Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 944: Tony and Steve's Nebraska Whitetail Hunt | 12 in '26

Transcript

Ep. 944: Tony and Steve's Nebraska Whitetail Hunt | 12 in '26 · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Damn dude that's great man again okay thanks brother because
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: you're the one that did all the work dude you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: deserve it man you didn't deserve that quick hey everyone
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: welcome to the 12 and 26 companion podcast for our
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Nebraska whitetail hunt last year that I did with Steve
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Rinella and Pat Hoffman really cool film that came together
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: uh we are going to go behind the scenes here.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting here with my buddy, Max Barta, our videographer extraordinaire,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: who actually spent the whole week with Steve.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Documenting not only the whitetail hunting, but the trapping. And, uh,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: we are going to just dive into, you know, some
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of the things that made it onto the show and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: some of the things that didn't, that the audience has
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: kind of been asking us about, or we've been, we've
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: been getting questions about just so basically like a behind
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the scenes breakdown of what really went into this.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's going to be a lot of fun. Um,
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: we'll just dive deeper into the preparation, the actual hunts. Um,
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: and then, yeah, like you said.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: What it's like to hunt with Steve when he's trapping
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: all of that.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Um, and yeah, just a little backstory.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Um, whenever, whenever I get asked to like go on
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: a trip and Tony's there, I'm like, yes, I'm going,
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: it's going to be a great time. Tony knows how
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: to hunt deer and it's just something I look forward to. So, um,
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: What's something that was so special about this hunt for you?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, this was a, for me personally, when Steve
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: called me, so I was actually walking out of a cattail.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Talk to us a little bit about how this hunt
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: came to be and just why you wanted to do
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: this so bad.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't want to do it super bad, but
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I did want to do it. But I was literally
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: walking out of a cattail slew. I just killed a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: limit of roosters. It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I get a phone call from Steve, and he said, hey, man,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I got the best whitetail hunt you're ever going to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: get offered. We're going to do it next year. He
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: explained to me that Pat's family has 3,000 acres. It
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: hasn't been hunted in 13 years or 15 years or whatever.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: And I knew what that meant. I knew I was
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: going to be doing a lot of work. But I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: was also really excited because I don't get to do...
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I do a lot of public land stuff. For sure.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Can't use the cameras in a lot of places. I
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: don't really get to work the deer the way we
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: did on this hunt. So I was actually very excited
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: to have... you know, raw, a lot of raw land
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: that hadn't been hunted in a state that I love. Um,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: so that was, that was a cool part. Like I,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: knowing that I was going to get to go through
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the process of scouting and working the deer and setting up, um,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I knew it would be a lot of work and
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Because you said you were, you got the call
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: in November or was it December?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: December.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: And you basically have almost a full year to prep
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: for this hunt.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Right. Right.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Right. Um, and so, uh, I guess what is some
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: of the first things that you do that Um, as
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: far as like, yeah, give me like a one, two,
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: three step process. Um, what you do when you first
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: learn about, oh, I have access to this property or
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: I'll be hunting this property this fall.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: What is the, one of the first things you do?
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: So this is, this is something that didn't really make
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the cut at all. Cause it's just not something you
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: would film. But, you know, as soon as Steve said that,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: then we had a group text going with Steve, Pat
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and I, and Pat started sending me, you know, screenshots
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: from on X or waypoints from on X. And so
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I started looking at that ranch, you know, cause I,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I knew I wasn't going to go there for months.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I was in the middle of the winter. It wouldn't
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: do us any good. Um, and so, you know, you
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: start looking at on X and it's like, start going, okay,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I got a river bottom. I know there'll be whitetails there.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: huge pivot fields, what's going to be in those. And,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: you know, now you can zoom in on Onyx. The
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: satellite imagery is so good that you can see cattle.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And so I started looking at like, where are their cattle?
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: There were cattle everywhere. And so I started to just
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: get my mind around like, where are the patches of cover?
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Where's the really open ground that isn't going to have deer?
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And then just trying to, you know, like get my
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: bearings a little bit. Because I know when you do that,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you show up and then you're like, this looks different.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: You know, like this, this field isn't what I thought
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: it was. Um, the river's deeper than I thought or whatever,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: you know, like it's, it's, it's a good starting point.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And so that, that's what I did. And I spent,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple months doing that where I was like, Oh,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I got some free time. I'm just going to like
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: start picking and choosing and started building my plan. And honestly, I,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: The first thing I thought of when I was looking
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: at that, I was like, we are going to decoy
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: the crap out of the bucks down there. Oh, really?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Super open.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: And I've been using our Dave Smith doe decoy a
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: lot the last couple of years. And my daughters and
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I have been killing bucks on it. And that thing
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: is like, I'm very confident. I don't use buck decoys.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And I thought the way that that ground was open,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: we were going to have to be in ground blinds
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a lot. So positioning a deer is important. So my head,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I was like already looking. I'm going to put cameras here,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: but I'm probably going to put a blind here, and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to decoy a buck here. I had some
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of it right, and I had some of it so wrong.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: I feel like once you get onto Onyx and you
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: start doing all this e-scouting, you kind of paint this
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: picture in your mind of how everything's going to go down.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: You get there in July, your first time.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: What was the difference between the actual, what was in
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: front of you and like what you had painted in
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: your mind as far as cover the river, um, just
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: all the different.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Circumstances that go into your strategy.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: So, right. I, I drove down there, uh, the week
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of 4th of July, I brought nine cameras down me, uh,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: or I brought nine cameras down with me and, uh,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: What immediately struck me, I met Pat down there. Pat
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: was down there with his family. His brother Nick was there.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: They showed me around. I was like, okay, this place
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: is way more open than I thought. When you're looking
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: at satellite imagery, it's sometimes deceiving. If you look in
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the summer, it looks like everything's leafed out and there's
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: lots of trees to work with. What I didn't realize
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: was This was 3,000 acres and every acre was involved
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: in cattle production. Okay. And so my thought process was,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I have this patch of trees here. This
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: is good cover. I have a patch of trees here.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: It's good cover. And then I got there and everything
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: had been grazed. And so it was a. a very
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: different kind of habitat than I was expecting. And it
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: was way wetter than I thought. So there were cattail sloughs.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Like when I got there, I was like, this is
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a great place to hunt dogs, you know, like, uh,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: and not necessarily deer. And so that, that changed things
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: for me a little bit. And I am kind of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly realized I'm like, I thought we were going
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: to have a high deer density. Like I was just like,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: this is a private land Nebraska hunt.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, next to river bottom.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: 3,000 acres. I'm like, there's going to be a ton
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: of deer. And it did not take me very long
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: walking around there where I was like, okay, I think
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the deer density is way lower than I expected. It
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: turned out to be way lower than even what I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: thought on that first trip. So there were a lot
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: of things that I just had wrong. Like I just,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I had wrong and I had wrong from every... I
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: went down there three times.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Oh, really?
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Every time. Well, once was to hunt, but I went
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: down there twice before that. And every time I had
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: an idea in my head, and then I got there,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, this isn't it. It kept changing
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: on me.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: So you went there, hung a bunch of cameras. Were
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: you impressed with what you found, or what do the
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: cameras tell you?
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Well, what was weird is that this buck right here,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: which is the buck I killed down there, The very
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: first deer I saw, we went into this spot along
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the river, you know, probably about 400 yards away from
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: where I killed him. And I walked into this spot,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: looked around, got back to the side-by-side, climbed in. I
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: looked over at that buck out of his bed, and
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: he was enveloped. So the first deer I saw was
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a deer.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Giant. And you're like, expectations are up here.
