Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 370: The Trials and Tribulations of Public Land Deer Hunting

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Ep. 370: The Trials and Tribulations of Public Land Deer Hunting · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
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Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
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Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast. I'm
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Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
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Speaker 1: and seventy. Today in the show, we are discussing the
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Speaker 1: trials and tribulations of public land deer hunting. Some things
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Speaker 1: not to do, some things to do, and some lessons
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Speaker 1: learned from our Idaho public land white to hunt. All right,
0:37
Speaker 1: welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, brought to you
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Speaker 1: by on X. Today in the show, we are talking
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Speaker 1: public land deer hunting. We're talking about the trials and
0:49
Speaker 1: tribulations of public land deer hunting and to discuss that,
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Speaker 1: to discuss some of the challenges of those types of hunts,
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Speaker 1: We're going to use the story of the recent hunt
1:01
Speaker 1: that Josh further Hilliard and I have been on and
1:06
Speaker 1: are still on to a degree as we speak. Um,
1:10
Speaker 1: I want to talk through some things like dealing with
1:12
Speaker 1: hunting pressure, dealing with the random adversity that comes along
1:16
Speaker 1: with traveling to hunt, and hunting new places. I want
1:20
Speaker 1: to talk about the challenges of hunting new ground. I
1:22
Speaker 1: want to talk about things like how to set proper
1:26
Speaker 1: standards and goals for public land hunts. All that kind
1:29
Speaker 1: of stuff is has been on my mind over the
1:34
Speaker 1: last week or so, and I'm sure it will be
1:38
Speaker 1: on my mind again on future public land hunts. And
1:42
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's something you can learn from every trip,
1:45
Speaker 1: and this trip has had a lot of learning experiences.
1:48
Speaker 1: I think. So we're gonna talk about our d I
1:51
Speaker 1: y public land Idaho white to hunt, but I also think,
1:55
Speaker 1: you know, we'll be able to throw back to some
1:56
Speaker 1: of the other trips I've been on and that Josh
1:58
Speaker 1: has been over the past years. We've been I don't know,
2:01
Speaker 1: just in the past few years. We've hunted some public
2:03
Speaker 1: lan in North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Michigan, UM Nebraska. So
2:13
Speaker 1: there's a few other players. There's something else I'm missing
2:15
Speaker 1: from a recent hunt. But but yeah, we've got some
2:18
Speaker 1: different experiences we can pull from here. UM. But let's
2:21
Speaker 1: start just with the store of this trip and we'll
2:24
Speaker 1: kind of take it from there. We'll run through some
2:26
Speaker 1: of these key learnings, will run through some lessons, we'll
2:28
Speaker 1: run through some challenges, UM, and we'll tell the story,
2:31
Speaker 1: and the story picks back up where we left off
2:35
Speaker 1: last week. For those who didn't listen to last week's podcast,
2:39
Speaker 1: which was ten Steps to your Best Deer hunting Season Ever. UM,
2:44
Speaker 1: we kind of teased that we had just finished our
2:46
Speaker 1: first night of the hunt, and that first night was
2:50
Speaker 1: a banger. That was a good night. You saw a
2:52
Speaker 1: whole bunch of deer, a whole lot of deer, You
2:55
Speaker 1: saw some shooter bucks. We praised the power of the
3:00
Speaker 1: first set which we enjoyed that night, and you said
3:04
Speaker 1: that you had nine probability that you were going to
3:09
Speaker 1: kill a big giant buck the next day. I'm not
3:12
Speaker 1: sure I said it was that it was high, but
3:14
Speaker 1: I think that was without giving away too much, I
3:17
Speaker 1: think that was the beginning of the end as soon
3:19
Speaker 1: as you asked that question there for you at least. UM,
3:23
Speaker 1: So let's let's walk it through. Let's I guess I'm
3:26
Speaker 1: gonna take a step back just again to rehash stuff
3:29
Speaker 1: very quickly for people that hadn't heard. This is a hunt,
3:34
Speaker 1: that it was in a brand new area. All we
3:39
Speaker 1: had done leading up to this is a little bit
3:43
Speaker 1: of summer scouting. When I was out west Um in July,
3:46
Speaker 1: I was able to do some drive bys. I did
3:48
Speaker 1: a lot of map scouting, and then I had a
3:51
Speaker 1: day day and a half where I was able to
3:53
Speaker 1: drive and check out some of these places, basically driving
3:55
Speaker 1: past them, getting eyes on him, hopping out, doing a
3:58
Speaker 1: quick walk about, just trying to con arm a few things. Um,
4:02
Speaker 1: see if there's actually crops on the neighboring fields, see
4:05
Speaker 1: what the access looks like, all that. So I was
4:07
Speaker 1: able to do that, and through that scouting work I
4:10
Speaker 1: pinpointed um about four different places that I thought had
4:15
Speaker 1: good potential. One that I was the most excited about
4:18
Speaker 1: because it had river bottom cover and had private land
4:22
Speaker 1: adjacent to it with crop fields, and that's where we
4:24
Speaker 1: started the first night. We pushed in that first night
4:28
Speaker 1: and set up you and that observation stand. I went
4:30
Speaker 1: a little back further back in the cover to see
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Speaker 1: what was going on back there, and you saw a
4:35
Speaker 1: ton of deer, including a number of nice bucks. And
4:39
Speaker 1: I saw a decent number of deer and passed on
4:41
Speaker 1: a two year old eight pointer and some other young guns. Um.
4:44
Speaker 1: But we felt pretty good about things. So the next
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Speaker 1: day the plan was to take those observations and adjust.
4:51
Speaker 1: So in my case, I had seen deer but I
4:53
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the quality dere I wanted, But you had
4:56
Speaker 1: seen a bunch of bucks come out. Basically, there's this
5:00
Speaker 1: elf alpha field you were hunting right, and you saw
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Speaker 1: some that came out on the west side, which is
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Speaker 1: where you were hunting near, and then you saw another
5:09
Speaker 1: pretty substantial number of deer that came more to the
5:11
Speaker 1: east side. So I thought, all right, I'm going to
5:14
Speaker 1: sneak in the back and hunt somewhere on the back
5:18
Speaker 1: side of Again, we can't hunt the elf alpha field,
5:20
Speaker 1: we're hunting the thick stuff behind it. But I wanted
5:23
Speaker 1: to try to get back into that thick stuff to
5:25
Speaker 1: maybe intercept more of those bucks that were coming hitting
5:27
Speaker 1: the east side of that. So I slipped in there
5:32
Speaker 1: and pushed back another hundred and fifty yards. Are so
5:38
Speaker 1: farther east than when I went where I was the
5:40
Speaker 1: first night, and my hopes here were just too slip
5:44
Speaker 1: in there a little bit further, hoping to intercept whatever
5:48
Speaker 1: that line of travel was um. But also I was
5:51
Speaker 1: scouting my way in so as I'm I'm working my way,
5:53
Speaker 1: and I got past where he hunted the night before.
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Speaker 1: I got to a creek, and this creek had just
6:00
Speaker 1: like cow path mode trails um not mode literally, but
6:05
Speaker 1: just like plowed down with deer traffic on either side
6:08
Speaker 1: parallel in the creek. And then two different trails criss
6:11
Speaker 1: crossed crossing it right there. And I saw this and
6:15
Speaker 1: it was definitely the greatest concentration I had seen to
6:18
Speaker 1: that point of travel. And then I saw some beds
6:22
Speaker 1: that had been used previously. We're all off on this
6:24
Speaker 1: grassy point on the knob of the creek um And
6:28
Speaker 1: then I could see way down the creek bed to
6:31
Speaker 1: my west, like three yards or so. It was like
6:35
Speaker 1: this big, you know, creek opening that you could see
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Speaker 1: a long ways and nice thought, Man, this is a
6:40
Speaker 1: great concentration of movement, and I would be able to
6:43
Speaker 1: see all the way down this creek, and if if
6:46
Speaker 1: something doesn't come by right here for a shot tonight,
6:48
Speaker 1: I can at least see where they're crossing this creek
6:50
Speaker 1: and make an adjustment for the next day. And this
6:53
Speaker 1: is a big part of at least from my public
6:56
Speaker 1: land experiences, when you're hunting new ground like this, something
6:59
Speaker 1: that is, if the terrain allows it and the habitat
7:02
Speaker 1: allows it. I often, at least early in the hunt,
7:05
Speaker 1: I'm trying to set up in places where you can
7:08
Speaker 1: learn something for the next hunt. So I want to
7:12
Speaker 1: have a good view at least early on when you're
7:14
Speaker 1: trying to learn these places. I need that observation stand
7:17
Speaker 1: opportunity to be able to learn, because you can only
7:21
Speaker 1: learn so much from your off season scouting, and in
7:23
Speaker 1: this case, I had very little offseason scouting. So basically
7:26
Speaker 1: it's learning as you go. And I wanted to see
7:31
Speaker 1: these crosses. Now you're way back and cover, but it's
7:34
Speaker 1: just this little line of sight, way back in the
7:38
Speaker 1: thick stuff. So as I you know, I got set
7:43
Speaker 1: up in the tree. I will tell you one thing
7:45
Speaker 1: that I've been very happy with as far as this trip,
7:49
Speaker 1: and something that I think is important for you know,
7:52
Speaker 1: my future public plan hunting, and and something I think
7:54
Speaker 1: you know, for most people listening. One of the things
7:57
Speaker 1: I wanted to build do was be more more wol
8:00
Speaker 1: than ever, being able to adapt and move as often
8:04
Speaker 1: as you need to and do it quickly, quietly, um efficiently.
8:10
Speaker 1: And I will tell you one thing that I think
8:13
Speaker 1: I've done better than ever before is that I've not
8:16
Speaker 1: been as mobile, uh in the past, as I have
8:19
Speaker 1: been this chart. I mean almost every night. I've been
8:21
Speaker 1: moving to new places, and I feel like my process
8:25
Speaker 1: is way better than it's ever been. I'm able to
8:27
Speaker 1: go up in one one trip. Um, you know I've
8:31
Speaker 1: the way I do it now. And I also tell
8:33
Speaker 1: you my my equipment has been improving over the last
8:37
Speaker 1: couple of years now to where I'm really happy with
8:38
Speaker 1: the system I have. So as you know, Josh, I'll
8:41
Speaker 1: run through this for for people that might be interested
8:43
Speaker 1: in setting up something like this themselves. Um, we're both
8:47
Speaker 1: using saddles. I'm running the Tethered Phantom saddle and using
8:51
Speaker 1: the Predator platform. So when I get to my tree,
8:55
Speaker 1: I put on my kneepads, I'm wearing my saddle. Um,
9:00
Speaker 1: I have a little it's just a little I don't
9:05
Speaker 1: know how you describe it, not a pack, but it's
9:06
Speaker 1: a little holding case for the platform that Tethered makes
9:11
Speaker 1: that's clipped to the side of my backpack. I have
9:14
Speaker 1: three climbing sticks and these that I've been using this
9:18
Speaker 1: year are from a company called timber Ninja. And I
9:21
Speaker 1: gotta tell you and I you know this, Josh, I'm
9:25
Speaker 1: not big on talking about products all the time, right,
9:29
Speaker 1: I hate I mean, we got to add sometimes, but
9:33
Speaker 1: I don't like to be like I would have never
9:34
Speaker 1: kill this book if it wasn't for my blank blank blank. UM.
9:38
Speaker 1: So I avoid talking about products as much as possible
9:41
Speaker 1: because I hate that kind of thing. But I'm going
9:43
Speaker 1: to give a huge plug to these guys because I
9:45
Speaker 1: have been floored by these climbing sticks. These timber Ninja
9:49
Speaker 1: carbon climbing sticks are nuts. Yeah, they're pretty, they're pretty slick.
9:53
Speaker 1: They're not. I mean, there there's no metal on them.
9:56
Speaker 1: There's no metal, so there's no sound, there's no clanking,
9:59
Speaker 1: there's know weight. I mean you can hold all three
10:02
Speaker 1: sticks like an empty water bottle, like analogene. It's stupid.
10:06
Speaker 1: They're super light. Um. I've just been so so so pleased. Um,
10:12
Speaker 1: I just hate all the metal sounds on metal climbing sticks.
10:15
Speaker 1: Even if you tape your buckles, they're still just too
10:19
Speaker 1: many little pieces and parts that could possibly make noise.
10:22
Speaker 1: You have none of them. These things lock onto the
10:25
Speaker 1: tree really nice. What I've done is I've used the
10:27
Speaker 1: tethered versus straps, which is like a like a daisy
10:31
Speaker 1: chain style, Um, what would you call it? Strap strap?
10:37
Speaker 1: I guess that again has no metal on it, So
10:40
Speaker 1: you just wrap the strap around the tree and then
10:42
Speaker 1: you pick the loop, and then you put that loop
10:45
Speaker 1: on the little button on the back on the front
10:47
Speaker 1: side of the stick sent you down the tree. I
10:50
Speaker 1: also have one of these sticks with a built in eight,
10:53
Speaker 1: so it has like a cable that slides out the
10:56
Speaker 1: bottom of the stick, which essentially adds a another excuse me,
11:00
Speaker 1: it adds another step to the bottom of that stick.
11:03
Speaker 1: So what I'm doing is I'm getting to my tree,
11:05
Speaker 1: I am taking my sticks off my pack. I am
11:08
Speaker 1: slapping that first stick up, but I'm putting it very
11:11
Speaker 1: high on the tree because I can have that eight
11:12
Speaker 1: or that slips out from beneath it. Two. So I
11:14
Speaker 1: stick the first one on there attach it. I then
11:18
Speaker 1: have a m oh, what do you call it? Um
11:22
Speaker 1: my bow rope. It's a retractable retractable yes, a retractable
11:28
Speaker 1: bow rope things. So I clipped that into my pocket.
11:30
Speaker 1: I attached that to my bowl on the ground, and
11:33
Speaker 1: then I take my other two sticks and I attached
11:35
Speaker 1: them to little gear ties like those night Eyes gear
11:39
Speaker 1: ties on that are attached to either side of my saddle.
