Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 143: Self-loathing and Guilt
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast, coming at you, shirtless, severely,
- 0:13Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
- 0:18Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Is there anyone here? Raise your hand?
- 0:28Speaker 1: If I haven't told you about a my buddy's brother
- 0:32Speaker 1: who was carrying the d Iraq on his backpack, I
- 0:35Speaker 1: haven't told you about this? No? No, okay, raise your hand.
- 0:39Speaker 1: If I haven't told you about this man eating tiger
- 0:43Speaker 1: and uh, this man eating tiger in India. I told
- 0:47Speaker 1: you guys all about it. Can you can we act
- 0:52Speaker 1: like I didn't tell you? Okay? My buddy's brother, he
- 0:56Speaker 1: doesn't want me to say who it is, but it's
- 0:57Speaker 1: a guy that's been on this podcast, and I've met
- 1:01Speaker 1: his brother. I fished purchased his brother. Um kills of
- 1:06Speaker 1: Columbia blacktail in Washington State, and I haven't spoke with
- 1:11Speaker 1: him directly about it, but he kills a blacktail in
- 1:15Speaker 1: Washington State and he affixes the rack, the skull and
- 1:24Speaker 1: antlers to his backpack. And this is one of those
- 1:30Speaker 1: things that you hear about it being a no no,
- 1:33Speaker 1: like it will even tie orange flagging or tie a
- 1:36Speaker 1: game vest or whatever around antlers when you're doing it,
- 1:40Speaker 1: but you're always like, man, what are the chances that
- 1:42Speaker 1: that would happen? That being, what are the chances that
- 1:45Speaker 1: someone would mistake it for a live animal? Well, he
- 1:51Speaker 1: got shot at so it was such a close call
- 1:57Speaker 1: that the guy shot a hole through his backpack? Whoa
- 2:00Speaker 1: dude too close? The game warden hauled. This dude often
- 2:05Speaker 1: handcuffs as he should. Jeez shot a hole through his
- 2:11Speaker 1: backpack with a high powered rifle thinking not only thinking
- 2:15Speaker 1: that it was a live buck, but also that he
- 2:19Speaker 1: was aiming at its lungs, or he didn't get that
- 2:23Speaker 1: far into the thinking horrifying. What does anybody else have
- 2:30Speaker 1: a story like themselves or someone they know closely that's
- 2:36Speaker 1: happened to you, like when someone shot at a sound
- 2:39Speaker 1: or I know people that got shot in Pennsylvania turkey hunting. Really,
- 2:44Speaker 1: I know there's three guys standing together talking after working
- 2:47Speaker 1: a bird and all three of them got hit. What
- 2:51Speaker 1: what did the person think he was shooting at a turkey?
- 2:54Speaker 1: I guess mistook three mugs for a turkey and knew
- 2:59Speaker 1: it was a gobbler, not him. That's what. I don't
- 3:04Speaker 1: know what he was thinking, but that's what I don't
- 3:06Speaker 1: get it. I don't. I don't think there's a mistaking.
- 3:08Speaker 1: It's a it's a there's movement. I'm gonna shoot and
- 3:13Speaker 1: figure out it out later. Is it that? Or is
- 3:15Speaker 1: it like buck fever sort of thing where you're just
- 3:17Speaker 1: like so keyed in, Like anytime you see like a
- 3:20Speaker 1: rack or movement and you're like, oh, I gotta shoot
- 3:23Speaker 1: because that's what I'm out here for. That's just too
- 3:25Speaker 1: In this case, you've got a rack that's pointed the
- 3:27Speaker 1: wrong direction. What's moving to? If it's on a backpack
- 3:31Speaker 1: walking away Buck of lifetime man inverted? It was an
- 3:35Speaker 1: inverted buck. It's just still blows my mind that stuff happened. Disgusting.
- 3:42Speaker 1: What are they thinking? There's more lury details about this individual,
- 3:47Speaker 1: but I don't want to give him away. Not lury
- 3:51Speaker 1: details about the victim, but lurd details about the perpetrator.
- 3:54Speaker 1: He had some other things going on. Mm hmm. What
- 3:58Speaker 1: does the victim say, I've only I'm friends with the
- 4:02Speaker 1: victim's brother, and I've fished with the victim, the near victim. No,
- 4:09Speaker 1: the victim. I fished with the victim, but I'm not
- 4:12Speaker 1: tight with him. Um okay, the man eating tiger. This
- 4:17Speaker 1: is kind of amazing. Man. If a bear, if if
- 4:20Speaker 1: a grizzly here scratches someone else, that's a dead bear. Quick.
- 4:25Speaker 1: This tiger in India killed thirteen people before they were
- 4:30Speaker 1: able to kill the tiger whittled away at thirteen people,
- 4:34Speaker 1: and they finally they got it to expose itself and
- 4:38Speaker 1: lured it in use an obsession clone no people. Yeah,
- 4:45Speaker 1: old obsession had like an extract, had some kind of
- 4:49Speaker 1: like civic extract or something in it, and they find
- 4:52Speaker 1: that it works really good as a tiger lure. Obsession obsession.
- 4:58Speaker 1: Tell me you know more about this and we can
- 5:01Speaker 1: take this one one step far. I was just reading
- 5:02Speaker 1: about this. I've heard that tigers have like a vengeance
- 5:06Speaker 1: for people. They will remember people scent, they'll remember like
- 5:09Speaker 1: they'll have it out and they'll do you speak up Orange. Yeah,
- 5:13Speaker 1: you guys gotta get you guys gotta get trying to
- 5:15Speaker 1: share the mike, but we're doing the two finger things.
- 5:17Speaker 1: But you're selling a dude yelling at up at a seminar. Alright, Well,
- 5:22Speaker 1: I'm gonna get real uncomfortably close to Chris and tell
- 5:25Speaker 1: you that I believe that what I've heard is that
- 5:29Speaker 1: tiger's hold vengeance against people. I think that comes from
- 5:34Speaker 1: one book called Tiger. The Tiger. Yeah, but John valent Yeah,
- 5:39Speaker 1: who wrote one of the really you know what, you
- 5:41Speaker 1: want to read a real book, read his book The
- 5:44Speaker 1: Golden Spruce. That's it right in some bit right there. Man,
- 5:48Speaker 1: he's good. But there's certain books that come out. It's
- 5:51Speaker 1: like Malcolm Gladwell writes a book, then for the next
- 5:53Speaker 1: six months you gotta have people tell you. They tell
- 5:57Speaker 1: you stuff that they read there and act like that
- 6:00Speaker 1: they didn't read it there. But you know what, Actually
- 6:03Speaker 1: the way to think about that is and you learn
- 6:05Speaker 1: later like where it's all coming from. But since that
- 6:08Speaker 1: book came out, I've had fifty people tell me that
- 6:10Speaker 1: about tigers. Not to take away from because he's a
- 6:12Speaker 1: hell of a writer. Was his name again, John Villante?
- 6:15Speaker 1: I think yeah, we've emailed the a I L. L Anti, dude.
- 6:19Speaker 1: The Golden Spruce is about a giant golden spruce and
- 6:22Speaker 1: the man who sawed it down and why he sawed
- 6:25Speaker 1: it down and he did not saw it down for
- 6:26Speaker 1: the reasons you think he would have saught it down.
- 6:31Speaker 1: It's about an act of like eco terrorism. Mm hmmm.
- 6:36Speaker 1: It's a goodass book. Uh, in Florida. Guy, you know
- 6:42Speaker 1: about this seven sevent ft python. Dude just got a
- 6:47Speaker 1: one twenty pound seventeen ft five inch long python. He
- 6:52Speaker 1: paid for it too. You didn't he didn't bite him
- 6:53Speaker 1: several times when he was wrastling with it. Bait him
- 6:55Speaker 1: up a little bit awesome. I can't even wrap my
- 6:59Speaker 1: head around on a snake that big. He can wrap
- 7:02Speaker 1: his head around. You, God, I can't wrap my head around.
- 7:05Speaker 1: Why you would want to catch it? I catch it
- 7:08Speaker 1: after I shot its head off. The bounties on them,
- 7:11Speaker 1: I guess not alive. I don't know why he wanted
- 7:13Speaker 1: to catch it live. Just a lot cooler to roll
- 7:15Speaker 1: in with the snake that's alive. It makes more of
- 7:19Speaker 1: a statement man, to have a hy pound of live snake.
- 7:24Speaker 1: Just giant pythons. Man, kind of getting sick of those pythons.
- 7:30Speaker 1: Imagine the tree stands you were sitting in. You'd go
- 7:34Speaker 1: from the top of that tree stands to the bottom.
- 7:36Speaker 1: That is that's so scary in way as much as
- 7:40Speaker 1: ridge founder, it's just about what are they eating? Just anything,
- 7:44Speaker 1: small mammals. They've eliminated a size class of mammals in
- 7:47Speaker 1: the everglades. That's what our buddy Robert Abernathey who worked
- 7:52Speaker 1: on some Python projects and whatnot. He's a he's a biologist.
- 7:56Speaker 1: A couple of interesting things he's telling us about is
- 7:58Speaker 1: they have like eliminated like everything, like grinners, raccoons, like
- 8:04Speaker 1: a whole size class of like mid sized mammal. They
- 8:08Speaker 1: just wipe them out anybody. They're working on this stuff
- 8:11Speaker 1: to try to test how far north pythons can go
- 8:15Speaker 1: and that they can't penetrate the frost line. So like
- 8:20Speaker 1: if you live in you know, yeah, man, they're not
- 8:24Speaker 1: gonna They're not gonna be up in the Carolinas. They're
- 8:25Speaker 1: not gonna be up in Alabama. Our squirrel populations, in
- 8:28Speaker 1: our cottental populations would be in danger. There's no safe
- 8:32Speaker 1: place to be a grinner anymore. Chase, we chased after
- 8:35Speaker 1: grinner last night, didn't we We did? We didn't come
- 8:37Speaker 1: up and gave us a slip. Does everybody know what
- 8:39Speaker 1: a grinner is? That's a possum, that's a dug During
- 8:43Speaker 1: calls them grinners. Speaking of getting mauled up. Now, this
- 8:48Speaker 1: is something we don't know. We just tried to fact
- 8:49Speaker 1: check it, but it seems like there's something here that
- 8:52Speaker 1: where we got in a we got in a mix
- 8:54Speaker 1: up with a with a brown bear on a fog
- 8:57Speaker 1: neck about a year ago. And I guess some I
- 9:01Speaker 1: just got mauled up pretty good. We've been hearing all
- 9:03Speaker 1: kinds of rumors from one dude. One of these rumors,
- 9:09Speaker 1: I don't know if it's sure or not, is he
- 9:10Speaker 1: was sporting a stone glacier backpack and that his backpack
- 9:14Speaker 1: got mauled About that, seth, you believe it? He tried
- 9:19Speaker 1: to fact check it in. Yeah, we tried you what
- 9:22Speaker 1: do you feel safe adding here he was a hiker? Yeah,
- 9:29Speaker 1: we don't know what that means. We don't know. We
- 9:30Speaker 1: don't know if he's scouting type hiker or an ari
- 9:34Speaker 1: I type. What if he was what he was hiking
- 9:36Speaker 1: around hunting? Yeah, I just wait to say that. I
- 9:40Speaker 1: don't know either way. We love him the same Ron
- 9:44Speaker 1: Bam wrote in all worked up about Remember the other
- 9:49Speaker 1: day we were talking about dogs and like, and I
- 9:51Speaker 1: was talking about the cake theory. Okay, that got a
- 9:54Speaker 1: lot of people, I've noticed to a lot of letters
- 9:56Speaker 1: came in about the cake theory. Um, they're saying that
- 9:59Speaker 1: A that was a bad analogy. One guy didn't. He
- 10:02Speaker 1: was talking about when he smells shrimp scampy that he
- 10:04Speaker 1: smells all that. He said, I smell the butter and
- 10:07Speaker 1: the shrimp, but it's just easier to say scampy. So
- 10:11Speaker 1: I'm like, whatever, Okay, well let's give this guy a
- 10:17Speaker 1: haul of pass. You got something to add well, yeah,
- 10:20Speaker 1: because yeah, sure shrimp scampy. You can smell butter and shrimp.
- 10:23Speaker 1: All good on you and you don't have a broken nose.
- 10:27Speaker 1: Ron Dame Rolds. We're talking about what does like what
- 10:29Speaker 1: is a dog? But this isn't why Ron wrote in
- 10:33Speaker 1: though round was over right in conversation about the what
- 10:36Speaker 1: hunting dog like? What dogs smell? Like? How is it
- 10:39Speaker 1: different than what we smell? Um? We got team about
- 10:43Speaker 1: like different uh climactic not climax climactic. Uh climatic climactic. Yeah,
- 10:55Speaker 1: that's right. You know what I'm talking about climate that
- 10:58Speaker 1: the different situation sations can influence a dog. And so Ron,
- 11:02Speaker 1: who you might know from the Hunting Dog Podcast, which
- 11:05Speaker 1: is all about all things that hunting dogs. Um, he's
- 11:08Speaker 1: been judging pointing dogs for the North American Versatile Hunting
- 11:12Speaker 1: Dog Association for twenty years and he's hung out with
- 11:16Speaker 1: a guy who's spent twenty years running dogs from Michigan
- 11:20Speaker 1: to Montana to Arizona. And here's what these guys think.
- 11:24Speaker 1: He says. For for tracking ability on a dog, he
- 11:27Speaker 1: says humility, humidity, humility levels. Humidity levels are a major factor.
- 11:34Speaker 1: He thinks when you get below ten percent humidity, it
- 11:37Speaker 1: becomes tough for a dog to detect game. And you
- 11:42Speaker 1: get much higher than sixty and it starts to have
- 11:46Speaker 1: a negative effect. He says that wind speed is also
- 11:50Speaker 1: a crippler. Anything over say, fifteen miles per hour in
- 11:54Speaker 1: the scent just gets too deluded and spread out too
- 11:56Speaker 1: thin too quickly. He says, you get wins in the
- 11:59Speaker 1: twenty just dirty range. It becomes very hard for dogs
- 12:02Speaker 1: to sort it out. He's talking about primarily bird dogs
- 12:05Speaker 1: becomes very hard from to sort it out. He says,
- 12:08Speaker 1: bara metric pressure matters too, but it matters for a
- 12:12Speaker 1: weird reason. If a front is coming in, birds just
- 12:16Speaker 1: sit tight and they don't feed, so you don't have
- 12:21Speaker 1: a lot of bird feet water all over the place
- 12:23Speaker 1: leaving odor. So you could you could have this front
- 12:27Speaker 1: coming in and think that somehow it's affecting your dog
- 12:30Speaker 1: his ability to smell birds. What's going on is birds
- 12:32Speaker 1: just aren't out leading are out leaving scent. M Most
- 12:37Speaker 1: birds walk to their food source. When they're feeding, they're
- 12:41Speaker 1: leaving smell. When they're leaving smell, your dog can find it.
