Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 390: I Missed a Buck, Now What?

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Ep. 390: I Missed a Buck, Now What? · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host Mark Kenyan. In this episode number three nine
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and today in the show, we are tackling just about
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the most depressing topic in the deer hunting world, but
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: one that we all will likely face at one point
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: or another, and that's missing a buck and figuring out
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: what to do next. That's what happened to me last week. Actually,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: real quick, before we start today's episode, I gotta give
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: you a quick heads up. Season two of the Back forty,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the show I host that season, has launched. It is
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: now up on the meat Eater YouTube channel, and the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: second episode of season two just dropped a few days ago,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: so you gotta head on over to the meat Eater
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: YouTube channel and go give it a watch. The first
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: episode showcases some of the work we did earlier this spring.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Our progress are bees check in with Steve, Rinella and
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: UH and a look at how everything has been coming
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: together into the early summer. Episode two, I'm joined by
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Doug Durren and dan Ja Joe, a guy who you're
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: gonna hear from here on today's podcast. Soon we're planting trees,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: planting food plots, and making some real serious progress this
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: summer on the property, which led to a lot of
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: good things for us this year. Check it on out.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: It's at the Media to YouTube channel. I'm very proud
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: of it. I hope you guys enjoy it. Please give
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: it a watch, give us a thumbs up, give us
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a comment. It would be in the world. And now
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: today's podcast. All right, welcome to the Wired un podcast,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: brought to you by on Next. Today, we're talking about
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: something that none of us really want to have to
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: talk about, but we do. It gets swept under the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: rugs sometimes in the hunting world, and if you're out
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: there as a hunter and you're having experiences like this,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: you might feel like, oh, I'm the only guy in
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the world who's ever missed a deer, or you're gonna
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: feel really bad about yourself because this thing happened, and
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you feel like you're on an island. And when you
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: watch TV shows, everyone seems to be perfect, and they
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: seem to be killing big bucks left and right, and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: they do it so well, and you might be thinking, man,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: why can't I do that. Well, I'm here to tell
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you that we've all been there. It happens, and it
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: happens to those guys that look really guys and girls
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: that look really good on TV two. They might not
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: show it, but it's happening. And that's why I want
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: to talk about missing a deer and what do you
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: do next? Because I missed a deer here just recently.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I've had kind of a devastating week. Uh So I
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: want to tell that story. I want to talk about
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: what's happened. And also I'm here with another guy who
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: missed a deer just recently and he's processing and working
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: through all that right now, and so we want to
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: talk about that experience too. Were gonna work through the stories.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: We're gonna work through what we think we did right,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: what we maybe did wrong, what we can learn from it,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: different ideas for how all of us can kind of
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: take that next step after missing a deer and come
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: out the other side better and more prepared for the
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: next shot. So with me, I got four and a
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: half people to my left. The half person just gave
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: me the eye to my left. You know, Dan, I'm
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: gonna get this wrong. I don't know how to pronounce
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: your last name properly. Welcome, Welcome to my world. To
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: my left is Dane Asdo Okay, that's what I thought.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Danasavedo one the hunt on the back forty So congratulations,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for having me here. Um, it's
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: been maybe different than you expected because number one, because
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of because of that virus is going all over the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: country in the world these days, Steve could not come
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: here for the hunt. Um, so we had to have
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: some change of plans there. I know you're gonna get
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a makeup because of that, but we we still want
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to try to show you a good time here without Steve.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So Dana Gledger here, has been a lot of fun
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: to have you on the property. No, it's been great.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like I've had my own little hunting TV show.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: There's been by myself and some of them, so it's
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: been awesome. So Dane's to my left. To his left
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: is Dan jo Jo Dan, welcome back to the podcast.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on again. Yeah, and so for
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: folks that are longtime listeners, Dan was the new hunter
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: that joined us on a podcast last fall after one
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: of Q d Amy's Field to Fork mentors hunts, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: he went out on one of his first hunts with
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: with a friend of ours, Jason Meekoff and UM, and
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: then we decided that this year we're gonna put you
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: to work on the back forty and then bring you
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: out for another hunt. And then to his left is
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: half person Charlie. Charlie doesn't have a microphone. UM, but
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: if you recall the podcast last week with Tony Peterson,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Justin and Charlie. UM, if you're ever wondering what Charlie's thinking,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it's probably something related to staring off into the stars
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: or junk food UFO UFOs yesterday for quite a quite
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: a lengthy time. So, so Charlie is here and listening.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: If he's got something really important to say, he's gonna
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: grab a headset. If not, he's just gonna give us
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the look. And then we got Justin Camerman extraordinaire. He's
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: been a rock star out here for the last ten
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: twelve days whatever. It's been filming, me filming Dan Um
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: getting a lot of good stuff on film. So that's
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: our crew, and UM, let's let's talk a little bit.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the back forty. How about that? UM,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I want to talk a little about what's been going
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: on here, what's happened, what led you to what happened
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: last night? And then um, as we're kind of going
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: through this, we're talking through some things. Dane, jump in,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Justin jump in whoever? Um, But we are here for
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: two hunts, right. We wanted to get Dane a shot
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: at a buck out here on the property. You want
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the hunt. I want to show you a good time.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: And then also Dan, as I mentioned, is back out
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: here trying to get a shot at the first year ever. Um,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: before we get into last night, Dan, can you kind
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: of give us an update on how you're hunting experiences
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: have progressed since last fall. So last fall we had
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: talked and you dabbled a little bit by yourself. You
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: did a hunt with a mentor one time. Um in
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: between then and you know, pret prior to this trip,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: walking through what you've done, what your experience has been,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: trying to learn to hunt and figure this out on
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: your own. Still. Yeah, so last year, like you said,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: went out with Jason Meekoff from at that Field of
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: four program got me going and then I started getting
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: out there on my own just on public land. Right, Um,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: tried to dabble a little bit, just getting comfortable in
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the woods, getting comfortable in certain situations where I might
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: be able to find some deer, maybe you get a
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: shot off. You know. I kept practicing my bow, and
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that's what I really wanted to do, was try to
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: get up a deer with my bow. Um. You know,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: had a few encounters, but nothing really really you know, legitimate. Uh,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: just kind of was really getting the feel of it.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until this season where I kind of started
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: really cranking up, cranking up my efforts. UM. I started
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: doing a lot of research over the summer, you know
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: on x on, you know, on my home computer, of
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: just figuring out places to go scouting a little bit
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: in the summer. So I've pinpointed a few spots that
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I wanted to go hunt. UM, got my gear situation
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: figured out. I ended up deciding that I was gonna
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: hunt via a saddle. Uh. So I got comfortable with that. UM.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: So this season has been like a huge, huge step
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: in my game. UM, just trying to figure out the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: whole thing and trying to you know, make things happen
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and getting getting a deer. So it's been fun. I've
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: had a lot of you know, frustrations and good learning
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: experiences uh this season. But uh yeah, it's been good.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Any frustrations that stand out, well, uh big one. Big
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  Speaker 1: one has been just just learning things on my own. UM. Obviously,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: like we were talking about, like getting out there and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: seeing like a certain sign and trying to interpret that sign.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: What what that's really telling me? Um, you know, trying
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: to figure out if this is a good spot to
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: set up that versus that spot. UM. Dealing with hunting pressure. UM,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: that's been a big one because most of my hunts
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: have been on public land, right Like I'll find a
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: spot on on X and and think it's money just
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: to freaking hike in there, and there's there's a tree
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: stands set up right where I thought I would i'd
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: be hunting. So so that's been some frustrations. UM. I
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: don't know how much you want me to get into this,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: but I last week on a hunt, my last time
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  Speaker 1: before I came out here, I actually took a shot
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: at a deer um and messed. So that's been that's
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: been a frustration of mine, and you know, getting around that,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: trying to learn from it, trying to grow from it.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Taking these experiences is and trying to trying to just
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: pick out certain things and figure out how I would
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: do it differently next time. Um has been has been good.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Frustrating but good, but you know it's been fun. So
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: so walk me through that that Archer encounter. What happened there?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah? Yeah? So, uh, I was out on a Wednesday.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I had work off for Veteran Renterans Day, so I
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: woke up at three a m. Drove out too. He's
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: telling us Justin and I were sitting in the blind
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: together and what he's doing, and I just I listened
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: to him like he's on the right for Yeah, thanks guys,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: actually too deep at this point. There's some of the
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: details he gave us. There's no turning back. So he's
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: doomed his girlfriends. His girlfriends, you guys have ruined me. Man,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Like you know, I feel bad for her, but it's
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: it's over now. He's like, hey, man, I bought a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: noz In generator and running my clothes. They're like, oh buddy, yeah,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: speaking my life that he said the word maps and
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yea, welcome, So sorry you woke up at
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: three am? Yeah, woke up at three am. Drove out
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: to a public land spot that I've been hunting, set up,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: didn't see anything in the morning, and you know, just
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: was getting frustrated because my whole season has been like
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: fired up going to set up at this spot and
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: then not seeing anything. So I've had so few encounters
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: this season that it's been it's been challenging. So I
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: just decided, you know, you know whatever, I'm just gonna
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: go to a completely different spot for the afternoon hunt,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: hike around trying to find some good sign, and you know,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: see what happens, right, So I did exactly that. I
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: found another section. UM, a lot of guys were out,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: so I just wanted to get away from the guys.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Found a little spot, you know, probably three quarters of
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a mile into the public land. UM, a lot of
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: good sign. I basically set up on this like deer highway.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: What it what it seemed like. UM set up on
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the ground because I didn't really feel comfortable getting up
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: in the saddle. And UM, probably like an hour into
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the hunt, I saw I saw some movement off to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: my right. UM looked like there was two two dough
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: kind of passing through and then UM, I was gonna
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: wait for them to kind of come my way and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: then maybe set up on a spot, but they just
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: never did. And then I always, you know, you're always
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: saying like you gotta find the spot within the spot, right,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So I was like, you know, what, should I move
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: over there? Should I not? What do I do? Um?