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: And I, so he got up, ran away. I got
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: out of the side by side, walked over there, started
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: looking around and found a trail. And I hung a
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: camera on the first picture I got on the whole
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: ranch was that buck coming back in there. And I
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: was like, I'm like, Holy cow. Like this, this deer
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: is really big. Um, but it didn't, it wasn't like
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: a reliable thing. Like even there was, it became pretty
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: clear quickly that there weren't that many deer there and
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: they weren't living there. You know, like, I mean, that
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: was like a part of their route. But even then
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: in the summer where you're like, I expect bucks to
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: be here every day on this food source, you know,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: batched out the whole thing. It just didn't have that vibe.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Like I started to realize, I'm like, I think this
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: is going to be a more challenging deal than I expected.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I actually thought it was going to be really easy.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And so, He went down there a couple times.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: We're actually going to watch a clip here. Just kind
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: of a funny moment. We'll tune into this right here.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: One of the things that sucks about filming for Meat
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Eater is when you do something really stupid, like close
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the gate and you're on the wrong side of it.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Close myself in on the wrong side. That's going to
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: make it in a show. People are going to be like,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: look at that dipshit.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: And so, seeing that, you kind of feel like a
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: big dummy. What's the most embarrassing thing that you've done
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: that did make the final cut?
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Because you filmed the last how many years? Four.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: There's been countless number of times.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I am a mistake making machine. That's something that I
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: try to get through in my writing and a lot
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: of stuff. You get a very curated highlight reel of
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: success generally from people in my position. That's one of
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the reasons I actually like Meat Eater. It sucks doing
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: something stupid like that, but I think we have an
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: obligation to that. I worked for a TV show in
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: a past life where it was very common to not
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: show anything like that. Like the host didn't want to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: be shown in any way like that. Mrs. They wouldn't
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: show Mrs. A lot of times.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: And I was like, man, we're, it's all part of it.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: We're bow hunting.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, I think, I think the worst one
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: that I had, and this was kind of just personal
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: was a couple of years ago, I snort wheeze in
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: a really big buck in North Dakota on public land
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and just whiffed on him.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: I think I remember watching that.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was, you know, the hard thing for me,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: the embarrassing stuff for me is, so when I started
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: bow hunting, I had buck fever so bad.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: And it took me years to sort of rein it in.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: And I got a pretty good handle on it. And
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: then I started filming a lot. And I don't, I'm
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: not the kind of person who can tune things out.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: So like when I missed that big buck in North Dakota,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: I know exactly what I did. I was making sure
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: that my camera guy was on it and that buck
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: didn't have my full attention. And I'd kind of filled
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: in the blanks and going, he's going to come through
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: at this distance and that's where I'm going to kill him.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: And I looked at Dylan to make sure because he
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: was on the other side of the tree, took my
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: focus out and looked back and I just didn't even
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: register that buck had walked way closer and just whiffed
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: on him, shot a little bit of hair off of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: his back. And when you do something like that, It
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: just sucks. You just live with it for like a year,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and then it drops, and you're like, whatever.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: You also put so much time and effort into this hunt,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: and then you just choke.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: That's all you do.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Dude, totally. And I mean, it's like, I'm going to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: say that I definitely do that stuff when I'm hunting
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: on my own too. It's just, it's so much easier
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: for me to make a mistake like that when I'm
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: on film because my focus just, I'm like divided. Yeah.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: And I think for a lot of people, they just
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: don't realize there's a huge, huge difference between just hunting
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: and filming a hunt.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like you have to make considerations that
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: you normally wouldn't do if you were just hunting.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, as a perfect example on that North
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Dakota hunt, we ran into that buck two days later,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and I had him at 21 yards making a rub,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a very clear window to his vitals, and my cameraman
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: couldn't get on him, and I had to let him walk. And,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, but what I'm saying there, and
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: that's just, that's a part of the job. I don't
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: really care about that, but what it is is like,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: and this is like general advice for every bow hunter
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: or every hunter out there, is whatever level of pressure
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: gets put on you. It doesn't have to be filming...
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: with Steve Rinella, like whatever pressure you put on yourself,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: that is something that's going to potentially cost you because
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: it's just, it elevates the experience. It, it gets you
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: kind of in that fight or flight mode, which is
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: buck fever. And it's just a different level. And so
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: like when people go, you know, I want my first
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Pope and young buck, or I want, I killed a
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: bunch of one twenties. I want a one 40. Well,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: when that one 41 walks in, you've already put that
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: pressure on yourself. That's where those mistakes come from. And
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: it's like, it's part of what's cool because if you
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: do it right, it's incredible. But putting that pressure on
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: yourself or feeling that pressure is like such a recipe
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: for making stupid mistakes.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Back to the film. We get there, was it first
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: week November?
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Yep. So was it peak rut, do you think?
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: Or where was the rut calculator, would you think?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: On a scale of one to 10, what would you
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: say the rut was? Like 10 being peak rut. one
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: being nothing at all.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're at a nine for sure. I mean,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: for me personally, especially, you know, when you're the Northern
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: half of the country, that first week of November, the
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: last week, October is bang. And first week of November
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: is you gotta be there. I think we got down
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: there on like the third or something. So we were
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: like right there. And that was the whole goal, right?
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: We're like, we have this place. Nobody's going to hunt it.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Nobody's going to be in there. Let's go have like
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: an amazing rod hunt.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: And so bucks should be, or they could be, or
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: they should be, pretty aggressive, how do you decide to
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: use a decoy or not to use a decoy?
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Well, what I realized, for me personally, it's such a
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: situationally dependent thing.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Because it could do more harm than good, correct?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Right. And so you'll see this on the film. You
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: would have seen this if I had hunted longer anyway.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Pat was rattling. blind calling, Steve was rattling, blind calling.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: The more time that I spent down there and the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: more trail camera images I got, the more I realized
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: like this is going to be a wait-em-out game, which
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: is generally how you kill big bucks during the rut.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Like patience is everything. And I knew with the way
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: we kind of had to protect an area that had
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: does in there and it had the most concentration of
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: deer on the ranch. I'm like, these bucks are going
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: to come in and they're going to leave and they're
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: going to orbit this thing. And I'm like the best bet.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't want them to know I'm there.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I know that if we put in enough time, they're
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: going to walk by. So I don't, I wasn't going
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to do any of that stuff. Like if I, if
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I saw one cruising, I would have called to him maybe,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: but there's just like a difference in strategy where, you know,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: those guys are Western hunters primarily. And that's what a
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: lot of people do when they do a hunt like that.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, it's the rut I'm going to rattle.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, there's no deer here hardly. So like
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: if you were a big buck there, that density of deer,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: like I just, I don't have that much faith in
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: blind calling that way. Like they're, they're on kind of
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: a different path and it's such a, just put your
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: butt in the seat, get the wind right and just
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: wait them out. And that's, you know, if we had
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: a little bit higher deer density or, you know, maybe
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: we had some deer coming into fields on there, which
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: we didn't really have those decoys would have came out.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: They're like, we would have, we would have had situations,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: but the more time I spent there, the more I
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: just realized, I'm like, I just don't, I'm not getting
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: that vibe. Like it's changing and we need to just
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: be on these pinch points and just ride them out. Yeah.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: So we get there. Everyone's excited. Everyone makes plans first morning.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: And then this happens. What was going through your head
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: at that moment?
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I need a backup from that.