- 12:45Speaker 1: And he talks about when. When he talks about when
- 12:48Speaker 1: you're judging a dog or buying a dog, there's a
- 12:52Speaker 1: scorecard category called use of nose, and he says this
- 12:56Speaker 1: should not be confused with quality of ohs. A dog
- 13:01Speaker 1: has to have a desire to find game. He can't
- 13:04Speaker 1: just like to just run around looking for it. You
- 13:10Speaker 1: can have, he says. He he winds it. He says,
- 13:12Speaker 1: it's a lot like people needing to stay at the
- 13:15Speaker 1: task at hand. He says, compared to hunters that get
- 13:17Speaker 1: tired or uncomfortable, saying the rain and their desire to
- 13:21Speaker 1: continue starts to slip a bit. They get distracted thinking
- 13:24Speaker 1: about things like hoping the weather gets better, instead of
- 13:27Speaker 1: pushing through it and blocking out those thoughts. Dogs are
- 13:30Speaker 1: very much the same way. The nose that is tied
- 13:33Speaker 1: or matched to its level of desire will produce the
- 13:36Speaker 1: best results. Some skills can be taught, but desire will
- 13:43Speaker 1: always win. The day. Just think about that Ron Bam
- 13:51Speaker 1: Hunting Dog podcast. Another dude, real quick road in saying like, um,
- 13:58Speaker 1: we get this a lot too, saying like, hey, does
- 14:02Speaker 1: does copper ammal work? And the thing about it? Go ahead, Jannie,
- 14:08Speaker 1: I didn't have anything to add. You just piqued my
- 14:11Speaker 1: interesting up up not just listening. You perked up. Here.
- 14:16Speaker 1: Here's the way I would put it more. I think
- 14:21Speaker 1: the copper ammal is having a high rate of adoption
- 14:25Speaker 1: because of efficacy, like so many loaders use it. You're honest.
- 14:36Speaker 1: I agree, like serious shooters switching for no other reason
- 14:41Speaker 1: than efficacy. I feel like the effic accuracy accurately. Well, yeah,
- 14:46Speaker 1: I'm I'm rolling that in. I think for a while
- 14:51Speaker 1: what happened with in fact check me on this. You're
- 14:54Speaker 1: honest because you follow the stuff perhaps tighter than I do.
- 14:59Speaker 1: I think for a while, and people first started using
- 15:00Speaker 1: monolithic or copper bullets, it was they were using because
- 15:05Speaker 1: they were very accurate, but they had there was like
- 15:08Speaker 1: early on performance issues because there's a lot to get
- 15:12Speaker 1: right where the thing has to expand but not break apart.
- 15:20Speaker 1: And I think it took some years to get it developed. Yeah,
- 15:23Speaker 1: it seemed like there was early critiques of uh, when
- 15:28Speaker 1: the bullets didn't hit bone, it hit some mass that
- 15:32Speaker 1: they would The term was used pencil through animals, like
- 15:38Speaker 1: taking an arrow with a field tip and just pushing
- 15:42Speaker 1: it through the lungs and not getting the upset and
- 15:45Speaker 1: the damage that you're looking for out of a bullet.
- 15:48Speaker 1: And I don't know if that was coincidence or if
- 15:52Speaker 1: they did make better technology. I know that Federal with
- 15:56Speaker 1: their new you know, trophy copper line, I know that
- 16:00Speaker 1: they have made like a deeper cavity up front that's
- 16:03Speaker 1: supposed to help, you know, initiate that expansion and make
- 16:06Speaker 1: that those pedals come out more, you know, so you
- 16:09Speaker 1: can get the get the damage. Yeah, if people try
- 16:12Speaker 1: different tricks, like even like cutting them to try to
- 16:15Speaker 1: get them to pedal and break into four pieces. But
- 16:18Speaker 1: I'm telling you, man, I have We've been shooting a
- 16:21Speaker 1: bunch of the Federal trophy copper and it comes out
- 16:27Speaker 1: looking like uh, it comes out looking like if you
- 16:29Speaker 1: had a magazine picture of like the perfectly expanded bullet
- 16:33Speaker 1: mm hmm, like opens right up, turns into nice slug.
- 16:39Speaker 1: I mean they advertise up the weight retention, so like
- 16:43Speaker 1: good penetration and it doesn't bust all up and they
- 16:46Speaker 1: put like a tip there's like a like a cavity
- 16:48Speaker 1: in there, but then it's got a polymer tip on
- 16:50Speaker 1: it that helps it expanding. The other problem with it
- 16:54Speaker 1: would be that, like, here's the thing to think about
- 16:58Speaker 1: when when you're talking about this stuff is when people
- 17:00Speaker 1: talk about a long range bullet, you might hear it
- 17:03Speaker 1: and think like, oh, that means it's like accurate long range.
- 17:05Speaker 1: It's probably true, probably has like a like a good
- 17:07Speaker 1: like a high ballistic or what's that word, ballistic coefficiency.
- 17:12Speaker 1: But the other thing when we talk about long range
- 17:14Speaker 1: bullet would be that it will still mushroom. It will
- 17:18Speaker 1: still expand at a low velocity. So if it's coming
- 17:22Speaker 1: out of your if it's coming out of your muzzle,
- 17:24Speaker 1: let's say three feet per second, if it were to
- 17:27Speaker 1: hit something at that speed, if it's a poorly constructed
- 17:30Speaker 1: bullet and it hits something at that speed, he might
- 17:32Speaker 1: rough to do a bunch of pieces. But then it
- 17:35Speaker 1: slows down and it loses half of its velocity and
- 17:39Speaker 1: hits something and it doesn't happen. There's not enough there's
- 17:42Speaker 1: not enough force there to cause it to expand. So
- 17:46Speaker 1: if you see a long range bullet, what that will
- 17:48Speaker 1: mean is that can still expand. One of the things
- 17:52Speaker 1: that means is it can still expand at low velocities.
- 17:55Speaker 1: And I think that these are all things that have
- 17:57Speaker 1: taken a while to get sorted out, which I feel
- 17:59Speaker 1: like now they've just got that sorted out. Where you
- 18:02Speaker 1: have like solid copper stuff that has a polymer tip
- 18:06Speaker 1: and a boattail design and has you know, a good
- 18:10Speaker 1: downrange velocity, like it's still cooking and still opens up, right.
- 18:16Speaker 1: I just don't think you can really right now. I
- 18:17Speaker 1: don't think there's really any from an efficacy standpoint. I
- 18:23Speaker 1: just don't see there's any argument that there's any argument
- 18:26Speaker 1: against it. No, was did this guy have a specific question?
- 18:31Speaker 1: You're just saying he's always hearing about it, but he
- 18:33Speaker 1: hears different things about whether it works or not. This
- 18:37Speaker 1: dude just rote into that. I've yet to have a bad,
- 18:39Speaker 1: uh experience with him. I had a bad experience with
- 18:46Speaker 1: a different kind long time ago, and it was still
- 18:48Speaker 1: in its infancy. This is like seven years ago, not
- 18:51Speaker 1: in its infancy, but it was I was using like
- 18:53Speaker 1: an unproven manufacturers offerings and had a penciling incident at
- 18:58Speaker 1: a long range four hundred plus yards. Good Mark Kenyon. Yeah, Uh,
- 19:12Speaker 1: tell me about sitting in the tree. Uh, tell me
- 19:15Speaker 1: what happens in your mind when you're sitting, when you're
- 19:17Speaker 1: doing twelve hours sits. We're just we're just finishing up
- 19:19Speaker 1: a white tail deer hunt, a white tailed deer bowl hunt,
- 19:21Speaker 1: peak rut and marksman sitting all damn day. Yeah, for
- 19:28Speaker 1: the last three days, at least all day, twelve hour days.
- 19:33Speaker 1: It's a long haul. I mean, me and Lauren we're talking.
- 19:36Speaker 1: When we got out of the tree every day. You
- 19:38Speaker 1: wouldn't think after just sitting for twelve hours that you'd
- 19:43Speaker 1: be physically exhausted. But when you get out of there,
- 19:46Speaker 1: I mean you are worn down. Well, you're in the
- 19:49Speaker 1: saddle today. I was in the saddle the two days
- 19:51Speaker 1: before that, I was in the stand. He was in
- 19:53Speaker 1: the saddle every day. Um. But yeah, yeah, I mean
- 19:58Speaker 1: you're look can a lot, you're searching a lot. But
- 20:03Speaker 1: then there there's a lot of downtime. There's a lot
- 20:05Speaker 1: of periods of time where there's nothing going on. And
- 20:07Speaker 1: the biggest thing for me on all day sits is
- 20:09Speaker 1: it is it's of course partly physical, but I think
- 20:12Speaker 1: the mental side is the bigger part of it. Being
- 20:14Speaker 1: able to stay mentally engaged as much as you possibly
- 20:17Speaker 1: can over the course that whole day, and knowing knowing
- 20:21Speaker 1: that even though things have been dead for two hours,
- 20:23Speaker 1: that at any time it could all change. So I've
- 20:27Speaker 1: had my fair share of mistakes over the years where
- 20:30Speaker 1: I lost focused in the middle of an all days sitting.
- 20:32Speaker 1: It cost me. I told you guys a story last
- 20:35Speaker 1: year about holy Field, and does eleven o'clock in the afternoon,
- 20:38Speaker 1: and I've lost focus. And then there is at twenty
- 20:40Speaker 1: yards um sending text messages. I was reading a book
- 20:44Speaker 1: on my phone. Reading the book on your phone. Yeah,
- 20:47Speaker 1: you're sitting for twelve hours. Everyone. You need a little
- 20:50Speaker 1: something to kind of buy the time. And so I
- 20:52Speaker 1: would like, look at I look at the phone for
- 20:54Speaker 1: twenty seconds, Scan all around me. Look at the phone
- 20:58Speaker 1: for twenty seconds, scan all around I got, you're reading
- 21:01Speaker 1: high cous What were you reading? I was reading, Uh,
- 21:05Speaker 1: it's a book called the Name of the Wind. For
- 21:08Speaker 1: a second, I thought, I've never heard of a book
- 21:11Speaker 1: called high cous. Dear, I'd read that book by high
- 21:18Speaker 1: Country Cus. Is that Duncan go christop No Duncan's Bill
- 21:24Speaker 1: Duncan Gil Chris's best book. His best book has an
- 21:27Speaker 1: unfortunate title of Hunt High. And I think a lot
- 21:30Speaker 1: of people read that. A lot of people read that,
- 21:32Speaker 1: and they get to think in one thing he saw
- 21:35Speaker 1: about unting the high country, not hunting high go on
- 21:43Speaker 1: sitting all day, man, I think nothing of going out,
- 21:46Speaker 1: Like if we're you know, regular spot star hunting anything, Oh, well,
- 21:50Speaker 1: you know, I leave knowing them. No way I'm coming back.
- 21:54Speaker 1: Why would I come back, Because let's take a big
- 21:56Speaker 1: old nap out where I am. I'll eat my lunch
- 21:58Speaker 1: for I am. There you go. But sitting in the
- 22:00Speaker 1: damn tree, it wears on you. The same scene for
- 22:05Speaker 1: twelve hours, the same trail, the same trees, the same creek.
- 22:11Speaker 1: It's all there. You don't get to do anything. It
- 22:13Speaker 1: definitely gets worse, the tighter to the space and the
- 22:17Speaker 1: shorter like if you if you yeah, where you can
- 22:21Speaker 1: glass every five minutes? Yeah, I mean, it's just it's
- 22:26Speaker 1: just a matter of toughen it out, having snacks, having water,
- 22:31Speaker 1: and then yes, I think that is better to be
- 22:34Speaker 1: in the tree and be slightly distratched on occasion by
- 22:38Speaker 1: your phone or a book or something that than not
- 22:40Speaker 1: being in the tree at all. Yeah, give me the
- 22:42Speaker 1: main argument, Like people can picture what it is, but
- 22:46Speaker 1: tell me why you sit all damn day. So the
- 22:48Speaker 1: reason why you sit all day during the rut is
- 22:51Speaker 1: because bucks specifically get up some number of them on
- 22:57Speaker 1: a relatively consistent basis in our cruising for os from
- 23:00Speaker 1: let's say ten or eleven till one or two in
- 23:04Speaker 1: the afternoon, especially older, dear, Now you're not going to
- 23:08Speaker 1: see the same number of deer as you might in
- 23:10Speaker 1: the typical um early morning or late evening hours, right, dear,
- 23:15Speaker 1: a crepuscular, so they are most active at first light
- 23:19Speaker 1: and last light, so that no matter what, you're the
- 23:21Speaker 1: most activity then. But there's a disproportionate amount of activity,
- 23:25Speaker 1: especially for mature bucks, middle of the day during the rut.
- 23:28Speaker 1: So people, you better tuck into crepuscular. They're a little
- 23:32Speaker 1: bit Yeah. Yeah, So crepuscular just describes an animal that's
- 23:36Speaker 1: most active at that dawn or dusk time period. So dear,
- 23:41Speaker 1: many many mammals, right are most active the first hour
- 23:45Speaker 1: or two, last hour or two. But for the small
- 23:48Speaker 1: time period, these bucks know where does will be in
- 23:52Speaker 1: the middle of the day, right they're bedded down, so
- 23:54Speaker 1: they have a great opportunity that time period to go
- 23:58Speaker 1: from dough bedding area to dope sitting air into dope
- 24:00Speaker 1: betting air to find females that are ready to breed.
- 24:04Speaker 1: So if you're willing to tough it out, it's a
- 24:07Speaker 1: great time to get those bucks on their feet. And
- 24:10Speaker 1: we saw it. You think he's going around to betting
- 24:13Speaker 1: areas just to sniff all the dos out and see
- 24:15Speaker 1: who's who's That's exactly what they're doing. I want to say,
- 24:19Speaker 1: who's ripe? Yes, that's not the right word. Hot hot
- 24:24Speaker 1: hot dough. Ripe doesn't sound quite ripe, sounds like something
- 24:28Speaker 1: my wife would be like, Really, it's a little bit
- 24:30Speaker 1: too misera um, I feel like she would say, because
- 24:37Speaker 1: there's gonna be another word for that ready hot dough. Yeah. Yeah.
- 24:45Speaker 1: And because they're normally like the big coming to our
- 24:47Speaker 1: breeding cycle. You guys knew that, yes, yes, uh, because
- 24:54Speaker 1: they're normally so paranoid. Yeah, this time you're the throw
- 24:57Speaker 1: caution to the wind to a degree, you know, for love,
- 25:02Speaker 1: and I think we can all relate. I think we
- 25:05Speaker 1: definitely witnessed it several times. There was, uh, you know,
- 25:09Speaker 1: your closest call came into eleven. You called it out
- 25:13Speaker 1: before that. He said, this is my favorite hour, eleven o'clock,
- 25:16Speaker 1: and here comes the one that was the closest, right buck.
- 25:22Speaker 1: But there were several other opportunities during that time. Yeah.
- 25:26Speaker 1: Two of our last three days of doing the all
- 25:28Speaker 1: day six we saw potential shooters in the middle of
- 25:31Speaker 1: the day, um. And and lots of other bucks, younger bucks. Um.
- 25:36Speaker 1: And I've seen at least every year now for a
- 25:39Speaker 1: good number of years, I've had at least one mature
- 25:41Speaker 1: buck encounter mid day. Um. And the thing is, if
- 25:44Speaker 1: you talk to guys who take this really seriously. I've
- 25:47Speaker 1: got a buddy who always always hunts all day and
- 25:51Speaker 1: he consistently killed mature bucks. And if you look at
- 25:54Speaker 1: the number of mature bucks that he's killed, I think
- 25:56Speaker 1: he's taken seventeen or eighteen or nineteen of them during
- 25:59Speaker 1: the middle of the day. Um. You look at the
- 26:03Speaker 1: number of hours compared to hours hunted across the ward
- 26:06Speaker 1: by other guys, Right, there's many more hours spent in
- 26:08Speaker 1: the tree evening or morning, but there's a significant percentage
- 26:13Speaker 1: killed midday by the fewer people that are actually hunting
- 26:16Speaker 1: that time period. Yeah, like no one's there, but they're
- 26:18Speaker 1: getting them. But they're getting them. Um, but it's tough.