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: So it was getting like last last hour of light,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: probably like five minutes to last shooting light, and I said,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: you know, screw it, I'm gonna walk over there and
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: just see if I can set up on this spot.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Maybe something will come cruising by. So I did that.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: On my way over there, I bumped those two dough
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: They ended up sticking around. I bumped them. I said, whatever,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: you know, hunts over at this point, but I didn't
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: want to. I didn't want to leave because I didn't
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: want to screw up anybody else's hunt on my way out.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So I just kind of set up on the ground
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and sure enough they came. They came back, and um,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: they came back and they were meandering around me. One
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: got to about thirty yards behind me. She was directly
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: down winding me, just sniffing at me, stomping her feet whatever,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: and I just knew I was like busted right, but
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: she was kind of quartering away from me, and she
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't running off, but she was kind of looking back,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and I just said, I'm gonna try to just you know,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: make something happen. Uh, drew back. Was it a shot
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I should have taken? I don't know, probably not a
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: little further out of my comfort zone in terms of
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: my range, but she was probably thirty to thirty five
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: yards let one rip, and I just hammered the trigger
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: right and I saw that, I saw the aero fly right.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I knew I missed it, and at that point I
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: was like whatever, you know it was It was cool
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: just to get a shot off at a deer. It
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: was cool going from like, Okay, I'm set up here
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: not seeing anything. I'm gonna be reposition and maybe get
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: myself an opportunity. And then I did get an opportunity,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: which was awesome, Uh, but just didn't make it happen.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: And um, I don't know. That was kind of the hunt.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: So the very first time I ever drew back on
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a deer, I was know, well, I hunted for quite
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: a few years before I did. I don't know, seventeen
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: something that maybe seen and it was a four point
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: buck that came walking in along the ridge and I
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: was in the ground blind down a little bottom and
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: then there's this main trail that came down the side
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: of this ridge, and I remember I remember seeing this
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: movement crusting the ridge and then antlers, and I thought,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: oh my god, there's a buck and it's getting closer,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and it's getting closer. And then I don't remember anything,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and then there was an arrow sticking in a tree.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I essentially blacked out once that buck came in. I mean,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: my body went into autopilot. I wasn't thinking, I had
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: no control over myself. It just was like there was
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: a buck. I drew back and all the arrow was
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: flying and what happened? Then afterwards, I'm sitting there thinking,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: how did they get to this point? Did that? Did
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: anything like that happen with you? It was like a
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: moment did you feel like you were in control? Were
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: you there mentally or was it like, holy crap, I
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: was shooting a deer and then just happened. Because because
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I'm trying, what I'm trying to say, is it it
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: is normal to feel that, especially early on. You describe
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: like your mindset and what was going through your head. Yeah,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I was there mentally, I didn't black out by any means, um,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: but the deer, the doe knew like what she was
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: looking at. Right, So I was, I was worried about
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: getting busted, and and I was I wanted it so bad, right,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I wanted that shot. I wanted it to
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: go my way, And the nerves started to hit me,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: and I was kind of shaken. Um, I was shaken
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: to the point where like when I did draw my
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: bow back, all the practice and all the repetition that
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: I had over the summer in season, repetition with my
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: bow kind of just like went out the window, right,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Like my process drawn back, getting my anchor points ready,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: you know, feeling my kisser button kind of just like
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: out the window at that point. So so that's after
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: after I took the shot, I realized, like I didn't
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: go through any of the things that I normally do
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: practicing with my target. You know. Um, that coupled with
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the nerves, I think, just just kind of ruined, ruined
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: my opportunity, hammered the shot, like I said, and I
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: just wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a good shot. Does
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: that sound familiar? To any of you guys justin Dane,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: have you ever been in that situation? Yeah, for sure,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: that's what that's what's you know, as time goes on
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and then where you put yourself in those scenarios, like
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: then you start to kind of reel it back in.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, there's definitely like a bit of a blackout
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: early on for sure. Dane. You're you've just gotten a
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: bow hunting the last couple of years, right, Yeah, I've
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I picked up a bow two years ago, and uh,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I mean I have yet to let a narrow go
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: on an animal. And I probably have to deal with
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: that same thing too, Like I have the checklist I
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: do at home night shoot, and it's you know, it's
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: don't grip too tight and your point, don't punch all
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: that stuff in my head when I'm practicing. But I've
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: yet to have to, like I don't put it in
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: game form. And I can tell you, having been bow
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: hunting for I don't know twenty years or something like that,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: um and killed a lot of deer with a bow,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I still have had moments where that stuff flies out
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the window to a degree, Like it's a constant battle,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: constantly trying to keep your composure, stay in control of
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the process. I mean, if anyone, anyone who's listened to
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the podcast for a long period time knows that, you know,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: several years ago I had to completely reconstruct how I
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: shoot to try to reclaim control. And it's been significantly
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: improved the past few years. But I still make mistakes too.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: So this is something that everybody listening, I think can
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: relate to in one way or another. And the only
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: ways that I've found to to to get that control back,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: and the only way I've heard consistently from other people,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: is to do two things. One is to constantly practice
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: that situation and and try to make it as automatic
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the being in the process, trying to make that as
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: automatic as possible, so that checklist and all the steps
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: you need to take becomes drilled into you. So there's
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: no way your body doesn't do anything except for nose
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: on the nose on the string anchor point. You know,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: don't talk about all this stuff. So that's so automatic
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: that even if your brain does shut down, your body
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: does all the right things. And then number two, and
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: most importantly, it's just doing it. It's just being in
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: that moment and handling that situation and shooting under pressure.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: You can replicate a little bit by shooting with friends
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: or shooting in competition, finding some way to add some
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: some degree of pressure to the shot and and that
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: in a way we'll replicate, you know, the pressure of
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a deer in front of you, but nothing quite does
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: it like an actual hand one in front of you
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and having to do that. Um, justin you've missed some
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: deer probably, right, How do you talk me through some
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: situations you've been through? Is there anyone that stands out? Yeah?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I mean do you want mrs or do you want
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: like bad shots? You could say, whatever story you think better,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: best showcases? Uh, something you can learn from, something you
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: can identify a problem with. Yeah. I think the the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: biggest thing is like slowing down. It's like as as
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the moment ramps up, you have to slow it down.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: And that's you know, I think time practicing and the repetition.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: You just have to create muscle memory and overcome. Like
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, we were talking yesterday about this thing that
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: happens to you when a deer comes in and you know,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: either you shoot or you don't shoot, but your body
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: goes into this like different mode and you you know,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how you control it. You just
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: kind of had to ride with a ride. You know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you're along for the ride, and um but yeah, creating
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: that like I, you know, I have a deer that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: still kind of haunts me and it's hanging in my
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: friend's house. Um. I. It was one of my first
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: all day sits and it was like three o'clock in
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the afternoon and I was like, you know, I guess
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: it's starting to lose focus. You know, it's a long
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: day and it all can happen so quickly. I think
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: that's one thing is like you don't always have the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: luxury of seeing like Okay, it's at three hundred yards. Now,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: it's at two hundred yards. Now, it's you know, it's like,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: oh crap, there is a dough with a block behind it,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and um yeah. It's like I don't know how you
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: really reel in that because you need you feel like,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: oh I gotta make it happen. I gotta make it happen.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, like even you like the other
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: day watching you shoot that deer. You know, I've I've
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: heard you talk about your process and whatnot, and I'm like, yeah, whatever,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: like yeah, Mark, um. So yeah, when I was in
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the tree with Mark, I've heard him talk about his
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: process and these things that he goes through. And I'm
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: on the deer filming and like I know that he
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: has drawn back, and I'm like, why is he not shooting?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And then like looking back at the footage and like
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: seeing what was going on, it's like you somehow you
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: have like kind of honed in on like that process
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and we're able to slow down. And I kept thinking
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: when I would shoot, I would have shot before you,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: but like I mean, and you you killed the deer. Um,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: And yeah, so that that buck came in behind the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: dough is shoes at thirty yards. They were at thirty yards,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and you know, I felt like I had a little
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: time and no I punched the trigger. It's like it's
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: one of those things like I think we all work
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: at and um, you know, I've even I feel confident
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: with my release, but I want to go further, Like
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I can kill deer with my current set up, but
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I'd love to go further because taking out any chances
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: of like, uh, something that could go wrong, you know.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: So I've toyed with going to a back tension release.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's never easy. And I think you bring
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: up a good point, which is anyone out there right now,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: anyone listening, not even the very best, most ice school
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: killer out there, is always going to be perfect. We
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: all are going to have those moments where it doesn't
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: go just right. Even if you do everything right, there's
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: still a wild animal, and there's there's these variables that
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: are out of your control too. So what I've always
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: thought is that just be working to get better, always
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: getting better every single year in the off season. Thing, Okay,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I did pretty good last year, maybe I didn't do
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: so good last year. What things can I identify that