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: So... The reason that I went into that stand is
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I hadn't had that buck. That was the buck that
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: we had dubbed the split brow buck.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: That's this deer.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the target buck. That's the buck you named. Right.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So I hadn't had that buck on camera in a while.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I knew that that stand was going to be a
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: really good one. What I screwed up on that you
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: don't see on the film is I had.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Easy access to every stand and blind i put up
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: that was the the farthest walk and when i went
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: down there in july and then i went down there
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: in august and hung that stand the mistake i made
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: is i didn't walk that river and so in my
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: head i'm like the river's shallow sandy very typical nebraska.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Type river easy to cross maybe right.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And so i was like i'm gonna get into that
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: river i'm gonna go half a mile upstream i'm gonna
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: pop up the bank and be right at that tree Well,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: as soon as we got out of the truck, and
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I'm in my knee highs, my cameraman's in his knee highs,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: we got into that river, and I immediately had water
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: in my boots. And I'm like, this is deeper than
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I expected, and I can't read the bottom because it's dark.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: And you're not using a headlamp?
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Well, I was using a headlamp. I didn't want to.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I wanted to use a red lamp and just wade
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the river straight up. I totally misread it. And the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: reason that I wanted to go in there is because
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, I wonder if I screwed this up.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: So I had my tracker on OnX. I'm like, I'm
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: going to send people into Stan for sure. I don't
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: want to send somebody in and have them get dunked
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: in the dark.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you almost wanted to be like the guinea pig. Right.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: If it was going to be too deep, I'll figure
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: it out kind of thing.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: So when we left.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: I've taken one for the team.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Dude, I knew, like I had this feeling. I'm like,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I think I screwed up. Like, I think I got
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: to know this. And with Steve trapping and not going hunting,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm going to go get a track so
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I can share it with these guys. I wade into
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: that river. I immediately know I screwed up. And so
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I'm like, now I got to either, I can't get
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: out on the far side because I don't know if
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I can cross at the stand. And that's where I
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: expect the deer to come from. So I'm like, I
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: have to be on the side I plan to hunt.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And so anyway, I had tons of time, but it
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: took me way longer because I screwed that up. I
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: had to go wade through a bunch of willows and
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: brush along the edge of the river and And just
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: really kind of like amateur, amateur hour my way through
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the whole thing.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: You felt like a rookie, like it was your first
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: time hunting, you know? Dude, right.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And, you know, get to that stand late. I got
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to that stand and sent Drew up and I'm looking
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: at my phone and I'm like, it's going to be
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: legal shooting light when I get in. Yeah. Like it
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: just is. And I'm like, you know, it's the rut.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So you're like, whatever. But, you know, I've got, I'm wet.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I've got water in my boots. I'm planning to sit
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: all day. And, and, Just everything, I'm like, I always
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: do something like this to myself.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: You're just thinking negative, negative, negative.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Right. And Drew gets up there. I go up after him,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and I'm not even close. And I hear something, and
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: I look over, and here's a deer walking. And I
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: can immediately tell.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: It's a big deer.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: That's a big deer. I bring my binos up, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I see just this tine. And I'm like, oh shit.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Oh no. And so I'm like, Drew, you got to
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: get your act together because this deer's coming and he's huge.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: And he moves, bangs his carabiner against the seat. Totally
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: not ready, but he's like, you know, those dudes are professionals.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Like he got on it. And I mean, in a
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: matter of just a couple of minutes from being on
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the ground to being in that tree, shot that buck.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And I didn't know, I didn't know it was him. I,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I kind of had gone from like seeing him in
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: my binos and just knowing it was good enough and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: then shooting him and he runs off. I, when I
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: was sitting in that tree afterwards, you know, the second
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: guessing came in. I'm like, was he really as big
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: as I thought? Like what happened? And I realized I
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: was just like geeked out of my mind and it
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: happened so fast and so chaotic that I didn't have,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: there were like pieces clipped out of my, like my memory.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't know what's going on. And
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: it ended up working out, but it was a, it
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: was a crazy, crazy hunt.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Well, I just feel like no one was more deserving
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: in shooting the target buck than you.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: You did all the work.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: You did all the prep, used your knowledge to break
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: down the property. And then it's like perfect buck comes
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: here and you make it look like it was the
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: easiest thing ever.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Like you knew that buck was going to be there
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: and you're just like, yep.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it, what's weird to me is I don't,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I don't really care. Like I wasn't like hung up
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: on the target buck.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Like, So you didn't feel guilty about shooting the target.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it just, it just happens, you know, look,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I knew when I went into that stand, that was
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: a good pinch point.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Like I knew that there was a chance, but I
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: believe that on every place we had to hunt.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like, you're not going to put a stand
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: or a blind there for no reason. Right.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: You know, like you were like using your knowledge and
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: you're like, yes, this has potential.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Right. And it, you know, I honestly, the thing that
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I thought it's, it, it was a relief to kill
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: one right off the bat.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Like you could go into a hunt like that and
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: everybody blanks and it's on you, you know? So getting
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: one killed like that was cool. Um, and it just
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: kind of let me play guide and like relax the
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: rest of the trip. So that part was nice, but
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I was actually kind of bummed because I'm like, man,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I was just looking forward to spending time in a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: treat or, yeah, for sure. And instead I'm like in
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: a camper and I'm driving a side-by-side around and Steve
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: and Pat, but, It was, I mean, it was cool, man.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: And that's like, to me, that's like such a good
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: lesson in like, if you do the work ahead of time,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: like so much of whitetail hunting is one when you're
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: not in stand, it's a, it's such a different beast
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: from Western hunting.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And a little behind the scenes.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: When you called or texted Steve that you shot a buck,
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: we were still in the camper.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Like not even dressed, not even ready to go out.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: And Steve was still like drinking coffee at this time,
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: you know? And I just like, I was like, you
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: gotta be kidding me. Like we could have been in
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: a tree stand and just like, you know, cause like
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: there's so much that goes into this. Like you want it,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: like you said, you want everyone to have success. And yeah,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: Steve and I are just sitting there twiddling our thumbs
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: because we have to go trapping that morning because Steve's
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: whole plan was, hey, I'm going to set a couple traps,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: letting them soak, and just like, I'll come check them
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: when I'm not deer hunting, you know? Right.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: And so what was that like?
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: You put all this work and effort into it, and
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: you're like, you're doing what the first morning?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I thought when he started texting us that he was
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: going to coyote trap on this hunt. You thought he
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: was joking? I thought he was joking. Oh, gosh. I
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: was like, but it's Steve, so you just don't know. Yeah.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: But I was like, there's no way. There's no way
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: he's going to.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: He's going to set up this freaking whitetail hunt during
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the rut. We got three guys hunting and then he's
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: going to show up and he's going to trap. And
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it was by far my biggest frustration point of the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: whole trip. Cause like. By the time the hunt happened,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I knew we were dealing with a really low deer density.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Like there just aren't very many deer on that, in
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: that area even. In fact, this is going to sound crazy,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: but when I went down and hung stands, I went
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: in the end of August and I stayed at a,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: I rented an Airbnb like 20 minutes from the ranch.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: We drove that, you know, because you're getting good camera
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: light and everything. So we drove that at first and
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: last light for four days and I never saw a
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: deer in a field. And on that ranch, I'm like, man,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: we really don't have very many deer. And so I
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: knew it was like a matter of spending time in
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the tree. Like I'm, I still believe that if we
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: all spend enough time, it would happen. And so Steve's,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is true and I'm filling
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: in the blanks here, but Steve was like, yeah, my
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: buddy who's a professional trapper is like, this is the
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: coyote Mecca and you got a trap here. And that,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that was what prompted him to do it. I think
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: this is my personal theory. I think that most of
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the Western hunters I meet are not very patient. Pat
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: was super patient.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he definitely was.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Pat was an all day sit, no problem guy. But
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I think that Steve did this so he
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: had an excuse to not sit all day because I
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: had told him this before the trip. I was like, dude,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: it's going to be put in the hours and kill
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: a deer. And I'm not, I know Western hunters will
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: lose their shit because I said that, but it's just
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: true that In the whitetail world, just patience kills big bucks.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And in the Western world, it's so easy to go
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: try to be proactive and make something happen. They're very
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: different things.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And it's hard. I've seen this with a lot of
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: really good friends who are like crazy accomplished Western hunters.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: They get into that whitetail space and it's like, it's
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: just hard for them. You know, it's the same thing like.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you know, you take a lot of my whitetail buddies
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and you put them on the mountains. They're not going
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to do very well because it demands a different thing
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: out of you. And so I think Steve was trapping
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: because he didn't want to sit all day.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: And like, I feel like also with Steve is like,
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: he gets an idea in his head. He's like, Oh,
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: that's a great idea. And he's going to run with
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: it no matter what, you know? And so, um, yeah, from,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: from a cameraman perspective is like each of us got
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: teamed up with a hunter. And so Drew was with you.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: Ty was with Pat and I was with Steve. And
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: so whatever Steve did, I had to go document, you know?