11:40
Speaker 1: So I've got to stick on my left hip stick
11:43
Speaker 1: on my right hip, my backpacks on my back. The
11:46
Speaker 1: platform is clipped to the backpack. I climb with that
11:50
Speaker 1: first step. I'm using my lineman's belt, and I just
11:53
Speaker 1: climb up that first one. I got my lineman's belt.
11:56
Speaker 1: I can lean back, grab the second stick off my hip,
11:58
Speaker 1: Slap that one up, shimming up that one. Grab the
12:01
Speaker 1: left one off, stick that one up. Grab the platform
12:05
Speaker 1: off the back of my backpack. Stick that up step
12:07
Speaker 1: into the tree. Attached my tether. I'm clipped in. I'm
12:10
Speaker 1: good to go. And my model this whole week. When
12:13
Speaker 1: it comes to everything, but especially like setting up my
12:17
Speaker 1: saddle stands and all this kind of stuff, it is
12:20
Speaker 1: um slowest smooth and smooth is fast. I just said
12:25
Speaker 1: that over and over and over UM. And I've tried to, like,
12:30
Speaker 1: in general, you know, I'm always in a rush. I'm
12:31
Speaker 1: always like feel like I'm always running late or I
12:34
Speaker 1: want to get somewhere faster. I need to get this
12:36
Speaker 1: thing done, um. And so I'm always stressing out in
12:39
Speaker 1: the woods about that. But I've just tried to be
12:42
Speaker 1: smooth with things, and when it comes to my setup process,
12:45
Speaker 1: that has really helped, I think. And so if there's
12:47
Speaker 1: anything I have done good on this trip. It's been
12:49
Speaker 1: getting up, setting up quietly and not always like super
12:54
Speaker 1: crazy fast, but just one smooth um process. And that's
12:58
Speaker 1: something I think can be helpful on Yeah, all sorts
13:01
Speaker 1: of public lan huts in the future. That is all
13:04
Speaker 1: to say that I quietly and efficiently got set up
13:07
Speaker 1: on the down wind side of this creek, within range
13:11
Speaker 1: of the crossings and the two parallel trails, and with
13:13
Speaker 1: a view down the whole creek bed. And I saw
13:16
Speaker 1: a bunch of deer. Um, some young bucks came through,
13:21
Speaker 1: some young bucks crossed way down the creek bed. A
13:23
Speaker 1: bunch of doughs came by me. But long story short,
13:26
Speaker 1: and that night did not see any shooter bucks. I
13:32
Speaker 1: slipped out and met you back in the truck, and
13:36
Speaker 1: what did you see? How'd your neck go? What were
13:38
Speaker 1: you doing? Yeah? I did something similar. I kind of
13:41
Speaker 1: pushed back further into the north, into the thick stuff, um,
13:44
Speaker 1: trying to intercept these bucks that I had saw the
13:47
Speaker 1: night before coming to the LFLFA field. And so I
13:50
Speaker 1: got back in there. Um. And then it was a
13:53
Speaker 1: slow night. I think, I said, I'm trying to remember.
13:55
Speaker 1: I think I saw a few deer that night, maybe
13:57
Speaker 1: a dough and a couple of bonds, and and maybe
13:59
Speaker 1: a year a half old buck um. I did see
14:02
Speaker 1: one decent buck um come through early. I don't remember
14:07
Speaker 1: if I told you about this, but he came through early,
14:10
Speaker 1: maybe fifty seventy five yards to my west. Um. But
14:15
Speaker 1: other than that, it was a pretty quiet night. And
14:17
Speaker 1: that was the night I had high, high expectations for
14:21
Speaker 1: and and unfortunately it didn't all come together that night.
14:24
Speaker 1: But um, yeah it was. It was not what it
14:27
Speaker 1: was like, not what I was expecting to see that night.
14:29
Speaker 1: I was hoping for a little bit better, better night.
14:32
Speaker 1: So we had that hunt had happened the day after
14:35
Speaker 1: we recorded last week's podcast, and last week one of
14:37
Speaker 1: the things we talked about was the importance of asking why.
14:41
Speaker 1: When you have a night like that, you need to
14:43
Speaker 1: try to think, Okay, why did that happen? Let's just
14:45
Speaker 1: not assume well just didn't work out? UM, Let's dissect
14:49
Speaker 1: some possible things and maybe there's something you can adjust
14:52
Speaker 1: based off of um a guess or an assumption or
14:57
Speaker 1: some some kind of slip with work here. So what
15:01
Speaker 1: were some of the things that you think that could
15:03
Speaker 1: have led to a better night or that led to
15:05
Speaker 1: you having not such a good night. Yeah, I think, Um,
15:08
Speaker 1: I think I needed to be further trying to think
15:10
Speaker 1: about this, I think I needed to be further to
15:12
Speaker 1: my north and to my west is where I needed
15:14
Speaker 1: to be. Um, you know, I think once I kind
15:17
Speaker 1: of got set up, I was like, yeah, I wasn't
15:20
Speaker 1: thrilled with what I saw, Like it looked good. Down
15:22
Speaker 1: on the ground. There's a bunch of trails kind of
15:23
Speaker 1: all funneling down to where I think a lot of
15:26
Speaker 1: these deer were entering the lf alfa field. They're kind
15:28
Speaker 1: of like looped around, and then there was some fences
15:31
Speaker 1: and some gates and things like that that I thought
15:33
Speaker 1: they were going around then to get in the field. Um,
15:36
Speaker 1: but I think these deer we're staying further to my west,
15:41
Speaker 1: and I just didn't get over far enough. And my
15:43
Speaker 1: guess is where that one buck came through real quick
15:46
Speaker 1: is is closer to where I needed to be, which
15:49
Speaker 1: is a reason that I went towards that way the
15:52
Speaker 1: next night. Um, we gotta we gotta add something else though.
15:56
Speaker 1: What we didn't mention the front, which was that when
15:59
Speaker 1: we got to the park area, there were two others.
16:02
Speaker 1: That's right. That was at night and it looked like hunters. Um.
16:06
Speaker 1: One truck had a bowcase in it. Um, the other
16:10
Speaker 1: one didn't. But didn't you say, like a dear, dear,
16:12
Speaker 1: there's a deer cart in one of them. Um. Yeah,
16:16
Speaker 1: so assuming other guys back in there, So that was
16:19
Speaker 1: the That was The other big thing is like we
16:22
Speaker 1: we never saw those people come past us, but they
16:26
Speaker 1: could have been farther to the north of us, and
16:29
Speaker 1: they could have been farther to the west of us.
16:31
Speaker 1: And with the wind direction we had there, if they
16:33
Speaker 1: had been west of you, their wind could have been
16:36
Speaker 1: blowing back across where you were hoping those deer would
16:39
Speaker 1: have come. And that could have been a reason why
16:41
Speaker 1: the same thing too. Ye gosh, all these nights are
16:43
Speaker 1: starting to run together and like one thing after another.
16:47
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was that night, wasn't it. There was
16:49
Speaker 1: two trucks there in the parking lot, and yeah, I'm
16:51
Speaker 1: I'm kind of guessing that could have been what what
16:54
Speaker 1: the issue was there? The thing about the spot though,
16:56
Speaker 1: was is it was hard to gauge what you're dealing with,
16:59
Speaker 1: especial early on, and we didn't know as much because
17:02
Speaker 1: there was also fish people were going to fish from
17:04
Speaker 1: this place too, so you'd see these trucks and you're thinking, well,
17:07
Speaker 1: are they fishing? Are they hunting? Uh? I don't know. Now.
17:11
Speaker 1: One of the things that I always try to do
17:13
Speaker 1: when I'm hunting public land, especially if we think there's
17:15
Speaker 1: other people, as you try to get away from other people, right,
17:18
Speaker 1: And in this case, we were walking a closed road
17:22
Speaker 1: that you couldn't drive on at all, almost a mile
17:25
Speaker 1: all the way back, um. And then you were hunting
17:28
Speaker 1: a little bit off that, and then I was hunting
17:30
Speaker 1: way off that. So I thought we would have gotten
17:32
Speaker 1: away from most competition. And it seems like most people
17:36
Speaker 1: didn't go all the way back there. Um. But fast
17:39
Speaker 1: forward to the next day. Now again we wanted to
17:43
Speaker 1: make an adjustment, so I again wanted to push what
17:48
Speaker 1: did we want to do? I was going to push
17:51
Speaker 1: back further the next day, um, because with the possibility
17:54
Speaker 1: of oh this was the adversity day of several um. Okay,
18:00
Speaker 1: so we had had that night. Things didn't go as
18:02
Speaker 1: what we wanted. So I had seen on the maps
18:07
Speaker 1: several other fields I was assuming and I thought had
18:11
Speaker 1: been alfalfa further to the east of this location a
18:16
Speaker 1: much longer walk. You'd have to walk that closed road
18:19
Speaker 1: and then jump back into the cover and then walk
18:21
Speaker 1: the edge, you know, another mile or so to get
18:24
Speaker 1: back to these secluded fields. But my thought was, no
18:28
Speaker 1: one's going to go that far back. I mean, it's
18:30
Speaker 1: two miles back from the parking area, very far from
18:34
Speaker 1: any other access points. And if that is a secluded
18:37
Speaker 1: alf alfa field out there, that's going to be money. Josh,
18:40
Speaker 1: you're and I'll let you tell your side of the
18:42
Speaker 1: story here, But at a high level, your thought was, well,
18:45
Speaker 1: let me take one more stab with these deer that
18:47
Speaker 1: I saw and make one more adjustment. Maybe it was
18:50
Speaker 1: a fluke last night, and it just wasn't quite in
18:52
Speaker 1: the right spot right yep, basically, And I was actually
18:56
Speaker 1: gonna sit a little closer to the two track this time,
18:58
Speaker 1: but but further the west, and it was a little
19:00
Speaker 1: bit more open in there, um where I could see
19:02
Speaker 1: exactly maybe where they were coming through, um, just to
19:06
Speaker 1: have some better site lines, and and then you know,
19:08
Speaker 1: the deer they were moving earlier at that point in
19:11
Speaker 1: the trip. Um, So I was hoping that if I
19:14
Speaker 1: didn't push in as far, i'd be able to see
19:17
Speaker 1: a little bit more again almost like a like another
19:19
Speaker 1: secondary observation sit almost but also be in the game
19:23
Speaker 1: there um with where I was. And and I want
19:27
Speaker 1: to reiterate one of the things that that I'm always
19:30
Speaker 1: trying to do on these hunts is is you keep
19:33
Speaker 1: adjusting until you've got it figured out. Very rarely what
19:37
Speaker 1: I ever said, just stick it out in the Saints
19:39
Speaker 1: about over and over. It's just like you see what
19:41
Speaker 1: you learn something from that day, whether it be when
19:43
Speaker 1: you're scouting on your way in or something you saw
19:47
Speaker 1: or something on trail camera, whatever it is, and then adjust, adjust, adjust, um.
19:51
Speaker 1: And so in this case, we were just trying to
19:53
Speaker 1: You were making micro adjustments because you you were in
19:55
Speaker 1: a spot where so many deer had come through that
19:58
Speaker 1: seemed like, you know, barring some kind of hunting pressure disaster,
20:02
Speaker 1: that you would hopefully get a chance. I, on the
20:06
Speaker 1: other hand, was trying to find this secondary spot since
20:09
Speaker 1: I didn't want to crowd on your stuff too much. Um,
20:11
Speaker 1: So I was going to make a bigger adjustment to
20:13
Speaker 1: try to get to this really far away secluded field
20:16
Speaker 1: that in my head, I thought, Man, if you get
20:19
Speaker 1: in that and this is there's a there was the
20:20
Speaker 1: flfa field in the private land that you were hunting near,
20:23
Speaker 1: and then there's a standing corn field next to that,
20:25
Speaker 1: and then what looked to be enough alfa field tucked
20:27
Speaker 1: in behind that, and I just thought to myself, man,
20:30
Speaker 1: that's way back in there. I gotta believe if so
20:33
Speaker 1: many deer were coming to this one that you were
20:35
Speaker 1: hunting near, that there's probably a bunch going to this
20:37
Speaker 1: other one. And if I could slip in there, man,
20:39
Speaker 1: that could be money. So we hike in. We hiked
20:43
Speaker 1: the mile back on the closed road. We get to
20:45
Speaker 1: the end of the road where you're about to jump
20:48
Speaker 1: in and try to find a place, and there's two
20:50
Speaker 1: hunters standing there on the road and two uh two
20:55
Speaker 1: guys too young guys who are going to hunt right
20:58
Speaker 1: there in the edge. And they had access to this
21:01
Speaker 1: from the private land, so they didn't have to come
21:04
Speaker 1: all that way in. They just popped in through the
21:06
Speaker 1: private land and we're hunting the edge there. Um, which
21:09
Speaker 1: ended up being something that we had to deal with
21:11
Speaker 1: a lot more throughout the trip. Even though I thought
21:14
Speaker 1: we were getting so far away from other hunters, because
21:16
Speaker 1: we were going so far um from the public access,
21:21
Speaker 1: you know, when there's In the case of a lot
21:24
Speaker 1: of the places we hunted, they were long and skinny.
21:26
Speaker 1: So if you came in from the public, you had
21:28
Speaker 1: a long walk to get this stuff. You came on private,
21:30
Speaker 1: it could be a much shorter walk. And I'll tell
21:33
Speaker 1: you there was just a lot more hunting pressure in
21:37
Speaker 1: you know, for a Western white tail hunt than I've
21:39
Speaker 1: ever had before. Um I've never encountered so many Western
21:43
Speaker 1: white tail hunters. Um. So I don't know what's going
21:47
Speaker 1: on in Idao, but you guys need to pick up
21:49
Speaker 1: elk hunting or mule deer hunting or antelop hunting. You've
21:52
Speaker 1: got these mountains full of critters. Get out there. Leave
21:56
Speaker 1: the white tails alone. White tails are boring, there's small Uh,
22:01
Speaker 1: they're like rats. Just ignore them. That's my recommendation. But
22:07
Speaker 1: but yeah, so I forgot to mention another thing happened
22:12
Speaker 1: this night before we even got there. We got a
22:15
Speaker 1: flat tire. Yeah. So we're pulled off at a little
22:19
Speaker 1: access point. We're doing some work midday and when we
22:22
Speaker 1: got back into the truck, realized with the flat tire,
22:24
Speaker 1: so we had to we fixed the flat tire, but
22:27
Speaker 1: that made us late for everything. So we were running
22:29
Speaker 1: late to get to the hunting spot after fixing the tire,
22:33
Speaker 1: and then we got there, got all the way back.