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I can work on? What can I do differently? How
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: can I do something to to take that next step
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: or two or three steps that next year I'm a
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: little bit better than it was last year. And you
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: brought up the fact that you felt like you had
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: to take the shot like it was I canna tell
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: you a vantage opportunity and you said the same thing, damn.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: And there's there's like three types of misses I think
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: that that happened. There's maybe there's probably a lot more
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: of that, but I can think of like three categories.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: There's one category where someone's out there shooting and they
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: just have not practiced enough. They just they can't shoot well.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: And that one's just kind of on you. Everyone's going
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: to make sure that they're practicing, that they're competent, etcetera.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: But then there's two other kinds of misses that tend
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: to happen for people that are competent with their equipment
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and with the process, but still happen. And one of
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: those is, um, just like target panic buck fever. You
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: just like your nerves got ahold of you and you,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you know, just you lost track of your process. And
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the third one is what I think you described justin,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: which is forcing a shot situation where you feel like
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I gotta take the shot. We worked so hard for
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: this stuff all year, right. We put in a lot
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: of time, a lot of time in season, a lot
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of team time offseason, put an energy, We sacrifice, we
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: take vacation days, or we don't spend time with our
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: families or friends, or we wake up at three am,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, and all that builds up, builds up,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: builds up, and you've got this like, wait, you're this
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: thing in your chest that feels like I'm supposed to
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: get this thing done. It's finally here. Oh my gotta
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: have to I gotta do it right now. And bam,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: you force something that you shouldn't have. And let me
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: tell you what I can relate to that. I had
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: a situation I've had. I hate that. I can name
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: several situations like this. But there's a buck that a
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: lot of you guys heard me talk about back in
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, the biggest buck I've ever been
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: able to hunt at that time, great big buck down Ohio,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and I've been hunting him for two years and finally
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: it's like October sixteenth. Actually, I made like a kind
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: of impromptu move, drove four and a half hours down
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: to this property because I thought he'd be moving with
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: this weather front came through and took a diving close
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to his bedding area. And the second day I made
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a move in there and bam, out of know where
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: he's there. I turned around, he's right there, yards or
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: something like that. But walking quickly across this opening, and
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I remember thinking this exact same thing you to justin.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I said, I have to get the shot. He's about
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: to walk out of my life and and I spun
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: around and I'm trying to get the camera on him,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and I'm trying to draw back, and he's about to
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: walk behind the bushes, and I gotta shoot now, and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I just did it, and I didn't slow down, I
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: didn't focus on my process. I forced the shot, hit
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: back and low, and didn't find him for a couple
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: of months, didn't find him till the winter. And that's
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: one that has q with man for a long time.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: So the question when that kind of thing happens is
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: is what do you do? The question after any of
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: these is what do you do next? How do you
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: handle that? What do you learn from it? So coming
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: out of that one, it was trying to find ways
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: to like get my mind back to process. So something
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: coming out of that hunt I remember was trying to
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: develop a mantra of sorts. This is a common thing
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: A lot of people talk about a way to use
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: verbal cues to pull you back into control. So, you know,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: at that point, I'm remember what I was saying back then.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I think it was, um, I honestly can't think of
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: what it was, but it's some kind of verbal thing.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: It was something just like slow it down and slow
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: it down and slow it down. Just something that can
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: break you out of the trance, because there's this kind
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: of shot trance that we get into when he's coming
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: in and he's like, Oh, I gotta go. If you
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: can somehow snap it, I've found if you can break
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: yourself out of it's kind of like there's this invisible barrier.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: You know those movies, and they show like a force
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: field around something, and it's a force field you can
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: kind of push up against, like a bubble. But if
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: you can finally burst through that bubble and explodes, you
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: can get through. When you are trying to get a
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: shot at a deer with a gun or a bow,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: you're stuck in this crazy bubble of intensity and this
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: moments insane and you're you're in this blackout bubble. If
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: you can somehow find something they can push you through
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: and pop it all of a sudden, sanity can take
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: control again. The mantra is one way to do that.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I've worked on several other things have helped me, but
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: usually it's some kind of verbal cue, a checklist, something
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that can snap you. If you can get two step
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: one and actually think about in your head, it's a
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: whole hell of a lot easier to get to step two.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: And if you can literally say the words okay, splash
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: it out, get on the target, okay, watch to keep
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: it okay, which is so for me like my process
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: right now, drawback. It's splashed on her. I took this
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: from Brian Call and I just used it. Um. So
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: let's just get the pin on the on the deer
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: where you want it and then watch it keep it.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm just watching the pin and letting the pin flop.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna watch, watch, watch, and then it's pull pull, pull, pull,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: and so all at that point once I'm on, I'm
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: watching it for a couple of seconds and then I'm
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: just gonna slowly pull pull, pull until that sucker goes
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: off and I use the back tension released now so
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: that I kind of lose a little bit of control
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: and that I can't determine when the trigger gets punched.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: All I can do is pull, and it's just like
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: a slow squeeze back with the shoulder and then it
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: goes And that's helped me a lot. I'm not saying
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: I'm perfect, Let's helped me a lot. Um. That's that's
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: one way to think about some of these things. I
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: guess let's get to then, Dan, what happened on this hunt.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna keep working through a number of different
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: examples here and talking about what we can do from those.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: So Dan, you you had that archery encounter and then
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: you're gonna come out here and hunt with us. Um,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: what were your thoughts coming to this on? Were you excited?
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Were you nervous? Did you think I'm gonna kill a deer?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Did you think this is did you want to do this?
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Were you feeling pressured to do this? Where's your head? So?
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel pressured to do this at all? I
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I was. I was really excited. Like you guys had
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: me out over the summer. I put some work into
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the property and I was fired up to to come
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: out and hunt with you guys, right. So I was
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: happy to be here and I was ready to go.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I did you know, like my rifle hunting experience has
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: been limited, right, So that that aspect was kind of
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I was a little unsure about it, but
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, I felt pretty confident that
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: you guys would coach me through it and we would
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: end up getting getting into something. Um. So I was
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: pretty was pretty excited, pretty kind of nervous, but yeah,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I felt good. Yea uh. And so we started the
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: trip Dan and Dan came with my place. We did
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: some shooting. Everyone was shooting really good. We felt good
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: about stuff. Um, and then we had out to hunt.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: First day we had a lousy weather. It was like monsoon,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: crazy wind Michigan. Dan was that probably wasn't what you
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: were expecting and invest thing. I didn't know what to expect.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I think i'd asked you, I don't know a week
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: or two before I came out, It's like, what should
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I plan for for weather? And you told me, well,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: it's been seventy five here, but it could get down
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to the twenties. So it was kind of a wide range.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was coming into and what
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: to expect when I did get here, and she she
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: gave her She gave us Hell's Kansas and Michigan. Yeah,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: it was some serious blowing winds. I think it's like
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: twenty five to thirty sustained type winds with gusts up
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to sixty at one point there soon. Um, there were
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: a couple of times when the gusts hit the tower blends,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: and I was like, good, about to get some good
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: footage of us falling over. But everything held up darn
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: well and the wallton never nothing pulled on the wall
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: to solid construction. Whoever started up the impressed, Yes, it
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: must have been us that did a good job. Um,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: and the tower blinds withstood it all. I was pleasantly
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: surprised with all that. Um. But day one was pretty rough.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: We saw what the first morning we saw Dan and
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I work three do three doughs? Yeah, I think so.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I think we had the one that busted us. And
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: did we see a few more summer? I feel like
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: we saw three in the morning and three in the
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: evening I remember, right. I can't remember where those three were,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: remember the one that came down by itself, But we
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: were the other two well, in the evening you're talking
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: about the evening. In the morning, I can't remember. I
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: saw nothing but sideways rain. You saw hard blind And
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: then we played a lot of UK in the middle
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: of the day, which was fun. Found out the dans
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of cheating food played a cheating is not the right
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: way to describe my that is fair game. Yeah, he
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have been here if you don't know about
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: his character exactly. We would have redacted that invitation real
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: quick if I played cards to the beforehand. Yeah, I
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: guess so. Um. We snuck out at the end of
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: the evening was crazy windy. We thought, you know, let's
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: just sneak out in the ground and see if we
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: can spot something and maybe get lucky. We ended up
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: seeing three doughs, which you know, could have been a
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: buck behind him. You never know. It could have worked out,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: but it didn't. It was worth a shot. And uh,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: next morning we switched locations. We ended up seeing three
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: doughs or handful of dos. No five doughs, so five
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: there's the first two and then another group of three
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and Dane, would you see three dos? So we've been
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: seeing kind of a handful of dose every sin it's
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: kind of been the story, but no bucks until last night. Um.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And this is a relatively short hunt, three day hunt
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: with bad weather in the first day. We're on night
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: of number two, so we're approaching two thirds of the
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: way done. Dan, how are you feeling going into the hunt?