- 26:21Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not necessarily fun now, Lauren, when
- 26:25Speaker 1: you're up filming Mark Kenyon being in a tree all day,
- 26:30Speaker 1: what's your perception of what's going on? Are you like, dude,
- 26:32Speaker 1: this job sucks or do you feel like you're hunting?
- 26:36Speaker 1: I think any time you're out there, you're kind of
- 26:38Speaker 1: feeling like you're hunting. You're part of the hunt. You know.
- 26:41Speaker 1: It definitely isn't the greatest deal sitting in a tree
- 26:45Speaker 1: stand all day, especially a sling or a saddle or
- 26:50Speaker 1: you know, it's not comfortable, so but you're definitely engaged
- 26:54Speaker 1: looking for that one bucker, any deer, any movement the
- 26:59Speaker 1: whole time. So it's kind of just like an assist,
- 27:02Speaker 1: you know. That's how I feel about it. Are you
- 27:04Speaker 1: periodically filming or do you let hours go by and
- 27:06Speaker 1: not film anything? Well? I think that hours went by
- 27:10Speaker 1: without filming for sure. Uh. You know, you're stuck in
- 27:14Speaker 1: one place, so shot options become pretty limited. You get
- 27:20Speaker 1: as creative as you can, but you know in retrospect,
- 27:24Speaker 1: you're always like, oh, I should have done more, I
- 27:26Speaker 1: should have done this or that. But you know, you
- 27:29Speaker 1: can only shoot the same angle, same depth, same focal
- 27:33Speaker 1: length so many times, so you're and too. We had
- 27:37Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities on on does and fawns and
- 27:42Speaker 1: not moving and lots of getting pinned down. Uh. So
- 27:46Speaker 1: there's only so much dough footage you're going to shoot,
- 27:50Speaker 1: so only so much of the interaction. Oh, I got
- 27:53Speaker 1: a close up of the fawn eating. You know, I
- 27:56Speaker 1: think I've got twelve of those, So do I need
- 27:59Speaker 1: any more. I'm gonna stop filming that. We're going to
- 28:03Speaker 1: not move, like what? How does I think At one
- 28:09Speaker 1: point we were discussing, did he say what the are
- 28:13Speaker 1: you doing? But then when we reviewed the footage and
- 28:16Speaker 1: he he didn't say that, he said, what are you doing?
- 28:19Speaker 1: What was I doing? I think I moved or you
- 28:25Speaker 1: can't move like that? Yeah, you know, Ridge Poder were
- 28:30Speaker 1: like an old We're like an old couple. Yeah, I'm
- 28:32Speaker 1: like an old abusive husband. He was pretty gentle. He
- 28:37Speaker 1: didn't really yell at me, but I get it. I
- 28:41Speaker 1: think it's definitely, uh gets intense enough where you don't
- 28:46Speaker 1: want to screw anything up, especially if you're on a
- 28:50Speaker 1: you know, pretty high end hunt where you know you're
- 28:54Speaker 1: the camera guy. If you messed this guy's hunt up,
- 28:57Speaker 1: you're gonna hear about it, you know, And uh, that's
- 29:00Speaker 1: the last thing you want to do is mess up
- 29:02Speaker 1: somebody's hunt. So you're definitely part of the hunt. You're
- 29:05Speaker 1: a hunter at that point because you're looking for the shot.
- 29:09Speaker 1: I feel I felt bad a couple times. I think
- 29:11Speaker 1: I apologized to once and I was like, I'm sorry.
- 29:13Speaker 1: I think I get a little bossy up in the tree.
- 29:14Speaker 1: I have like hunting turettes, were like, I can't help myself.
- 29:19Speaker 1: I have to say, don't move, stop moving, Why are
- 29:21Speaker 1: you moving? You can't move like that. A couple of
- 29:24Speaker 1: times I'm like, oh, that you're six o'clock. We had
- 29:28Speaker 1: our system down for sure, And and that happens real quick.
- 29:31Speaker 1: The first day was brutal. The wind was blowing, it
- 29:33Speaker 1: was twenty five degrees. We're both shivering, you know. At
- 29:37Speaker 1: one point your teeth are chattering. You're like, oh my god,
- 29:40Speaker 1: are we ever gonna be done with this? Uh? But
- 29:44Speaker 1: then time goes on and dope pins you down or
- 29:48Speaker 1: whatever happens I think we had you know, we got
- 29:51Speaker 1: lucky because there were a lot of deer and a
- 29:54Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on the whole time, so it
- 29:55Speaker 1: kind of kept us busy in that respect. And then
- 29:58Speaker 1: after three days, the third day flew by twelve hours.
- 30:02Speaker 1: Was no big deal. What time of the day when
- 30:06Speaker 1: you're doing a twelve hour mega sit? Got his twelve
- 30:10Speaker 1: hours too, it's almost maybe longer than twelve bars. Well,
- 30:13Speaker 1: we got in it getting the stand around six twelve bars,
- 30:16Speaker 1: get out just after six. At what time of the
- 30:20Speaker 1: day do you hit where you're like, oh, we made
- 30:22Speaker 1: it three Yeah, I mean there's that point where ten
- 30:29Speaker 1: o'clock rolls around You're like, oh god, it's a double shift. Well, yeah,
- 30:34Speaker 1: So it was the first day we did I think
- 30:37Speaker 1: it was we sat and then we went to this
- 30:39Speaker 1: new spot and there was bucks chasing does all over
- 30:42Speaker 1: the place. It was like it was a good morning,
- 30:44Speaker 1: and it was probably around ten o'clock and I look
- 30:46Speaker 1: at Laura. I'm like, I've got good news and bad
- 30:47Speaker 1: news for it. Which do you want? And then he guessed.
- 30:50Speaker 1: He's like, is the bad news that we're sitting all day? Yep,
- 30:56Speaker 1: we're sitting all day with a good news because the love. Yeah,
- 30:59Speaker 1: there was sons of deer. We counted yesterday. I think
- 31:03Speaker 1: we saw thirty five that last count after that keeps
- 31:09Speaker 1: you busy, and there was enough to do up there.
- 31:13Speaker 1: Though it is totally uncomfortable. I mean, your feet go
- 31:16Speaker 1: numb and I don't know. It's not not the greatest deal,
- 31:20Speaker 1: but this is my first time ever bow hunting for
- 31:24Speaker 1: white tails or any kind of deer um bow hunting
- 31:31Speaker 1: on like a private managed property, where do you have
- 31:38Speaker 1: a chance to grow old and to like be there.
- 31:44Speaker 1: Knowing that you could see one of these bucks come by.
- 31:47Speaker 1: It's four years old, keeps you, keeps you wanting to
- 31:52Speaker 1: sit there because these are things you just read about.
- 31:55Speaker 1: No them to be like that they actually might show up.
- 31:59Speaker 1: You think it's gonna be easy, but it's not easy.
- 32:01Speaker 1: It's still not easy. There's still too many things that
- 32:04Speaker 1: could go wrong. But like no one they're out there
- 32:06Speaker 1: is makes it intriguing. Man, no one they could roll
- 32:09Speaker 1: around the corner. How many opportunities did you have mark
- 32:13Speaker 1: on two and a half year olds? Oh, we could
- 32:16Speaker 1: have killed a lot two and a half year olds,
- 32:18Speaker 1: a good handful of them, lots of year and a
- 32:21Speaker 1: half olds, a couple three year olds, one three year old,
- 32:24Speaker 1: maybe two three ye olds. I can't remember, dude. That's
- 32:26Speaker 1: where you're screwed up. Man Like, like, explain to people
- 32:31Speaker 1: what you talk about. You talk about a mature buck
- 32:33Speaker 1: because you always use the word mature buck. You don't
- 32:35Speaker 1: put like a number to it. Yeah, so I I
- 32:39Speaker 1: would typically call four or older mature. Some people will
- 32:44Speaker 1: say three year older. In Michigan, the three year old
- 32:46Speaker 1: is if it's everything's relative, right in Michigan, a three
- 32:49Speaker 1: year old in most places is the most the most
- 32:52Speaker 1: mature buck you might have around. But you don't mean
- 32:54Speaker 1: sexually mature, because they're sexually sexually mature at one and
- 32:57Speaker 1: a half correct? Correct? So what do is mature? Yeah?
- 33:01Speaker 1: You know, why not to say big as bucks in
- 33:04Speaker 1: the eye of beholder, Right, it's in the eye behold.
- 33:08Speaker 1: It's all relative. But when you get to four or five,
- 33:11Speaker 1: four plus, you were at that top percentile of age
- 33:15Speaker 1: and most populations and in any state really, um, you know,
- 33:20Speaker 1: I think people would look at year and a half
- 33:22Speaker 1: old bucks being like your I don't know, like a
- 33:25Speaker 1: ten year old, like a young child. The way they act,
- 33:29Speaker 1: the way they think, the way they operate. You get
- 33:32Speaker 1: to a two year old, you've got like a young
- 33:33Speaker 1: teenage type deer. You know, you got your fifteen year
- 33:37Speaker 1: old boy running around being crazy. You get two three
- 33:40Speaker 1: year old that's like your college kid. That's dude out
- 33:43Speaker 1: of the bar. Yeah, he's like they're hitting the bars.
- 33:45Speaker 1: But they're there. They can be like the big boy
- 33:47Speaker 1: in town in some places, like they can walk around
- 33:49Speaker 1: their chest out. They were pretty good and strong, but
- 33:51Speaker 1: they still don't quite have it. But when you reach four,
- 33:54Speaker 1: that's like you're I think a four year old is
- 33:57Speaker 1: like a thirty one year old. He's in the PC
- 34:00Speaker 1: of everything. Um wow, okay, so yeah, four or five, six,
- 34:20Speaker 1: you're getting to they've they've they've achieved whatever whatever. Bodies
- 34:24Speaker 1: structurally skeletally mature. That's what I've missed. That's a good point.
- 34:28Speaker 1: Yet they have a weird way. They look different. When
- 34:32Speaker 1: they get that will for sure everything about them. You
- 34:38Speaker 1: see them from hundreds of yards away, and you know
- 34:43Speaker 1: what you're looking at. Definitely where they carry their head,
- 34:47Speaker 1: the neck, the chest, it's all. It's it's almost a
- 34:50Speaker 1: different animal. And just how deliberate they almost look like
- 34:57Speaker 1: in their head they're gone they seem like old men,
- 35:04Speaker 1: is what they seemed like a day. How old are you,
- 35:07Speaker 1: Steve Man? So I'd say a four year old plus
- 35:11Speaker 1: kind of like a forty four year old person. Damn it,
- 35:15Speaker 1: halfway to eighty eight man. But here's the deal. Let's
- 35:19Speaker 1: say he snapped both of his antlers off. You wouldn't
- 35:21Speaker 1: shoot him even though he's four and a half. You know,
- 35:24Speaker 1: I had an interesting scenario like that two years ago
- 35:28Speaker 1: with not to bring up the same deer again every
- 35:30Speaker 1: time I ever talked to you, but holy Field broke
- 35:32Speaker 1: off part of his main beam. I like hearing about
- 35:34Speaker 1: this deer and I thought him to be four years
- 35:38Speaker 1: old that year, and he snapped out half his antler,
- 35:41Speaker 1: and I was faced with this question. I was like, well,
- 35:43Speaker 1: it's the buck OFT been hunting forever at that point,
- 35:46Speaker 1: I've been two years. He's mature. But he lost half
- 35:49Speaker 1: his antler. What would a lot of people are asking
- 35:51Speaker 1: what here gonna do? What are gonna do? And I said,
- 35:53Speaker 1: I'm still gonna shoot him. But if he had knocked
- 35:55Speaker 1: off both of his antlers, in my thought, it would
- 35:59Speaker 1: be if I were to take that deer, I want
- 36:02Speaker 1: to take that deer, like as I knew him, if
- 36:05Speaker 1: that makes sense at all, So come on, it makes sense.
- 36:08Speaker 1: But come one part of it, part of that how
- 36:15Speaker 1: do I describe it? Mental masturbation? You kill it, you
- 36:20Speaker 1: kill a deer, and you take it, and you take
- 36:21Speaker 1: the meat, you consume the meat, but then you also
- 36:24Speaker 1: have some kind of a mento to remember that animal body.
- 36:28Speaker 1: So that antler, his antlers, the mountain. That would be
- 36:31Speaker 1: an important part of that hunt for me to be
- 36:33Speaker 1: able look at that, remember that, see that, and it
- 36:36Speaker 1: would just feel it just be a just be a
- 36:38Speaker 1: bummer to kill him and not be able to see
- 36:41Speaker 1: him in all his glory again. And why I wouldn't
- 36:45Speaker 1: want to kill something and then feel like a bummer
- 36:47Speaker 1: about it afterwards. Let me put it this, let me
- 36:49Speaker 1: do this to you. Let's say you found it. Let's
- 36:54Speaker 1: say you had him because you found where he snapped
- 36:56Speaker 1: him off. I guess in that case then yeah, because
- 37:01Speaker 1: you could you could just the tax dumers could could
- 37:05Speaker 1: fix it. Um. But yeah, it's an interesting question. Now
- 37:12Speaker 1: holy Field was the uh you think that buck's dead?
- 37:16Speaker 1: I think so I found a shed in February thinking
- 37:19Speaker 1: still like found Zandler. So that mean as he made
- 37:22Speaker 1: it into the winter. Figured he'd be back this year,
- 37:24Speaker 1: but have gotten zero pictures, zero sightings. None of the
- 37:27Speaker 1: neighbors I talked to have seen him or gotten pictures.
- 37:29Speaker 1: So what do you think he's where? Where do you
- 37:32Speaker 1: where do you think he's dead from? Well, we found
- 37:35Speaker 1: I found his shed early, So I found it at
- 37:37Speaker 1: the very beginning of February, late January. So as an
- 37:41Speaker 1: early drop, lots of times early antler drop is indicative
- 37:44Speaker 1: of health issues, nutrition, something like that. So my theory
- 37:50Speaker 1: is that maybe he got shot by someone in gun
- 37:53Speaker 1: Seas he had injured in some way, So he had
- 37:56Speaker 1: an injury, dropped his antler early, and he's to come
- 38:00Speaker 1: to die off over the winter, wouldn't kill or something
- 38:04Speaker 1: like that. I was bear hunting one time at May
- 38:06Speaker 1: and saw a bull elk still packing his antlers around?
- 38:09Speaker 1: Is that pretty unusually? Honest? I've seen quite a few.
- 38:12Speaker 1: I had some of my best elk. I don't do
- 38:15Speaker 1: a lot of it, but elk shed picking days um
- 38:19Speaker 1: late in May. We on my birthday still dropping. Well
- 38:23Speaker 1: just you know when you go there and they're all
- 38:25Speaker 1: on top of the grass, nothing's going over him, They're
- 38:28Speaker 1: all just brown laying there. You know like it just
- 38:31Speaker 1: recently happened. I'm with you, m to what degree if
- 38:36Speaker 1: you like to, if you're if you're a guy that
- 38:37Speaker 1: wants to kill mature white tail box, I mean one,
- 38:41Speaker 1: they got to be there, absolutely in many places. That's
- 38:45Speaker 1: the biggest thing keeping to them killing them is that
- 38:48Speaker 1: they're not there. Yeah, they didn't exist when I was
- 38:50Speaker 1: a kid and I grew up ninety miles from here,
- 38:56Speaker 1: they really did. I mean, I don't want you think
- 38:59Speaker 1: that's to find him a point out. Okay, We hunted
- 39:03Speaker 1: uh public land north of us a little bit, and
- 39:08Speaker 1: we hunted some large farms. We hunted some large farms
- 39:13Speaker 1: very near our house, within an eight mile All the
- 39:16Speaker 1: honey we did, unless we went out to Baldwin so
- 39:19Speaker 1: on public land, all the honey we deal was an
- 39:21Speaker 1: eight mile radius less than eight mile radius of our house. Okay,
- 39:26Speaker 1: and unt some large farms, two farms, and my people,
- 39:30Speaker 1: my my father knew from church families. My father knew
- 39:32Speaker 1: from church and let us hunt out there where these
- 39:35Speaker 1: were like three and four acre dairy operations where they
- 39:39Speaker 1: were running dairy and they were growing corn and raised
- 39:43Speaker 1: alfalfa to feed cows. And they had river bottoms, thickets
- 39:48Speaker 1: like the whole picture, okay, And these two farms were
- 39:52Speaker 1: virtually up against one another over the entirety of over
- 39:59Speaker 1: the entire I ready of my until I moved to Montana.