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: And so I was stuck trapping for the whole morning,
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: you know?
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Right. And I want you to know that I requested
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you and Steve took you.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know. So it was just kind of funny.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: And just like that whole mentality of like, Oh, Tony
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: just shot a buck and we're not even out of
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: the camper yet.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: It's just like, it was hard for my head to
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: wrap around, you know?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: So target buck is done. What's next?
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Well, for me, it just became managing Pat and Steve
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: around the wind.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Almost like, like you said, guiding them, figuring out where's
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: going to be the best sits. Right. Yeah.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: And I mean, we were, you know, we were still
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: running cameras. It wasn't, I actually, the camera situation was weird. It,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: confirmed some of the things that I thought, some of
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: those pinch points.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: You're talking about the mole trees, right?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Not the actual camera.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Right, right. The trail cameras. It was weird because it
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: showed me a couple of the spots we killed were
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: good enough, right? But it also, the spot that Pat
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: sat all day on day one, you and Steve sat
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: in there at some point that blind, that camera was
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: three times as active as any other camera I had
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: down there. I mean, that mulchery was lighting up often
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and nobody saw a deer there. And I, when we
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: were going into that hunt, I was like, somebody will
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: kill a buck here. It's too good. There's too many
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: does and it never happened. And so in that way,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that was like a cautionary tale camera wise for me,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: because it was showing me really good deer action, but what,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason they knew we were there. And so I,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I kept believing in it because as soon as we
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: get out, there'd be deer in there, but it just
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't working. Like it just, I had something wrong there.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: And so in a way I let those, that camera
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: talk me into that spot, but it also showed me like, Hey,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to show you what you did wrong,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: but you're doing something wrong because these deer are still here.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: And that was To me, that was actually pretty fun.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Like the camera thing on this hunt was pretty fun
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: because I don't get to do that at that scale.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: You know, normally I'm on public land. Normally I'm where
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people and I don't get to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: see that kind of thing very often. So that part
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: was fun. But mostly that time after I killed, I
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: spent like, okay, the wind's going to be out of
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the north until 11. The wind's going to be out
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: of the south until whatever. And just trying to like
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: make sure Pat and Steve were on places where I
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: was like, this is... This is so worth your time here.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: And that, you know, it was tough because there weren't
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: very many deer, but it worked out.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: From your whitetail hunting experience, there's, I would say, four
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: main ways to hunt. There's a tree stand, tree saddle,
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: ground blind, and a natural blind.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: Out of those, what are your favorite? Like, what's your favorite? I...
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: And yeah, you can tell me, yeah, it depends on this, that, this. I.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: My favorite thing to do is to go out with
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: a light set of sticks and a very, very, uh,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: lightweight hang on or a saddle and just be mobile.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: That's like, I like showing up.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Setting us, setting your saddle up and just hunting, you know?
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Right. And I mean, natural blinds. I do that a
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: lot too. Um, I don't like sitting in hub style
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: blinds for deer. Like it's just, I do it, especially
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: with my daughters. Um, I don't like big ladder stands.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I like mobile stuff. That was a tough element to
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: this hunt because I knew that I had to find
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: spots ahead of time that I could put Pat in
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and a cameraman or Steve and a cameraman. It has
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: to be good enough. They're not going to be like,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: we're moving. We could have moved sets, but I'm like,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: that's going to be a whole different thing. I feel like.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: When you set a stand, you also have to think
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: like this, well, first of all, this is a good
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: hunting stand, but since we're filming, is it a good
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: filming stand? Can I put a second stand above the hunter,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: you know?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: And so, um, on this hunt, you did a multiple
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: different things. You set stands, ground blinds and natural blinds.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: Tell me a little bit more about these natural blinds.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I only, I actually only did one natural blind. Um,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and that was partially because most of the trees down
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: there that, that the trees were either, like saplings or
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: they were a hundred years old and four feet in
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: diameter and you couldn't get a stand into them. And
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the one natural blind I, I put up that was
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: just in a spot that had this great big tree.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And there were a bunch of scrapes from the previous year.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: It was right on a Creek. So they weren't going
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: to get behind you. And it was just like a,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: it was, it was the spot that had the most
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: previous year's buck sign. I just couldn't, I couldn't get,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: anything else going there and i walked all over that
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: place yeah um i did put a i did put
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: a pop-up blind probably 200 yards away from it that
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: i thought would be a decoy thing and that and
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: that is kind of interesting because i put up i
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: think i put up five blinds and five double sets
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: when i was there in august and we only sat
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: a couple of them several of the places that i
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: set up we never sat and they became a non-issue.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: And I, I was, I had enough conviction in those
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: spots to actually do a setup and then we didn't
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: use them. And it was like kind of an eye
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: opener to me that I didn't, I didn't really need
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: to overdo it. You know, like I, I'll give you
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: another example here just as it's sort of like, you
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: don't get to see it on the film. You see
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a little bit of setup of me going in there,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: but I found this little frog pond on this part
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: of this property. It was in a, for people who
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: don't know, in that area, you have these pivot fields, right?
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because there's lack of water.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Egg field, right? And then in the corners of those fields,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you usually have some kind of brush, cedar trees planted,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: some kind of habitat, right? Good place to hunt pheasants.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Quail or whatever, right? And in one of those, there
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: were some big cottonwood trees and there was a little
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: frog pond. And I was like, this pond is exactly
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: what I like to hunt. You know, and like, It's
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: kind of in a series of patchy cover. And I
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: put up a double set on that to shoot that pond.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: And I put a camera on it in July and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I never got a picture of a deer on it
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the whole time.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Probably some cows though.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't even get cows in there because they were
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: kept out of that corner. Okay. Literally never got a deer.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: And so when I went there in... July I found it,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: put a camera on it. I still believe the deer
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: were going to come, hung a double set on it
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: in August, and ended up pulling that set after I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: killed my buck because I'm like, there's nothing over here.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: No photos, no nothing.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: That was, I had like a lot of kind of
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: dead program stuff that I thought was going to kind
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: of hack it, and it just didn't. And so it
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: was an interesting challenge that way.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. We are going to watch a clip.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: of Steve in this natural blind.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: I've built plenty of natural blinds before for duck hunting
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: or goose hunting. I respect it. Take some work. You
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: blend in probably the best. I had full confidence that
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: this was going to work. We're going to watch this
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: clip and have a little laugh about it.