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Last night we set up back near the honey hole. Uh,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: the same spot that my dad was hunting. One of
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: the nights when he came out here, um close to
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: where I killed my buck a week ago. Um, do
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you feel good? Did you feel? Yeah? I felt really
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: good going into the evening hunt last night. The weather
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: was kind of calming down, the wind was going to
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: die down in the evening, right kind of near last
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: shooting light. So I think I told you earlier in
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the day. I think like tonight's tonight's I have a
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: good feeling about tonight. So yeah, I was really excited. Yeah,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: I felt really good too. Like you said that, we've
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: been having a crazy wind and bad weather, and and
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: yesterday evening was the first day it was really gonna
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: first time I was gonna it was gonna die down.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: It was real cold, bluebird skies. It just seemed like
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: deer should be moving. And sure enough we got to
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the last hour or so, last forty five minutes and bam,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: first year we see behind us, justin extraly spot a
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: first nice nice eye. Justin, Um, there's a buck standing
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: right behind us. First buck was seen of the hunt.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: And justin just as there's a buck right behind us.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And then I slipped my head around and look out
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the side window, and I see right away it's like
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: a nice tight tall buck. Um, and he's he's staring
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: right at us. Dan, what I was going? Walk me
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: through your thoughts at this point. So we say there's
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: a buck, I spin around and and you didn't move.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: You were just kind of sitting there one like, Dann,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you should be getting ready now breathing started. So Dan
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: walked me through was going through your head when when
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: you heard there's a buck, and then the process began.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: And I'll let you kind of tell the story from
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: here if you want, and maybe we'll jump in, but
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: you walk up there, I'll do my best to try
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: to give you guys a feel for what happened. So
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: so Justin says there's a buck behind us, first thought
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: in my mind is like you're kidding. And then but
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: it's like all right, here we go like um, so
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: like my next thought was like, all right, I want
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: to get eyes on it to just just see where
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: it's at, see what I have to do next. Um.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Where the buck was at was wasn't really where we
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: were anticipating anything to really come by, right, Like we
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: were kind of checking the back, but we weren't really
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: like focused on that being a scenario where we would
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: take a shot. Like we were. We were looking out
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of the front window. I was looking out of the side.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: You were looking out of the side, but the back
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: window was kind of like our least expected opportunity. Um.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: So we kind of had to do some like shuffling around, right.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Um so Justin had to get a camera in position.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: I had to get like my shooting stick over to
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: where I you know, I thought I could get comfortable
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: and get the gun set up and um get in
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: position to take a shot. Uh So at that point,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: the buck was just kind of staring at us, right,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: it was down when he knew something was up, but
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: apparently didn't know enough because he didn't move. He just
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: stood there's kind of like nose up looking staring. But
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: but for a long time, for a minute or two,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, for quite a while. Right, I'd ranged
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: him as soon saw I'd spun, got my head out
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: there and ranged him. Was just over a hundred yards. Um.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: And then yeah, you you you started getting in position,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: knelt down, get your shooting stick up. Yeah, and uh yeah,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: you were kind of you were doing mark. You were
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: doing a good job with like you know, take your time. Um,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: you know, get comfortable, and then you know he's gonna
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: start walking away, and right then, you know, I'll try
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: to make a big noise to stop him. And then's
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: where that's when we'll have try to you know, have
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to get a shot. And uh so I
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: get set up. I'm I'm shaking, man. You know, I'm
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: getting nervous, I'm getting the buck fever coming coming down.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I'm breathing heavy. But I'm just trying to stay in
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: control as best as possible. Right. Um, I had a
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: little awkward thing going out with my shooting stick where
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: I had to prop it up against my leg get
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the gun up, but I had the book in my view,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: had him in the crosshairs, and as he started to
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: walk away, he kind of turned away from us. Um
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: took a few steps and then looked back and he
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: was quartering away from us. Perfect like perfect opportunity, right
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: like perfect case scenario to get a shot. Mark. You
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: didn't really have to give him a big noise or anything.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: But I just kind of like kept saying, don't rush
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: the shot, don't rush the shot, like just like we practice,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: just easy squeeze and Um, for what it was worth,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty hard quarter. So yeah, I mean
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: he he wasn't you know, he was definitely less broadside
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: than you would hope. But your angle makes it look
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: worse than it was from my angle, looked not. I
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: mean it was a good job. Yeah, yeah, but I
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: mean it was definitely the best that he had given
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: a second point, when I saw him in the scupe,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I said, this is this is fantastic, um, And I
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: put the cross hairs where where they needed to be.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Obviously I had some I had some shake in me,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: you know, Um. And then uh, I let it ripped
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: right like I let it rip, and I kept looking
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: through the scope. He he started to trot off, but
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: he didn't like, you know, go busting through sprinting away
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: like he spooped. He kind of trotted off, went into
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the fence rowe kind of like that wooded area. UM
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: looked back, was flicking his tail, head, his head, his
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: leg up. And my first thought after I took the
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: shot was like, like what happened? Like did I did
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I hit him? Why didn't he drop? Right? Like That's
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: what I was looking for. I was like, why didn't
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: he drop? Like he didn't drop? It must have missed, Um,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: so so then I think it was you guys were like,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you hit him, like I think that was a good shot.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And then he looked like he either turned down like
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: a little ridge or a little hill, and I think
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you guys said like, we think he went down he
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: tipped over. And I said really like like I'm thinking
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: in my head like I don't I don't know, like
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if I missed him. I
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: don't know if I hit him and it wasn't a
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: good shot. I started to get a little worried, and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: I remember looking through the binoculars watching it all happen,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: and at the hit, I couldn't see impact, but the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: way he started running off sort of I immediately thought
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: that's a good hit, because the tail tucked almost immediately
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and he almost look a little hunched over. And then
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: when he got to the edge of the woods, he stopped,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and that's when it looked like he was a little
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: hunched and the tail started flicking. And the first thing
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: I thought when I saw that was okay, hitting the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: back hit back a little bit, because whenever you see
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: a deer that hunches up and the tail was kind
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: of like that, that seems like a paunch it of
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: some kind, but with cording away angle. I thought, okay,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: entry a little bit back, which explains why I reacted
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that way. Exit right through the lungs dead deer. And
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: so so he stops for a couple of seconds like that,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: just inside the tree, so you can just kind of
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: see his figure like that, and then he tail keeps
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: flicking step step step, and then it really looks like
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: it really looks dropped. I don't I can't explain what
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: we were seeing, but it really looked like that. So
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: that's why myself of the binoculars and then we all
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: justin I both thought, man, we think that's a There
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: is nothing that he did indicated he wasn't hit. I
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: mean yeah, just like you explained, it's like Dan, and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: now I feel like, you know, a goon because like
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I just totally myself misinterpreted it. You know, do you
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: feel complicit? Now? I feel like Dan's not going to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: trust me. I don't know about that. Just so yeah, um,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: but man, we were stoked, and uh, Dan was like
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: sitting there. I'm like, dude, who you gotta stare at?
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Like texting people get excited about this when we when
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: we heard the shot over in our blind it was immediate.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Me and Charlie looked at each other and we were stoked.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: We heard the shots like that was Dan, that's a deer,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Like it's down. I pulled out my phone immediately and
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: just was waiting for a text message, just waiting for something.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: So we were filing the excitement too over in our
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: blind forehead. We're so excited. Uh. And and you know
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: that's that's those moments or what you live for as
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: a hunter, like that ultimate euphoria dandis shots first deer.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: We're so excited for you and and and you were
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: the one being cautious, which was smart. Me and Justin
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: were like little stupid kids. And uh, you know, a
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: long story short, we can kind of fast forward a
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: little bit. We decided to, you know, give it a
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: little time, go back, get the get the UTV, get
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: the rest of the crew. Um, just make sure everything
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: was cool. And then we go back out there and look.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: And and when we went back out there to look,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: couldn't find blood, couldn't find couldn't find hair, couldn't find anything. Um,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: search and search and search, no sign. And then we thought, well,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: let's just peek over to where we saw him go down,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, he should be right there, go over there.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Nothing nothing, no blood, no blood. We find one speck
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: of red that we think is blood. That's it. We
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: spent quite a deal, quite a good amount of time
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: from there continuing to look went in a little ways.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: At this point, after finding nothing between the site impact
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: and where we thought that dear had gone down and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: in so little sign, I started getting worried. But I
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: have a friend with a tracking dog who, um, who
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I know is really good and has helped a lot
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: of people in this situation. So once we got to
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: that point where it's like, okay, we do not have
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: good blood. We've searched decent ways in here without any
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: kind of positive sign um. What he's always telling me.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: He's like, don't screw it up for me, if you're
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: not feeling good about it, don't go too far and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: ruin it for the dog. Let the dog do the work.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: So we eventually decided to pull back, wait for the dog,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and and not push our luck. So we didn't have
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: my friend come out with his dog. We continue to
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: look more around the side of impact, trying to find something,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: continue to look inside the woods, trying to find something.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: My buddy comes out with this dog. He goes tracking
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: the dogs on a track, but she doesn't follow blood.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: She follows like an interdigital glands. And so even there
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: was no blood, she was tracking something. But he kept
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: going and going and going, and justin year with him
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: for a while. So you saw this. But to make it, uh,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: to kind of take hours of time and compress it
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: into a short period. Um, you know it found zero
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: blood found, zero deer found, no hair, found nothing. And
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: when we restarted that track three times just to be sure, Um,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: she was on the right dear, and yeah, we just
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: never never could find anything. And he went and did
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: downwind sweeps of all the different areas of cover just
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: in case and see if she could smell a body
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: or something enough. And um, so I don't know it was.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: It was midnight or one o'clock or something by the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: time we called. We called it, and um, I ended
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: up finding after looking for more blood, I found in
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: this area where we found that little speck of blood,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: you know, like a little less than a fingernail blood. Um,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of these little berries, like red berries,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: and one of the berries I was smashing barriers to
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: try to see like what does the smash berry look like?
