Minneota outdoorsman goes viral

Leo Buysse has showcased his outdoor talent and enthusiasm with a Facebook and Instagram pages called Buysse Outdoors. He has over 3,000 followers on Instagram.

“I started posting pictures on my personal Instagram account and then I realized some of my followers might get annoyed with all my fishing and hunting posts,” he explained, “so I decided to make an Instagram and Facebook page.”

His outdoor pages even caught the eye of Jig Heads Gear, which is now a sponsor.

“I guess I’d like to see Buysse Outdoors grow,” he said.

“I’d like to gain a few more sponsors and get some better gear. But I just love hunting and fishing and another sponsor would just be a bonus.”

And while it continues to grow, there may be a few kinks to iron out along the way.

“I hope to start making a few fishing videos, but I’ve noticed it’s very hard to catch fish and remember to hit record on my camera,” he joked.

Growing up on a farm equates to a majority of the time being spent outdoors. And for Leo Buysse, that time spent outdoors led to a love for hunting and fishing.

“I started hunting when I was 12 years old, and I started fishing when I was really young at our cabin on Lake Le Homme Dieu (near Alexandria). My cousins and I would sit on the dock all day catching bass and sunfish.”

“I’ve always been the outdoors kind of kid while growing up on our farm by Ghent. So I guess the fishing and hunting just came hand in hand with always being outdoors.”

And being outdoors is still what this young man enjoys most. Buysse, a standout athlete for Minneota High School, is now a sophomore at South Dakota State University in Brookings, studying Agriculture Science.

And whenever he has spare time, you can find Buysse on a lake fishing from his Crestliner boat in the summer or dipping a line under the ice in the winter, sitting in a deer stand waiting for a trophy buck to come into sight, or trampling through the brush in search of pheasant or grouse.

“I usually fish every day depending on my schedule, but during exam weeks I limit it to just on the weekend and maybe once during the week,” he said.

Most of his fishing activities are in South Dakota now, although he occasionally makes a trip to the Walker area in northern Minnesota to visit friends and try his luck at angling.

“I also make a trip to Lake Winnipeg (in Manitoba, Canada) in March every year,” he noted.

Buysse’s target fish are walleye, but he also enjoys catching an occasional perch or eelpout. “I’m not much into bass fishing, but I have had some luck catching big bass while walleye fishing.” Buysse’s personal-best walleye was 28.5 inches long and weighed 8.7 pounds.

His biggest bass is 6.0 pounds.

“I hope with a little luck I can break my personal best (bass) this year,” he said. Buysse owns a portable sled flip-over for early ice fishing, as well as an Ice Castle Fish House he purchased from the company in Montevideo.

“I spend my weekends with all my buddies out on the ice in the Ice Castle,” he remarked. “It’s awesome to fish in.”

Buysse also does the majority of his hunting near Brookings while at college, although his travels take him to other places in South Dakota for pheasant and deer.

“I bow hunt more than I should,” he said.

“But it’s very addicting for me.”

To prove just how much Buysse loves the outdoors, he claims he’d rather have an unsuccessful hunting day than not getting to hunt at all.

“I don’t really mind sitting in a cold tree stand all day even if I don’t see any deer,” he said.

“I just enjoy being outdoors.”