- 40:07Speaker 1: I and my old man's one shot and shot with
- 40:09Speaker 1: his bow. One time of all those years of everyone
- 40:15Speaker 1: hunting in the farmers kids hunting and us hunting, and
- 40:18Speaker 1: everyone hunting and then surrounding, only one time that a
- 40:22Speaker 1: buck that I now recognized to have been the three
- 40:24Speaker 1: and a half ye old buck ever come off anywhere.
- 40:27Speaker 1: I never laid eyes on one, dead or alive. I
- 40:31Speaker 1: do not think you could read. I do not think
- 40:33Speaker 1: they could reach three and a half years of age
- 40:37Speaker 1: unless they lived in some deep, dark swamp hole that
- 40:39Speaker 1: nobody went to. Ever, the one my dad killed, you
- 40:42Speaker 1: killed on the edge of a pine plantation, small little
- 40:45Speaker 1: thing called the pines. We ain't mark. You think years
- 40:51Speaker 1: ago Michigan had any big box or are they just
- 40:53Speaker 1: not around? I think that Steve's right for them to
- 40:58Speaker 1: like to to a degree, there were definitely fewer of them.
- 41:01Speaker 1: There were there were mature bucks around, but there are
- 41:05Speaker 1: few and far between. And then number two, I do
- 41:08Speaker 1: also think that years ago people weren't as tuned into
- 41:12Speaker 1: how to kill mature bucks too, So it's much people
- 41:15Speaker 1: are much more savvy now and the things you need
- 41:17Speaker 1: to be doing to see and kill mature bucks. Back then,
- 41:19Speaker 1: it was kind of head out of the most people
- 41:22Speaker 1: head out in the woods next to a tree trunk
- 41:24Speaker 1: or something like that, or get up and sit on
- 41:26Speaker 1: a tree branch and shoot something over a carrot pile,
- 41:29Speaker 1: because you weren't running cameras either, so you didn't know
- 41:32Speaker 1: if you didn't know. If you knew one was out there,
- 41:35Speaker 1: then you'd like change everything to go get them, but
- 41:37Speaker 1: you didn't know they were out there. The one my
- 41:39Speaker 1: old man killed, he didn't know what exists until it
- 41:42Speaker 1: walked under the tree, right. Yeah, But I do think
- 41:47Speaker 1: culture has changed so much that allows a lot more
- 41:50Speaker 1: dear to to reach that age. So probably the biggest
- 41:52Speaker 1: thing is just that the number of mature bucks around,
- 41:54Speaker 1: it's just higher now. I remember being in high school
- 41:58Speaker 1: and one of the farms we hunted on and one
- 42:02Speaker 1: of the kids, Tim, who was still a big time
- 42:04Speaker 1: hunter to day and and does a really good job.
- 42:06Speaker 1: He's got a small property now but does a very
- 42:09Speaker 1: good job with wildlife. Habitat on his place. He was
- 42:13Speaker 1: the first guy. And I was in high school and
- 42:15Speaker 1: I heard Tim's are a lot had passed on multiple bucks,
- 42:20Speaker 1: and I remember thinking like, something must be wrong with
- 42:21Speaker 1: that dude's head. But he was a revolute he was
- 42:25Speaker 1: like a pioneer man. He was a revolutionary at the time.
- 42:29Speaker 1: It's like passing on bucks you crazy. And he had
- 42:34Speaker 1: gotten good enough where he could do it. We used
- 42:37Speaker 1: to think a big buck a big buck was just
- 42:39Speaker 1: a year and a half old buck. To put more
- 42:41Speaker 1: times on. My brother Danny shot with his bowl one time.
- 42:44Speaker 1: He shot an eight point and got it stuffed. It's
- 42:49Speaker 1: still hanging in my mom's house. It's a year and
- 42:51Speaker 1: a half old buck. In our head. It was a giant.
- 42:53Speaker 1: I remember he shot it and put a hole right
- 42:55Speaker 1: through its heart. It took three steps and fell over
- 42:57Speaker 1: it on itself, and he got a mount it and
- 43:00Speaker 1: we you wouldn't believe we went through the drag dead
- 43:03Speaker 1: deer ahole because the last you'd ever do was cut
- 43:05Speaker 1: a buck off in the woods because you want to
- 43:07Speaker 1: go show everybody. And it was like Danny killed the
- 43:10Speaker 1: eight point. Danny killed eight point. But there was no
- 43:12Speaker 1: perception it's just the same thing. It's just the same
- 43:14Speaker 1: year and a half old buck. We thought that the points, yeah,
- 43:19Speaker 1: exactly on those points. I think that puts it in perspective.
- 43:21Speaker 1: I didn't growing up. I was taught that like Spiker
- 43:26Speaker 1: far Horn was one year old, and then if he's
- 43:29Speaker 1: the six point, he's probably two years old at eight
- 43:32Speaker 1: points three, and Ted it's probably four years old, no
- 43:35Speaker 1: matter the size. You know, in our family, we didn't
- 43:38Speaker 1: even talk about age at all. It was just the points.
- 43:40Speaker 1: It was like, oh, he's a spike, he's a six point.
- 43:42Speaker 1: Never once did say it was probably three or five.
- 43:46Speaker 1: It was the same much. My first buck was an
- 43:49Speaker 1: eight pointer and I got it mounted and I thought
- 43:51Speaker 1: it was the biggest damn buck ever. But it's well
- 43:53Speaker 1: under a hundred inches. When when I shot a thing,
- 43:58Speaker 1: I was like and disbelieve A thought it was a
- 44:01Speaker 1: giant because someone getting an eight point got everyone's attention.
- 44:05Speaker 1: But now you look at him, you're like, yeah, it's
- 44:07Speaker 1: just like a he just a year and a half old.
- 44:10Speaker 1: So point being, I don't think that they were around
- 44:12Speaker 1: and then culture changed. I think that a couple of
- 44:16Speaker 1: things that led to it. In a handful of places
- 44:19Speaker 1: like information about what it required to grow a big box.
- 44:22Speaker 1: And I think kind of a changing people. This is
- 44:27Speaker 1: like some old man ship here, but but a lot
- 44:31Speaker 1: has changed around the way people handle permissions and stuff
- 44:34Speaker 1: on their properties. And I think that at the like
- 44:37Speaker 1: when I was coming into the world, there were a
- 44:43Speaker 1: lot of properties around us, farms and stuff around us
- 44:46Speaker 1: where the farmer wasn't even exactly clear on who was
- 44:49Speaker 1: hunting there. People just hunt, you know, if someone gave
- 44:55Speaker 1: you permission years ago, you just kept going on until
- 44:58Speaker 1: they told you not to go any more. And so
- 45:00Speaker 1: I think that there was more. I think that later,
- 45:02Speaker 1: when people started to recognize the value of dear more,
- 45:05Speaker 1: they started to kind of like wanting to know who
- 45:08Speaker 1: was out there, and it just it wasn't like such
- 45:10Speaker 1: a free for all, you know, I had I would
- 45:14Speaker 1: have hunting permission on farms where every person that asked
- 45:17Speaker 1: had hunting permission. No rhyme reads to it. I just
- 45:22Speaker 1: like that kind of stuff has just come to an end.
- 45:27Speaker 1: It's tough to come by. I was sitting next to
- 45:30Speaker 1: the the there, and I I was sitting at dinner
- 45:33Speaker 1: with you have met or heard of Shane Mahoney. Everyone
- 45:37Speaker 1: here so he's kind of a preeminent expert on the
- 45:41Speaker 1: North American model wildlife conservation. He's kind of like a
- 45:45Speaker 1: conservationist philosopher type figure. So how you describe me like that?
- 45:52Speaker 1: He saw him about just the way it's become hard
- 45:54Speaker 1: for new hunters. The way it's become hard for young
- 45:57Speaker 1: hunters is those days are kind of done when you
- 46:03Speaker 1: could just wander around hunting on people's land, on neighbor's land,
- 46:09Speaker 1: and you know the farms where everyone can just kind
- 46:11Speaker 1: of go where you take your twenty two and ride
- 46:13Speaker 1: out on your bike and go. And he said, there's
- 46:15Speaker 1: all these programs now they're like meant to sort of
- 46:17Speaker 1: like recreate that, because that you're not going to recreate it,
- 46:23Speaker 1: and and and if there's an upside to this, the
- 46:26Speaker 1: upside of this is I think there's a lot more
- 46:28Speaker 1: big bucks running around now as people like exercise more
- 46:32Speaker 1: control over their stuff. And I don't know what good
- 46:36Speaker 1: big bucks really are. Besides they look cool, they represent something.
- 46:41Speaker 1: They represent an ecosystem, well at least a species of
- 46:47Speaker 1: population that is in balance in a natural state. If
- 46:53Speaker 1: you looked at the deer herd in Michigan in nineteen
- 46:55Speaker 1: seventy or something like that or whenever you get are
- 47:00Speaker 1: hunting around or whatever this was. Um it looks like, um,
- 47:08Speaker 1: that was a very askew deer herd. Heavy heavy on
- 47:12Speaker 1: the dos, very light on any type of mature bucks.
- 47:16Speaker 1: Just tons and tons of year natural bucks. That's not
- 47:18Speaker 1: a natural herd of deer as as it would be
- 47:22Speaker 1: in you know, several hundred years ago when it wasn't
- 47:24Speaker 1: as impacted by what we're doing. But now you are
- 47:27Speaker 1: finding some places where you have a more natural herd,
- 47:31Speaker 1: which is which is beneficial, not just for hunters I'd
- 47:33Speaker 1: like to see big bucks, but having a relatively balanced
- 47:37Speaker 1: age structure that's good for the whole herd. And what
- 47:40Speaker 1: way is that good for the herd? So, for example,
- 47:42Speaker 1: if you have more mature bucks and you have a
- 47:45Speaker 1: balanced kind of structure of the different ages and things
- 47:48Speaker 1: and balanced with the does, you're gonna have a more
- 47:52Speaker 1: tight rut. If you have a tight rut, if you
- 47:54Speaker 1: have a well timed rut happens consistently in a small window,
- 47:59Speaker 1: you gonna have a better fawn dropping, tight fawn drop,
- 48:01Speaker 1: a well placed fawn drop that is conducive for the
- 48:05Speaker 1: females and the fawns to be most healthy grown up
- 48:08Speaker 1: the next year. So if you get um, let me
- 48:11Speaker 1: describe the opposite scenario. If you have a scenario where
- 48:13Speaker 1: you've got lots and lots of does, not many mature bucks,
- 48:17Speaker 1: just a bunch of year and affle bucks, you're gonna
- 48:19Speaker 1: get does coming into heat and bread at all different
- 48:21Speaker 1: times of the year in the fall, so we're gonna
- 48:24Speaker 1: say a very spread out trickle run does and getting
- 48:27Speaker 1: bread in mid October all the way to mid December,
- 48:31Speaker 1: scattered all around. So you've got fawns dropping in March,
- 48:34Speaker 1: you got fawns dropping and may not March. You got
- 48:37Speaker 1: them dropping in late April, mid May, early in June.
- 48:40Speaker 1: You want to have a tight drop if you have
- 48:43Speaker 1: fawns dropping all the same time, less coyote predation. If
- 48:47Speaker 1: you have them dropping at the right time that's not
- 48:49Speaker 1: too early that they're freezing and not having nutrition available,
- 48:52Speaker 1: but not so late that they're getting a late start
- 48:55Speaker 1: on being able to go in the winter. Small exactly, Um,
- 48:59Speaker 1: So that that I mean, there's a whole bunch of
- 49:01Speaker 1: different things on those lines that lay a couple of
- 49:03Speaker 1: things in here. Real quick. No, you're not rambling at all.
- 49:08Speaker 1: But I remember in those in that era, it was
- 49:12Speaker 1: common to hear that you had bucked to dough ratios
- 49:14Speaker 1: of twenty or thirty does to every buck. And I
- 49:18Speaker 1: remember when I learned that they were born basically one
- 49:20Speaker 1: to one ratio. It's kind of shocking to see that
- 49:26Speaker 1: that level of of harvest on the bucks. But it's
- 49:30Speaker 1: a thing that like, and I've talked about this before.
- 49:31Speaker 1: I don't know if I talked about it here, but
- 49:35Speaker 1: when we had like largely kind of eliminated deer really
- 49:38Speaker 1: knocked deer back bad. You know, even coming up into
- 49:42Speaker 1: the into the nineteen thirties nineteen forties, just weren't that
- 49:44Speaker 1: any deer around. Um, people became very like like it was,
- 49:50Speaker 1: it became culturally taboo to shoot. Does I remember, like
- 49:55Speaker 1: in this era we're talking about when I was a kid,
- 49:57Speaker 1: there were a lot of old timers that would like
- 50:02Speaker 1: disparage someone who shot a dough And because you wanted
- 50:06Speaker 1: to get a deer, you just shot the box and
- 50:09Speaker 1: you shot every damn buck anyone ever laid eyes on
- 50:13Speaker 1: got shot, and you'd wind up with these situations where
- 50:16Speaker 1: you had, like I said, twenty to thirty dolls for
- 50:21Speaker 1: every book and the box were all most books were
- 50:26Speaker 1: not living in to see their second December. Even relatively recently,
- 50:35Speaker 1: that was still the case in a lot of states. So,
- 50:38Speaker 1: for example, in Michigan, and I'm gonna get the numbers
- 50:41Speaker 1: not quite right, um, but some number of years ago,
- 50:46Speaker 1: maybe it's ten years ago, give a take the percentage
- 50:49Speaker 1: of the buck harvest in Michigan. If I remember right,
- 50:52Speaker 1: someone's gonna email you and say I'm wrong, but it's
- 50:54Speaker 1: somewhere in this ball park, something like se of all
- 50:59Speaker 1: the bucks, maybe more of all the bucks killed in
- 51:02Speaker 1: Michigan were year and a half olds. Now it has
- 51:05Speaker 1: dropped down to so significantly improved, but still one of
- 51:09Speaker 1: the highest in the country, something like fifty five percent
- 51:12Speaker 1: or fifty some percent now, I think is the number
- 51:15Speaker 1: of the bucks killed in Michigan annually are year and
- 51:18Speaker 1: a half old, um, And that's still like the top
- 51:23Speaker 1: five in the country. But now across the entire country
- 51:26Speaker 1: several years ago, for the first time, an age class
- 51:31Speaker 1: different than year and a half olds is a higher
- 51:34Speaker 1: percentage of the buck harvests than year and a halfl
- 51:36Speaker 1: So yeah, so now bucks over three comprise overt of
- 51:42Speaker 1: the harvest. If you look at across the country, and
- 51:46Speaker 1: this has changed over the last fifteen and twenty years,
- 51:48Speaker 1: has just been dropping down. So why don't why don't
- 51:53Speaker 1: guys that are big into white tail management? Why don't
- 51:57Speaker 1: they let I know, the answer to this is Poe
- 52:00Speaker 1: using it. Why don't if you want balanced age structure,
- 52:07Speaker 1: why don't they let the once they hit four? Why
- 52:10Speaker 1: don't they become hands off? Why be like, oh, we
- 52:15Speaker 1: want to make older box, we wanna make older bucks,
- 52:17Speaker 1: but then systematically kill off every buck that gets to
- 52:20Speaker 1: be that same threshold age. Why is there not a
- 52:24Speaker 1: movement to or or like a management strategy be like
- 52:27Speaker 1: to get to be like post trophy and say like,
- 52:31Speaker 1: oh yeah, man, if he hits four and a half,
- 52:35Speaker 1: what one in a hundred bucks or whatever it is
- 52:38Speaker 1: will be four in half. So as big as they're
- 52:39Speaker 1: gonna get, then we let those go because we're gonna
- 52:43Speaker 1: create five year old, six year old, seven year old.