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: And one of them had like an orange jelly light consistency.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, that doesn't look anything like our blood,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: so I must be really blood. But then later I
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: was testing on another berry and that one looked exactly
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: like our speck of blood. There's a dark red barrier.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: So then I was starting to question, like was that
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: even blood. We looked at the footage over and over again, like, man,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: we can't see an impact. We can't see like maybe
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: maybe this little movement on his shoulder is it, but
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: we just can't tell on the small screen. Um, And
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: so we we pulled out for the night. You guys
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: blew it up on the big screen, looked at again,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: and what did you guys see justin when you looked
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: on the big screen. Yeah, we got back at thirty
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: and I was like just kind of dying to see
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: what had happened, because I knew once we got like
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: zoomed in a bit, it would tell more of the story.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: And um, you could see the shot and immediately you
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: know the deer reacted and when you go frame by frame,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: like then I see behind the deer there's a reaction
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: at the base of this tree, and I see a
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: stick jump and then I see like they're So it
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: was immediately evident that like the shot was over its
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: back and it hit the tree behind, and there was
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a you know, and obviously you
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: have a three inch screen, you can't really tell what's
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: going on. But yeah, so it was like, man, I
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: wish we could have seen this sooner, but it was
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: It actually was a relief because I knew then we
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: could tell Dan like us, and the deer's not hurt
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: at all. What we what we thought was blood must
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: be these berries, which we kind of like wrestled with
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the whole time because we kept kind of seeing and
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: so I knew that Dan was already like struggling, but
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I knew like part of that struggle was the fact
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: that he has a wounded deer out there. So it
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: was a way to to add closure to that situation
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: and like hopefully get him, uh mentally where he could
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: try again. Yeah, so we ended the night and you
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: know kind of a Dan, take tonight, sleep in, think
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: about what you want to do, um, and then let's
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: figure out how we want to proceed from here. What
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: was last night and this morning? Like for you, Yeah,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: last night was rough. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. It
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, a lot of different things happening
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: in my mind. Like you know, the big thing was
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: all right, I just shot at the animal. I wounded it,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: but he didn't die. Um. That that was. That's been
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: like my biggest thing with with getting into hunting is
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: like I don't want to like have to put you know,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: more than one arrow in a deer, more than one
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: shot intew a deer. I just want to clean an
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: ethical kill like that. That was. That was really eating
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: away at me. Uh. The other part of it is
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: like we were we were out, all of us were out,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: and I you know, I really appreciate you guys being
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: out and being so supportive Like that was like God,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: like I put us in this situation. I'm bringing the
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: whole group down. Like I feel terrible, but you I mean,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: you guys were great, justin you June Bug and Andy
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: like put in put in some work to try to
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: figure out what was going on. And I really appreciate that.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: That was going through my mind and I just kind
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I felt bad. I felt you know a little bit
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: of embarrassment, Like I just just kind of had a
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: sick to my stomach type type of field in so
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: many different ways that that was last night. But you know,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I went back. I was so austin and I ended
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: up luckily crashing right away. Um, you know, woke up
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: this morning and I had talked to one of my
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: fishing buddies, Will, and he was, you know, I was
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: running through everything was going on. I was telling him
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: like what should I do, Like should I just kind
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: of take it off or whatever? And he was like
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: kind of talking me through some stuff. He's like he's
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: a fan of Jocko and he goes, you know, when
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: something bad happens, like good get better. And I'm like, alright,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Like now you got me all fired up. So you
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: know you had mentioned you had mentioned maybe you know,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you know, take them morning off and getting some some
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: more shots and making sure our gun was good and
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: then maybe doing something like an evening hunt. And I
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: was like, all right, let's let's do that. Let's get
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: comfortable with the gun again, and then let's maybe try
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: to give it another shot in the evening. Well. I
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: was excited to hear that because my experience has always
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: been that, Like, what happened is the worst. It's the
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: worst feeling if you go from this euphoria thinking that
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the thing you've wanted so badly just happened to just
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: having a crash back down. I mean, there's no wilder
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: swing of emotions that I can think if you go
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: from we said all the time, the highest highest to
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: the lowest and lowest. I mean, that's but the best
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: thing I found is too you feel it, feel it
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: that day or that night, experience it. Okay, this sucks.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: This happened, Like we're not gonna ignore that it happened.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: It happened, but it's now past us, it's behind us.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: There's nothing I can I can't do anything to change
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: what happened. All I can do is change what's next. So,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: like Jacko says, good now, what now? What are you
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: gonna do? And that's the way I've always tried to
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: approach things. So that next day I like to shoot,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: get get my confidence back, and that's back into it.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: And so that's what we did this morning, came over
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: my place, we did some more shooting. You're shooting great.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: The gun the site was actually, for whatever reason, the
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: scope was hitting a little bit higher than we would
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: have wanted, so we tweaked that a little bit. We've
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: practiced different shooting angles, different shoot positions. So you shot seated,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: you shot kneeling, You shot with a good rest, you
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: shot with just the stick rest, um got you. You know,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I hope you're feeling confident again and locked in and
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: we're gonna go out and give it a crack tonight.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: So so so you're you're feeling, you're feeling ready to
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: take take this next step and get back effort. Yeah,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I'm excited. I'm feeling ready. Yeah, last night was rough,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: and you know, so many things we're going through my mind,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: like God, like just I should just stick to fishing
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: or something like. You know, well, I'm glad you got
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: past that because I love fishing. It's not as much
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: meat and uh. And I think that when this all
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: comes together for you, when it's going to I can't
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: promise gonna happen today, but at some point this is
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: gonna come together for you, makes it all the much sweeter.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Oh man, It's gonna be an unbelievable culmination for you,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna eat the best food of your life
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and you'll never feel so satisfied with the meal and
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: the work you put into this is going to come
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: back tenfold. And I'm just so excited for that moment.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: And I hope it happens tonight. If not, I hope
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get a phone call or a picture and
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna crack a cold one for you, and I'm
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: gonna be really really happy because I got a lot
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: of confidence in you from from spend time with you
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: last fall, a little bit this summer, now this week. Um,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: you are on the right track, man, You're definitely on
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: the right track. So so I guess the way to
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: end this then because we know how dance hunt last
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: night and and we'll get an ending there possibly later today.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: But you had made these mistakes, or maybe not in
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: really big mistakes, but you had these things happen, you know,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: the nerves, and we've talked with things like justin described
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: feeling you had to force a shot, feeling like you've
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: had forced a shot with that deer in the bow. Um,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: you know you're a brand new hunter and you experienced that. Well,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: we should end the conversation with a very experienced hunter
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: describing something like that. So for all of you folks listening,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: you heard last week I shared the story of how
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: I killed the draft time buck out here in the
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: back for you. Well, when I got that done, we
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: finished filming things and I had a couple of extra
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: days before Dan and Dane we're going to show up,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: so I had some bonus hunts. I thought, Man, I
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: can get back and try to get after my target
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: buck again. This deer I've been hunting for the last
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: three years, call him Tran. Anyone listening for a long
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: period of time has heard too much about this deer.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: So I was really excited, like, man, I get to
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: go back after it. Good weather, good conditions. I haven't
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: been in there four days. Um, he's been in this
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: little pocket so much in the past. I'm going to
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: get back in there and take a crack. So a
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: couple updates from the last time I talked about my
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: hunt for tram So the last time on the podcast
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: I gave you as an update, it was after I
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: had seen him locked onto a dough. I tried to
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: spot and stalk in on him, never came quite close enough.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: And then two days later I think I made the
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: move into like the middle of this betting area. Super
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: early set up a news stand, and he came by
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: ten minutes before a shooting light, and I couldn't shoot him,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: but he was right there ten yards and then he
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: winded me after he walked past my shooting lane and
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: went down wind. So that had all happened. After that,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: hunt kept on going after him. The next day, I'm
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: walking out to set up on the north side of
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: this betting area, and as I'm walking on the outside
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: edge of the cut cornfield, the only way I can
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: get to the north side of the section. Um, there's
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: never deer betted around here. This is safe access route.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: It's like two o'clock in the afternoon or one thirty
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon, and a deer, a dope jumps out
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: from in front of me, and like a little ten
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: ft patch of grass on the edge of this cornfield,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: the dope starts running and then right behind her steps
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: up Tran goes running away. He was down winding me.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: He was he saw me, so I just busted him,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: like fifty yards away. He goes running the laft. So
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: that's the second time. And no, well, he winded me
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: twice the day before because he went down wind to
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: me before daylight and then came two hundred yards down
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: wind later in the day. The day prior and now
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: the next day, I just bumped him visually and with wind.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: So I'm bummed out and frustrated with that. I repositioned
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: for that even news hunt. Don't see him that night,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: but the next day I keep on keep on moving,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: and basically at this point in the season, after having
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: had so many encounters with him in this in and
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: around his betting area, I decided, like the rest of
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: my hunt for him, the key is not I'm not
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: blowing the mount of here. He wants to be in
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: this pocket. It's like thirty acres a thick, nasty and
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: there's so many doughs in here, and it just seems
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: like everything I'm seeing this is where he is, and
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: he's just going from dough to dough to dough in here,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: and there's no reason for him to leave because there's
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: enough dos in here in this food and cover, and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: if if you know, historically he's not been bothered in
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: this area. Just this year, for the first time, I
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: could get into some of the stuff. So I decided
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep cycling around this based off wind
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: direct and being one of these couple of key places
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: that he seems to pass through the most when he's
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: cruising or we're does will take him in and out
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: here on a camp out in those spots, so that
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: next night I make a move into the same general area,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: see him again. He's kind of cruising, follows a doorways