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: That moment of truth happened soon. when a buck steps
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: from the woods already fully aware that I'm trying to
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: hide there. I attempt to pull my bow as though
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: I'll somehow shoot from the position I'm in, which is
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: nearly impossible.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: No chance.
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: And all I managed to do is get a partial
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: draw before I really spooked the buck.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: That buck, when he came out, like, little backstory, Steve
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: is to my right, I have a camera on a
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: tripod facing him, and also my handheld camera, and I
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: was the first person to spot that buck. And I
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: just slowly, like, that buck comes out, and he's just, boom,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: right on us the whole time. He knew We were there,
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: but he didn't know what we were. And so I'm
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: just like kicking Steve like, hey, there's Buck. And I'm like,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: how is this guy going to shoot?
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: So when you're playing guide, you.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: Tell people to go to these spots, but you don't
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: really tell them how to hunt.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: Tell me, tell me what did Steve do wrong and
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: what you would have done differently?
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: I would say for sure. The spiciest moment that I
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: had with Steve off camera was after he got back
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: from that.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, he was so frustrated.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: He was pissed at me and I didn't, I'm only
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: getting the story from him.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Uh, I'm just going to say this. If you see
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: somebody go out into the white tail woods and they
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: sit in a natural blind and they don't have a
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: face mask or face paint on, uh, you're not thinking
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: this stuff through. Um, What I should have told him,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: and I didn't think about this, and this was on me,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: is I should have said, hey, get there early, cut
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: some extra stuff, and build up that blind. Because it's
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: been up for a couple months. It's going to be
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: kind of beat down. And the thing about those natural
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: blinds is they work really well when you set them
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: up correctly. But you have to hide yourself. And that one,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: I didn't know, the way that buck came in, they
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: could come in from About 270 degrees there because you
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: have that creek behind you. So they're not going to
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: come in behind you, but they could have come in
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: from everywhere. And when you're sitting there like that, kind
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: of in their line of sight, like at their level,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: it's just tough. And so I should have told him
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: he should have built that blind up more. But that
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: was just like sort of a many mistakes at one
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: time type of thing. And, you know, whatever, like that
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: stuff happens, but definitely should have been built up a
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: little bit more. You get some fresh stuff cut with
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: some leaves. So they're blown in the wind and just like,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: give yourself like that layer, right? You know, and that's
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the one thing that I do when I set up
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a natural blind for whitetails. I mean, I have, I'm covered.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I sit behind something. And then, so you have to
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: do that kind of when you set up a videographer too,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: is like, you stack up a bunch of stuff and
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: you're just filming around that. Yeah.
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: And so your movement is already behind this sort of, um,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: you know, at least a layer of cover. And then
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: that's the same thing. So he's a, he's a lefty.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: So he should have had stuff built all the way
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: up on his right. So he could have just rolled on.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So you could just, yeah.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, if, if you're in that situation
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: and that buck comes out and he's, he catches you
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: off guard, you're never going to kill him.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Like it's just, you're done.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: And just, Are you sitting on your butt when you're
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: hunting these natural blinds or are you like on your haunches,
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: on your knees?
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: So it depends, but I'm always in a situation where
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I can get to my knees, you know, because that's,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the whole name of the game.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: Because I feel like in that clip, we just watched
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: Steve's first instinct was like, Oh, I'm going to draw
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: from my butt.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Right. You know, so hard.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: And like, I don't bow hunt. I don't archery hunt.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: And like, I don't think I could do it. And like,
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: do you think you could, uh, Do you practice.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: That at all?
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have, you know, and I've, I've, I
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: shot a deer a few years ago on film sitting
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: a lot like that. It's not ideal. Like it's some setups.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: You're just like, this is just kind of how I
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: have to be. Yeah. Because you're setting up where you're
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: going to kill a deer. You know what I mean?
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Like you're setting up. So like you have to just
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: use whatever's available to you exactly on that spot. But
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: that was just one. I should have told him to
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: brush that in more, and it was just like a
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: bad deal.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: So another cool behind-the-scenes is Pat still has a tag,
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: Steve still has a tag, and this buck basically spooks.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: How far do you think Steve and Pat were away
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: from each other?
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: We measured it on Onyx. Yeah. My first instinct was
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: to say 600 yards, but I don't think it was
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: that far.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, after Steve and I.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, Steve would probably blame me for spooking this buck,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: but after Steve and I boogered this buck, this buck
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: heads in past direction.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: And are you confident in saying that buck that Steve
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: and I ran into is the same buck that Pat
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: ended up.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: 100%. Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Ended up shooting.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And, I mean.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: This is what you don't see on the film too,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: is that where Pat killed, there's a fence line through
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: this cattail slough. And it is like a really cool
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: pinch point. Or I guess I should call that a
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: funnel because they're going to walk a couple hundred yards
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: along this thing. But the way that that worked out,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: as soon as that buck spooked and he was pointed
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: in Pat's direction... it was almost a guarantee if he
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: kept going, he was going to hit that funnel and
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: have to follow that fence line. Because either way, it's
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: going to be super wet. And that's the route. And
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: so for that deer to go do that and then
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: hit where Pat was at, and Pat was in a
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: ground blind because all those trees, they were way too
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: big for a stand. That was what I had to
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: work with. But it's cool. Knowing what I know about
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: how the terrain was, it's cool to understand that that buck...
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: even though like theoretically you could look at it and go,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: he could go anywhere. But if he's, if he's going
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: that direction, he's going to naturally fall into that funnel. Yeah.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: And it's so, you know, a cruiser would do that.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Most deer would do that. And that deer did that too.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: And then Pat killed him.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: And I think Pat was the perfect example of putting
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: your time into it.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: And it, it paying off, you know, Pat, the whole
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: first day shot or sat in that, ground blind, you know,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: and blanked.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Didn't he saw possum? Right. I think it was.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: And then that second day, was he in the same blind?
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: I can't remember.
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: No.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: But he was still on the same plan of like, Hey,
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: I'm sitting this blind from sunup to sundown. You know,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: it just so happened that buck came in mid morning
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: and Pat ended up making a perfect shot.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Pat, dude, Pat's a bad-ass man.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: He, He is a cool dude, and he has a very,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: very good demeanor. He has a vibe about him that's
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: just what good hunters have. There's not a lot of second-guessing.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of conviction, and he just sees stuff through.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: So that was freaking sweet, man.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: To have him kill that buck, that was a great
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: deer on day two. That was such a relief. But
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: then we had Steve.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Well, no, I was going to say, like, if, so
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: out of the three hunters, the most deserving to kill
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: a buck would be you because you put all the
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: time and effort. My number two would be Pat because
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: it's his property, you know? And so just seeing that
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: was so awesome. And it just made me happy. And then, like,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: that last person who deserved the buck was Steve because
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: he's not putting the time into it.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, he's a great hunter. Don't get me wrong.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: But he's not putting his time into it. And he's
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: focusing more on trapping. Obviously, that was a huge challenge
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: of this hunt. And I could tell you, like, we
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: would get back, meet at a camp, and Steve would
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: be like, all right, I got to go check traps.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I could just see smoke coming out of your ears.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Talk a little bit about that and how was that
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: just eat.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: It at you? Well, Steve has been very open about
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: how he feels about whitetails generally. He'll tell you that
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: he loves mule deer way more and that whitetails aren't
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: that cool, blah, blah, blah. And so like, there's always
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: like that point of contention. But honestly, the one thing
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: that I've learned about Steve Rinella is that like, if
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Steve likes it, it's something I don't care about and
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: vice versa. We were in that camper and we were
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: talking about fishing and he was like, my favorite kind
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: of fishing is like the cold, deep water in Alaska.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: And I was like, give me the flats in the
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Bahamas that are 85 degrees. Total opposite. I'm like, just
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: everything that we talk about. And so it's just how
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: he is. But that trapping situation, I will say this,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: that was a huge pain in the ass. He knew it.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: It actually kind of became a thing. Everybody knew. But
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: you could see when Pat killed that there was like
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: a vibe shift where he's like, oh shit, like all
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the pressure's on me now. Things got a little tense
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: for a while. Cause you're like, you got to get
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: your ass in a tree, buddy. You're the last one.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Everybody's waiting to go home, you know? And he's, he's
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: out there running a trap line, but yeah.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: It was just kind of crazy to me that like
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: you go on this whitetail hunt and you spend just
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: as much time trapping as you do as whitetail hunting,
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: you know, just hilarious. But Steve's trapping and the amount
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: of time that Steve put in to wait to hunt
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: did pay off for him.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: But it was close to not paying off because he
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: made this, I wouldn't say a mistake, but it was,
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: what would you call it?