- 52:45Speaker 1: But instead they get that big and people just get
- 52:48Speaker 1: so lusty for him they want them dead. So it
- 52:50Speaker 1: makes it hard to argue that you're really trying to
- 52:52Speaker 1: have these like age classes in places it seems like
- 52:55Speaker 1: you're just walking What you're really trying to do is
- 52:57Speaker 1: have big box because you want to shoot big bucks,
- 53:00Speaker 1: and and you're trying to like act like there's some
- 53:03Speaker 1: biology or or a college or conservation at work when
- 53:09Speaker 1: it's like, oh, how convenient, I think. I mean, I
- 53:13Speaker 1: don't think anyone's gonna argue the fact that anyone who
- 53:15Speaker 1: is managing deer also wants to hunt deer. They want
- 53:18Speaker 1: to take some deer. So yes, so there's gonna each
- 53:22Speaker 1: person is going to set a different goal that is
- 53:25Speaker 1: going to hopefully achieve something beneficial for the her, but
- 53:28Speaker 1: also they've got to have a goal as far as
- 53:31Speaker 1: what they want to try to hunt in harvest. And
- 53:33Speaker 1: if you start saying that, you know, I want to
- 53:36Speaker 1: wait for six or seven or eight or nine year
- 53:38Speaker 1: old bucks, you're simply never gonna shoot you bucks then,
- 53:40Speaker 1: because it's really really hard to get bucks over four,
- 53:43Speaker 1: let alone over five um. Even on big managed properties.
- 53:47Speaker 1: It's just not an easy thing to do because even
- 53:49Speaker 1: if you have a large property, these deers still go
- 53:51Speaker 1: all over the place. UM. So it's no guaranteed thing
- 53:55Speaker 1: that if you pass on a four year old he's
- 53:56Speaker 1: gonna make to five um. Whether you're on a hunt
- 53:59Speaker 1: ac or property or a thousand maker property that's not
- 54:01Speaker 1: a guarantee, So that just kind of wants up being
- 54:04Speaker 1: about as old. Like, there's so fewer five or year
- 54:10Speaker 1: olds and four year olds even yeahs, I don't know
- 54:13Speaker 1: of anyone. Even the folks that take management to the
- 54:18Speaker 1: highest level have great, big properties. Um, they can control
- 54:21Speaker 1: a lot of acreage. I don't know anyone that really
- 54:24Speaker 1: looks at targeting anything over five. Five is kind of
- 54:26Speaker 1: like that. If it's over five, it is fully mature,
- 54:29Speaker 1: it has has kind of reached the pinnacle as far
- 54:33Speaker 1: as body size, antler size. It's it's it's it's um
- 54:36Speaker 1: expressed whatever genetic potential there. It is. What he's gonna
- 54:39Speaker 1: be is what he's gonna be, and that's a fully
- 54:42Speaker 1: mature deer that's gonna do everything that the mature dear
- 54:44Speaker 1: is gonna do. And if you can get them older
- 54:46Speaker 1: than that, great, but that's hard to ask for. UM,
- 54:50Speaker 1: So five year olds or what most people kind of
- 54:52Speaker 1: set as that top end. During this week, tell me
- 54:54Speaker 1: about the or I can start the encounters you had
- 54:58Speaker 1: with with um, the closest encounters you had with mature
- 55:05Speaker 1: bucks and what what went wrong? Yeah, well I had one.
- 55:11Speaker 1: I had one encounter on the ture buck for sure,
- 55:13Speaker 1: mature buck? Do you wanna tell my story? Do you
- 55:15Speaker 1: want to start with yours? You go ahead? No, dude,
- 55:20Speaker 1: whatever you decide, Mark, you should go first. Okay, they
- 55:28Speaker 1: had it began and ended so fast like they do.
- 55:33Speaker 1: So I'm I'm perched up in a really shitty tree powder.
- 55:38Speaker 1: I don't think I'm gonna talk about the one that
- 55:41Speaker 1: you screwed up, because I don't think he was four
- 55:45Speaker 1: and a half. I think he was like three and
- 55:46Speaker 1: a half or something like that. What do you think
- 55:47Speaker 1: he was? Mark? So I that's not the deer I saw.
- 55:51Speaker 1: The deer I saw? Was that the one that you
- 55:52Speaker 1: screwed up? The big one? The other one that's a
- 55:56Speaker 1: mature buck. I didn't see the big, big one, but
- 55:59Speaker 1: I'm talking with the other one. But did you screw
- 56:01Speaker 1: that up? No? I screwed up? Well, I in that
- 56:06Speaker 1: I'm a person that has an order to him, not
- 56:08Speaker 1: an unusual order. In fact, my wife comments, I'm not
- 56:12Speaker 1: a smell uh in fact, not a smelly person. But uh, okay,
- 56:19Speaker 1: can we talk about the one you screwed up? Sure? Man,
- 56:23Speaker 1: it's a story. So first of all, I'd like to
- 56:27Speaker 1: preface the story by saying that this is never in
- 56:29Speaker 1: the history of mediator ever happened to me before, as
- 56:33Speaker 1: far as i'm you're embarrassed about it, but you don't
- 56:35Speaker 1: need terrible. So Lauren was talking about the pressure of
- 56:37Speaker 1: like being a camera dude on a hunt like that.
- 56:40Speaker 1: To me, that interaction that happened is worse than any
- 56:44Speaker 1: like anything either one of the hunters could have done. No,
- 56:49Speaker 1: you gotta tell it now, Okay, if killing uh killing
- 56:54Speaker 1: the mature buck mark? What percentage harder does it become
- 56:58Speaker 1: when you have a camera person? It is harder. I
- 57:01Speaker 1: think it's it's half as likely something significant. Sure, it's
- 57:05Speaker 1: twice as hard, a little less, twice less, twice hard,
- 57:08Speaker 1: but there's is a lot, there's already a lot that
- 57:11Speaker 1: can go wrong, and you're just making it's it's not
- 57:13Speaker 1: quantifiable because there's twice as much older, there's twice as
- 57:16Speaker 1: much movement, there's twice as many weird there's twice as
- 57:19Speaker 1: many weird blobs up in the tree, there's twice as
- 57:22Speaker 1: much sound, and and I found that that, Um, the
- 57:26Speaker 1: best camera guys. I don't know why this is, but
- 57:28Speaker 1: the best camera guys don't have this is this is
- 57:33Speaker 1: not a fair statement. We have some phenomenal camera guys
- 57:36Speaker 1: who don't have a strong hunting background, which is a plus,
- 57:43Speaker 1: but they tend to not know how to read a critter.
- 57:48Speaker 1: They don't know how to read a critter, and they
- 57:50Speaker 1: don't know when. Is this fair? Probably No, it's totally fair.
- 57:54Speaker 1: I think I've I've been learning how to a lot
- 57:57Speaker 1: better taking its temperature. I take a critter's temperature now,
- 58:01Speaker 1: I feel maybe not to the extent of pro but
- 58:05Speaker 1: I'm close. I think when is it appropriate to move? Yes,
- 58:10Speaker 1: taking his temperature? A deer standing there, uh, who's kind
- 58:16Speaker 1: of like waving his nose through the air and kind
- 58:19Speaker 1: of almost wanting to like stop his front hoof don't move,
- 58:24Speaker 1: then that's yeah. Okay, so yeah, you're taking this temperature
- 58:27Speaker 1: and you're like, this is not an appropriate time for
- 58:29Speaker 1: movement because this deer is like I don't like something.
- 58:32Speaker 1: I don't know what I don't like, but I don't
- 58:34Speaker 1: like it a deer, this guy his nose of the
- 58:39Speaker 1: arts of another dear Time to move man still slowly? Yeah,
- 58:44Speaker 1: so you get it. Yeah, that's good. A turkey who's
- 58:47Speaker 1: got his fan up and his fan is between its
- 58:50Speaker 1: head and you you can do it. That's time to move. Um.
- 58:55Speaker 1: So we're sitting there and and we're in a weird
- 58:58Speaker 1: setup where we're actually differ. Thinks I'm gonna tree stand
- 59:02Speaker 1: up in a shitty tree, and Chris is in like
- 59:04Speaker 1: a little outhouse. What do you call us? That's like
- 59:07Speaker 1: a box. Chris is up a little miniature plastic bad
- 59:12Speaker 1: box blind. It was less than the desirable filming location.
- 59:17Speaker 1: But it wasn't That wasn't the problem. The problem was
- 59:19Speaker 1: about ten am. I get a text from Chris. I'm
- 59:25Speaker 1: looking at Chris. Can hear me? So? So we were
- 59:27Speaker 1: I were him because we're filming. So I have a
- 59:29Speaker 1: mic and I can whisper to Chris. I can be
- 59:31Speaker 1: like six o'clock do or whatever. But he can't communicate
- 59:33Speaker 1: to me. Um. We have one thing where there's a
- 59:37Speaker 1: stick that he can hang out of his blind and
- 59:40Speaker 1: that conveys a certain message to me. What What did
- 59:44Speaker 1: that convey? That conveys? Because this is the problem we have.
- 59:47Speaker 1: That conveys I see it, dear, that you don't see.
- 59:51Speaker 1: And I'll tell you that this stick does not come
- 59:53Speaker 1: into play very often, but it did one time. But
- 59:57Speaker 1: one time the stick came into play. Yeah it's damn Yeah.
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: We met Pounders mom and uh and this pounder and
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: miss Founder and she was telling us about a great
- 1:00:14Speaker 1: cook Pounder so and she made a bunch of cookies.
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: So around ten I get a text, Is that what happened? Yeah,
- 1:00:25Speaker 1: and you needed to go down because you had left
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: your camera battery at the base of the blind. So
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: I had my backpack. But then I had like a
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: little go bag that I had made, and I was
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: stoked on it because I was gonna have it all
- 1:00:38Speaker 1: like folded in and silent, and if I needed to
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: like quickly change a battery, I would just reach into
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: this bag. No zippers, no velcrow, nothing, grabbed the battery.
- 1:00:48Speaker 1: Still noisy ass bag. Yeah, well until it's until it's
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: in its right zone, then it's then it's it's it's
- 1:00:54Speaker 1: not the greatest bag, But I was stoked on the idea.
- 1:00:57Speaker 1: But then I stupidly forgot to put the battery in
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: that bag and left it in my bag at the
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: bottom of this ladder. And you didn't have a pea
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: bottle and I didn't have a pea bottle, and you
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: can't really sneak her up out over the window ledge
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: a little too high, and you could have sneaked her
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: out the door, but you had to get a battery anyway.
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: So he says, is it okay if I climbed down?
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: It's ten am? Is it okay if I climbed down
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: and get me a battery and take a leak. I
- 1:01:25Speaker 1: see you at the door open, I see him come down.
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: I see him turn away from me, presumably, Yeah, you
- 1:01:33Speaker 1: sneaked her out. And I looked past you and down
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: the hill, and I'm not kiddey man. We've been sitting
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: there all morning. And he hits the ground, starts taking
- 1:01:44Speaker 1: a whiz, and in the direction he's whizzing, I just like,
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: here's a buck, and he's coming, and he's close, he's coming.
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: It was like you ever have a dream where like
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: like when you wake up from the dream, you and
- 1:01:59Speaker 1: you realize that it was the dream, you're like so
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: relieved that it wasn't real life. Yes, that's what it was,
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: except it was real life. Oh that was like the
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: worst case scenario. And I'm saying to you, like I do,
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: I'm like Chris, Chris. Then I realized he can't hear.
- 1:02:14Speaker 1: He had to unhook. So you eventually turned around and
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: I give you a frantic like down on the ground,
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: and I see him good out of his phone, like
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: he's gonna fil him with his phone and aim it.
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: It's my only instinct. And it's a nice buck. It's
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: a nice like I'm like very interested in shooting his buck.
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: And this buck comes up and I think he's gonna
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: come right up the edge you're on and when be
- 1:02:39Speaker 1: perfect And I'm like, he's gonna pass and buy ten
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: ft away about it, like he probably not gonna he's
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: probably not gonna see because you're hunker down in tall grass.
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: But then he cuts and comes in and picks up
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: your smell. And here's the difference between like an older
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: buck and a not older buck. When he hits that smell,
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: it's he turned like like you watch deer hits smell
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: all the time, and a lot of your hits smell.
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: They hit human odor and they get this like oh
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: my gosh, and they wave their nose in the air
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: and they're like they're gonna run. Maybe not. They stop
- 1:03:18Speaker 1: their footy, they take three bounds and stop again and
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: and blow and whatever they do. They and then they
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: drift off raising all kind of fanfare and tail in
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: the air and all piste off and letting everybody know.
- 1:03:34Speaker 1: And you know, but it took him like a full
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: minute to like come to the conclusion this is what
- 1:03:40Speaker 1: they want to do. This buck hits that like that
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: wall of scent, and he he doesn't like his attitude
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: doesn't change really, but he just stops, turns around and
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: lowers his profile. M hm, like he sees like slink
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: into the earth more and just go back the same direction.
- 1:04:09Speaker 1: Very often that you describe that wall of scent. I
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: feel like it's they hit a wall. They literally you
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: can physically see it as if they smash their head
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: into it and then bam, it's all different after that.
- 1:04:21Speaker 1: And he's like not he doesn't desire to draw any
- 1:04:24Speaker 1: attention to himself. No pause. It's like that's how they get,
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: that's how they live. Like that's the difference in the
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: buck that dies in a buck that lives. It's like
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: you bump a big meal to your buck, you know,
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: like muled your famous for like you bump amulder buck
- 1:04:43Speaker 1: and they run and they're gonna vanish. They're gonna get
- 1:04:46Speaker 1: where He's not gonna be able to he's gonna vanish
- 1:04:48Speaker 1: over the edge, but he stops and looks back. Like
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: the big ones when you bust a group of them.
- 1:04:56Speaker 1: He doesn't go the way the dolls go. He goes
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: a different way, and he ever stops, he doesn't stop
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: and do that. What was that? And this buck man?