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah, but similar situation doesn't give me a shot.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Um too far away with her and then follows her
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: out into the corn. That was right around the end
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: of the first period of hunting before I had come
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: and start hunting the back forty. So come hunt the
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: back ford to kill the draft time buck. Now I'm
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: back on the property. I've got my couple of bonus days.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: First day it's cold front pushing to the south side
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: of this pocket of bedding because we've got something slightly
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: north northwest winds and gets set up on the edge
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: of the stuff. Every time and going, I'm setting a
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: new stands. I hunting new spots every single time, going
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: in my sticks and saddle about an hour after daylight. Um,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: I'm watching t J. This buck that looks just like
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Tram like a couple of years younger. He comes working
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: past me like five yards. I'm watching him and I
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: look up and here comes the real deal. Here comes
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Tran coming right at me. Um, it looks great, like
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: this is gonna have him grabbed my ball, get clipped on.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: He's at seventy five, he's at seventy, he's at sixty five,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: he's at sixty, he's at fifty five, kind of heading
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: up my right at me, and then he turns his
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: angle and starts angling the way back to sixty, back
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: to sixty five, back to seventy. And at that point
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: I realized, Okay, he's not coming my way. Um, I
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: gotta try something. So I grabbed the grunt tube. Get
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: him a grunt. He stopped, looked my way, took a
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: step forward, and then turn start walking away again. It's like,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I'll try to get a little more aggressive and try
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: snort wee's. And we just had this whole big debate
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: about snort weez is like the day before with Tony
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and Justin and Charlie, and I know he says, man,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: you know, I really don't like to use snort reezes
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: on immature bucks and and even on big mature bucks
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: that regularly works in Michigan, where I hunt, but you
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: know it was worth a shot, so I ripped out
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: of snort whist. He spins, stares at me, and then
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: does like the head like left to the right, to
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: the left to the right, and then uh not today, bro.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: They starts to running away. He goes bolting off and
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: then stops after like bolting like forty yards, stops, turns
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: back again, and then just as like a fast paced
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: walk kind of paralleling away from me. So once again,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: another close call doesn't come together. I'm like, oh my god,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I'm never gonna kill this deer. And this has just
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: been like endless. Every couple of days I have an
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: encounter with him but just just a little too far
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: away or something goes wrong or that was the same
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: story last year. And I've been talking about this deer
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: and busting my balls trying to get this deer, and
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: it's just it just felt it was never gonna happen. Um.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: And and as much as I love hunting deer, and
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: I love chasing one specific deer and I love all
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: that stuff, I was definitely getting frustrated. Just felt like
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I just feel like I'm chasing my tail, and um,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know it was just I was kind of
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: just bonking. Just it's kind of like that I don't
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: know want to do. Like every night I come back,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I'm talking to my wife school, what happened? What do
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: you think? I'm like, I gotta throw my hands up
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and there I'm like, I don't know, Like I'm right
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: there but never right there, and I don't know what
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: else to do. Um, I'm just gonna keep on trying
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: and keep on being in this general area and and
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: try to be as smart as you can with the wind.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: And eventually I gotta get lucky. Like I just need
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: the right set of circumstance. I'm right in the game.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: I just need one more thing to follow my favor.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: So make another move. The next day, see him again,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: but he's chasing a dough out of range. Um where
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I was the day before or something like that takes
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: us one day further. And this is November twelve, and
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: I pushed in, got in really early, came in the
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: back door of this betting year set up just on
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: the outside edge of the really thick, nasty st uf,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: just with the wind cutting it, and um, I this
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: is right on his doorstep of the betting year. He
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: likes the most. It's more signing there than anywhere else.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: It's more does coming in another spot than just about
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: anywhere else. And I could, I could get away with
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: it with a wind there. And it was kind of
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: slow morning, but around ten I started seeing bucks showing up,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: just like it was. It was zero deer then all
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: of a sudden like fuck, fuck buck, and then I
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: saw deerro running pass. About ten thirty, I saw a
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: buck around buck, a rounding bucker round the last buck
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: I saw I look like tall times, tall, white times man.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: That could have been him. That might have been him
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: was just a brief flash and this little gap in
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: the timber, but I kind of got right into that
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: he might have just ran up in there, watching, watching, watch,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: and I see some other bucks come back from that direction,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: and just feeling good. And it's late morning, it's almost
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: eleven o'clock. But when you see that kind of activity,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: basically what I'm thinking my head is, Okay, there's a
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: hot dough somewhere in my general region. That's that's what
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I need. And sure enough, not minutes after kind of
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: being sitting there having the internal conversation, a dope pops
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: up over this little berm, and the first thing I
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: saw was she she popped over the berm, and then
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: she squatted and starts peeing, and then her tails is flicking.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Then she stopped just kind of hunting to her tails flicking,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: tails flicking, tails flicking, and immediately like that's a hot dough.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: That's a dough, and there's a buck with her, Like
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: this is there's something behind her. I'm watching and waiting.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: She kind of takes a few more steps and just
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: stands her tail flicking, tail flicking, tail flicking, takes a
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: few more steps, looks behind her, and I just see
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: the tips of these times, and then they keep on
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: getting bigger and taller and taller and taller and taller
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: and trying. The man steps out over this berm. Perfect
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Like the image is like we're in this timber. I'm
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: on the edge of the thick stuff, and there's like
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: standing mature timber, and he's actually in the standing mature timber,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: and there's all these trees. But then it's like one
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: lane in between all the trees, and it looks kind
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: of like if you're in an old cathedral, like an
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: old Catholic cathedral, if you can imagine the aisle that
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: runs down the middle of the cathedral and you get
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: all your pews on either side. He was kind of
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: standing there at the end of the aisle, like the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: pastor at the front of this big Roman Catholic church,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: standing there, just proud, holding his hands up. But it
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: was this huge antler current kind of turns and looks
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: and his head's kind of going left and right, and
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: the lights glimmering off him, and I think, holy shit,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: here we go. And then she turns. She's been going
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: kind of parallel to me, and she turns and starts
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: walking right to me, and that's when I really said,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: holy ship, here we go. Grab my bow and I
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: remember thinking, finally, finally, I've got a hot deal that's
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: gonna just bring him right towards me. And that's what
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: they do coming my way. And I remember thinking, in
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: this moment, okay, like what like, think through everything? Where
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: is she gonna come through? I made sure like there's
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: no sticks behind you that you're gonna bump when I
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: moved down to position and said, okay, make sure, how
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: are you going to adjust your knees here? How are
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: you gonna be positioned? Trying to think through exactly we're
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: gonna pass through. I grab my range finder, made sure
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: would be easy for me to grab my range for
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: I started ranging things in front of her so that
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: I would know ahead of time. If she stops behind
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: this tree, she's gonna be at this distance. If they
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: come through here, there's gonna be that distance. I remember
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: looking at my broadhead make sure my broadhead didn't get
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: pulled off or anything. I was like trying to check all.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, check, check, check, check, and they're
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: just slowly working their way. She comes towards this little
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: old two track that runs right along this edge down nearby,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, okay, that's where she's didn't cross
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: this at this two track. If she crossed the two
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: track and gets to the other side of it, she
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: gets into the thick and then there's there's there's no
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: shots at that point. So I ranged right as she crosses.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: I've ranged her, and she's about forty yards, So I'm thinking, okay,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: he's gonna be crossing just about the same place, about
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: forty yards. And there's a big tree right there, and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: there's the y in the tree, and right in between
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the y is where she crossed and I thought, Okay,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: that's my one shot if he comes through there. So
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: she crosses. I'm watching him as soon as he got
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: to you know, just for that, and stepped behind a tree.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: I drew back anchored, got on it and just waited
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: for him to step into that hole. And as soon
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: as he stepped in that hole, RANT trying to stop him,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: and he just blasts right through that lane that didn't
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: even pause, just like right through zero shot. And immediately
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: it's down into that thick with the dough. So now
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: he's a thirty nine or thirty eight or something like that.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: She keeps walking and now I remember thinking myself, now,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: what like you have to get a shot. He's right here,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: He's finally in range. You finally have your chance of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: this deer that has consumed your life for the last
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: two years. And like everything, like I've never worked so
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: hard for a deer. I know, like every year I
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: talked like that, I guess, but this has really been
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: like a different level. Um, like I've done I've tried
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: to analyze like what I do and how I do it,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: and have I made good decisions and have I been
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: doing things the right way? And even though like the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: rest haven't been what I've wanted. I'm a nerd, and
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: I've read a lot about like decision making and like
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: trying to find different ways to analyze the quality of
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: your decisions, how to make better decisions, how to uh
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: learn from your results. And there's something called resulting, which
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: is a bias that the human mind has, typically where
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: you will misjudge decisions based off the end result, when
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: oftentimes an end result is not directly correlated to a decision,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: but a variety of different factors. So you won't take
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: into effect pure chance, you won't take into effect um,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: you know, all these different variables, and you'll just say, well,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: because because such and such guy through an interception, that
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: was a bad play call and that quarterback sucks and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: that was bad, bad, bad, when actually maybe it really
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: was if you look at the probabilities and if you
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: look at everything, it was really the best play call
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: he could have made, and it really was a good pass,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: but they just got a little lucky, or that one
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: guy took a step and it changes everything. And so
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: what I've tried to do over the course of the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: season is to not judge what I'm doing based solely
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: on the results of each one of my hunts. If
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: I were to do that and be getting more and
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: more and more frustrated, I think I'm an idiot. But
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: to instead try to judge the quality of my decisions
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: throughout the season, and so think, okay, based on what
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I know, based on what I've seen, based on all
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: the work I've put in, Um, you know, did I
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: do the right thing? Did I do the thing that
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: I knew I should do? When I look back and think, okay,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: with all these factors, was that decision? You know? Did
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: I put in the amount of work I should have?