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I don't want to give it away yet, but.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Are we going to watch the clip?
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to watch the clip, but what would
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: you call it?
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Let's watch the clip. Okay. And then we'll get to it.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: We're going to watch it.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: So, um, yeah, I guess a little bit of backstory
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: before this, I think it was like day two, I
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: was starting to get sick and like, just the sickness
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: came out and just knocked me on my butt and
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: hunted day three, um, through the sickness.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: And I was this miserable in this tree stand. It
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: was cold, windy.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: And I'm just like, okay, I got one more, one
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: more morning left in me. And Steve and I get
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: up into these, this tree stand and I have this
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: all out cough attack, just hacking up a lung and
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: there's nothing I can do to stop this cough.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: And Steve is just like, Oh gosh, he understands that
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: I wasn't feeling well. Everyone knew it was not like
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: I was hiding it. And so he kind of expected
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: this and he was probably thinking like, I probably should
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: have took a different camera guy. And I cough for
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: a straight minute or two. And then I finally get
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: this cough under control. And I'm not kidding you. It
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: was 30 seconds later. Steve makes this sound. And that
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: was his signal of like, hey, deer coming.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: So let's watch. No. That deer was still moving.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Right. Which, so there's a lot to unpack here. Yes. Uh, the,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: the thing, the first mistake he made here was he
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: thought that that buck in that stand was going to
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: look up and bust him. And I'll tell you, I've
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: really started to look at a lot of my hunts.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to like, be really honest about what
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: are the advantages I have in a situation and what
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: are the disadvantages and, One of the advantages that I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: figured we were going to have, which I think was 100%
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: true on this hunt, was that these were not going
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to be the smartest whitetails we've hunted. These were not
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: public land.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they haven't been hunted in X amount of years.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: So you have bucks that... I know people will lose
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: it over this, but I've hunted Nebraska a lot. The
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: biggest buck I ever killed in my life was on
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: public land in Nebraska. I've hunted there a lot. They're
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: not deer that are, at least in my experience, are
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: super cagey, are looking up in the trees all the time.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Some places I hunt, like northern Wisconsin, I get busted
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: all the time by deer.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're probably walking like this.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Right, it's just a different thing. And so on this one,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: I'm like, we're not going to be dealing with bucks
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: that are going to be super cagey. Not to say
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: that they wouldn't wind you or pick you off or whatever,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: but I just knew, and you have peak rut. So
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: the whole reason that I killed this buck here– A
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: huge part of it was he was so rutted up.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: He just didn't have a clue. That's why I got
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: to shoot at him as many times as I did.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Like he was just like, he was in one mode.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: Can I see him? For sure.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Keep talking about him.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Um, and so Steve thought there's no way this buck's
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: going to walk in and not bust me. And I
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: would look at that situation. I'd go, 99 out of
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a hundred times that buck comes in and he's not
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: looking up at you. He's cruising. And so in his head,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: he's like, I can't draw. I can't do anything until
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: that buck's right there, which whatever, you know, like you're
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: kind of erring on the side of caution, but it
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: was unnecessary. But what he did, and a lot of
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: bow hunters do this, is, okay, I'm going to draw.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stop him. I'm going to shoot. That's
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: the thing going around in your head. His thought was,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm going to be able to
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: draw without getting busted. It wouldn't matter at that range.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: If that deer sees you, you just still kill him.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: But in his head, I know where he was going.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: He draws. He murps him. Get him to stop and
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: instantly punches that trigger.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: It was almost like he went to stop him and
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: there's just like a reaction.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Right. And I'll tell anyone who's listening to this or
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: watching this who's a bow hunter. If you do that,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: which we all do, right? I stopped deer all the time,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: shoot them. If you go out into your backyard and
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: you draw and you make that sound and then go
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: to shoot, the odds are you'll punch that trigger or
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: you'll shoot maybe faster than you need. It is like
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: a thing. that just like psychologically just tells you, you
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: got to let this go. And that's what he did.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: And you know, I mean, lucky for him and to
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: his credit, he was on that buck.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: He was right in the wheelhouse, like right in the
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: boiler room, aiming at it, you know?
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: But it's like a, it's, it's a very, it's a
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: sort of a very interesting psychological thing to like acknowledge
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: because you start that clock ticking because you've made, you know,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: auditory contact with him. That buck knows something's going on now.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: So in your head, you go, I have X amount
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: of seconds to get this shot off or that buck's
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: going to bolt because I've now changed this, the vibe
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of this situation. That, like, if it were me, well,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: I guess it's different when you're on film because you
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: always kind of try to stop them. But that buck,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: you could kill that buck all day long just walking
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: like that, nice and slow. He was super close.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: Didn't know you were there.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's... It's like an interesting thing to watch
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: to see how that play out. Cause people will see
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: that and they'll go, he totally rushed it and punched
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: the trigger, which he acknowledged and he did. But that
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: happens a lot when you, when you're in that situation.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I just, I just can't even understand it.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Cause I mean, you think about it, like, so let's
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: say you have a, a pointer or a flusher in
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: your pheasant hunting, right. And you have a new hunter, right.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Like somebody who's like, they're on their first rooster hunt,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: and that pointer locks up, tripod point right in front
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: of them, they walk up, or that lab, the tail
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: is just, you know, helicopter, right? You're like, that sucker's
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: right here. And they know it's coming. And so they're
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: standing there getting ready to take that safety off, and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: that big rooster gets up, and it's both barrels they miss.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: And it's just one of those things like there's too
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: much going on. Because now you're thinking, I'm going to
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: get my chance. That bird's going to get up right there.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: And it happens and your brain just melts. Yeah.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: Another question that I have, just not being an archery hunter,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: a bow hunter, is how do you know when to
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: start tracking? I mean, there's a lot that comes into
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: play is like, oh, did that animal turn?