22:35
Speaker 1: Then there's these two hunters. Then I leave you. You
22:38
Speaker 1: go get set up. I start hiking. I slip in there,
22:42
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to be quiet, and this stuff is
22:43
Speaker 1: just like thicker than just I just gnarrowly nasty stuff.
22:48
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to slip through there quietly and just
22:50
Speaker 1: slowly taking my time. But it took a very long time.
22:53
Speaker 1: I finally get all the way around this chunk of
22:56
Speaker 1: private I have to I have to walk this this
22:58
Speaker 1: public job. I go around this chunk that kind of
23:01
Speaker 1: goes into the public land. Way around, I'm added like
23:05
Speaker 1: another mile to my hike. I get around to the
23:08
Speaker 1: other side to where this secluded alf alfa fields supposed
23:11
Speaker 1: to be, and it is standing corn. So I'm looking
23:15
Speaker 1: at this and it's, you know, September four or fifth
23:17
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. There's third, I don't remember, but
23:20
Speaker 1: early September, and there's green alfalfa fields around here, I know.
23:25
Speaker 1: And I just historically from what I've seen, these deer
23:27
Speaker 1: and not going to key in on corn until it
23:30
Speaker 1: drives down until in October or something. Um, maybe they'll
23:34
Speaker 1: you know, you nit along a little bit, but I
23:36
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna be nearly as attractive as those
23:38
Speaker 1: up green alf alfa fields. So my thought was, Man,
23:42
Speaker 1: this is not gonna be the spot to be. There's
23:44
Speaker 1: another field I can see, an onyx that is even
23:47
Speaker 1: further to the east, and I think, well, I've already
23:49
Speaker 1: gone this fire, might as well go another half mile
23:52
Speaker 1: to get to this next one. Maybe that would be
23:53
Speaker 1: the honey hoole. So I keep hiking, keep hiking, and
23:57
Speaker 1: there's so many like stickers and burrs and prickers and crap,
24:01
Speaker 1: like my pants and boots and everything are just covered
24:05
Speaker 1: and stuff. I get all the way to this next field,
24:08
Speaker 1: and first off, it is not a greenolf off the field,
24:12
Speaker 1: it's like a cut hay field. It's just just dry
24:15
Speaker 1: brown um straw. And then there's a truck parked there
24:21
Speaker 1: on the private land. But it's like next to there,
24:24
Speaker 1: there's some cattle in a little corral, and then there's
24:27
Speaker 1: a truck parked next to that. And so I'm sitting
24:29
Speaker 1: there thinking, man, is this a hunter or is this
24:32
Speaker 1: just an old farm truck that's just sitting back here
24:34
Speaker 1: by the cows. Uh does this mean there's a farmer
24:37
Speaker 1: back in here doing something or does he just leave
24:39
Speaker 1: his truck here? And so I'm sitting here trying to
24:42
Speaker 1: think through all this crap, and I'm frustrated. And now
24:45
Speaker 1: We've been late in the first place, and then I've
24:46
Speaker 1: been hiking for like an hour or and a half
24:48
Speaker 1: or something, so now it's down to maybe an hour
24:51
Speaker 1: of daylight or day light. So finally decided, screw it,
24:54
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna move back, pop up in a stand
24:57
Speaker 1: here and just watch the edge of the standing corner
25:00
Speaker 1: field and this little kind of staging air back behind it,
25:04
Speaker 1: and a little bit of this straw field, and you know,
25:07
Speaker 1: I might as well just try to get in a
25:08
Speaker 1: tree and see something. For all this time I just
25:11
Speaker 1: spent walking out here, and long story short, I didn't
25:16
Speaker 1: see any deer around me at all, zero deer. I
25:19
Speaker 1: did see some deer come out into that hayfield way
25:22
Speaker 1: off like five yards away, uh, in in a nice buck,
25:26
Speaker 1: like a shooter buck, the first for sure shooter buck
25:29
Speaker 1: that I saw the trip. And he came out and
25:31
Speaker 1: his he had velvet peeling, so it's like dangling off
25:33
Speaker 1: his anilers very cool. He comes out and another buck
25:36
Speaker 1: that was like a borderline kind of deer, and a
25:39
Speaker 1: couple other little ones and they're out there feeding and
25:42
Speaker 1: they're moving in my direction. The big buck. Every once,
25:46
Speaker 1: I would look at the tree line that was like
25:48
Speaker 1: in between me and him. So I've got a standing
25:50
Speaker 1: cornfield and then there's a little tree line, and then
25:53
Speaker 1: there's the field he's in, and he he would stop,
25:57
Speaker 1: and he was kind of staring at that tree line,
25:59
Speaker 1: and it was kind of like h staring in my
26:00
Speaker 1: general direction, but I knew there was he wasn't staring,
26:03
Speaker 1: and he was so so so far away, and the
26:04
Speaker 1: wind wasn't blown that way at all. So I kept wondering,
26:07
Speaker 1: is there another deer? There is there someone there? What's
26:10
Speaker 1: going on? But the evening progresses and it gets the
26:15
Speaker 1: last like ten minutes of daylight, and then I hear
26:18
Speaker 1: just don't jump jump crank crank clank clank, and a
26:21
Speaker 1: truck starts driving down the edge of that field, just
26:25
Speaker 1: barreling down the edge of the field and just drives
26:28
Speaker 1: like a bat out of hell all the way down
26:30
Speaker 1: the field past the deer, like within like a hundred
26:31
Speaker 1: yards or yards something of those deer driving past them
26:35
Speaker 1: all the way down to the end of the field,
26:38
Speaker 1: and I can hear the truck stop. I hear doors
26:40
Speaker 1: open and close, and then nothing, and then those deer
26:44
Speaker 1: eventually run off. So there go the deer, and someone
26:47
Speaker 1: had driven in here. And now I'm wondering, Okay, what
26:50
Speaker 1: were these people doing? Um is that the farmer? I
26:53
Speaker 1: don't know. So the rest of the night passes another
26:56
Speaker 1: ten minutes, it's just about dark. I'm packing up, and
26:59
Speaker 1: then I hear crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, And I looked
27:02
Speaker 1: down the kind of opening where I'm at the little
27:05
Speaker 1: trail I was near, and here comes a guy. And
27:09
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the guy and he's wearing like a
27:11
Speaker 1: white jacket and it's like not what I would expect
27:13
Speaker 1: a hunt to be wearing, but he's wearing a white jacket.
27:15
Speaker 1: It's like ripped up, and he's walking right at me,
27:19
Speaker 1: and he's holding his bow and his arrow is knocked
27:22
Speaker 1: and he's like clipped on, walking with his bow like this,
27:25
Speaker 1: and it's like the end of the night and like
27:28
Speaker 1: charging at me, like moving very quickly right at me,
27:30
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, what is this guy doing and how
27:33
Speaker 1: does he not see me. He ended up walking literally
27:36
Speaker 1: within like two yards of my tree, right underneath me,
27:39
Speaker 1: and I just I don't know. It just was a
27:42
Speaker 1: kind of weird situation, and the guy was a little different,
27:46
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm not going to bring any
27:47
Speaker 1: attention to myself. I'm gonna let this guy just go.
27:49
Speaker 1: I don't know what he's doing. I don't know if
27:52
Speaker 1: he had been hunting that edge and was going into
27:54
Speaker 1: the private land to get to his truck somewhere else,
27:57
Speaker 1: or if he was I don't I don't know. I
27:58
Speaker 1: don't know, but I didn't wanna have anything to do
28:00
Speaker 1: with it. Probably a good idea to not say anything
28:03
Speaker 1: and it so he walked on by, and I'm frazzled
28:06
Speaker 1: and frustrated. And then I go to get my head
28:08
Speaker 1: lamp to start packing stuff up, and I've realized that
28:11
Speaker 1: in all the casts earlier in the day, I forgot
28:12
Speaker 1: my headlamp, so I know, I head lamp. I've got
28:15
Speaker 1: like a psycho killer that's walking past my tree stand
28:18
Speaker 1: and and now I've got to do more than two
28:21
Speaker 1: miles back in the dark through this hell hole brush.
28:24
Speaker 1: And to make this fast, I had a horrible hike back.
28:29
Speaker 1: I had to use my cell phone flashlight and a
28:31
Speaker 1: little tiny light that's on the quiver of my bow.
28:34
Speaker 1: Neither of them worked terribly well on the situation. I
28:37
Speaker 1: fell down a lot, I got bruised up, I covered
28:41
Speaker 1: and burrs again, and by the time I got to
28:43
Speaker 1: the truck, I realized that I lost two of my
28:45
Speaker 1: arrows out of my quiver too. So that was my night. Um,
28:50
Speaker 1: that was my adversity day. You I had. What happened.
28:55
Speaker 1: I ended up going further back in than what I
28:58
Speaker 1: originally wanted to. Um. I was maybe I had moved
29:01
Speaker 1: maybe fifty to seventy five yards from where I was
29:03
Speaker 1: sitting the night before, I think, and maybe i'd catch
29:05
Speaker 1: one of those bucks coming through again. I decided to
29:07
Speaker 1: go back in further because that um that other hunter
29:10
Speaker 1: was was basically going to blow all his wind right
29:13
Speaker 1: back to where I wanted to sit. So I was
29:15
Speaker 1: trying to kind of get back and around from him
29:18
Speaker 1: to not deal with any of that. And I saw
29:21
Speaker 1: a few small bucks at night and a couple of dos,
29:24
Speaker 1: but but um not the not the deer I was
29:27
Speaker 1: looking for that night again. So here's here's one of
29:32
Speaker 1: the things that I think needs to be thought about.
29:34
Speaker 1: And it comes to hunting public land, especially if you're
29:36
Speaker 1: doing something like this where you're going to brand new ground,
29:40
Speaker 1: it is really helpful. I wish that I had had
29:42
Speaker 1: more time this summer to go and scout this out
29:46
Speaker 1: on foot, so that I would have known what each
29:48
Speaker 1: field had. So what I've said, I would have known,
29:51
Speaker 1: you know a little bit more about the habitat features.
29:54
Speaker 1: So instead of discovering these things every day as we went,
29:57
Speaker 1: I could say, Okay, I know exactly where the three
30:00
Speaker 1: best food sources are, planned things accordingly. I could have
30:04
Speaker 1: saved essentially a wasted night. That night was a waste
30:08
Speaker 1: for me. So when you're on a trip like this,
30:10
Speaker 1: were we only have seven, eight days or whatever, you
30:13
Speaker 1: can't afford to have wasted days. You can't afford to
30:15
Speaker 1: have wasted nights, and and we had one. So if
30:19
Speaker 1: if I'm looking for different takeaways or things that I
30:21
Speaker 1: could have done differently, that I can do differently in
30:24
Speaker 1: the future, one of those things is going to be again,
30:26
Speaker 1: try to get more scouting time. And when we talked
30:28
Speaker 1: about this last week, Scott scout Scott more scouting the better,
30:31
Speaker 1: and and I thought we had done I thought we
30:33
Speaker 1: had found the things we needed to find, then felt confident.
30:35
Speaker 1: But you know, we kept finding, we kept having new
30:39
Speaker 1: challenges that forced us to forced us to do new
30:44
Speaker 1: things in which having more information would have helped. So
30:47
Speaker 1: you can never have enough scouting. Maybe we could have
30:49
Speaker 1: done more scouting during the trip. That's another thing I
30:52
Speaker 1: thought about the last couple of days. Should we have
30:54
Speaker 1: been taking some of the time midday when we were
30:56
Speaker 1: doing work or when we took a fishing break a
30:58
Speaker 1: couple of times. Um, should we have gone and been
31:01
Speaker 1: walking some other stuff to put you know, some contingency
31:04
Speaker 1: plans in place. Um. It's a weird balancing act on
31:08
Speaker 1: a trip like this because you're trying to kill a deer.
31:10
Speaker 1: You're trying and do this at the same time, you
31:12
Speaker 1: have to get at least in our case of yourself
31:14
Speaker 1: to work. And then you know, like we had some
31:16
Speaker 1: days like over the long weekend and stuff where we're
31:18
Speaker 1: still trying to have a good time a little bit
31:20
Speaker 1: and do some fishing, enjoy yourself. You're out west, you
31:23
Speaker 1: don't get to do that a lot. But then I
31:25
Speaker 1: look and say, well, we didn't spend every single possible
31:27
Speaker 1: minute scouting or hunting right, we could have done a
31:31
Speaker 1: little more. Um So those are the kinds of things
31:34
Speaker 1: that I start looking back on and trying to, you know,
31:38
Speaker 1: analyze and think through what could you have done differently?
31:42
Speaker 1: Or maybe not? Maybe maybe maybe you don't need to
31:45
Speaker 1: be uh machine on a trip like this. Maybe it's
31:47
Speaker 1: okay to have some days you go do something a
31:49
Speaker 1: little bit different because that keeps you moraile high and
31:52
Speaker 1: that makes the larger trip enjoyable. Um it's not all
31:55
Speaker 1: just about failing tag right, um So, so I don't know,
32:00
Speaker 1: but that's These are all the things I'm thinking about
32:02
Speaker 1: and that I'm going to continue to battle with I think,
32:04
Speaker 1: and yeah, I know I've definitely had those same thoughts
32:07
Speaker 1: and like, oh man, should we have been doing this
32:09
Speaker 1: or you know? And then I started thinking, if we
32:12
Speaker 1: go to look at some of these other places, are
32:14
Speaker 1: we putting more unnecessary pressure on some of these spots
32:17
Speaker 1: then but they're may be already getting you know, by
32:21
Speaker 1: going in there and scouting around and checking things out.
32:24
Speaker 1: Um but yeah, I I also think some of our
32:27
Speaker 1: our fishing breaks have been much needed morale boost for
32:31
Speaker 1: some of the days that we've had. So it's a
32:34
Speaker 1: catch twenty two for sure. Yeah, And and to your point,
32:37
Speaker 1: I mean that's the count. The constant balancing act on
32:40
Speaker 1: a hunt like this is that balance between scouting and
32:43
Speaker 1: learning and hunting while keeping pressure as low as possible.