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Did I do the thing that would have given me
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: the highest probability even though it didn't work out? Could
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: I have done something different looking back on it without
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: some kind of hindsight bias and what I've done it
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: differently and many times like, No, it didn't work out,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: but that was a damn good decision and you execute
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: it on the right way. I bring all this stuff
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: to say that it feels it has felt like more
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: than any other year I have. I've leveled up, but
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the results haven't panned out that way. I've been like,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: really happy with how I made adjustments in my level
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: of aggression and my willingness to try new things and
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: adapt and adapt and adapt, and so now finally things
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: are working out. It looks like it feels like finally,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: you know, this is it, This is this thing I've
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: been building up to all this time, and he's in
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: this thick stuff, and my brains with my brain flips
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: over to it's gotta happen. It's gotta happen. It's gotta happen.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: You need a shot, You need a shot, You need
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: a shot, And all that slow and smooth and controlled
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: stuff flies out the window and now it's how you
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Yes shoot, yes, shot, You have a fair way to
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: do it. And so I remember he's in there, and
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like where there's gotta be some way to get
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: a shot through here. And I remember I'm in my saddle.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: I'm looking up and I'm looking down. I'm trying to
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: find is there any pocket? Is there any holes there?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Any gap? Is there any little slit I could fit
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: an arrow through? And I find a little hole like
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: a melon or a small volleyball or something. There's a
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: little hole like man, if he comes right through there,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: which where the dough was, I can maybe slip one
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: through there. And remember I had to I had just
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: my tether, so for anyone who hunts from his saddle,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about here, I had to
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: like pull my rope down and just like three ft down.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: So instead of being like leaning up almost standing on
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: my platform, now I'm like three ft down lower, like
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: hanging down low, and my knee against the tree. So
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: I'm downlowing off so I could actually shoot through this hole.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: And oh, I'm just gonna get Charlie horse my leg.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: I find this hole and I'm looking at the hole.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking I could slip one through there. But there's
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: still twigs and branches and stuff all around it. It's
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: just the one thing that's not impenetrable. But in that moment,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I gotta do it. I gotta do what
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: I gotta do it, I gotta do it, and I
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: draw back. Is he's getting close and then he hangs up,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and he's standing in there and just standing there and
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: just standing there, and then finally he steps into that hole.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: And even if I'm trying to remember everything that's going on,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: I even think in the moment I said something to
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: myself like this, excuse me, the effort. I remember thinking
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: like this, I think, I think, I remember having a
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: moment like this isn't good. But it was like I
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: was already pulling back as that was happening, like I was.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I was not drawing back like I was on him,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: and I was executing the shot, just hoping I could
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: punch it through. And and moments after I released the arrow,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: I instantly said I released the arrow, and instantly was
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: like that was so stupid. But for the thirty seconds
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: preceding it, I couldn't get that into my head. I couldn't.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: I had no control of it was all that pressure built.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: It was like a volcano inside of me, and I
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: couldn't stop the lava. And it was just it was
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: just going. The train was going, and I had two
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: I had to shoot. And then as soon as I shot,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I knew that I had done the wrong thing. And
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: I knew that I just did the one thing that
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: I tell myself and I tell other people not to do,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: which is forced the shot. I old my dad, as
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: I told you, is you can never you can always
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: get another shot some day. You can never take an
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: arrow back if you force the shot, if you forced
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: a bullet you can never get that back. And I
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: did it myself and I couldn't get that arrow back
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: and I missed. And I immediately knew I missed, and
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I think, I think, you know, when this little tiny
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: hole hit those branches at the end, and so it
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: could have been you know, I saw it was just
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: like a it was just a stupid mess. And and
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I still not even look back now. I'm
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: just like, uh, I still feel the same way I
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: guess I felt then, just like devastated and just stupid
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: and embarrassed and pissed. And another thing I remembers as
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: soon as that happened, and I said to myself that
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: was like, what are you doing? Man? The first thing
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: I thought was I'm never telling anyone about this. First thing,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I thought, like, I'm not going to tell my friends,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not telling my wife. Um. I was so mad
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: that I just had let that happen and so frustrated
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: by that. Was like nobody, I can't tell anyone about this.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: It was like so painful in that moment. Um. Yeah,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: but it is, isn't that life? Though? I Mean, obviously
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter who you are. Like Michael Jordan failed
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: and he was the best, right, we you always just
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: try your best, and like you were saying, it doesn't
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: mean the outcome is going to be the best. But uh,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: what if you had killed him, you'd have been you'd
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: have been like I did the best. I did the
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: right thing. Yeah, talk about resulting. The sliver of hope
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: is what makes us do kind of those. I mean,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: it's out of left field decisions. It might work if
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: we all did it, if we always like succeeded, Ah,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: then I mean we we how could we grow? You know?
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: So you know, I think you only think you made
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the bad, the wrong decision because it didn't work out. Well,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to disagree with it a little bit because
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: even if I did kill him and did hit him,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: it's still if I would have been by luck, like,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: it was still a poor It was a low odd shot.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I should not have forced a shot through a tiny
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: little gap like that with little twigs and branches and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: ship all around it. I simply like, that's not a good, smart,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: high odds shot. There's too much room for air. It
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: was forced. Um, I guess ethics that would come into
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: play there. Yeah, And and so for that reason, I
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have like if if I had watched anyone else
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: do that, I was like, don't do it, don't do it,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: don't do it. You can get another shot another day,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: or maybe he'll swing around, or maybe he'll turn around,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: or you know, you don't need to God forbid, I
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: could now the worst case scenario didn't happen. The first
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: case scenario could have been I forced that shot and
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: I did hit him, and I hit him in the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: guts or him in the leg, or injured him somehow,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: I means so. So I got lucky in that regard.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: At least it was a clean mess and I was
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: able to eventually get down go check it, found my arrow.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: I saw exactly a zero blood, zero anything on it,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: so I could confirm on clean mess. But thank goodness,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't want him. Um and uh and yeah, you
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: know I couldn't have worked out. Maybe was there very
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: high odds of it working out? No? Was I happy
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: with how I handled the moment. No, it was the
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: exact opposite of what I did four days prior with
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the draftime buck right. He talked about how I was
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: in control of my process. I was slow, I wasn't
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: forcing it. You were wondering why isn't he shooting yet?