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's, you know, when you're filming.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: You have the benefit of just getting to watch it
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: and go, all right, we can slow this down. You
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: can see where that arrow impacts. And it honestly, that,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: that has taught me a lot about how archery tackle
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: performs and deer reaction and stuff. I mean, I shot
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: a buck a few years ago in North Dakota from
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: the ground on public land that we filmed. And that
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: arrow went all the way through that buck and in it,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many frames per second we film in, 60, 120,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: whatever it is.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: 24.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: 24? Oh, well, in between two frames, it went in
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: and came out. That arrow fully penetrated and fully got
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: kicked out. And so in my head, I was like, man,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't get very much penetration there because my brain's
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: only registering so much that's going on. And then you
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: watch it on film and you're like, oh my God,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: that fletching disappeared inside of him and poked all the
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: way back out. So you get that, but it's really
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: just a matter of like, what is the evidence? And again,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: so I know I said that whitetail hunters are patient
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and Western hunters aren't as much. One area that I
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: see a lot of impatience in whitetail hunters is trailing deer. People,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: they just want to get on that blood trail and
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: get going. And it's almost always a better idea to
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: play it safe. Because people go, oh, well, coyotes are
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: going to find it or it's too warm. You can
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: get away with a lot. You can get away with
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of warmer weather than people think. The coyote
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: thing is often kind of overblown. It's like an excuse
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: we use. It's not always, but often.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: I feel like the coyote thing is very common for
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: the overnight, maybe.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Sure. I mean, and it's certain areas, right? But mostly...
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: we're just not that patient. Like we want to get
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: on the trail. And so it just depends, you know,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: like if you, if you know, you made a good
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: shot and your arrows in the ground covered in bright
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: red blood and he meal kicked on the way out
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: or whatever, you're like, okay, I'm going to go. But
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: if it's like, you know, when I shot that buck
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: of mine, um, my first shot, I had no idea
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: where it hit. I just knew I hit him.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: Cause you could also hear that meat report.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Right. Um, the way he reacted, I was like, okay,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: that wasn't great. The second shot hit him right next
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: to the heart. You can actually see there's, there's two, uh,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: two broadhead cuts like side by side in the pocket,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: but it must've like missed his heart by like, I mean,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: it had to be within like millimeters. Um, And so
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: on that one, you could watch that and be like,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: that deer's toast. And he might go a mile.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a dead deer running almost.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: So it's like, you got to take in like, what
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: was your initial reaction? Where do you think it hit?
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: What does the arrow show you if you can find it?
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: What's the first blood show you? And then, so you
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: build this plan. You go, okay, I'm going to give
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: it two hours, even though I think I smoked him.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Then you get out there and you're on the trail
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: and you find a little bit of gut material in
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: the blood or you go 250 yards when you're like,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: there's no way he should have gone 100. And then
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay, now you have new relevant data. You
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: better reassess this situation. Is it time to back out?
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Is it time to get the dogs? Like, what is it?
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: But generally it's like, be really patient and trust the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: actual evidence, not what your brain is telling you. Like
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: what is the sign and the spore and everything show you? Yeah.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: I've, I've been on three whitetail hunts with, you know,
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: and I, I would say that's one thing you're really
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: good at is just being patient and just taking in
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: what you're actually seeing as far as blood, um, how
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: much blood is on the arrow. And yeah, I just
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: think you're just really good at it. And, um, I
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: think Steve on his buck didn't feel so great about it. Um,
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: but yeah, you saw the footage.
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: And.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Okay. How much time do we got?
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Um, we're almost at an hour.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: That's pretty, probably pretty good.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Start that over. I think Steve, Sadie.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: Um, I think Steve, after he shot his buck, wasn't
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: feeling the most confident. about his shots and I showed
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: you the footage and you're like, Oh, we can start
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: tracking right now. You were very confident in that. And, uh,
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: we ended up tracking Steve's buck a hundred and 150
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: yards and there he was laid up.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: So, yeah. So there's a, there's like an interesting thing
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: that happens from a hunter perspective or, well, yeah, from
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: a hunter perspective. Okay. So Steve, Steve knew he punched
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: that trigger. So now he has that, that doubt, right?
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Like I, I probably didn't do the job I needed to,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: because I know I screwed up that important part.
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Um, so his, his default is to go negative. I
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: do that all the time.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. I'm sure it's easy to do.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: But the reason he does it and I do it.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people do is if you've been
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: on enough blood trails, I mean, ask any guide out there,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: ask anybody who's been around a long time and been
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: on a lot of them. Uh, on unearned enthusiasm. Like
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: if it's, if you're, if you're too optimistic right off
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the bat, you have a, you have like a high
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: odds of being disappointed and the high odds of making
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: a mistake. So you see people with a lot of
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: experience generally default to like, I don't know, man, we
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: got to play this safe. I'm super worried. And you know,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: you could see it when we found that buck. Steve's like,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Like he was plowing. Like I felt like
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: the hit was good. But it's very common to immediately
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: default to second-guessing mode and low-confidence mode for people who've
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: been there a lot. And then when you have people
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: who haven't, they often just are like, I think I
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: smoked him. It looked perfect right behind the shoulder. And
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: then you're on an all-night ordeal overnight. over and over again.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: And so it's like a, it, it's interesting how different
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: people like experience level plays into how do you, how
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you react to that stuff. Yeah.
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: Um, I remember.
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: One point in this video, you mentioned how, it would
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: be a lot of people's dream to hunt with Steve Rinella.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: What is like the biggest or hardest thing.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: To do with hunting with Steve?
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: And then you could ask me that from a film
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: perspective and I'll tell you, I got a.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Pretty good idea. Your answer, buddy. Uh, you know, I don't,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously Steve, Steve, super famous. Uh, it's like a,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: it's like a weird case, right? I like hunting with
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: people who have a lot of experience just to see
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: what do they do. I have a cameraman that I
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: use a lot, who I use a lot, Dylan Lenz,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: who's a really good whitetail hunter. I like hunting with him,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: filming with him, because he'll make observations or he'll question
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: a decision I'm making. Yeah, you don't have to babysit him. Well,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: not only that, but I learn from him. And so,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: like Steve, when we're whitetail hunting, I'm in the driver's seat.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: But he's a guy who's done a lot of stuff
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: out there and he's like a very generally capable outdoorsman.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: And so I enjoy that part. Like, honestly, I like
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: being around people who are, even if he's not like
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: specifically super good at white tail hunting, he's really capable
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: in the outdoors. And he's, and he's like a student
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: of the game. And so anybody, anytime I can be
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: with somebody like that, like I've spent a lot of
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: time with some wildlife photographers who don't hunt very much,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: but I learn so much from them. And so I
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: like being around people who've been out there a lot.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: And I don't spend a lot of time with people
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: who are trappers. I don't spend a lot of time
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: with people who do a lot of his stuff. So
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: that part's fun. And honestly, he's kind of a pain
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: in the ass because he's like, I know how to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: do this. And he's a little bit stubborn. But it's also...
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: it's fun for me to watch him because I can
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: see him wrestle with what he thinks he should do
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: and what I say. And I've done two, two whitetail
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: hunts with him. Um, we did one down in Oklahoma
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: on public land and he, he will like defer and
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: he'll be like, all right, I'm going, you say this,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try this. And he will actually go
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: through that stuff and it works. And so it's, he's, he's.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: Like an interesting guy because.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: You feel like, You shouldn't tell him what to do,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: but you have to. And you feel like he won't listen,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: but he will.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think he's definitely the kind of person
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: that will take your knowledge and try to learn from it, too,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: which is awesome.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, and I mean, we've been kind of ripping
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: on him, but he's actually super funny.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: He's super down to hang. It's generally been... like my
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: first time I did with him, I was like, I
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: don't know if this is going to be a nonstop
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: stress fest. Like, I don't know if he's going to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: bitch if I cook burgers and not something fancy or whatever.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: And he's like, he's like way more easy going when
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: he like gets into the mode. Like you can tell
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: it takes him a little while to unplug from whatever
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: he's got going on and get into it. But once
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: he gets into it, he's like pretty just like, okay,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: we'll do this. We'll do this, whatever. Um, so it's interesting,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: but yeah, that's, That's my experience. I'm not sitting in
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: a tree with him swinging a camera around. Go ahead, buddy.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: Like I said before, there's a huge difference between hunting
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: and filming a hunt. When you're filming a hunt, you
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: have to get all these shots to help build the story.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: You have to get some walk-by shots. You have to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: run up there, have them pass. You have to do
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: all these B-roll shots, scenic shots.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: You have to film.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: the same branch about five different times in five different ways,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: you know, um, do all these focus polls. But I
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: feel like the biggest thing with Steve is he wants
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: to hunt as naturally as possible, which makes sense. He's
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: there for five days. He wants to have the odds
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: stacked in his favor. And so like in a tree
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: is like, I have to switch lenses as quietly, quietly
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: as possible.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: But, it's going to make some noise, you know?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: And so there was so many times where I would
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: be like moving slowly, switching a lens, you know, and
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: I would make a little noise and it was just
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: be like.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: You know, just death glare. Like, Hey, shut up. You're
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: making too much noise, you know?