32:47
Speaker 1: And the whole name of the game on these hunts,
32:49
Speaker 1: This one, more than some hunts have been on, has
32:51
Speaker 1: been dealing with hunting pressure. It has been constant, it
32:55
Speaker 1: has been more than expected. It's been unexpected places in
32:58
Speaker 1: an unexpected way. And it's basically throwing a grenade into
33:02
Speaker 1: every different plan we've put in place, and we've adjusted,
33:05
Speaker 1: and you'll hear we keep on pivoting, We keep on
33:08
Speaker 1: going in new spots or pushing in deeper, or trying
33:10
Speaker 1: to adjust based on what's happening. And then there's a
33:14
Speaker 1: new grenade and a new grenade, and I think that
33:18
Speaker 1: brings me to the second or whatever number were on.
33:21
Speaker 1: Another takeaway from me when I look back on this
33:23
Speaker 1: experience and look back on past public land hunts, and
33:26
Speaker 1: it's just being able to do what we just You
33:30
Speaker 1: have to be able to pivot, You have to somehow
33:32
Speaker 1: put on a smiley face and pivot to the next option.
33:36
Speaker 1: And so many times we've had that happen where it's like,
33:39
Speaker 1: son of a bitch, this thing happened. And then the
33:43
Speaker 1: way I try to handle it is like I'll feel it,
33:48
Speaker 1: I'll give myself like that night, I'm gonna be pissed
33:50
Speaker 1: about it. That night, I'm gonna be frustrated. We'll vent
33:52
Speaker 1: to each other for a little bit, and then's all right.
33:54
Speaker 1: You gotta adapt and adjust, you gotta push through it.
33:57
Speaker 1: You can't, you know, it's all. It's funny. It's so funny.
34:00
Speaker 1: Everything we talked about last week in that episode, we've
34:03
Speaker 1: dealt with this good timing. It was a good timing
34:06
Speaker 1: because so much of the mental stuff we talked about
34:09
Speaker 1: we've had to try to practice this week. And it's
34:12
Speaker 1: not easy. It's not always easy to practice what you
34:14
Speaker 1: preach on that one, because so many times you want
34:16
Speaker 1: to get disheartened, you want to get frustrated, and and
34:19
Speaker 1: I don't want it. You do. I do get disheartened.
34:22
Speaker 1: I do get frustrated to do get uh, just down
34:26
Speaker 1: on stuff, and you somehow have to try to battle that.
34:29
Speaker 1: And it's it's something that you just gotta do your
34:33
Speaker 1: best at and try to figure out a way to
34:35
Speaker 1: keep on grinding. I think we both had some therapy
34:38
Speaker 1: sessions in the truck on the way from hunts this
34:41
Speaker 1: this week for sure. So yeah, I'll tell you what
34:43
Speaker 1: it's nice to be with somebody else. So I've been
34:47
Speaker 1: on hunts like this solo, and it's it's easy to
34:51
Speaker 1: it's easier to fall into those things when it's just
34:53
Speaker 1: you and your head. When you've got another person there,
34:56
Speaker 1: usually one of you can be like the good cop.
34:58
Speaker 1: So if like when you're Aldonamo something, I was trying
35:01
Speaker 1: to tell you, you know, hey, you can all change.
35:03
Speaker 1: I got to keep pushing whatever. And then when I'm
35:05
Speaker 1: piste off about something, you were saying the same thing
35:07
Speaker 1: back to me. And that, I think is is another
35:10
Speaker 1: great reason to go on these hunts with a partner. Um,
35:13
Speaker 1: to to have a built in psychiatrist if you needed um.
35:19
Speaker 1: So that was nine number three or four or whatever
35:23
Speaker 1: it was. Um hunting pressure influenced us from both sides
35:29
Speaker 1: in a bunch of unexpected ways. So after that, I think, um,
35:35
Speaker 1: we decided to try a new area. Right, this is
35:37
Speaker 1: my adversity day. This, well, your next day was the adversitydy,
35:42
Speaker 1: wasn't it? Is? This? I think, well, I don't know,
35:46
Speaker 1: I can't one of the many adversity days. Yeah, But
35:50
Speaker 1: this day decided to go and hunt a new spot
35:53
Speaker 1: that was kind of farther to the east, and this
35:57
Speaker 1: was in the same general area, give or take. So
36:01
Speaker 1: I I believe there to be more green alfalfa fields
36:04
Speaker 1: in this section over here that we could access from
36:07
Speaker 1: a different access point, different spot, but get into similar
36:11
Speaker 1: types of habitat, great thick river bound cover with private
36:15
Speaker 1: land crop fields on the outside, so same kind of game.
36:18
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get into the backset of this area.
36:21
Speaker 1: And this time I found an access point that didn't
36:24
Speaker 1: seem to be as known. It wasn't like a place
36:29
Speaker 1: that's just for hunting. It seemed to be something that, um,
36:33
Speaker 1: if you didn't know you could get in here to
36:35
Speaker 1: hunt um from past experience, you wouldn't know it. While
36:38
Speaker 1: the other place had like a gated little parking lot
36:41
Speaker 1: and a closed road you could walk a mile back
36:44
Speaker 1: this spot there was nothing. There was just a bunch
36:46
Speaker 1: of woods and you had to cross the road and
36:48
Speaker 1: dip into a little chunk of timber hop fence and
36:52
Speaker 1: then you were in it. So that said to get
36:56
Speaker 1: back to one of these crop fields I had I
36:59
Speaker 1: had spotted some bucks feeding out into one of these
37:01
Speaker 1: fields this past July, I guess it was, and I
37:05
Speaker 1: marked that an onyx, so I knew, okay, I know
37:08
Speaker 1: for sure that there's some good bucks back in that
37:10
Speaker 1: timber and that cover back there. It's about two miles
37:13
Speaker 1: to get back there, though, but we've been dealing with
37:16
Speaker 1: a lot of hunting pressure. And when you look at
37:18
Speaker 1: this map, you've got a narrow stretch of cover along
37:22
Speaker 1: this river on the public land, and then it eventually
37:25
Speaker 1: widens out in as much ox bows and just really
37:27
Speaker 1: good looking stuff. And that was all right near where
37:30
Speaker 1: that field where I saw those bucks were, So all
37:32
Speaker 1: that told me that this seems to be a good
37:34
Speaker 1: area to be. We decided to make the hike and
37:36
Speaker 1: do it. So I got on the hiking boots and
37:42
Speaker 1: walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and
37:44
Speaker 1: walked and walked. As we walked in, there was a
37:46
Speaker 1: trail camera and a tree stand just like within a
37:48
Speaker 1: hundred yards of the access point. So already I'm a go,
37:51
Speaker 1: no more hunters on this than this spot. To keep going.
37:55
Speaker 1: We see another tree stand way up high. Keep going.
37:58
Speaker 1: We see a ground blind so now I'm sweating bullets
38:01
Speaker 1: thinking that even in this spot, we're back in it.
38:04
Speaker 1: But we eventually get about a mile out back that disappeared,
38:09
Speaker 1: and we get to a spot where the river comes
38:12
Speaker 1: tight to the private land and there's a small pinch
38:15
Speaker 1: republic in between it, and there is a elf helfa
38:19
Speaker 1: field in the public land, not on the private land,
38:21
Speaker 1: and an open gate and then the public land and
38:25
Speaker 1: a bunch of trails you could see all coming through there.
38:29
Speaker 1: And that looked pretty dunk good to me. So we
38:30
Speaker 1: decided that somebody's ships should sit there. And you did.
38:35
Speaker 1: I did. I sat there, You sat there. Yeah. Um
38:40
Speaker 1: ended up being a better night than the previous nights. Um.
38:43
Speaker 1: They didn't quite use that area like I thought they would. Um.
38:47
Speaker 1: I don't think I had any deer come back from
38:50
Speaker 1: the cover and go through the gate. Um. I did
38:53
Speaker 1: see a few, uh, like one for sure, shooter buck
38:58
Speaker 1: that had came him my east. Um. I think he
39:02
Speaker 1: was maybe on on the private or on yeah, on
39:04
Speaker 1: the private land. Um. They were away out a hundred
39:06
Speaker 1: two hundred yards out, a small bachelor group with some
39:09
Speaker 1: other bucks. But um, other than that, not a whole
39:13
Speaker 1: lot going on back there. Ended up seeing a couple
39:17
Speaker 1: of moose, I think like four moose that night that
39:20
Speaker 1: came right out of the thick bedding where I was
39:22
Speaker 1: hoping deer would come from a bowl and a cow
39:25
Speaker 1: moose came out of there and making all sorts of racket. Um,
39:28
Speaker 1: there was a deer headed down a trail towards me,
39:31
Speaker 1: and that's when those moose came out. And I never
39:32
Speaker 1: saw that deer. I don't know what it was. I
39:34
Speaker 1: could just see the back of it. Um. Yeah, ended
39:38
Speaker 1: up dealing with with moose that night. I think they
39:41
Speaker 1: ended up being four out in the field by the
39:43
Speaker 1: time I left, And as soon as they came out,
39:45
Speaker 1: I had a couple of does come in the field.
39:47
Speaker 1: But um, not really any other action from from bucks
39:50
Speaker 1: that night. UM, at least close everything goes was a
39:54
Speaker 1: ways off in the distance on on private, so I
39:58
Speaker 1: had continue, you're done past that point, and I wanted
40:02
Speaker 1: to try to get to this area directly above where
40:06
Speaker 1: I had spotted those bucks in the summer. And what
40:10
Speaker 1: I was trying to do with this situation was find
40:16
Speaker 1: And again I've never walked back in here before, so
40:20
Speaker 1: you're trying to look at a map and pick the
40:22
Speaker 1: best possible location off of a map. But what I
40:25
Speaker 1: saw was, as I look at this area directly above
40:30
Speaker 1: where the crop fields were, there was a long stretch
40:33
Speaker 1: where is relatively open kind of sage brush, open field
40:37
Speaker 1: kind of stuff on the public land. And then there
40:41
Speaker 1: was a line of trees and then another opening and
40:45
Speaker 1: then a bunch of really good thick stuff that led
40:47
Speaker 1: up into this section of islands and ox bows. And
40:52
Speaker 1: with the wind direction we had, I'm looking at that,
40:54
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to pick, Okay, where would I hunt
40:56
Speaker 1: in this huge check or this huge chunk of ground. Well,
40:59
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna have a good starting point, if I'm
41:00
Speaker 1: a buck, there's a decent chance I'm not going to
41:02
Speaker 1: cover any of that. I'm not going to cross any
41:05
Speaker 1: of that open stuff. I'm gonna want to stay in
41:06
Speaker 1: thick cover. So I looked at where's the thickest stuff,
41:10
Speaker 1: and then how would you come from that very thickest
41:12
Speaker 1: stuff in these islands down lawn that edge. My assumption
41:15
Speaker 1: was that they would go no farther east than this
41:17
Speaker 1: stage brush edge. So my idea was to set up
41:22
Speaker 1: essentially off that edge, beneath it, in a spot where
41:26
Speaker 1: I could see but beyond, you know, within shooting range
41:29
Speaker 1: of this main trail that came off that edge. That's
41:32
Speaker 1: all I had to work with. And then I wanted
41:33
Speaker 1: to be somewhere I could at least see a good
41:35
Speaker 1: distance on either side, again pointing to that whole observation
41:39
Speaker 1: idea when you're on these hunts, want if you're not
41:41
Speaker 1: really sure of where you're at, what you're doing, being
41:43
Speaker 1: a place where you can learn something into jus for
41:45
Speaker 1: the next day. So I got set up. I saw
41:47
Speaker 1: some does early on, and then I don't know the
41:52
Speaker 1: last twenty minutes of daylight, I had a buck pop out,
41:57
Speaker 1: dropped down right off that edge, came across us. And
42:01
Speaker 1: when I first saw him, thinking oh, that might be
42:04
Speaker 1: a shooter buck, and he turned and looked at him,
42:08
Speaker 1: he was like a decent a pointer, and I'm arranging him.
42:11
Speaker 1: He's just past forty yards and at that distance in
42:14
Speaker 1: the angle, ha, like, I don't want to try to
42:16
Speaker 1: make that shot. Um, it just wasn't a shot. I
42:19
Speaker 1: felt comfortable with with the way he was coming in
42:21
Speaker 1: and the way the tree was in front of me.
42:24
Speaker 1: So at the same time I see a second deer
42:25
Speaker 1: come behind him, and that dear steps back. It's a
42:28
Speaker 1: little bit farther behind him, and I put my binoculars
42:31
Speaker 1: up on him, and he is a big buck. He's
42:35
Speaker 1: a big buck, um, like a buck I would not
42:40
Speaker 1: expect to see in public land. And he's at fifty five.
42:44
Speaker 1: And the two of them passed once a little past
42:47
Speaker 1: forty ones, that around fifty five, and they moved through,
42:49
Speaker 1: and I can't get a shot anything. It's too far
42:51
Speaker 1: for the big one. They moved through very excited. Moments later,
42:56
Speaker 1: I see another deer, another like fifteen yards farther back,
42:59
Speaker 1: and he steps out and he's even bigger, um, big
43:05
Speaker 1: big buck. So I see these three nice bucks. Two
43:09
Speaker 1: of them are impressive deer, and they go through and
43:13
Speaker 1: quickly we're out of site. But a pinpoint exactly where
43:16
Speaker 1: they crossed happened very fast. It was intense um and
43:22
Speaker 1: I couldn't get a shot. But it was this moment
43:25
Speaker 1: of hope and excitement and were right away, Okay, I'm
43:28
Speaker 1: gonna make an adjustment tomorrow. I gonna get a shot him. Now.
43:32
Speaker 1: When I sit and look back on that night, I
43:34
Speaker 1: see one glaring missed opportunity, and just in the moment,
43:39
Speaker 1: I never even thought about it, and I don't know
43:41
Speaker 1: why not, but I didn't even think to try a grunt.