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Was because I was in it. I was focused, I
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: was in control. In this case, it was the the
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: ship was moving and I was just hanging on and UM,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm I'm better than that. I'm experienced enough that
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't have let that happen. But it did. And
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: I eventually decided that, you know, kind of back to
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: what I was telling you the other day, Dan, you
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: you know, all you can do is is figure out
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: what you can do next and what good can come
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: from this. Um. We had this podcast a month or
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: two ago, a month ago maybe with the author of
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: this book The Obstacles the Way, and the idea here
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: is that oftentimes like it's the challenge, it's the thing
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: that goes wrong, it's the roadblock that is actually what
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: leads to the thing you want. That's what's gonna lead
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: you to growth, that's gonna lead you to success if
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: you if you if you choose to look at it
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: as as you're the victim, then it can be your downfall.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: If you look at it, Okay, this is a thing
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: that happened, Now what that can actually be the impetus
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: for for good things? And so looking back on I thought, Okay,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: I could keep this to myself and I know what
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: he has to know, and no one needs to look
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: at Mark and think he's an idiot or think he
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: shanked the shot at the buck of his life. The
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: buck he's talked about. No one will give me crap
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: on Instagram, bought it, no one will judge me, and
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: my friends won't know. Um blah blah blah blah blah
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: and all that seemed very um tempting in that moment.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: But then over the course of that day, I thought, Okay,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: this thing happened, Now what are you gonna do about it?
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: And there's two good things that could come out of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: One of the good things could be that I could
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: learn from it. I could once again see one of
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: my see an examine and learn from one of my
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: mistakes and get better from it. But also maybe this
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: is something that we can use as an example. It
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: can help all other people too. And I think what
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: I've tried to do with this podcast has never positioned
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: myself as like I am the end I'll be all
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: expert in all things, and you should look at me
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: and listen to me, and I'm gonna tell you exactly
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: how to do things perfectly. Um, I'm not that guy.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: Anyone who listens knows that I'm not the guy that
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: you need to put on a pedestal and think, Man,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: that guy's a slayer, he's perfect and feeling I could
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: be like that. No, I have been someone who has
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: a huge passion for this thing, and I'm always trying
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: to get better. And I want to share with everyone
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: what's working, what's not, what we can learn from my
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: mistakes and others, and how do we all grow from them?
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: And so here I am. I'm at my the biggest mistake,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: the biggest failure of my hunting um journey in a
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: good number of years. I haven't had a doozy like
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: this in a long time. And and here I am
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: my my big goal. I've been going after this thing.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: I put more time and energy into. You know, I
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: did this thing. I blew it. And so the question
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: is not what's marking to do? What can you do? Um?
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: And And for what it's worth, what I've tried to do,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: what I decided to do is all right. And dude,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: just what Dan did that night that won't hurt? It
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: was like a knife in the back. I just felt
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: like I let myself down, my family down, you know, whatever.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: You know. I don't mean to over dramatize it, but
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: it felt intense for me. But the next day got
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the bow out and just kept shooting, shooting and shooting shooting,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: thinking through, how do you not make that same mistake again?
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: What did I learn from this? I learned that I
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: still do lose control. Now. I thought maybe I had
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: it all under control. I thought maybe I wouldn't fall
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: prey to that, but the pressure was there. I felt
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: like I had to force it, and I did, and
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: that was a mistake. So next time, hopefully it's gonna
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: be a thing where I can catch myself. I can
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: remember the pain of this moment and not let that
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: happen again. I can be better prepared for the next situation. Um,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: and all this, the point of any and all this
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: is that it's gonna happen. It does happen. Happened to me,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: happened to Justin, happened to Dan. Um. I hope it
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen to Dane with your bow, but thank you
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: appreciate that. I hope it hasn't. But in this there's
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: no like secret formula here, there's no, like secret actic,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: I can tell you it's gonna be like, hey, here's
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: this thing, and it's gonna change you, and you're never
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: gonna miss anymore. You're gonna be You're gonna be just
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: a bow hunting assassin now and you're gonna be ice cold. No,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: you need to live through these things. You gotta work
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: through them. You gotta keep practice, and you gotta keep trying.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: You gotta keep the faith. You have to decide that No,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let that define me. No, I'm not
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: gonna let that ruin the rest of my season. You
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: can't change the past. All you can do is decide
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: what do you do next? And damn it, that's I'm
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: gonna do. Keep getting after, keep getting better, keep hunting,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: and maybe I'll kill this buck someday. Maybe I won't,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: but I know that I am different and it will
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: be better because of it. And I think, as a
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: hunter or dad, or a businessman or a woman or anything,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: you're not always going to be a successful reaching your goal,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: but you can always get better. You can always work
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: to take that next step, and that's that's something worth
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: striving for. So that's where I'm at, Well said any thoughts,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: any closing words, anything else we want to add to
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: this before wrapping it up. H I got nothing, no, man,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: I'm good. All right. Well, then here's what we're gonna do.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: We're gonna go out for our last ton of the trip. Dan,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: We're gonna try to get you your first Dear, I hope,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: and I'm crossing all my fingers and toes. They're gonna
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: get a crack at one. Are you wanting to shoot
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: a do tonight? Okay, yeah, so so we've got higher
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: higher odds. We're gonna stop the podcast now and if
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: we shoot a deer tonight, we're gonna come back. We're
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: gonna stop for five seconds. We have a long pause here,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: and then we'renna jump right back and we're gonna tell
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: you Dan's story of success. If we don't shoot a
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: deer tonight, you're gonna hear five second pause and the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: damn things just gonna end. We'renna leave you with five
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: seconds of drama and then you're gonna find out how
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: tonight went one way or another. So that Dan, let's
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: cross our fingers and toes. Dane, same to you. You're
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: hunting to hoping that you have some success tonight. Feed
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: on the ground, Feeding the ground. Yeah, we're gonna have
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: an exciting Hunt's gonna groundpound it. It's gonna be good. Okay,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: are we ready? Thinks? So all right, let's start a
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: five second pause in five four three two one, and
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: unfortunately we don't have the happy ending. I had a
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: really close call at last light. A couple of dolls
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: came out and Dan almost got a shot at one
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: of them, but the only shot opportunity came when the
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: two doors were stacked. There was one younger one directly
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: behind the baby mature dough and we didn't want to
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: take that shot and possible hit both, so we passed
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: on it. A situation where Dan did the smart thing
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: and didn't force a potentially risky shop. So that was tonight,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: and with that, we're gonna wrap this episode up. I
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: I kind of struggled with this one, especially even after
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: we recorded it. As we were walking out to Hunt,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: I was just thinking my head, did we achieve anything
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: with this podcast? Did we help anyone with this podcast?
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: Was there anything revolutionary with this that was actually gonna
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: help someone that made this worth listening to? I don't
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know UM, I sure hope so UM recording
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: this and putting this out there, I sure as how
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: hope there's some good that can come from this. I
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: hope it wasn't just us rambling on about the cruddy
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: things that happened to us. UM. But if you're listening
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: to this and that's how you feel, I'm sorry. I
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: hope I hope that's not the case. Though. UM, you
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: know it's it's one of those things that is a
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: tough it's a tough deal, right. But I will close
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: with this thought, which is after my miss on tram
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: that I just told you it's all about, which obviously
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: you know, really really bummed me out. As I described,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: after all those things happened, UM, I had one really
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: important thing that I remembered, and that was my kids.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: I knew I was going to go home and see
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: my boys, I was gonna see my wife. And though
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: at times it can feel it, deer hunting is so
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: so important, and that whether or not I achieved this
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: goal is so so important. Ah, having children or family
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: members or those other things in life, UM, that can
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: center you again remembering those things and those really really
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: good things in your life that can help you put
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: all this in perspective. So, yeah, uh, I missed a deer.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah it was a deer I really wanted to get
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: a shot at. Yeah, I'm very disappointed. At the same time,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: life goes on. I've got a couple of wonderful kids.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: I've got a great family, a good job. I'm very fortunate.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: You can't hang your head for too long. And that's
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: what I remember. And I went home, and I gave
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: my boys a hug, and I ran around pretending to
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: be a wolf while my son pretended to be an elk,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: and I helped him shoot his pretending nerf bow and
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: we're laughing and playing and having a grand old time,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: and everything is okay. So, for whatever it's worth, that's
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: something that I that I often times need to remind
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: myself of that this stuff can sometimes be all consuming,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: but you you don't need to let it be. There's
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: more to it. And I'm really lucky. I've got a
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: couple of kidouts here at home that helped me remember
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: that often. So that is it. That's my long winded,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: rambling final thought of the day. I hope this is
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: helpful in some kind of way. Thank you for listening,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks for hearing us out and uh and rolling with
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: us on this one. Hopefully we're all going to learn
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: a little something, We're all gonna get a little better,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: We're all going to enjoy the rest of our seasons.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: I hope you guys are having a great season, and
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: I will leave you with one final reminder some good news.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: Good news is that, like I mentioned earlier, season two
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: of the Back forty is now out there in the
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: second episode just dropped a few days ago, So heading
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: over to the Meat Eater YouTube channel to watch episode two.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: That's the one that Dan Jjo the guy were talking
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: to there. That's the episode in which we introduced him
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: and you see him working on the farm, So check
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: it out. Thank you for everything. We appreciate your time
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: being a part of this community spending some time with us,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.