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: It was kind of magical to watch him just be
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: like not killing me today, sons of bites and just
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: slunk out. Now the other one go ahead. I was
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: just gonna ask, this wasn't the short time one, or
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: was the short time one he had? He had one
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: of his sides, one of his sides had noticeably shorter
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: times than the other side. Now, the one that was
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: my not the one that was not I don't want
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: to say it was my fault, but the one that
- 1:05:29Speaker 1: was not Chris's fault. All day were watching deer that
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: are like following a certain line of traffic. They're they're
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: they're coming into our zone and they're like coming along
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: the same edge and some break some go straight, and
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: some break left and come up past us, eat some
- 1:05:48Speaker 1: dry leaves or laying on top of the snow. They're
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: like that little spot m hm. He just watched deer
- 1:05:53Speaker 1: They're like doing this all daylong. And there's one spot
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: I can't see really clearly, and it's kind of like
- 1:06:00Speaker 1: a ridgeline that comes up to where we are, and
- 1:06:03Speaker 1: late in the morning, like you're saying, late in the morning,
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: here comes one and I look and he's already it's
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: too it's happening too fast, already coming against the flow
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: of traffic. Walking the ridge just has that dead on,
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: like paranoid look to him, but traveling like with a
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: sense of purpose. And it's a ten, it's a nice ten.
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: And he comes up and I'm like, oh my god,
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: like he's gonna pass ten yards way, He's gonna pass
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: sen yards away. I get my bow. He's behind some brush.
- 1:06:40Speaker 1: I'm not even only have a chance to start pulling
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: back and hits the wall of scent and not even
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: I mean, he's so close to me and I've been
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: there for hours, and the winds like not the kind
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: of wind that flushes everything away, but just to kind
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: of wind it's like very steady in the direction and
- 1:07:00Speaker 1: you've pooled up I don't know how much stink at
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: ten yards away, and he hits it and just gone vanished.
- 1:07:08Speaker 1: Was that one of the bigger white tail bucks you've
- 1:07:09Speaker 1: seen while honey at least yeah, right, yeah, probably a
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: pretty nice one, super nice one. It was the kind
- 1:07:18Speaker 1: of buck, and I was glad. I was kind of
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: like reviewing in my mind. I was kind of glad
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: and have time to dwell on how nice he was.
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: But I finally I could do everything better when I
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: have time. If I have time. Um, you see something,
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: you get excited. When you have time, the excitement goes
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: down and you start remembering the important things. This would
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: have been one of those great shots to screw up,
- 1:07:40Speaker 1: because um, it would have happened too fast. Do you
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: think is there anything like if you I always trying
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: to do this at least any kind of mature bucking
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: counter that doesn't end the way I wanted to try?
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: Self analyzed little bit when you look back in that,
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: Is there anything you would have done differently? Is there
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: any other Yeah? I would be after all this time
- 1:07:59Speaker 1: we've and spending in trees and and just having things
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: like that happened and then not work out. I think that, Um,
- 1:08:08Speaker 1: it's hard to do it. But the balance of shooting
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: lanes and cover, Yeah, because here you have here here
- 1:08:17Speaker 1: I'm in a tree where of the stuff around me,
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: there's no possible way to take a shot. You're also
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: not that high in that tree either. That's a pretty
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: low stand. It's a horrible tree. Yeah, that from that
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: angle you got plenty of cover. You can't it's impossible
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: to shoot the years own. You cannot shoot now. Though,
- 1:08:39Speaker 1: if we assume that we're stuck with that stand where
- 1:08:41Speaker 1: it is, if the back had been trimmed out, you
- 1:08:45Speaker 1: know how much worse we would have been, like hung
- 1:08:47Speaker 1: out to dry them. That's the thing, because if you
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: could like I actually was sitting there tonight thinking about um,
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: I was actually sitting there to night thinking about this
- 1:08:55Speaker 1: problem and the cover you and I think if I
- 1:09:01Speaker 1: hunted up, if I hunted up a spot where I
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: was really like putting in multiple years in hunting there,
- 1:09:07Speaker 1: I would I would probably like my contribution to white
- 1:09:11Speaker 1: tail hunting would be that I would become very detail
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: focused around selecting spots not just for their location, not
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: just to take advantage of pinch points and travel routes,
- 1:09:26Speaker 1: but I would put a lot of energy into places
- 1:09:29Speaker 1: that had good cover and and so that if I
- 1:09:35Speaker 1: looked around me, if I like spun in the degree circle,
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: I'd be going to like cover shooting lane, cover shooting lane,
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: cover shooting lane, even if I had to have someone
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: come out, if I had to like take my woman
- 1:09:47Speaker 1: out and give her a pulse, give her a pulse,
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: all with a thirty foot handle. I'm sorry I have
- 1:09:52Speaker 1: to interrupt, but I don't think you're bringing up anything
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: new here. I think that you're explaining what most people
- 1:09:57Speaker 1: go out there and try to achieve, not when you
- 1:10:00Speaker 1: doing not when you're running around making snap decisions about stuff. Yeah,
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: I think you do. We used to when I when
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: I was younger, my old man put a ton of
- 1:10:08Speaker 1: focus on it. Not covered, but shooting lanes. If you
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: have the preset stands that you're putting up the four
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: season and stuff, Yeah, absolutely, but not like we're doing
- 1:10:18Speaker 1: the running gun hanging hunt. And I think I think
- 1:10:21Speaker 1: the issue here, right, both your situation and my situation,
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: we ran to the same problem. Um, But I think
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: I think what we have here is we've got a
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: property that we are trying to get stands up this summer,
- 1:10:36Speaker 1: and a lot of stands up across a bunch of places,
- 1:10:40Speaker 1: and they're simply wasn't time to get every single one
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: perfect right guy, and nobody haunted it. Yeah, you guys
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: were the first ones. Right. Um, So I think what
- 1:10:49Speaker 1: we have this year, now we're getting us first run
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: through like all the stands we've we've hung all the
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: spots that got trimmed out. I think now this next
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: spring and summer, we're gonna know, Okay, this one we
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: gotta fix a, B and C, this one, we gotta
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: trim out this, this and this and and we'll have
- 1:11:03Speaker 1: time to go back to a lot of these other
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: stands that we just barely had time to get up
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: this year. Now it's now we can try to get
- 1:11:10Speaker 1: things a little bit more fine tuned. You don't have
- 1:11:12Speaker 1: a back background as an arburst, is there? Right? So
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: this is especially sensitive subject, right, I can I can
- 1:11:19Speaker 1: feel that you stewed on it. I have stuped on
- 1:11:23Speaker 1: it as well because it it hurt me too. But
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: that's something okay, talking about getting screwed by big bucks,
- 1:11:30Speaker 1: getting screwed by big Bucks, the anatomy of getting screwed
- 1:11:33Speaker 1: by a big Buck. Well this that same day that
- 1:11:36Speaker 1: you had your big giant Buck come by and be
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: stuck behind brush, I get this text message from you
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: saying I had a giant at ten yards couldn't get
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: a shot because of brush. I told you I could
- 1:11:45Speaker 1: have jumped on him. Yeah, yeah, I should have jumped
- 1:11:47Speaker 1: on him. Why wasn't that your your change? You would
- 1:11:52Speaker 1: have made um. So that morning, like I said, me
- 1:11:56Speaker 1: and Lauren had um, we've been seeing handle, not even
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: hand a good number of bucks running through, chasing does
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: around a lot of activity. So I gave him the
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: good news bad news speech, told him we're gonna sit
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: all day and um, as you alluded to. Around eleven o'clock,
- 1:12:10Speaker 1: I turned around, Hey, Lauren, this is the beginning of
- 1:12:13Speaker 1: what I think is the best stretch of the day
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: oftentimes for like that one solo mature buck to come through,
- 1:12:20Speaker 1: just notorious eleven to one, big bucks, big old mature
- 1:12:24Speaker 1: bucks are gonna come cruising through checking these doe betting ears.
- 1:12:27Speaker 1: And the spot we were in was a really cool
- 1:12:28Speaker 1: little bench on a ridge, and there's great betting behind us,
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: great betting sort of in front of us a little
- 1:12:34Speaker 1: ways and then around the corner of this ridge. It
- 1:12:36Speaker 1: just seemed like a spot that a mature buck with
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: cruise midday. So we even said a bet. We're like, okay,
- 1:12:41Speaker 1: I'm betting, Like, let's put money, Like, I have one
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: dollar bill in my wallet. I bet you that we
- 1:12:46Speaker 1: will see a mature but a deer. I think we
- 1:12:49Speaker 1: just said a deer. I bet like eleven thirty five
- 1:12:51Speaker 1: we see the first deer between eleven and one. You
- 1:12:53Speaker 1: walk around with a one dollar bill in your wallet. Yes,
- 1:12:58Speaker 1: in this situation, I have been have a one dollar billon.
- 1:13:01Speaker 1: Was it? Um? I lost? You did loose and then
- 1:13:05Speaker 1: later we double or nothing to that one again? Um?
- 1:13:08Speaker 1: But it actually I wasn't quite right because we saw
- 1:13:13Speaker 1: the dough at eleven thirty. The buck we saw one
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: hour later. So twelve thirty rolls around. We've seen a
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: few doughs coming through. Midday twelve thirty, I am looking
- 1:13:24Speaker 1: off to my right, kind of doing my skin, and
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: I noticed a dark shape moving along the side of
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: this ridge. And there's snow over everything. It's snowed overnight,
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: so you can see these bodies or lists right away.
- 1:13:34Speaker 1: Pull my bannocks, get eyes on him. And at first
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: I saw the buck and I'm like, Lauren Buck coming
- 1:13:39Speaker 1: in whatever six o'clock or whatever it was, and um,
- 1:13:43Speaker 1: he gets turned around and I'm like, usually the first
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: thing to say if it's a buck or dough and
- 1:13:47Speaker 1: then right away there's used a quick snap judgment like
- 1:13:50Speaker 1: little buck or shooter or something like that, just so
- 1:13:52Speaker 1: he knows like yeah. And first I was like buck,
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: big buck. And then I'm wasna looking at him again,
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: and and I'm trying to look at his body and
- 1:14:03Speaker 1: trying to like see what's coming my way. And for
- 1:14:06Speaker 1: the first time this trip, I was like, I think
- 1:14:08Speaker 1: that's a shooter. Um. I just remember noticing obviously bigger body.
- 1:14:14Speaker 1: And then when you looked up as antlers, I saw heaviness.
- 1:14:19Speaker 1: There was a heaviness to it. And I remember looking
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: at the main beam and seeing like something funky going on,
- 1:14:26Speaker 1: another thing of indicative, like you're not gonna see a
- 1:14:28Speaker 1: year and a half old or two and a half
- 1:14:29Speaker 1: year a buck. That's gonna be some kind of unique
- 1:14:31Speaker 1: funkiness to the rack. Um, So he's coming down the ridge,
- 1:14:36Speaker 1: and earlier, maybe ten minutes before that sounds rout right,
- 1:14:40Speaker 1: maybe five minutes before, we had seen a couple of
- 1:14:43Speaker 1: deer running or moving across the opposite ridge, and so
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: I grunted a couple of times just on the off
- 1:14:48Speaker 1: chance that one was a buck. We occasionally do like
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: a hail Mary grunt. So I grunted. Now this about
- 1:14:53Speaker 1: comes in. We didn't know if he was coming in
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: just because he was cruising, or if he was coming
- 1:14:57Speaker 1: into the ground. But make your grunt noise. Well, I
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: usually as a grunt tube. Just guys, zuck, you can
- 1:15:12Speaker 1: probably do it all right, all right, all right, do
- 1:15:16Speaker 1: your turkey call with no turkey call. Check this out.
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: This guy with no turkey calling his mouth. Do the
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: p Yeah, that's where he makes his magic. Good. That's good, man, Yeah,
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: that's real good. So there you are, Matt nice. Just
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: buck we got on camera. Yeah, well, well you're you're
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: stealing my thunder. So the next thing I know, um,
- 1:15:43Speaker 1: he is coming up. He comes over the rise at
- 1:15:46Speaker 1: this point like full blown. This is absolutely buck, I'm
- 1:15:48Speaker 1: gonna shoot. I grabbed my bow. I turned into position.
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: He's worked his way across and at this point in
- 1:15:55Speaker 1: an encounter with the mature buck, I'm usually holding my
- 1:15:58Speaker 1: bow and then I'm gonna grab my release and have
- 1:16:01Speaker 1: it clipped on and ready to go. So I go
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: to clip on my release and I don't have a
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: release on my hand because you were changing your clothes.
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: Because just a minute like minutes something before I had
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: added another layer put a vest on. So I took
- 1:16:17Speaker 1: everything off, put the vest on, and I take off
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: my release. Well, I put my release in my pocket
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: and forgot to put my release on. Downfall of a
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: twelve hour sit. Yeah, I kind of want to put
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: a layer on, take a layer off. Whatever. So this
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: is the most terrified I've probably ever been in my
- 1:16:35Speaker 1: entire hunting life. When I've got this great, big mature
- 1:16:38Speaker 1: about coming in and I don't have a release on,
- 1:16:40Speaker 1: and I said a bad word on camera. I'm like,
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: I blanked up. I said that. He's walking in and
- 1:16:47Speaker 1: I'm like scrambling trying to get my release. I found
- 1:16:50Speaker 1: it and I'm trying to get it in my hand
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: and he's just slowly walking across. Fortunately, the area he's
- 1:16:54Speaker 1: walking across is all limbs, like there's zero zero Could
- 1:16:58Speaker 1: you drawn back? Uh No, because he was so far
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: from being from being able to be in a shotline
- 1:17:04Speaker 1: that I'd be holding back for three minutes. So I
- 1:17:07Speaker 1: remember getting the release on and my hands started to
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: shake while I was trying to get it on so
- 1:17:12Speaker 1: badly I could not get the strap through the buckle
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: like I was sitting there like, oh my gosh, this
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: bux that was shaking from the release, from freaking out
- 1:17:21Speaker 1: about trying to get the release, that's what threw me.
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: Um Like. I was like, I gotta get this thing on,
- 1:17:26Speaker 1: and I couldn't. And I'm just imagining he's standing right
- 1:17:29Speaker 1: in the open and I can't shoot him right now.
- 1:17:31Speaker 1: He wasn't, but in my mind I was sticking as it.
- 1:17:34Speaker 1: But finally I remember telling myself, don't think about going fast,
- 1:17:38Speaker 1: just just pull it through. Just so, I like slowed
- 1:17:43Speaker 1: it down and I got the release on, and I
- 1:17:45Speaker 1: looked back up and he's still behind all these tree limbs,
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: slowly working his way. I'm okay, he's right there, he's
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: moving in. He's like thirty yards, he's twenty five yards.
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: Question about the release? Do you ever practice fingers so
- 1:17:58Speaker 1: that just in case you release, said falling into the snow,
- 1:18:02Speaker 1: you just had to let him walk. You couldn't shoot fingers.
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I would shoot fingers. Can
- 1:18:08Speaker 1: you shoot a short limb bow with fingers? Fingers? Why,
- 1:18:12Speaker 1: there's a certain there's a minimum actle to actually you
- 1:18:15Speaker 1: have to have so you don't get like a real
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: bad pinch from the bow stream and my grip is
- 1:18:18Speaker 1: so strong I can just grab the loop. Oh yeah,
- 1:18:24Speaker 1: pinchinger and thumb. That's very impressive. I do train that.
- 1:18:30Speaker 1: Put it in your teeth. Thank you. Mark. Yeah, no,
- 1:18:35Speaker 1: no release snow go, no release snow go. But in
- 1:18:38Speaker 1: this case, I was able to get the release on time,
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: and it was a huge relief. He's still there. I
- 1:18:42Speaker 1: clicked on, like, all right, that's great. But then I'm
- 1:18:45Speaker 1: looking at him and there's just no shoot there's no
- 1:18:47Speaker 1: holes I can get a shot, I can't thread it
- 1:18:49Speaker 1: through anywhere. I'm looking at him like trying to see,
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: and he's just knew me, knew him his way along,
- 1:18:53Speaker 1: kind of just and sniffing around, walking along just perfect.
