# 533 Deer Hunting – Zada Dog Tracker – Lyle Avis

We’re heading actually down to Georgia, and with Lyle Avis, and we’re going to be talking about dog tracking tonight. And he’s quasi-famous. He’s real famous in Georgia for Deer Hunting with his tracker – Zada, he’s getting famous throughout the social media world with just his stories and his handheld videos. And, you know, pronounce the name of your company, your dog company.

Right. So it’s Schmavis Outdoors.

: Schmavis Outdoors, so remember that. And you can look him up on social media. But Lyle kind of got reverse engineered, he fell in love, and then his wife got him into hunting. How did that happen?

So, yeah. So, I mean, my dad hunted a little bit [Inaudible 00:00:48], but I just wasn’t that…you know, I was never interested. And then I ended up getting married. We moved to Iowa, I get married and join the Army, move away. Years go by and we come back and my father-in-law and my wife, they’re like, “Hey, you want to go hunting today?” And I was like, “Man, I’ve never hunted anything in my life.” And on top of that he wants to go bowhunting. I’m like, “Well, I’ve never even shot a bow outside of like Boy Scout camp when I was like five,” you know?

So he comes home at lunch, hands me this bow from my little brother-in-law that’s, you know, about three inches draw length too short for me. And he’s like, “Here, I’ll show you how to shoot this.” So about 30 minutes of instruction at lunch, he comes back after work at about 3:30, 4:00 and he’s like, “You ready to go?” I’m like, “I shot for a half hour. Sure, I’m ready to go hunting.” They take me out there on that first hunt, I think I shot every arrow in that quiver and didn’t come within 10 feet of the deer I was shooting at, but, I mean, after that I was hooked. Went the next day, bought my own bow. And you’d be surprised how good you can shoot when you’re shooting a bow that actually fits you compared to shooting one three inches too short.

But, I mean, that’s what really sucked me in from there, was the in-laws and them wanting to go hunting and go out all the time. I mean right now they’re probably the biggest pheasant-hunting family that I know and a whole house full of pheasant and deer heads on the wall. And, you know, they have the land that we hunt whenever I go back home to Iowa [Inaudible 00:02:24]

Now what part of Iowa is it? What part of Iowa is it?

Northeastern Iowa, so it’s Dubuque, Iowa. They actually live in Epworth, Iowa right now, a tiny little speck on the map outside of Dubuque. Right on the Mississippi River kind of, where Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa all touch in that little corner right there, that is my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa.

Is that near McGregor at all?

It doesn’t sound familiar, but I haven’t been there.

Okay. McGregor is a little bit north of that. You know, like you said, you know where I went to college at University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, and so I wasn’t that far from it. I never hunted Iowa, I’ve only hunted Iowa for whitetails once, pheasant hunted a little bit. But I’d like to get back there, but it’s a four-year wait. You know, it’s just a four-year wait.