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: And like, um, I feel like when you film with someone,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: the more time you film with someone, you can read
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: each other. And so like, it was really easy for
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: me to read, read Steve or be like, Hey, I
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: got to quiet down or like knock it off with
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: the B roll, you know? Uh, and so like, and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: also Steve is a big, uh, fan of not doing
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: any retakes. And so I'm constantly sitting in that tree
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: thinking one, two steps ahead of like, okay, what's he
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: going to do? Is he going to look left? Is
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: he going to look right? Um, when is he going
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: to grab the bow? And so it's just like a constant.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: There's no breaks. You have to be on 24-7 or
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: else you're going to miss that shot. So yeah, that
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: was the biggest challenge for me was just not making
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: that much noise.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, people don't understand. I'm not complaining about this.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: This is just an observation. It's hard to sit two
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: feet away from somebody for hours on end and days
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: on end. Like you said, you have different goals in mind.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: The overarching goal is to get a kill on film
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: and get your show, but how that comes to be
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: isn't from just sitting quietly and not moving. It's a
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: tough deal.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: One last video we're going to watch. Kind of ending
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: on a happy, fun note. This was one of the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: first evenings. And Steve didn't like how much I was moving.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: And this is something that didn't make the cut, but
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: I just think it was absolutely hilarious.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: You gotta chill out on that moving head around. Pretend
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: you're a video. Why don't you make a video about
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: you not moving that camera so fast? We'll make a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: video of camera moves that shouldn't have happened. And that'll
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: be like the Worst camera moves for deer hunting. And
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: that'll be the cold open. What do you think of that?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: Just give me one talking point.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: Just give me one talking point.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: I'll stop.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: I just gave you a talking point. I gave you pointers.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: I gave you professional feedback.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: What more do you want?
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, man. That was just hilarious.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: Goodness.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: It's... I don't know. I don't remember if you and I,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: I don't feel like we had any too contentious moments,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: but generally when I film a whitetail hunt, I will
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: end up having to apologize to my videographer at some point.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: I remember the last whitetail hunt I filmed with you,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: you were almost full draw on this buck, and then
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: you look up and realize, I'm filming the wrong buck.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Well, right. That worked out. Yeah. So that, that didn't
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: lead to anything, but I just, I filmed a, a
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: fishing show, uh, this summer and Lauren Moulton, one of our,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: one of our good videographers, he came out and filmed
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: that with me and he and I were reminiscing. We
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: filmed one week in November, the second season together. And
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: it was a rough hunt. Just, we had a, we
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: had a rough hunt. And the last morning, uh, I
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: kind of had a Hail Mary situation going on, hung
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: a set for us. And we got in there and
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: he was climbing up ahead of me and he got
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: tangled up in the tow rope and he's spinning around
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and swearing and make a bunch of noise. And I
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: was like, hey man, you got to get your shit together.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: And he looked down at me and he goes, you
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: got to chill the fuck.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: Out.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: And we had a little spicy back and forth and
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: then got into that tree and killed a buck and
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: it was great. But almost every time At some point
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: it just, it just breaks a little bit, you know? Yeah.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: But that's, that's like, it's, that's like the nature of
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: doing something like that, where you have all that pressure
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: on you to get the film and you're just, you're,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: you know, like those competing interests or like competing routes
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: to the same goal or, you know, it gets a
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: little feisty once in a while.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: And I've, this is the last time I'm going to
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: say it. There is such a big difference between hunting
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: and filming a hunt, you know?
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: So, all right, Tony. it's late September fall is here.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of people want to know what
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: trips or what's your fall look like, man.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: I have some cool stuff I'm working on.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, talk about them.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: I'm I'll talk generically.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Generally.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Uh, I got a couple of whitetail hunts on public land,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: cool spots, cool situations. Um, that I'm building a couple
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: films around, and I have another one on public land
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: that I'm not going to talk about yet. That's going to,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's going to be unlike any whitetail hunt
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: that's ever been filmed. I don't think it's out there yet.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: So I'm very excited about that. So I'm, I'm going
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: hard toward the public land, whitetails this fall, a couple
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: of different States, maybe an extra country in there somewhere.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: And just, just going after like those, like what I
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: feel are just very like real world, you know, like
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: anybody could do them hunts and just trying to show
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: like that process. Like, I feel like at least for
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: my audience, like generally, like that's like bread and butter, man.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: Like people want to see that. And I, and I
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: like doing that. Like I like going and living out
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: of a tent and just hunting those deer where anyone can.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: And so that's what I'm going to be doing very,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: very soon.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: Well, that's just so relatable to the, to the viewer too.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: You know, like that's what a lot of people are
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: doing these days.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: So for sure. That's sweet.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: Um, what's one thing you're looking forward to the most? Any,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: is there any one hunt that you're, you know, I'm, I'm.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Doing a hunt in Minnesota that we're going to, we're
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: going to paddle in with kayaks and it's, it's a property,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: it's a public, it's a piece of public. Actually, there's
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: a couple of pieces in there that I hunted when
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I was like a teenager and hadn't been back into for,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: I haven't set foot in there in 15, 20 years
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: for sure. And it's just sort of this like nostalgia
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: hunt on this place where I was like learning how
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: to whitetail hunt. And like, I went in there in
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: the beginning of September and scouted around and it just, dude,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I got so excited and it just brought back like
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: so many memories. And so that one is, that one's
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: really cool to me. And then the, you know, the
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: other ones will be hunting with my daughters off film.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: Like we've got a lot of deer to hunt, a
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: lot of, a lot of forkeys and spikes to target.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: I would be scared if I was a forky or spike.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: We don't, They don't get a lot of mercy from
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: the Peterson girls.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: That's funny. That's awesome. Well, Tony, great job if no
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: one's told you about this hunt. I had a lot
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: of fun filming it. I had a lot of fun
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: just watching it as well, too. Um, and it just
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: makes me want to pick up a bow, start flinging
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: some arrows.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: You got a buddy. So, uh, no, I appreciate it, man.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: That is our companion podcast for this 12 and 26
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: film where Steve Rinella, Pat Hoffman, and I went down
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to Nebraska, chasing bucks on Pat's family ranch, had a
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: hell of a time down there. We had a good
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: four day run. Um, You can check it out if
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: you haven't watched it yet. It's at the MeatEater YouTube channel.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: And if you do go watch it, leave us a comment.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Let us know what you think. Tell us what you
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: want to see us do more films about.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us what we did wrong.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Tell Steve what he did wrong. I don't want to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: hear it. No, you can tell us. But leave some comments.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: Go check it out. And thank you so much for
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: all your support.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good luck to you this fall.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: Thanks, brother.