43:47
Speaker 1: I should have. I mean, you could make an argument
43:50
Speaker 1: that these deer were completely unaware of my presence. They're
43:53
Speaker 1: moving through. You know, maybe it could have spooked him,
43:55
Speaker 1: But these deer out here, I think, at least I
43:59
Speaker 1: used to think our relatively less pressured and more apts
44:02
Speaker 1: to be susceptible to calls. So I think I could
44:06
Speaker 1: have tried a you know, a light, little contact grunt
44:09
Speaker 1: and maybe could have made one. I'm curious. All I
44:12
Speaker 1: would have needed is that, you know, that second buck
44:14
Speaker 1: to come another twenty yards closer out of curiosity, and
44:18
Speaker 1: I might have been able to get a shot. And
44:19
Speaker 1: I just never thought about it. I don't know what
44:22
Speaker 1: what it was. I mean, I was just in the
44:23
Speaker 1: moment and I was like, oh my gosh, look at
44:25
Speaker 1: that one, and oh my gosh, look at that one. Um,
44:28
Speaker 1: But that could have been a game changer. Maybe you
44:30
Speaker 1: never know hin, um, but that's something that if I'm
44:34
Speaker 1: looking back on things that I could have done differently,
44:36
Speaker 1: that's definitely one of them. So I didn't the bucks
44:40
Speaker 1: moved off. I waited till I was quite pretty confident
44:43
Speaker 1: they'd moved way off and went out to the fields
44:45
Speaker 1: and were long gone. And then I slipped out of
44:46
Speaker 1: the really quiet, pulled my set, and then I made
44:50
Speaker 1: sure to remember exactly where those dear crossed visually. So
44:53
Speaker 1: the next day my plan was to come in and
44:56
Speaker 1: set up about fifty sixty yards farther to the east
44:59
Speaker 1: to hope intercepted them coming back through. Very excited that night,
45:04
Speaker 1: um and was full of hope, excited to see what
45:07
Speaker 1: would happened, and the next day to be to to
45:13
Speaker 1: move it along. I guess you had some stuff come up.
45:16
Speaker 1: You couldn't hunt that night, some stuff. Um, So I
45:20
Speaker 1: was going solo and I snuck back in there, and
45:24
Speaker 1: this was I felt great, the the wind was right.
45:29
Speaker 1: I slipped in there in such a way that, you know,
45:31
Speaker 1: just once I got close to the generator, I was
45:34
Speaker 1: just in super stealth mode. Took it slow and smoothed.
45:37
Speaker 1: Then I slipped in and made a big loop back
45:40
Speaker 1: around the section so that I wouldn't walk anywhere that
45:45
Speaker 1: these deer might possibly cross. Made sure that my scent
45:48
Speaker 1: was as far to the downwards side of possible, so
45:51
Speaker 1: like essentially Luke did like a jay hook around and
45:53
Speaker 1: then approached my tree from the bottom, got into it,
45:58
Speaker 1: got all set up, um and and I found the tree.
46:01
Speaker 1: So I didn't have a set up there yet at
46:03
Speaker 1: this point, and basically had moved to be downwind of
46:07
Speaker 1: where these bucks had passed through, but within shot shooting
46:10
Speaker 1: range of war all three deer came through. I found
46:13
Speaker 1: a tree with a big fork and a bunch of
46:14
Speaker 1: vines hanging off of the prize provided some pretty darn
46:17
Speaker 1: good cover, and um, I felt good. The night progressed.
46:22
Speaker 1: We should point out all of these nights it was
46:24
Speaker 1: like nineties, high eighties to low nineties, the whole super hot,
46:29
Speaker 1: so all the movement was in the last half hour
46:32
Speaker 1: to hour in most cases, and that ended up being
46:35
Speaker 1: the case. Here we get to the last half hour
46:37
Speaker 1: or so, a bunch of does come out passed by,
46:41
Speaker 1: and then boom, here comes a buck popping out of
46:42
Speaker 1: the same spot that those bucks did the night before,
46:45
Speaker 1: and some the cold crap game on. I got my bow,
46:48
Speaker 1: I clip on. First it was like a little velvet
46:50
Speaker 1: five pointer, and then a hard horned six, and then
46:53
Speaker 1: a velvet seven pointer, and then there was one of
46:57
Speaker 1: the bucks I think of four key and then here
46:59
Speaker 1: comes at eight point from the night before, and so
47:01
Speaker 1: at that point I'm thinking, oh, okay, this is the
47:04
Speaker 1: running buddy. Then right behind him is going to be
47:06
Speaker 1: the two giants. And so they come in, they filter,
47:10
Speaker 1: and they stopped like all around me. So I've got
47:12
Speaker 1: five bucks in all directions of me, all within shooting range,
47:17
Speaker 1: fiddling around that big eight, not big, but like a
47:20
Speaker 1: decent eight. He's like rubbing his antlers and tree limbs
47:23
Speaker 1: and fiddling around, and I'm I'm looking at them, like, God,
47:27
Speaker 1: where's the other box? Where the other box? Where the
47:29
Speaker 1: other bucks? Should I shoot that a pointer? Where the
47:33
Speaker 1: other box? They gotta be coming, They gotta be coming,
47:36
Speaker 1: and to to to move to jump right to it.
47:39
Speaker 1: I guess I decided not to shoot that a pointer
47:43
Speaker 1: because I just had to give a chance of these
47:46
Speaker 1: other deer to come. They've been with him the night before,
47:50
Speaker 1: and they never showed. And the other deer eventually moved off,
47:55
Speaker 1: and I had chip shots at this eight pointer that
47:59
Speaker 1: I didn't take um or all these other bucks. I mean,
48:02
Speaker 1: I could have shot any one of these five bucks,
48:04
Speaker 1: and I didn't because I had kind of got in
48:07
Speaker 1: my mindset on one of those two big boys, and
48:11
Speaker 1: that could have been viewed as a mistake because I
48:16
Speaker 1: haven't seen those two bucks again. And I you know,
48:20
Speaker 1: this is a similt situation to what I had last
48:21
Speaker 1: year where I was in North Dakota and I've seen
48:24
Speaker 1: a really big buck scouting one morning and I went
48:27
Speaker 1: in made a move on him, and outcomes a really
48:30
Speaker 1: nice eight. This was a bigger eight, and I passed
48:33
Speaker 1: on him because I was hoping that the real big
48:35
Speaker 1: buck would behind him, and he never showed. I never
48:37
Speaker 1: saw him again, and then I found myself regretting not
48:39
Speaker 1: taking that shot in this situation. I don't think I
48:47
Speaker 1: made the wrong decision in that case, because he had
48:50
Speaker 1: to at least give it one chance to have the
48:51
Speaker 1: big guys roll through. It would have killed me if
48:54
Speaker 1: I shot that buck and then they showed up right
48:56
Speaker 1: behind him. Um. At the same time, I should would
49:00
Speaker 1: like to fill tech. So I don't know. You could
49:03
Speaker 1: make an argument that I'm an idiot because I keep
49:05
Speaker 1: passing on a lot of nice box out here in
49:06
Speaker 1: public land that a lot of guys would take. Um.
49:09
Speaker 1: You can make an argument that hunt your own hunt
49:11
Speaker 1: and do what makes you happy, and at that moment
49:13
Speaker 1: that is what I really wanted to try to. I
49:16
Speaker 1: made the move forward those two dear. I really want
49:18
Speaker 1: to get a chance that those two deer. I was
49:20
Speaker 1: very excited about those two deer and I wanted to
49:22
Speaker 1: give the chance for that to play out. It didn't
49:24
Speaker 1: play out. It didn't work out. Um, it is what
49:28
Speaker 1: it is. But it's something that I'm sure I'm gonna
49:29
Speaker 1: be thinking about in the days to come. And I
49:31
Speaker 1: did think about in the days to come, because the
49:34
Speaker 1: next day I thought, Okay, well, those bucks came through
49:40
Speaker 1: exactly like I was hoping they would. They didn't spook,
49:42
Speaker 1: they didn't freak out. I had a lot of dear
49:44
Speaker 1: move through. It was all. It all went to script.
49:47
Speaker 1: But the two big boys didn't show. I do you
49:51
Speaker 1: never know? But I thought, in my head, man, there's
49:55
Speaker 1: a chance it was just a fluke last night, and
49:56
Speaker 1: maybe they'll come through again. I think I should give
49:59
Speaker 1: it another chance. So I decided to slip back in there.
50:03
Speaker 1: I've got the same winds, same conditions, everything. I'm gonna
50:05
Speaker 1: try it one more time from that spot. I get
50:08
Speaker 1: into that spot, I'm feeling good, it's looking good, and
50:13
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe a half hour into the set,
50:16
Speaker 1: I start hearing U A t V s or U
50:20
Speaker 1: TVs driving up and I hear like kids like yelling
50:22
Speaker 1: and screaming, and they pull up like close. It sounds
50:27
Speaker 1: like they're hundred yards away or hundred fifty yards away
50:29
Speaker 1: or something, and my heart sinks something. Oh no, what's
50:33
Speaker 1: going on? And they're coming from the private land. So
50:36
Speaker 1: this group of people comes inot the private land and
50:38
Speaker 1: they start like cutting stuff. I hear saws and hammers
50:42
Speaker 1: and people hitting metal against metal, and I'm trying to
50:46
Speaker 1: listen and trying to figure out what what are they doing? Um?
50:49
Speaker 1: Because at this point I'm thinking, Okay, do I need
50:50
Speaker 1: to bail or do I stick it out because it's
50:52
Speaker 1: gonna be like they're coming in here grabbing something farm
50:55
Speaker 1: equipment and they're gonna be gone or are they gonna
50:57
Speaker 1: be here for a long time? So I'm listening, listening,
51:00
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting there stressing out, trying to start what
51:02
Speaker 1: to do. And then I hear someone mentioned something about
51:04
Speaker 1: tie downs and it's sounds like those girls and boys
51:08
Speaker 1: at first. And when I hear the thing ties downs,
51:12
Speaker 1: I started thinking, are they like setting up camp? Like
51:15
Speaker 1: is it like a group of kids are gonna like
51:16
Speaker 1: set up a tent and camp out on there, you know,
51:19
Speaker 1: on the edge of their farm for the night. So
51:21
Speaker 1: I got this idea in my head that was maybe
51:23
Speaker 1: what was going on, because it was for a long time,
51:25
Speaker 1: all this noise in one place. So okay, I have
51:28
Speaker 1: to move. I'm you know, I'm too close. So I
51:31
Speaker 1: was commotion. These bucks aren't gonna come all the way
51:33
Speaker 1: out here, but maybe they'll come out of the bedding,
51:37
Speaker 1: and if I get right in the edge of the bedding,
51:38
Speaker 1: maybe they'll stop there and mill around and I'll you'll
51:40
Speaker 1: get a shot. So I pulled out my stuff. I
51:42
Speaker 1: decided to leave my set hanging, and I'm gonna sneak
51:44
Speaker 1: on the ground and try to set up on the ground.
51:47
Speaker 1: I slip out. I sneak about two yards deeper into
51:51
Speaker 1: the bedding cover area, towards the bedding cover, at least
51:54
Speaker 1: slip sliding in real slow sneake, sneake, sneak. I'm seeing
51:57
Speaker 1: some good trails and sign I'm feeling like I'm getting
52:00
Speaker 1: to the edge of like where like this real, the
52:03
Speaker 1: real betting stuff is happening. I get in there, I
52:06
Speaker 1: settle in, find a little nook to get comfy in,
52:09
Speaker 1: and I think it's down to I don't know, like
52:11
Speaker 1: an hour and a half or an hour of daylight
52:13
Speaker 1: left or something, and I think, Okay, maybe this will
52:16
Speaker 1: work out. You know, I was saying this stuff. We
52:19
Speaker 1: were just saying adapted to adjusticely. In my head, I
52:20
Speaker 1: was like, God, totally screwing up this great plan I have.
52:23
Speaker 1: But now we're gonna adapted, adjusting the sneak and it's
52:24
Speaker 1: gonna be right. Get set. And then I hear and
52:29
Speaker 1: the dang a TV or U TV with a bunch
52:31
Speaker 1: of people comes driving right across this track that I
52:34
Speaker 1: trossed all the way back into me. I can't quite
52:38
Speaker 1: see that, I can. I can see them come up
52:39
Speaker 1: on a little rise and then they now they're coming
52:41
Speaker 1: back into the bedding cover by me, and they're yelling
52:44
Speaker 1: and screaming and hooting and hollering and stuff, and they
52:47
Speaker 1: drive past me deeper back towards the river, like right
52:50
Speaker 1: into all the good betting cover. So now I'm basically devastated,
52:56
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, okay, I have Then now this spot
52:59
Speaker 1: is blown out. What's the next thing I'll do? If
53:01
Speaker 1: I'm these deer and all the commotions happening here on
53:04
Speaker 1: the east side. Maybe these deer will pivot and they'll
53:07
Speaker 1: try to go to the far west side. So I'm like, Okay,
53:09
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come back to the trail, and I'm gonna
53:12
Speaker 1: go to the far west side of this chunk and
53:15
Speaker 1: just hope that maybe whatever deer aren't totally scared out
53:18
Speaker 1: of their minds might come through that section as far
53:20
Speaker 1: away from the noise and commotion as possible. So the
53:22
Speaker 1: night slip slide, sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak. We're down
53:25
Speaker 1: to the last half hour daylight, forty minutes something like that.
53:29
Speaker 1: Sneak over there and get positioned in a spot where,
53:31
Speaker 1: if nothing else I can walk, I can watch a
53:33
Speaker 1: little kind of a lane and see where these how
53:36
Speaker 1: these deer adjusted. Because I believe that deer, these deer
53:39
Speaker 1: would do something, I want to see how they adjust
53:42
Speaker 1: to tell us commotion to the east. So find a
53:45
Speaker 1: new spot, get set up, tucked into a cedar, and
53:48
Speaker 1: not like five minutes after getting settled in, here comes
53:52
Speaker 1: another UTV drives down and this one this time comes
53:56
Speaker 1: all the way past me, literally within ten yards of
53:58
Speaker 1: me um and there's a group of like young people
54:03
Speaker 1: on it, hooting and holler and yelling. They've got what
54:06
Speaker 1: looks like ladder stands in the back of their UTV
54:09
Speaker 1: and they drive past me. They drive back into another
54:13
Speaker 1: section of the river. I hear them yelling and hooting
54:15
Speaker 1: and like e hying and making like obnoxious amounts of noise.
