the river to guys who still haven't found their shotgun.
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Hunter Childs goes by Rooster, a nickname his grandpa gave him for quoting John Wayne lines from True Grit so well it just stuck. He grew up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin near Webster, where the county forest system runs for miles, the dirt roads are sand and gravel, and the duck hunting is as good as anywhere in the country if you know where to look. His grandpa taught him to road hunt grouse from a Tahoe on snowmobile trails, his dad dropped him in a canoe with two boxes of shells and told him to figure it out, and somewhere in between he became one of the more passionate duck hunting guides in northern Wisconsin.
Rooster shot his first duck at six years old, his first wood duck at fourteen, and has spent the years since learning every bend of river and shallow slough in Burnett County worth knowing. He floats the river with a canoe instead of a big duck boat, times his hunts around frozen interior lakes when every bird in the county piles into the moving water, and guides people into spots most hunters will never find on a map. He also talks about Wisconsin's wolf problem, bear hunting with hounds, the reintroduced elk herd at Clam Lake, forty-two coyotes in three days in North Dakota, and the time his shotgun flew out of his hand and sank to the bottom of a river in November.
This is a northern Wisconsin hunting story about ducks, wolves, grouse, predators, and a guy who would rather float a river alone all day than sit in a blind waiting for something to happen. A Hunter's Legacy is built for stories like Rooster's, from first-generation guides learning the river to guys who still haven't found their shotgun.
How Good Ethics Turned Into Two 180 Inch Bucks In Seven Days With Russ Seal (Louisiana)
Russ grew up in the toe of the boot in South Louisiana, surrounded by family that breathed and slept hunting. Squirrels with his grandfather first, then deer on timber company ground where a spike buck was a genuine conversation piece and anything over 120 inches was the talk of the club. That world shaped him early, but it was a trip to Missouri public land in his twenties, where he drew back on a 135 inch buck at 35 yards and watched him wind him and walk off, that flipped a switch he has never been able to turn back off.
Since that day Russ has made it a personal mission to chase giant whitetails across the Midwest every November, hunting public land for most of his career until a stranger found his YouTube channel, liked what he saw, and invited him to hunt private farms in Missouri. That relationship turned into a 160 inch rifle buck the first year and a 184 inch giant the second. Seven days before that 184, he had already killed a 190 inch buck in Kansas. Two bucks over 180 inches in seven days, on two different pieces of ground, in two different states.
Russ is also a hang and hunt guy, a saddle hunter, and one of the more quietly obsessive whitetail hunters you will come across. He talks about why relationships open more doors than tactics ever will, what it takes to earn trust on somebody else's private ground, and why he thinks hunting ethics start long before you ever enter the woods. A Hunter's Legacy is built for stories like Russ's, from South Louisiana public land deer hunting to back to back giants that most whitetail hunters will never see in a lifetime. ...