- 1:18:57Speaker 1: I was twenty yards broadside Lawrence, felling him gray, and
- 1:19:02Speaker 1: he's a beautiful buck. And then I look, okay, no
- 1:19:05Speaker 1: shooting lands, no shootlings. I'm seeing, Okay, he's gotta walk
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: another ten yards or so, and then there's there's no
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: reason for a buck to be lingering around that long
- 1:19:11Speaker 1: without hitting the shooting lane. But he's moving anyway. Yeah,
- 1:19:15Speaker 1: and I agree there should have been a shooting land
- 1:19:16Speaker 1: here there, just there just wasn't Um, there's shooting lanes
- 1:19:19Speaker 1: in the other three directions. This was just the one
- 1:19:21Speaker 1: spot that we didn't get yet. And but he's moving,
- 1:19:24Speaker 1: so it wouldn't do you any good slowly moving, And
- 1:19:27Speaker 1: unfortunately he slowly moved in the direction that our wind
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: was blowing, the one direction we didn't want him to go,
- 1:19:34Speaker 1: and there was no openings before he hit that wind.
- 1:19:37Speaker 1: So just like you described, he's walking along and he
- 1:19:39Speaker 1: hits the wall, and as soon as he hits the wall,
- 1:19:42Speaker 1: it's like someone spanked him. Like he just jumped and
- 1:19:45Speaker 1: bounced off. It's different than your buck the slank away.
- 1:19:49Speaker 1: He hit it and immediately jumped, ran off ten fifteen yards,
- 1:19:53Speaker 1: stopped really yeah, looked back one time and then slunk
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: a laugh, And then after that I just melted down
- 1:20:02Speaker 1: because then I realized that was the big brow buck.
- 1:20:05Speaker 1: The big brow buck was the buck that I got
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: on camera in September August, the biggest deer we've seen
- 1:20:11Speaker 1: in the farm, really really really cool deer. He has
- 1:20:14Speaker 1: um he was the obviously most mature buck that we
- 1:20:17Speaker 1: had seen yet huge body. Um. I remember, we we
- 1:20:21Speaker 1: got the picture like that's a no brainer. That's the
- 1:20:24Speaker 1: only real one we got that wasn't them, and then
- 1:20:27Speaker 1: he has this really unique like at least twelve inch
- 1:20:30Speaker 1: brow time, just huge brow time. Um, so really really
- 1:20:34Speaker 1: really cool buck. And he was the one. I was like, Man,
- 1:20:36Speaker 1: if there's any deer I could happen to get a
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: chance that, he was the one. I would really like
- 1:20:39Speaker 1: to get a chance that. And there was a twenty
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: yards and I couldn't shoot him, and he bounces off
- 1:20:44Speaker 1: and and that was it. So I was, you know,
- 1:20:47Speaker 1: he had that these moments, especially in Michigan. An opportunity
- 1:20:51Speaker 1: to mature buck is so so so rare. An opportunity
- 1:20:54Speaker 1: to mature buck like that in Michigan is is infinitely
- 1:20:57Speaker 1: more rare. Um to have that right there in your
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: hands after hours, so many hours, miss is you know,
- 1:21:06Speaker 1: I've been going aft for quite a long time here
- 1:21:07Speaker 1: in Michigan for I don't know if that was like
- 1:21:09Speaker 1: the tenth day in arrow or something like that, that
- 1:21:11Speaker 1: I've been hunting um in the rut and um. To
- 1:21:15Speaker 1: have it right there and not have to come together
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: it was a little frustrating, even like it doesn't even
- 1:21:21Speaker 1: need to be big huge giants, man, because I had
- 1:21:24Speaker 1: like a like I loosed an arrow I don't know.
- 1:21:29Speaker 1: It's like a eight point, you know, like a little
- 1:21:32Speaker 1: like a two and a half year old type eight
- 1:21:34Speaker 1: point buck. But this trip like like a screw up
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: for me. And it's like all of a sudden, this
- 1:21:39Speaker 1: there he is, out of nowhere, no sound, nothing like.
- 1:21:41Speaker 1: There he is, and he's gonna be gone in no time.
- 1:21:44Speaker 1: And I have a great shooting window. And he stopped,
- 1:21:49Speaker 1: and I go to drawback, so I'm ready when he
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: hits the shooting window, and if I need to, I'm
- 1:21:56Speaker 1: gonna say something to stop him. Even though you said
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: that with these bocks don't do that. We did have
- 1:22:00Speaker 1: a phone call before this night. We talked about it
- 1:22:02Speaker 1: right how they jumped the string, marks saying, there's so
- 1:22:06Speaker 1: like they're too high strung and too nervous all the time,
- 1:22:10Speaker 1: and when you stop him with a with a grunt,
- 1:22:13Speaker 1: they stense up so bad that when they hear the string,
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: they're gonna bolt. They're gonna jump the string. So you
- 1:22:21Speaker 1: don't like to alert them if you don't have to. Yeah, well,
- 1:22:26Speaker 1: I go to drawback and not go to a drawback
- 1:22:30Speaker 1: so that I'm ready for the lane when it's a
- 1:22:32Speaker 1: nice big shooting lane. But he stopped shy the lane,
- 1:22:38Speaker 1: and as I'm looking, I realized, oh wow, there's actually
- 1:22:44Speaker 1: like most of his rib cage is actually open. And
- 1:22:50Speaker 1: I become so fixated on the fact that like, what
- 1:22:52Speaker 1: are the chances and and can you do this? And
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you can and should you ensure it's open?
- 1:23:02Speaker 1: And I'm like running this in my head and and
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: as I'm like, as my brain is sending the signal
- 1:23:07Speaker 1: to to hit the release, he steps but I still
- 1:23:11Speaker 1: like hit the release, and I and and like reviewing
- 1:23:14Speaker 1: my head, I almost had the desire like reach back
- 1:23:16Speaker 1: and grab my arrow, but he stepped in lunge, like
- 1:23:23Speaker 1: stepped or was already like stepping, like he's scared. He
- 1:23:26Speaker 1: saw me pull back and like freaked them lifted up
- 1:23:29Speaker 1: and stepped, and then his step as the as I'm
- 1:23:32Speaker 1: releasing the movement, his step turns into a leap and
- 1:23:36Speaker 1: it was gone for the arrow. It's amazing how quick
- 1:23:41Speaker 1: they can drop. Dude, this is one of those old
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: crazy ones. This is the teenager. So how did you
- 1:23:48Speaker 1: feel after that missed opportunity? Like, how do you take that? Well?
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: At first I felt pretty sick because I'm afraid I
- 1:23:53Speaker 1: hit it. Yeah, but we have, you know, one of
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: the luxuries we have. We had two luxuries, one a
- 1:23:59Speaker 1: camera so you can review, and to snow. So I
- 1:24:04Speaker 1: waited a while and got down and followed his tracks
- 1:24:06Speaker 1: for long ways not to drop of blood, and then
- 1:24:08Speaker 1: I catch up to him chasing a dough. Yeah, and
- 1:24:14Speaker 1: then went back. We watched the footage a ton of
- 1:24:16Speaker 1: times more and you it's not there. And I couldn't
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: find the air because I went into snowy high grass.
- 1:24:20Speaker 1: But like I said, I tracked. I tracked him for
- 1:24:22Speaker 1: over a hundred yards. How based off the film, how
- 1:24:26Speaker 1: much do you think he dropped? He doesn't drop. He
- 1:24:29Speaker 1: goes forward because he was already going forward. But you
- 1:24:32Speaker 1: don't think he went down. I know exactly what Tom about,
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: but no, he doesn't seem to go down. He seems
- 1:24:37Speaker 1: to go forward. He was already getting He was already
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: getting going. And I even like, as my arrows leaving,
- 1:24:43Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm saying, like what do you oh? Chris?
- 1:24:47Speaker 1: And I reviewed it too, I would say for sure
- 1:24:48Speaker 1: that he did the classic ductor ductor strange. You felt
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: he went down more than forward, Yeah, because when they
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: before they can go forward to to make that they
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: bring up, they have to load their legs and the
- 1:25:02Speaker 1: what looks like a duck is when they load their
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: legs and they're loading their lowering to basically get their
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: legs into us to a compressed spring so they can
- 1:25:13Speaker 1: then push off rather than you guys sit here having
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: like knowing glances. Ah, we're talking about this. He was
- 1:25:19Speaker 1: already stepping forward. No, he was. He was walking. So
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: he was walking forward as you released. When he heard
- 1:25:27Speaker 1: your string, your bow go off, he did what's called
- 1:25:32Speaker 1: ducking the string where he crunches his legs underneath him,
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: his body drops and then he and then he goes forward. Okay,
- 1:25:40Speaker 1: where were we remarked, Um, we're just talking about how
- 1:25:43Speaker 1: we both had our opportunity to slip through our fingers
- 1:25:46Speaker 1: like that. I can be frustrating, super frustrating man. So yeah,
- 1:25:54Speaker 1: I spun the camera over to Mark. After that buck
- 1:25:57Speaker 1: hit the wall and ran off. It was a day.
- 1:26:00Speaker 1: It's twenty five degrees and he's shaken like a leaf. Yeah,
- 1:26:05Speaker 1: And I asked, I was like, are you cold or
- 1:26:07Speaker 1: what's going on? Like? No, man, that buck tore me up.
- 1:26:11Speaker 1: It was he was shaken in his boots like full
- 1:26:15Speaker 1: of emotion. Obviously big, big opportunity slipped through his fingers.
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: But I was upset and excited and all that kind
- 1:26:24Speaker 1: of stuff, you know, it was that would have I mean, well,
- 1:26:31Speaker 1: it was the best buck on this property. And if
- 1:26:33Speaker 1: we're talking, I've I've killed mature box in Michigan, but
- 1:26:36Speaker 1: that for sure would have been the biggest buck I've
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: ever would have gotten a shot at in Michigan. So
- 1:26:40Speaker 1: it was it's a really big deal for the state. Um.
- 1:26:43Speaker 1: So that was an opportunity that I would have loved
- 1:26:46Speaker 1: to have seen it go a different way. So I
- 1:26:48Speaker 1: was just I don't know, It's just it's something when
- 1:26:51Speaker 1: it's so close for some reason, it just slips through
- 1:26:54Speaker 1: your fingers. It hurts just a little bit more like
- 1:26:57Speaker 1: and I knew and I knew it too in my head,
- 1:26:59Speaker 1: think that was my opportunity. Like you're you're, yeah, there's
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: a chance, but especially here in this state, you get
- 1:27:05Speaker 1: maybe one opportunity mature buck, even if you hunt really
- 1:27:09Speaker 1: smart in most places. These most places I hunt, I
- 1:27:11Speaker 1: don't hunt. This is an abnormally good property for me, um,
- 1:27:16Speaker 1: But most years you've got that one chance. And if
- 1:27:18Speaker 1: that one chance doesn't go the way that you want
- 1:27:20Speaker 1: to you're kind of s ol so I was like,
- 1:27:23Speaker 1: that was it? And you were so so close twenty
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: yards Uh. Two observations. One was Ridge pounders. But it's interesting,
- 1:27:33Speaker 1: is it? You know you're up here in the right knocks.
- 1:27:36Speaker 1: There's so much dear movie. You're having all these like
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: adrenaline moments, and Ridge was noticing. And then and once
- 1:27:42Speaker 1: you brought this up, I realized it's true adrenaline moments. Uh.
- 1:27:46Speaker 1: Make it that you get cold on the come down? Yeah,
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: you feel your body temperature drop in the minutes after
- 1:27:58Speaker 1: adrenaline rushes. Yeah, which if you'd asked me prior, if
- 1:28:03Speaker 1: you without thinking about it, if you'd asked me, I'd
- 1:28:06Speaker 1: be like, I'm guessing that it makes you feel hotter
- 1:28:09Speaker 1: now when I like when it's real cold and you're
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: camping and you gotta go take a growler. My brother
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: used just call it taking the heater because he'd always
- 1:28:16Speaker 1: mysteriously come away feeling warmer, like just the activity or something.
- 1:28:20Speaker 1: You know. He'd be like cold relief. Yeah, and he'd
- 1:28:23Speaker 1: go dig a hole and come back and be like, dude,
- 1:28:25Speaker 1: I'm warmed up. I don't know why. It doesn't make
- 1:28:28Speaker 1: sense if I got warmed up. But having a bucking
- 1:28:31Speaker 1: counter or just a deer encounter, even just like something
- 1:28:34Speaker 1: exciting happened. Five minutes later, you realize you got cold.
- 1:28:38Speaker 1: I'd be shivering. I'd be fine before a big buck
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: would come in close, and then as soon as he
- 1:28:45Speaker 1: walks away, then I'd start shivering. I'm like, wait, what,
- 1:28:49Speaker 1: but it's nothing's changed, feel a chill. As the adrenaline
- 1:28:53Speaker 1: goes away, it leaves you feeling a chill. Uh. My
- 1:28:56Speaker 1: other observations this and this is harder articulate, harder to articulate. Uh.
- 1:29:02Speaker 1: I spent a great many years lusting for and trying
- 1:29:07Speaker 1: to figure out and crack the code on how to
- 1:29:10Speaker 1: get how to just like locate big mule deer, you know,
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: and it took a long time to start. A lot
- 1:29:22Speaker 1: of it was location, but also just strategy, um like
- 1:29:26Speaker 1: how to figure it out? For for years, we just
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: walk hunted, walked likely territory, thinking you'd kick him up,
- 1:29:33Speaker 1: like they're just like how we went about it, just
- 1:29:36Speaker 1: like you'd kick him up, right. And over time I
- 1:29:38Speaker 1: learned like, uh that not just that you need to
- 1:29:45Speaker 1: sit and observe, like where are you sitting observing? When
- 1:29:48Speaker 1: you sitting observe and what you're actually looking for and
- 1:29:51Speaker 1: all that, and it's you know, gradually like finding nicer ones.
- 1:29:55Speaker 1: But the the years of frustration around it made me
- 1:30:00Speaker 1: want to learn it more and more and more. A
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: weird thing. I think it's because I have a long
- 1:30:05Speaker 1: background of what we thought we were serious deer hunters,
- 1:30:09Speaker 1: but we didn't do the stuff that you do, but
- 1:30:12Speaker 1: we felt like we were serious deer hunters from the time,
- 1:30:15Speaker 1: you know, for a good decade I did that between
- 1:30:19Speaker 1: becoming old enough to legally hunt and then moving away
- 1:30:23Speaker 1: from the Midwest. Um, like that's what we did and
- 1:30:27Speaker 1: thought we were, you know, into it. But um, I
- 1:30:32Speaker 1: don't know, Like I totally respect him, but I just don't,
- 1:30:36Speaker 1: like I'm not getting where I feel the lust form. Yeah, no,
- 1:30:40Speaker 1: And I don't know why I think they're so hard,
- 1:30:43Speaker 1: but I just don't feel the lust. I think you
- 1:30:46Speaker 1: just haven't. This is too much of you were dropped
- 1:30:50Speaker 1: into a thing. You're just kind of along for the
- 1:30:53Speaker 1: ride here right now. I think that, at least for me,
- 1:30:57Speaker 1: what gives me this like insatiabill craving to keep learning
- 1:31:03Speaker 1: about these animals and hunt them and try to figure
- 1:31:05Speaker 1: them out. Is the chess match element of it, the
- 1:31:09Speaker 1: the just the constant tinkering and rethinking and observing and
- 1:31:14Speaker 1: adjusting and learning more. And that's something that in this situation,
- 1:31:19Speaker 1: you know, you showed up to new property, we're kind
- 1:31:22Speaker 1: of saying, well, try this, try this, try this. I
- 1:31:24Speaker 1: think that if you had to move back to Michigan
- 1:31:28Speaker 1: for a year or something like that, and you had
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: to dive in and fare all the stuff out, you
- 1:31:32Speaker 1: start get lost. I think you get lusty when you
- 1:31:34Speaker 1: start dating to that start putting that puzzles together for yourself.