54:20
Speaker 1: A couple minutes later, they come driving by again, and
54:23
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like listening here and stuff. I'm like,
54:25
Speaker 1: what's going on? What are these people doing? Like it
54:28
Speaker 1: made like when they were just going and setting up
54:30
Speaker 1: camp or something, or what I thought was setting up camp. Okay,
54:34
Speaker 1: that's one thing, but now they're driving all over the
54:36
Speaker 1: property and it's not like they're just chatting with each other.
54:39
Speaker 1: They're making obnoxious amounts of noise, banging metal, like banging
54:43
Speaker 1: things on the ladders and stuff. And then I hear
54:45
Speaker 1: someone say he was seeing some nice deer and then
54:48
Speaker 1: the other guy says, not anymore. Ha ha ha ha.
54:52
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I'm if I'm reading too
54:58
Speaker 1: much into it or what, but at that point I'm like,
55:01
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, my hunt's being sabotaged. And maybe I'm wrong.
55:07
Speaker 1: Maybe there I mean, they certainly certainly seeing that these
55:10
Speaker 1: kids are trying to screw this whole area. It really
55:13
Speaker 1: seemed like they were going all over the place, making
55:16
Speaker 1: a ton of noise and like that time of like
55:18
Speaker 1: the last hour late like last hour daylight. They were
55:21
Speaker 1: obviously hunters. You can see they had stuff in the
55:25
Speaker 1: back of their thing, but they weren't dressed a hunt
55:27
Speaker 1: um and they're talking about, you know, someone have been
55:30
Speaker 1: seeing nice deer back there not anymore ha ha ha.
55:33
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe who knows what the situation was,
55:36
Speaker 1: but I had a moment where I'm thinking, these sons
55:38
Speaker 1: of these guys, someone is following my Instagram story and
55:43
Speaker 1: is seeing it has summed up pinned down where I'm hunting,
55:45
Speaker 1: or they've seen my truck and they figured out I'm
55:48
Speaker 1: hunting back here and they're trying to blow it up.
55:51
Speaker 1: That's probably not the case, but I certainly had a
55:53
Speaker 1: moment there where I was like, oh my gosh, this
55:55
Speaker 1: is really really frustrating, and uh yeah, so that was
56:01
Speaker 1: a bad night for me. I got out of there
56:03
Speaker 1: and was upset with the whole scenario and not sure
56:06
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do, and uh, I decided to
56:09
Speaker 1: hold off on my live Instagram updates for a few
56:12
Speaker 1: days because of that. Um, and that was a situation
56:17
Speaker 1: where what can you do? I mean, we kept on
56:19
Speaker 1: trying to pivot from all these different pressure hunting pressure
56:23
Speaker 1: scenarios and then two miles off from the nearest public
56:26
Speaker 1: access two freaking miles back, and then you've got people
56:29
Speaker 1: coming in and blowing it up. I mean, what are
56:31
Speaker 1: you gonna do about that? I was, I was dialed
56:34
Speaker 1: in onto like awesome public land box and then that happens. Um, yeah,
56:42
Speaker 1: that's that was a bummer of a night. I had
56:44
Speaker 1: a similar night that night. Um, we had pulled a
56:48
Speaker 1: trail camera. At this point, we kind of decided to
56:50
Speaker 1: split up. That spot was getting so much pressure, let's
56:53
Speaker 1: split up, see what we can find in some other spots. So, UM,
56:57
Speaker 1: we had pulled a trail came mid day and out
57:00
Speaker 1: some recent intel that there was some good bucks that
57:03
Speaker 1: one of these other areas that we're looking at, and
57:05
Speaker 1: she's what that cameras for four or five days and
57:08
Speaker 1: we had three deer that we're all shooters on there,
57:11
Speaker 1: two of one in daylight, one on the edge of daylight,
57:14
Speaker 1: and one is in the middle of the night. But
57:16
Speaker 1: you know, it was kind of it's kind of in
57:17
Speaker 1: the spot you wouldn't really think the hunt, but it
57:20
Speaker 1: was definitely getting some traffic, some some deer traffic through
57:23
Speaker 1: it where it kind of pinches down and um, you know,
57:27
Speaker 1: it's holiday weekend and I'm not too far from the
57:31
Speaker 1: access road and there's some two tracks and stuff through it,
57:35
Speaker 1: and man, it was just a TV after you TV
57:39
Speaker 1: after dirt bike after truck going down the road and
57:42
Speaker 1: it finally stopped, you know, maybe an hour and a
57:44
Speaker 1: half before before dark. But I think the damage had
57:48
Speaker 1: already been done at that point where we thought those
57:51
Speaker 1: deer would be coming from. There's people driving by all day.
57:57
Speaker 1: Going back to what I talked about earlier, how you
57:59
Speaker 1: need you to have you know, you need to have
58:00
Speaker 1: a lot of scouting lot you need a lot of
58:02
Speaker 1: contingency plans when you're gonna do some public plan hunting.
58:05
Speaker 1: And what I did do well to a degree, it
58:09
Speaker 1: was I had a lot of contingency plans this year.
58:12
Speaker 1: Not that I didn't have like well researched or well scouted,
58:15
Speaker 1: but I had places like I had places that I
58:17
Speaker 1: knew a little bit about, you know, four different good
58:20
Speaker 1: chunks that we could hunt that I had a basic
58:23
Speaker 1: level of knowledge about. And then in this case, this
58:25
Speaker 1: is one property that we went in and we did
58:26
Speaker 1: scout it on foot the first day we got in,
58:28
Speaker 1: that first morning, we went and scouted this and hung
58:31
Speaker 1: cameras just as a backup plan. We want to go
58:33
Speaker 1: hunt these other places first, but we want to have
58:35
Speaker 1: this back up. And thank goodness we did, because you know,
58:38
Speaker 1: when we decided that there's just too much stuff going
58:40
Speaker 1: on and you were going to try this new area,
58:43
Speaker 1: pulled the camera and right there new boost to hope,
58:45
Speaker 1: gave us some new hope. Yet for sure two nice
58:48
Speaker 1: bucks using it and UM didn't work out for you
58:50
Speaker 1: that night. You have three nice bucks didn't work out
58:52
Speaker 1: for you that night, but it gave us another option
58:54
Speaker 1: to work with UM and so what so that was
58:59
Speaker 1: the sabotage night. And again, so much of this hunt
59:03
Speaker 1: was just like you get punched in the face, and
59:05
Speaker 1: like how do you get back up? The moral of
59:07
Speaker 1: the story the more if you if you want to
59:09
Speaker 1: take anything from this whole podcast about the trials and
59:11
Speaker 1: tribulations of public land deer hunting, the biggest thing is
59:14
Speaker 1: learned to take a punch, Like learn to take a punch,
59:19
Speaker 1: get back up and adjust. How do you adjust to
59:22
Speaker 1: hunting pressure? How do you adjust to the guy walking
59:23
Speaker 1: past your trees stand? How do you adjust to there
59:25
Speaker 1: being three trucks of the parking lot when you show
59:27
Speaker 1: up to your spot? How do you adjust when your
59:30
Speaker 1: tree stan't gets stolen? Like, all these different things are
59:32
Speaker 1: possible in public land, and you can have great hunts,
59:37
Speaker 1: like I've killed some great bucks in public land. I've
59:39
Speaker 1: had some really fun hunts in public land. We've seen
59:41
Speaker 1: a lot of good bucks. Like we've been right there
59:44
Speaker 1: on the edge of it. We've been so close to
59:46
Speaker 1: getting shots, and then we've had all these things happen
59:49
Speaker 1: where right and we're zeering in Bam, here comes somewhere
59:52
Speaker 1: with bam, here comes something else. Um, so it's it's
59:57
Speaker 1: it's possible, it's awesome, but it's tough, it's different, and
1:00:02
Speaker 1: we just had to keep on reminding ourselves of hey,
1:00:05
Speaker 1: it could change in a second. We just have to
1:00:06
Speaker 1: keep on moving to the next option, move to the
1:00:09
Speaker 1: next option, and maybe this one it'll finally work out.
1:00:12
Speaker 1: So it's definitely been a a game of mental chess,
1:00:17
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out a way to stay positive
1:00:19
Speaker 1: and keep moving. But we had this sabotage night. The
1:00:23
Speaker 1: next day, we hunted in the morning. Um. We started
1:00:26
Speaker 1: hunting mornings the back half of the trip given the
1:00:28
Speaker 1: fact that we hadn't filled their tags yet. Stuff was
1:00:30
Speaker 1: starting to get a little down to the line. So
1:00:33
Speaker 1: we had we scouted one morning to that point, and
1:00:36
Speaker 1: now we started hunting. Um. And I don't even think
1:00:39
Speaker 1: there's anything terribly exciting about this hunts. We hunted that
1:00:42
Speaker 1: that new areas where we both hunted, Neither one of
1:00:44
Speaker 1: us saw anything to speak of. That night was like
1:00:47
Speaker 1: a dangerous windstorm that came through and it was blowing
1:00:50
Speaker 1: down trees all over the place. We did not hunt
1:00:52
Speaker 1: that night. Um. But when you look at a short
1:00:56
Speaker 1: trip like this, every hunt matter. We missed a night
1:01:01
Speaker 1: because of that, So that was a big deal. Like
1:01:02
Speaker 1: that was one eighth of our possible good hunts as
1:01:06
Speaker 1: far as evening hunts gone because of a storm. And
1:01:08
Speaker 1: then I had another wasted hunt because of my debacle hike. Um.
1:01:14
Speaker 1: And you can point to a lot of our other
1:01:15
Speaker 1: hunts that became debacles, can wasted hunts because of this
1:01:18
Speaker 1: hunting pressure or the sabotage and night all that kind
1:01:20
Speaker 1: of stuff. So that brings us to last night, right, yep.
1:01:27
Speaker 1: So we've had all these things happen. We've had everywhere
1:01:30
Speaker 1: we've gone, we've been blown up by other hunters or
1:01:32
Speaker 1: other people, but we have head sightings and we have
1:01:35
Speaker 1: had some close calls. So last night I did some
1:01:39
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics and I'm trying to think through, Okay, what
1:01:41
Speaker 1: should I do? Um. My initial gut reaction was that, Okay,
1:01:46
Speaker 1: all that action happened in there. Two nights prior, we
1:01:51
Speaker 1: had this big storm blow through in a big coal
1:01:53
Speaker 1: front hit, so went from being the nineties to now
1:01:55
Speaker 1: being in like the fifties. Her Yeah, I think it
1:01:58
Speaker 1: was like high high fifty um, so huge coal fronmt
1:02:02
Speaker 1: pushed through. All that commotion that happened back in my
1:02:05
Speaker 1: little honey hole was bad, but it was all on
1:02:10
Speaker 1: a UTV and like in just like a couple of
1:02:12
Speaker 1: places where they got out. So these deer used to
1:02:16
Speaker 1: farmers coming and making a racket all around here. I
1:02:19
Speaker 1: kind of convinced myself that maybe the impact won't be
1:02:22
Speaker 1: quite as bad as I initially feared, And I forgot
1:02:24
Speaker 1: to mention that night after they drove by and left,
1:02:27
Speaker 1: I end up seeing deer immediately start moving, like as
1:02:30
Speaker 1: soon as they drove away. The last five minutes of daylight,
1:02:33
Speaker 1: I had a couple of bucks and a couple of
1:02:35
Speaker 1: dolls come crossing in front of me. Still, so that
1:02:37
Speaker 1: gave me a thinking, Okay, these deers hunkered down, they
1:02:40
Speaker 1: wait till the farmers leave, and they get right back
1:02:42
Speaker 1: to it. So now I'm thinking maybe with this mega
1:02:45
Speaker 1: cold front that just pushed through, and with the fact
1:02:47
Speaker 1: that all that sabotage at least was you know, it
1:02:50
Speaker 1: wasn't a guy criss crossing on foot everywhere, it was
1:02:53
Speaker 1: people driving around. We're driving up to the property to
1:02:57
Speaker 1: go hunt, and we see a truck on the side
1:03:00
Speaker 1: of the road on the private land with two hunters
1:03:02
Speaker 1: getting ready to go and hunt. So now I've got
1:03:05
Speaker 1: a new curve ball throwing in my plans because they
1:03:08
Speaker 1: this was pretty close to if those guys came off
1:03:10
Speaker 1: the private went straight in, they would eventually hit the
1:03:13
Speaker 1: same general area as hunting on public. So as I'm
1:03:17
Speaker 1: hiking in to go in there, I'm sitting here and
1:03:19
Speaker 1: I'm thinking in my mind what to do, And I've
1:03:21
Speaker 1: got one part of me that says, you had this
1:03:26
Speaker 1: blow up in there two nights ago, and now there's
1:03:29
Speaker 1: two guys that are going in to hunt somewhere in
1:03:31
Speaker 1: the same general area. You need to pull your set,
1:03:34
Speaker 1: You need to push in there even deeper, right into
1:03:36
Speaker 1: the heart of the bedding, and hope something works out.
1:03:41
Speaker 1: The other side of me said, this huge cold front
1:03:44
Speaker 1: came through. It's gonna get the demer moving early, the
1:03:47
Speaker 1: whole farmer than just described to you, which hopefully will
1:03:49
Speaker 1: make things not as bad. And these two hunters that
1:03:52
Speaker 1: you're seeing have not been here at all this week.
1:03:54
Speaker 1: This is the first time I've ever seen this truck
1:03:56
Speaker 1: or these hunters anywhere in the area, so they don't
1:04:00
Speaker 1: they probably I'm making assumptions, but as I was trying
1:04:02
Speaker 1: to make guesswork here, I'm thinking, Okay, there locals because
1:04:05
Speaker 1: they're accessing from the private land. If I'm a local
1:04:08
Speaker 1: around here, I don't think anyone ever comes to hunts's
1:04:11
Speaker 1: public I can't. Maybe I'm wrong, but I gotta believe
1:04:13
Speaker 1: it's rare. The people are hunting the public land, hiking
1:04:17
Speaker 1: in two miles to get back to this stuff, so
1:04:19
Speaker 1: they're not used to other hunters being back there. Probably,
1:04:23
Speaker 1: And secondly, if I live out here, and I'm a
1:04:26
Speaker 1: Western guy. You're probably used to seeing a bunch of
1:04:29
Speaker 1: white tails coming out and feeding these huge alfalfa fields. Right,
1:04:32
Speaker 1: there's tons of deer. They're all feeding out the field. Um,
1:04:35
Speaker 1: I'm thinking if it's the first night out that I've
1:04:37
Speaker 1: been out in a big cold front, isn't I'm thinking
1:04:39
Speaker 1: these deer are gonna be on the fields, so maybe
1:04:41
Speaker 1: these guys are just gonna hunt the field edge. So
1:04:44
Speaker 1: I did all these mental gymnastics, and I convinced myself
1:04:47
Speaker 1: that I should sit the same tree again because I
1:04:53
Speaker 1: just had a lot of confidence in that specific tree,
1:04:56
Speaker 1: Like I knew that was the killing tree that these
1:04:57
Speaker 1: bucks would come by twice before, and I just didn't
1:05:00
Speaker 1: have as much confidence if I went in tried to
1:05:02
Speaker 1: find a brand new spot further in that might get
1:05:04
Speaker 1: me closer to the bedding, but I wouldn't be in
1:05:07
Speaker 1: the right spot. And we're down to only two more
1:05:09
Speaker 1: sits two more nights at least, And essentially I I
1:05:17
Speaker 1: was juggling this back and forth, back and forth, back
1:05:19
Speaker 1: and forth as I'm hiking in for the two hours
1:05:21
Speaker 1: or the two miles, and right when I get to
1:05:23
Speaker 1: the spot where my saddles hung up. I slip in there,
1:05:25
Speaker 1: and there's deer moving already. There's some does that I
1:05:28
Speaker 1: end up bumping away from where I was. So there,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, Okay, there's deer and here feeding hanging out comfortable.
1:05:33
Speaker 1: That means those guys didn't come in here. They are
1:05:35
Speaker 1: hunting the edge. I'm still the furthest back. It's gonna
1:05:38
Speaker 1: be okay. I climb in there. I decided to give
1:05:41
Speaker 1: it a shot, and I don't see crap the whole night.
1:05:45
Speaker 1: I saw a moose and a calf and I saw
1:05:48
Speaker 1: two more doughs that came from the alf alfa heading
1:05:51
Speaker 1: back into bedding. Nothing came through from I heard some
1:05:54
Speaker 1: dear blowing back further into the bedding, which made me
1:05:58
Speaker 1: wonder if maybe one of these hunters did pushed back
1:06:00
Speaker 1: there and was scared and deer and was essentially it
1:06:02
Speaker 1: cut me off. Maybe not. I don't know, um, but
1:06:06
Speaker 1: it's a really disappointing, frustrating night again. And uh, you know,
1:06:10
Speaker 1: this is a situation where maybe I had rose colored glasses.
1:06:14
Speaker 1: Maybe I I wanted it to work out so bad
1:06:17
Speaker 1: there that I convinced myself of all these things. I
1:06:21
Speaker 1: convinced myself. Oh, they're probably just gonna hunt the edge
1:06:23
Speaker 1: because of all those things that just described. Oh, the
1:06:25
Speaker 1: sabotage night probably wasn't as bad as you originally thought
1:06:28
Speaker 1: because they were just on the UTV. Um. Oh, you know,
1:06:33
Speaker 1: they'll probably come back through because yeah, you've been in
1:06:36
Speaker 1: this general are a couple of times, but you know,
1:06:39
Speaker 1: nothing ever spooked when they crossed your ground trail. You
1:06:41
Speaker 1: never once heard a dear blow or so anyone thinks spook.
1:06:44
Speaker 1: And so I essentially took all these possible negative things,
1:06:48
Speaker 1: and because I wanted it to work out so much,
1:06:51
Speaker 1: I maybe convinced myself to sit somewhere that I shouldn't
1:06:57
Speaker 1: have um high say twenty right. I mean maybe it
1:07:03
Speaker 1: could have all worked out and it could have been great, um,
1:07:05
Speaker 1: and I'd be sitting here towny. I was. I was smart.
1:07:07
Speaker 1: Look at all this great mental gymnastics I did to
1:07:09
Speaker 1: think through all these scenarios, and I stuck to my guns,
1:07:12
Speaker 1: and there was the right scenario and here they come. Um.
1:07:15
Speaker 1: But they didn't. So that was last night. And after that,
1:07:20
Speaker 1: after sitting this spot and having it gone from seeing
1:07:22
Speaker 1: a lot of deer and three good bucks to now
1:07:24
Speaker 1: seeing almost no deer. I definitely knew it was time
1:07:27
Speaker 1: to pull the plug on that spot. And Um, and
1:07:30
Speaker 1: that was my my last night in that area. You
1:07:33
Speaker 1: had gone to a brand new child, went to another
1:07:35
Speaker 1: another chunk to try to get on some deer, and
1:07:38
Speaker 1: and hiked way back in there and got into some
1:07:41
Speaker 1: stuff that was looking good. And UM had high hopes
1:07:45
Speaker 1: for this spot, and very similar to you, nothing going on.
1:07:51
Speaker 1: I heard some I got. I literally just got all
1:07:54
Speaker 1: set up, and I wasn't thrilled about my spot. It
1:07:57
Speaker 1: was very limited in trees, a lot of big like
1:08:00
Speaker 1: old cotton woods down in here, and just you couldn't
1:08:02
Speaker 1: get it. You couldn't get straps around the trees, or
1:08:04
Speaker 1: they were um split off, or they were dead, or
1:08:08
Speaker 1: the one tree I wanted to get in was like
1:08:10
Speaker 1: half eaten by a beaver. It's like I probably shouldn't
1:08:13
Speaker 1: go up from that. So it's just like just one
1:08:15
Speaker 1: thing after another. And in the spot where I thought
1:08:17
Speaker 1: they'd be coming through, UM, on this little creek, it
1:08:22
Speaker 1: looked like from the maps that you could see trails
1:08:23
Speaker 1: coming out of there. And I got there and there
1:08:25
Speaker 1: was no trails coming out of there. Um. The water
1:08:28
Speaker 1: was maybe a little high from some of the rain
1:08:30
Speaker 1: and some things that it has been going on here. Um,
1:08:34
Speaker 1: but ended up finding another secondary little location that I liked.
1:08:37
Speaker 1: It was in some just on the edge of some
1:08:39
Speaker 1: thick stuff, a lot of trails criss crossing through. Um
1:08:43
Speaker 1: some of this cotton wood. I don't I don't want
1:08:45
Speaker 1: to call it savannah, but like you know, you got
1:08:47
Speaker 1: the big cotton woods, and you know the grass, you know,
1:08:50
Speaker 1: the grassy fields below it, and um, so I get
1:08:53
Speaker 1: all set up and I hear crash, crash, crash, and
1:08:56
Speaker 1: the thick stuff to my south, and like, all right,
1:08:58
Speaker 1: here we go, this is a spot. And now it
1:09:01
Speaker 1: pops out like three moose like a bowl and two
1:09:04
Speaker 1: cows and he's chasing them all around and grunting and
1:09:08
Speaker 1: they're just making a racket for like a half hour
1:09:10
Speaker 1: in there, and then um, they kind of calmed down,
1:09:13
Speaker 1: and then you know, over to my over to my west,
1:09:17
Speaker 1: I guess it would have been here's some here's some
1:09:19
Speaker 1: more crashing, and look over there, another moose coming out.
1:09:24
Speaker 1: So I ended up seeing six moose at this spot
1:09:26
Speaker 1: last night. UM, I guess, stop being white tail tags
1:09:29
Speaker 1: in these Western trips and just figure out how I
1:09:31
Speaker 1: could get a noose tag because gosh, yeah, it's cool
1:09:36
Speaker 1: to see. It's a lot of fun to see, and
1:09:38
Speaker 1: you know it's not something to get to see at home. Um.
1:09:41
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I don't think there um
1:09:44
Speaker 1: necessarily ideal for having white tails in the area when
1:09:47
Speaker 1: he got these big animals bedding in there and moving
1:09:51
Speaker 1: all around, and um, I don't know. I don't know
1:09:54
Speaker 1: if they pushed deer out of there, but I didn't
1:09:56
Speaker 1: see any deer. So that was that night. I mean
1:10:01
Speaker 1: more moose mo de Yeah, I forgot. I did see
1:10:04
Speaker 1: a cow and a calf. I don't know if I
1:10:06
Speaker 1: mentioned that or not. I did see color and calf
1:10:08
Speaker 1: last night. So yeah, we kept on trying new spots
1:10:14
Speaker 1: and and panned out. It brings to I was in
1:10:18
Speaker 1: an area that I could see a pretty good distance
1:10:20
Speaker 1: and nothing going on around me. And and basically all
1:10:24
Speaker 1: of these places we've tried to be in we've tried
1:10:26
Speaker 1: to balance two things. We've tried to in most cases
1:10:31
Speaker 1: get into the cover and close to bedding scouts so
1:10:35
Speaker 1: we know we're close to these concentrations, but also placed
1:10:38
Speaker 1: ourselves in places where we can see because again we've
1:10:42
Speaker 1: got very little intel to work from. So we get close,
1:10:46
Speaker 1: get in that concentration point, but with the opportunity to
1:10:49
Speaker 1: pivot to a next day location based off an observation.
1:10:52
Speaker 1: So in your case, you had that you're right up
1:10:54
Speaker 1: on the edge of that thick stuff to yourself right,
1:10:56
Speaker 1: but you can then see a good way as a
1:10:58
Speaker 1: head of use. You can see if they crossed out
1:10:59
Speaker 1: of any where else. Yep, I could see through there's
1:11:01
Speaker 1: a little meadow that that creek ran through, and I
1:11:03
Speaker 1: could see down through there if anything came out, um,
1:11:07
Speaker 1: which a moose did, but nothing else, And I could
1:11:09
Speaker 1: see then to my west a pretty good ways kind
1:11:11
Speaker 1: of back. Um. So I had a pretty good vantage
1:11:14
Speaker 1: point of a pretty wide area from that spot. And
1:11:19
Speaker 1: that takes us to this morning, the last hunt covered
1:11:23
Speaker 1: on this podcast. We decided to hunt the forest like
1:11:29
Speaker 1: the Mountain Forest section where we had gotten those good
1:11:32
Speaker 1: bucks on trail camera. UM. I slipped up on a
1:11:36
Speaker 1: ridge back behind you a ways. You had kind of
1:11:40
Speaker 1: already had this pre hunked spot where that trail camera was,
1:11:43
Speaker 1: so I didn't want to get encroach in your space there,
1:11:46
Speaker 1: So I swung up and snuck down this ridge and
1:11:48
Speaker 1: sat down on the corner of it. And um, the
1:11:51
Speaker 1: only thing of note for my whole hunt this morning
1:11:53
Speaker 1: was around seven, I don't know, seven thirty. Oh my gosh,
1:12:01
Speaker 1: there's actually dear coming. So I'm like knocked on ready
1:12:05
Speaker 1: and then here comes the hunter and another hunter and
1:12:10
Speaker 1: they come walking by like seven yards in front of
1:12:12
Speaker 1: me and walk past. I'm like, jeez, I literally I
1:12:15
Speaker 1: was sitting on the ground. I literally laid down the
1:12:17
Speaker 1: ground of put my arms up. I'm just like, I
1:12:19
Speaker 1: get up and I freaking get out, Like I can't
1:12:21
Speaker 1: get away from people. Everywhere I've gone. I've hiked miles
1:12:24
Speaker 1: and miles. I've gone in the mountains, I've gone the
1:12:27
Speaker 1: river bottoms, I've gone, you know, I've I don't know,
1:12:31
Speaker 1: just a nap and I'll get away from people. So
1:12:33
Speaker 1: that was another interesting moment. And then eventually walked over
1:12:37
Speaker 1: back to your spot to get you and uh, you've
1:12:40
Speaker 1: had a more interesting day, a little bit more interesting.
1:12:42
Speaker 1: I had the same experience earlier than you. Those same
1:12:45
Speaker 1: two hunters came walking by me about seven seven fifteen
1:12:49
Speaker 1: something like that. Um, so forty five, I mean was
1:12:53
Speaker 1: that a half hour forty five minutes after shooting light?
1:12:55
Speaker 1: They come walking through, and Um, I saw them go up.
1:12:59
Speaker 1: Then I knew they were going to probably head towards you.
1:13:01
Speaker 1: They started looping around towards you, So you know, I
1:13:04
Speaker 1: was feeling the same thing. I just sitting in my seat.
1:13:06
Speaker 1: I was like again, like jeez, like we just you know,
1:13:10
Speaker 1: can't catch a break. And I'm sitting there and I'm sulking,
1:13:14
Speaker 1: and I look over and on to the other side
1:13:16
Speaker 1: of this canyon and I see a deer walking up
1:13:21
Speaker 1: the steep hill of this cane and kind of sidehilling
1:13:23
Speaker 1: it up, and UM, throw my binos up and it's
1:13:27
Speaker 1: one of those bucks, one of those nice bucks we
1:13:29
Speaker 1: had on trail camera. He's he I think what happened
1:13:33
Speaker 1: is I think he probably was on our side, and
1:13:35
Speaker 1: I think that I don't know if they got spooked
1:13:38
Speaker 1: or maybe just bumped out of where they were at
1:13:40
Speaker 1: or off their course of travel by those other hunters,
1:13:44
Speaker 1: and I think they dropped down the creek and then
1:13:47
Speaker 1: back up the other side, just based on the angle
1:13:49
Speaker 1: of their of their movement. And then behind him was
1:13:51
Speaker 1: another one of the nice bucks that we had on
1:13:54
Speaker 1: trail camera, and they went into the thick stuff up
1:13:57
Speaker 1: on top of this other canyon. Um, so that was
1:14:02
Speaker 1: basically the end. I mean that that happened around seven
1:14:04
Speaker 1: thirty ish and sat for another hour, hour and a
1:14:07
Speaker 1: half and and didn't see anything. Um to know other
1:14:11
Speaker 1: than that, but at least gives me a little bit
1:14:13
Speaker 1: of hope tonight that I could potentially set up on
1:14:18
Speaker 1: on then maybe coming back down across the creek. I
1:14:21
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, at this point it's a we're
1:14:24
Speaker 1: swinging for the fences here with whatever we can do.
1:14:26
Speaker 1: But um, at least make an educated guests on on
1:14:30
Speaker 1: what I think they're gonna do, and and see what happens. Yeah,
1:14:33
Speaker 1: So tonight is our very last hunt to the trip. Yep,
1:14:36
Speaker 1: We've gotta take off to farm warning. So you're gonna
1:14:39
Speaker 1: go set up on the creek, yep? I think so.
1:14:42
Speaker 1: I think that's what I'm gonna do and just um
1:14:44
Speaker 1: see what happens. I think that I am going to
1:14:50
Speaker 1: bail on the sabotage spot and go back to the
1:14:54
Speaker 1: very first area we hunted. The last three times we've
1:14:58
Speaker 1: driven back there. We have to drive by the original
1:15:01
Speaker 1: spot to get to the sabotage spot, and there have
1:15:05
Speaker 1: not been hunter trucks there. So I'm hoping that there's
1:15:10
Speaker 1: not been as much pressure back there as was as
1:15:13
Speaker 1: there was earlier in our trip. As my hope and
1:15:17
Speaker 1: my idea is too, I'm still going to push in
1:15:19
Speaker 1: there really far. I'm still gonna push in at least
1:15:21
Speaker 1: a mile and a half. Um. But what I'm gonna
1:15:23
Speaker 1: do is I'm gonna go walk the closed road, walk
1:15:28
Speaker 1: past that whole area you were hunting, Walk past the
1:15:31
Speaker 1: first couple of places. I hunted past the creek crossing stuff,
1:15:35
Speaker 1: and actually hunt a chunk that I noticed on my
1:15:39
Speaker 1: death March day, the night when I ran into the
1:15:41
Speaker 1: serial killer um. As I was hiking in there. On
1:15:45
Speaker 1: the way in, I found this spot that is it
1:15:50
Speaker 1: just looks like a bunch of deer moon all funneled
1:15:53
Speaker 1: into this, this small um opening of sorts in the
1:15:58
Speaker 1: middle of a ton of thick, nasty Russian olive and
1:16:02
Speaker 1: and cottonwood stuff. There's last times, there's like walls of
1:16:06
Speaker 1: the stuff that you can't cross the all. And what
1:16:08
Speaker 1: I've noticed in a lot of these Western states this
1:16:10
Speaker 1: river bottom stuff is when you get these little openings
1:16:12
Speaker 1: in there, the deer naturally gravitate towards them where they
1:16:15
Speaker 1: can get an easy travel path into, you know, towards
1:16:18
Speaker 1: wherever they want to go, and so it's still very thick.
1:16:21
Speaker 1: I mean, you're it's it's a jungle in there. But
1:16:23
Speaker 1: inside the jungle there's a small highway kind of and
1:16:26
Speaker 1: this small highway from Google Maps, you can literally see
1:16:30
Speaker 1: a bunch of trails coming in and the dirt all
1:16:33
Speaker 1: coming into that and then heading right towards that alf
1:16:35
Speaker 1: alfa field to the east corner of the alf alfa
1:16:38
Speaker 1: field that you watched the first night where you saw
1:16:40
Speaker 1: a bunch of deer coming in. Essential, what I'm hoping
1:16:44
Speaker 1: this is is I'm hoping this is you know, it's
1:16:46
Speaker 1: gonna be It's not the very end of the funnel,
1:16:48
Speaker 1: because the very end of the funnels on private land
1:16:50
Speaker 1: by the alf alfa fields. But I'm hoping it's gonna
1:16:51
Speaker 1: be midway up a funnel of deer movement where they're
1:16:54
Speaker 1: coming from all these different places and they're they're filtering
1:16:57
Speaker 1: down towards the food. And my hope is that this
1:17:01
Speaker 1: thing is way back in the cover, um but in
1:17:04
Speaker 1: a little bit of a funnel of sorts that I'm
1:17:06
Speaker 1: that I'm banking on with colder weather, with hopefully no
1:17:10
Speaker 1: one being crazy enough to push that far back in
1:17:12
Speaker 1: with hopefully, um, hopefully my guests about the deer movement
1:17:18
Speaker 1: and based off the sign I said, I want to
1:17:19
Speaker 1: walk down there's all right, hopefully something's going to move
1:17:21
Speaker 1: through there, and um, I think it has the highest
1:17:25
Speaker 1: number of potential target deer based on what you saw
1:17:28
Speaker 1: that first night. You know what we've seen, um, and
1:17:31
Speaker 1: my you know, my standards are. You know, I'm not
1:17:34
Speaker 1: waiting out for two big giants anymore. I'm willing to,
1:17:37
Speaker 1: um take a crack in a n ice buck. And
1:17:40
Speaker 1: that's I think the best opportunity to do that. So
1:17:44
Speaker 1: that's what I'm going to do. I wish that I
1:17:46
Speaker 1: was like sitting the kill set based off of an
1:17:49
Speaker 1: observation for the night before. Wish I was in a
1:17:51
Speaker 1: spot where I'm like, oh, yeah, it's gonna absolutely happen.
1:17:53
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, every time we start zero in on something
1:17:56
Speaker 1: that's been blown up and UM, it's just the cards
1:17:59
Speaker 1: we've been dealt. And I guess my takeaway from this
1:18:03
Speaker 1: whole thing, if I'm looking at what can I learn
1:18:06
Speaker 1: from this or what can other people learn from this,
1:18:08
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just the same thing we've said over
1:18:10
Speaker 1: and over again, the fact that you need a lot
1:18:11
Speaker 1: of backup plans when you're planning a public iDeer hunt
1:18:13
Speaker 1: like this. You need to go into it being like
1:18:17
Speaker 1: this is another thing we talked about last week, like
1:18:19
Speaker 1: think positive, believe in yourself, believe in it, but also
1:18:22
Speaker 1: have plans for the worst, prepare for the worst. And
1:18:25
Speaker 1: and we kind of did that. Um, we had a
1:18:28
Speaker 1: lot of different places, so we've been able to keep
1:18:30
Speaker 1: on going in new spots. I just wish that I
1:18:32
Speaker 1: had scouted even more and so like so I knew
1:18:35
Speaker 1: these places like the back of my hand, I don't
1:18:37
Speaker 1: know them by the back of my hand. So we're
1:18:38
Speaker 1: learning it all new as we go. And that's inevitably
1:18:41
Speaker 1: tough to do when you're learning and dealing with new
1:18:43
Speaker 1: hunters coming in from every direction all the time. Um.
1:18:46
Speaker 1: So it's been a challenge. It's forced me to probably
1:18:49
Speaker 1: hunt harder in like an eight pay pier than I
1:18:52
Speaker 1: ever have as far as like just like hanging and
1:18:54
Speaker 1: resetting and resetting and hiking like long hikes, like lots
1:18:58
Speaker 1: of long hikes in and out. Um. Yeah, we're definitely
1:19:02
Speaker 1: gonna have our set up dialed in for Michigan season though,
1:19:05
Speaker 1: yeah said it's gonna feel it's gonna feel like a
1:19:08
Speaker 1: piece of cake. I should. We've been doing that NonStop,
1:19:11
Speaker 1: so so you know, that's how it goes. Sometimes we've
1:19:14
Speaker 1: got one more hunt, maybe we'll have that last minute
1:19:16
Speaker 1: magic and we'll be able to celebrate, or maybe we're
1:19:20
Speaker 1: gonna go home with no tags filled. Um. It's like,
1:19:25
Speaker 1: I'm torn on this one. I'm like, very you're very frustrated,
1:19:29
Speaker 1: upset with it because I really thought we would be
1:19:31
Speaker 1: able to get it done. I was really confident coming
1:19:33
Speaker 1: into it. We had a little more time than I
1:19:35
Speaker 1: usually do on these hunts. I just I couldn't imagine
1:19:39
Speaker 1: the scenario where we'd come home without failing the tags.
1:19:41
Speaker 1: Everything everything seemed to be lining up pretty well for us,
1:19:45
Speaker 1: and um, and then just everything went wrong. And what
1:19:50
Speaker 1: I've what I've tried to do is like over the
1:19:53
Speaker 1: last day, as I'm like mentally processing all this is,
1:19:57
Speaker 1: is also remember that when it comes trips like this,
1:20:01
Speaker 1: it all hunting is like this, but especially trips like this,
1:20:05
Speaker 1: you need to be able to take satisfaction out of
1:20:08
Speaker 1: the whole experience, because if you're so dead set on
1:20:11
Speaker 1: just killing a deer on something like this, Like, the
1:20:14
Speaker 1: odds are are stacked against you when you travel two
1:20:16
Speaker 1: thousand miles from home to a brand new place, uh
1:20:20
Speaker 1: that's hunted by dozens of other people. Apparently, Um, the
1:20:23
Speaker 1: odds are stacked against you. And if we can only
1:20:26
Speaker 1: derive enjoyment out of killing a deer in that situation,
1:20:30
Speaker 1: well then we we probably should have known that we're
1:20:32
Speaker 1: setting ourselves up for potential failure. UM. So I think
1:20:36
Speaker 1: when I look at it, I'm not upset that we
1:20:39
Speaker 1: fished a few times. I'm not upset that we you know,
1:20:44
Speaker 1: came out here and saw some beautiful country and we
1:20:46
Speaker 1: saw some nice bucks, and we saw a lot of deer,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: and we saw some moose and we got to you know,
1:20:53
Speaker 1: explore new places. And it's it's um and it's public.
1:20:59
Speaker 1: It's like here for us, Like, how crazy is that
1:21:02
Speaker 1: that we got to go to this stuff that we
1:21:03
Speaker 1: don't own and I got to enjoy this beautiful, beautiful
1:21:06
Speaker 1: country and critters and things, and we got to do
1:21:08
Speaker 1: it for basically for free. Um, you can't complain about that. Yeah, No,
1:21:12
Speaker 1: it's it's been a great trip, regardless of if we um,
1:21:15
Speaker 1: if we feel a tag tonight or not. You know,
1:21:17
Speaker 1: I've been doing some of the same thing thinking and um,
1:21:21
Speaker 1: you know, I think one of the things that I'm
1:21:22
Speaker 1: proud of us for is that we have adjusted so much.
1:21:25
Speaker 1: We've stayed positive. Like I don't know, there's probably a
1:21:29
Speaker 1: time in the past where I would have been like,
1:21:31
Speaker 1: screw this, let's go home. You know, I miss my family,
1:21:34
Speaker 1: I miss home, I got stuff to do. Let's bail
1:21:37
Speaker 1: on this a couple of days early, or that storms
1:21:39
Speaker 1: rolling in, let's get out. You know. I think there's
1:21:41
Speaker 1: just there's things that we could have you know, we
1:21:44
Speaker 1: could have packed it up and went home, and we didn't.
1:21:46
Speaker 1: We kept you know, charging away at it and and
1:21:49
Speaker 1: being scrappy and trying to find new spots and new
1:21:52
Speaker 1: deer to hunt and get away from people. And you know,
1:21:56
Speaker 1: it didn't didn't always go in our favor. But I
1:21:59
Speaker 1: think I think we definitely gave it a hell of
1:22:02
Speaker 1: a shot. Yeah, well gave her hell, that's for sure.
1:22:06
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, there's our sob story. I hope there
1:22:10
Speaker 1: was something in there, um that's either reassuring to you
1:22:13
Speaker 1: or comforting to you because you've had the same thing happen,
1:22:16
Speaker 1: or maybe can help you adapt and put together plan
1:22:19
Speaker 1: for your upcoming hunt. UM, learn from our mistakes, learn
1:22:23
Speaker 1: from our takeaways. UM, set yourself up for a hunt
1:22:27
Speaker 1: so that you enjoy it and have a successful hunt,
1:22:29
Speaker 1: regardless of if you feel your tag and uh and
1:22:32
Speaker 1: get out there. Above all, get out there and enjoy
1:22:35
Speaker 1: these places. I don't want to scare you away from
1:22:38
Speaker 1: going out and trying it out of state hunt or
1:22:39
Speaker 1: trying public land deer hunt. Things happen. It can be tough.
1:22:43
Speaker 1: At the same time, you could also have a hunt
1:22:46
Speaker 1: of the lifetime. You just never know what you're gonna get.
1:22:48
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what makes this thing so special.
1:22:50
Speaker 1: If it was guaranteed, what funds that I know? I yeah,
1:22:54
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's been a heck of a heck
1:22:56
Speaker 1: of a time regardless of what happens. UM, tonight, I
1:23:00
Speaker 1: do it all again for sure? All right, man, Well,
1:23:03
Speaker 1: I think we should shut it down, wrap this podcast up,
1:23:07
Speaker 1: and you and we need to go out and have
1:23:09
Speaker 1: one last great hunt. Fingers crossed. What happens? Okay, what's
1:23:15
Speaker 1: what kind of probability would you put on your success tonight? Josh,
1:23:19
Speaker 1: let's go there, let's go to the flip side. I'm
1:23:22
Speaker 1: I'm saying about one percent. I'm don't have super high hopes,
1:23:26
Speaker 1: but there's deer. There's a couple of deer that I
1:23:28
Speaker 1: saw this morning, and I know where I think I
1:23:30
Speaker 1: know where they're going, and just a matter if they'll
1:23:33
Speaker 1: they'll come back down the canyon and cross the creek again.
1:23:35
Speaker 1: I figure if I go super low percentage, maybe it'll
1:23:39
Speaker 1: happen on them. There you go. I'm going with twenty
1:23:43
Speaker 1: percent from my hunt tonight. I'll bought mine up to
1:23:46
Speaker 1: five percent. All right, So there you guys go. We're
1:23:50
Speaker 1: very excited and feeling optimists tonight. H. Tune in next
1:23:54
Speaker 1: week for the exciting conclusion and uh, until then, thank
1:23:58
Speaker 1: you all for listening. Good luck on your hunts. If
1:24:00
Speaker 1: you're out there, enjoy it, have fun, adapt, adjust, persevere,
1:24:06
Speaker 1: and until next time, stay wired to hunt. H.