- 1:31:39Speaker 1: That's when things start getting really really interesting. And this
- 1:31:42Speaker 1: is an interesting scenario here because um, you know, I'm
- 1:31:46Speaker 1: learning it too, and and and you're learning it and
- 1:31:49Speaker 1: and guy, you're learning it into a degree. And this
- 1:31:52Speaker 1: is kind of the first year this property is being
- 1:31:54Speaker 1: hunted in this kind of way, so's lots of new elements.
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: Were kind of figuring things out as we go. Um.
- 1:31:59Speaker 1: I feel like we it a lot just this week. UM,
- 1:32:02Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff I already know I wanted to
- 1:32:03Speaker 1: do differently next time around. Um, but all those mistakes
- 1:32:09Speaker 1: that in the moment are like a painful mistake or
- 1:32:11Speaker 1: something that just reinvigorates and re excites me for well,
- 1:32:16Speaker 1: I want to do this differently, and I wanna do
- 1:32:17Speaker 1: this differently. I try that differently, and I think already
- 1:32:20Speaker 1: I I'm I was telling you the other night, Like
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: I'm sitting in my bed at night for half hour
- 1:32:24Speaker 1: to an hour look at maps and thinking about how
- 1:32:26Speaker 1: we shouldn't move to camera there, we should move a
- 1:32:27Speaker 1: stand there, and we should get it back in there,
- 1:32:29Speaker 1: because I think that these mature white tailed deer um,
- 1:32:34Speaker 1: they don't live in the most rugged, rough country. They
- 1:32:37Speaker 1: don't get the biggest antlers of any ungulate. They don't um.
- 1:32:42Speaker 1: They're not gonna put as much meat in the freezer
- 1:32:43Speaker 1: as a moose. They're not gonna take you to a
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: mountain peak like a mountain goat. But I don't think
- 1:32:49Speaker 1: there's a more savvy, weary, tricky smart critter out there
- 1:32:56Speaker 1: than a mature whitetail buck. Like they deal with a
- 1:32:59Speaker 1: whole lot of humans, and these deer that make it
- 1:33:03Speaker 1: to that age are just survivors. And to consistently get
- 1:33:08Speaker 1: on them and to learn them and be in a
- 1:33:10Speaker 1: position to sometimes get a shot at you like that
- 1:33:12Speaker 1: requires a lot of mind power, Like thinking and that
- 1:33:17Speaker 1: just gets me. I see it get you. I love
- 1:33:23Speaker 1: it that it gets you. And and and I'm not
- 1:33:25Speaker 1: like down on it, just like it just uh yeah,
- 1:33:30Speaker 1: I don't know. Did you have a good time? Phenomenal time?
- 1:33:33Speaker 1: I feel really bad a lot of stuff. You feel bad.
- 1:33:37Speaker 1: I feel really bad that like you just didn't you
- 1:33:39Speaker 1: didn't get a shot of him. I mean you did
- 1:33:40Speaker 1: get a shot of one, but I just felt like
- 1:33:44Speaker 1: I let you down. Who cares? I had a phenomenal time,
- 1:33:46Speaker 1: a great time, um, and I loved every second of it.
- 1:33:50Speaker 1: But I don't like, uh yeah, man, I'm just I
- 1:33:58Speaker 1: just like this meal deer and stuff like that. This
- 1:33:59Speaker 1: is I get that, you know, I love it. I
- 1:34:02Speaker 1: would do it all the time. But I think for me,
- 1:34:07Speaker 1: it's I think for me that i've that that a
- 1:34:12Speaker 1: thing that like some kind of strength that I have
- 1:34:17Speaker 1: in hunting is just um like can just go and
- 1:34:23Speaker 1: go and go. And sometimes it's a hindrance, but sometimes
- 1:34:26Speaker 1: it's the strength. It's like going, going going. I'd like
- 1:34:29Speaker 1: to sit and just watch and watch and watch and
- 1:34:31Speaker 1: and like be out and and I and I think
- 1:34:34Speaker 1: that I struggle. I think that I I struggle a
- 1:34:38Speaker 1: little bit with them. The stationary, the very stationary aspect,
- 1:34:43Speaker 1: because even if you're sitting there glass and from me
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: older your glass and for cousi or whatever you're doing,
- 1:34:48Speaker 1: and you're in one spot, there's there's like this kinetic
- 1:34:51Speaker 1: energy that builds because you know that all of a
- 1:34:54Speaker 1: sudden there's gonna be your chance and you're gonna go,
- 1:34:58Speaker 1: even if you wait all day. You might wait all day,
- 1:35:01Speaker 1: but there's still this idea that like, go time, now,
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: we're gonna go. And to be strapped into that tree
- 1:35:10Speaker 1: watching things and it would never work to go after him.
- 1:35:13Speaker 1: They're just not gonna put up with that. But watching
- 1:35:15Speaker 1: things and feeling that and it's going the wrong direction,
- 1:35:19Speaker 1: and you're like, you don't have that that, you don't
- 1:35:25Speaker 1: have that um, that autonomy, or you don't have that
- 1:35:30Speaker 1: a lack of control. You can't make it move the agents,
- 1:35:33Speaker 1: you don't have the agency to and it like, really,
- 1:35:37Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like I'd have to get
- 1:35:39Speaker 1: better at it, you know, I'd have to get better
- 1:35:41Speaker 1: at it. I used to not have the ability, like
- 1:35:43Speaker 1: what I was sawing about earlier, trying to learn how
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: to kill Multier. I didn't have the ability at the time.
- 1:35:48Speaker 1: If you just said, oh, the key to kill muliteer
- 1:35:49Speaker 1: is sitting and observing, I wouldn't have had it in me.
- 1:35:55Speaker 1: I developed it. I would have to develop the ability
- 1:35:57Speaker 1: to sitting these damn trees. I think I wind up
- 1:36:01Speaker 1: cursing the tree. I don't wind up loving the tree.
- 1:36:05Speaker 1: I get that. It's like, it's like I feel like
- 1:36:07Speaker 1: I'm chained to it. You know that if you had
- 1:36:10Speaker 1: sat in that same tree that you sat when you
- 1:36:14Speaker 1: had those two encounters described, you would have had another
- 1:36:17Speaker 1: nice big buck in front of this morning. You know
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: why he was there because he weren't there because I
- 1:36:23Speaker 1: wasn't there exactly. That's the funny thing like hunting this
- 1:36:27Speaker 1: stuff now, Like you'd be like, oh, a big buck
- 1:36:29Speaker 1: passed by that tree. Stand like the big buck pass
- 1:36:31Speaker 1: that tree stancause you're not in it. It's not like
- 1:36:33Speaker 1: he would have been. It's not like you would have
- 1:36:35Speaker 1: been there anyway. Yeah, it can be frustrating. Yeah, I
- 1:36:39Speaker 1: do feel like the interesting thing about a Western style
- 1:36:43Speaker 1: hunt is that a lot of the actual hunting is
- 1:36:45Speaker 1: the hunt is happening right then, right The decisions you're
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: making that are going to impact that hunt are happening
- 1:36:51Speaker 1: right now. It's like do I go up that ridge
- 1:36:53Speaker 1: or that ridge, or do we make the stock now
- 1:36:55Speaker 1: or do we wait? Many times, the actions that dictate
- 1:36:59Speaker 1: the success or failure of a white tail hunt are
- 1:37:01Speaker 1: not the actions taken right now as that deers in
- 1:37:04Speaker 1: front of you. It's the actions you took two months
- 1:37:06Speaker 1: ago or four months ago, when you made the decision
- 1:37:10Speaker 1: to put a stand here, when you thought through all
- 1:37:12Speaker 1: the things, all the assumptions you have about a deer,
- 1:37:15Speaker 1: you think through all the behaviors that are gonna happen. No, No,
- 1:37:18Speaker 1: not November eight, all that stuff that's leading to what
- 1:37:21Speaker 1: you're seeing on November eight. The reason that happens because
- 1:37:25Speaker 1: the decisions made on August first, and what limbs to cut,
- 1:37:28Speaker 1: what limbs not to cut, which trails coming through here?
- 1:37:31Speaker 1: Why did I want to access the tree stand from
- 1:37:34Speaker 1: this way and exit that way? Um? So, so much
- 1:37:36Speaker 1: of the hunt actually takes place many many, many weeks beforehand,
- 1:37:40Speaker 1: because the hunt really is in setting up the ambush location.
- 1:37:44Speaker 1: We have. The decisions we can make now in the moment,
- 1:37:47Speaker 1: are do we hunt A or B or C or
- 1:37:50Speaker 1: do it which place? For the what we have today?
- 1:37:53Speaker 1: And then how you actually conduct yourself in the tree.
- 1:37:55Speaker 1: But a big piece of the hunt you missed out on. UM,
- 1:37:59Speaker 1: So that can I can. I would imagine that maybe
- 1:38:01Speaker 1: that might um change your experience a little bit too. Yeah. Uh.
- 1:38:07Speaker 1: A reason I like to hunt turkey so much is
- 1:38:09Speaker 1: because it's so responsive, physically responsive. Yeah, he does this,
- 1:38:15Speaker 1: you do that, he does this, micro movements little, it's
- 1:38:19Speaker 1: just like I like it. Speaking of turkeys, we called
- 1:38:22Speaker 1: in a lot of deer this week. They were very responsive,
- 1:38:24Speaker 1: called lunch your tonight. Well he did, called in a
- 1:38:28Speaker 1: bunch of doughs. They didn't want to leave. Why didn't
- 1:38:32Speaker 1: you shoot it, doll? Yeah, I just didn't. Man. We
- 1:38:38Speaker 1: had a lot of opportunities to shoot at doughs, a
- 1:38:41Speaker 1: lot of them. I don't know why. That's a good question.
- 1:38:44Speaker 1: I wanted the same thing, just because we were kind
- 1:38:47Speaker 1: of like hunting bucks. And I'm not hurting for meat.
- 1:38:51Speaker 1: I'm sitting pretty good. Actually, if I was meat, Christis,
- 1:38:54Speaker 1: it would have been a whole different situation. Yeah, we
- 1:38:56Speaker 1: would have solved that problem quick. All right, man, thanks
- 1:39:03Speaker 1: for coming out and chasing white tails. I'll come to
- 1:39:05Speaker 1: it again. I hope it. I hope it goes a
- 1:39:08Speaker 1: little different. I had a great time. Man, I don't
- 1:39:11Speaker 1: care if I got one. I honestly don't care. Good
- 1:39:13Speaker 1: if you could like probe into my brain and see
- 1:39:15Speaker 1: if I'm telling the truth or not, I'd be telling
- 1:39:16Speaker 1: the truth, all right. I really don't give a ship
- 1:39:18Speaker 1: all right, good? Yeah, thanks for sharing. It was fun
- 1:39:21Speaker 1: to listen to you all week, learn and learn a
- 1:39:24Speaker 1: lot from you. Well. Thank you to the two Guy
- 1:39:27Speaker 1: and Matt for allowing us to to hunt this location
- 1:39:30Speaker 1: and sure what you guys to come back. It was
- 1:39:33Speaker 1: a good time. Do that turkey prayer again. We heard
- 1:39:41Speaker 1: that a whole bunch. They didn't. We found her. We
- 1:39:44Speaker 1: had turkeys up close. And that's the thing I remember
- 1:39:48Speaker 1: that you don't realize how much noise they make. They're
- 1:39:52Speaker 1: all making noise all the time. When you get that
- 1:39:56Speaker 1: close to them, they're cool man getting in their winter flaw. Yeah,
- 1:39:59Speaker 1: we're ten from him, and they didn't care about us
- 1:40:03Speaker 1: all making noise. We were moving. I was like filming
- 1:40:07Speaker 1: them moving. They were like, I don't care, bro, we're
- 1:40:10Speaker 1: eating corn. I think of you have said something to him.
- 1:40:12Speaker 1: They had to move, yeah, And I was like, eight turks,
- 1:40:15Speaker 1: you guys need to get a Turkey tag next year.
- 1:40:17Speaker 1: Put in from oh Man today, I was really regretting
- 1:40:20Speaker 1: I have more, Lauren, you got any final thoughts? Man?
- 1:40:24Speaker 1: Just thanks for having me along. I learned a lot
- 1:40:27Speaker 1: from Mark. Sitting in tree stands forty eight hours. It's
- 1:40:32Speaker 1: a good time. I was definitely a part of the hunt. Yeah,
- 1:40:35Speaker 1: not just here to take pictures, not just here chasing dollars.
- 1:40:41Speaker 1: He lost dollars actually, yeah lost? Oh yes, that cut
- 1:40:48Speaker 1: into the bottom line. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. You know, obviously,
- 1:40:56Speaker 1: sitting in the tree that long is not anyone's favorite thing.
- 1:41:00Speaker 1: Maybe it maybe it's Mark's favorite thing. I admire it.
- 1:41:04Speaker 1: I admire it. Man, sitting in a tree like that
- 1:41:06Speaker 1: for that long, it's tough. I think it comes with
- 1:41:10Speaker 1: age to the ability to not necessarily the ability, but
- 1:41:13Speaker 1: just the just the downright appreciation of it. It only
- 1:41:18Speaker 1: comes with age of sitting there for a long time
- 1:41:23Speaker 1: just smelling the roses. It only comes with with a
- 1:41:26Speaker 1: long you know you're never gonna meet at five year old.
- 1:41:30Speaker 1: It's like, oh, yeah, I disagree, you do, yeah, yeah,
- 1:41:33Speaker 1: I disagree to alright, eighteen whatever the cut off data
- 1:41:37Speaker 1: cut off ages. Yeah, there's there is an age. I
- 1:41:40Speaker 1: just think, if you tore up with it enough, you'll
- 1:41:43Speaker 1: sit all that. If you love it enough, you'll do it.
- 1:41:45Speaker 1: So there's like, so you'll sit all day, but will
- 1:41:48Speaker 1: you enjoy it? That is different? Probably. I think that
- 1:41:51Speaker 1: even even the thirty one year old me, sometimes it's like, God,
- 1:41:55Speaker 1: why aren't they moving? Why isn't this happening? Exactly? And
- 1:41:57Speaker 1: I just think for me at forty now of it
- 1:42:00Speaker 1: just in the last few years sort of been like,
- 1:42:02Speaker 1: you know what, what else? What the else? Is actually better?
- 1:42:08Speaker 1: Yeah than just sitting here and why and waiting for
- 1:42:11Speaker 1: the next woodpecker to come by or the next chickadee
- 1:42:14Speaker 1: to come by or whatever. Yeah, it is a rare
- 1:42:17Speaker 1: opportunity to just slow down and embrace Oh it's not
- 1:42:21Speaker 1: existing thing. Yeah, it's easy to get caught up in
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: everything else. My brother hunts by himself. He's a few
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: years older me, so I don't know what the age part.
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: He hunts by himself, and he hunts by himself in
- 1:42:34Speaker 1: the mountains, bow hunting for elk. And he said that
- 1:42:38Speaker 1: every day it's part of his day to talk himself
- 1:42:42Speaker 1: out of going home mhm. Because he hates it, hates
- 1:42:48Speaker 1: it and has every day talk himself out of quitn
- 1:42:53Speaker 1: What is he hating the grind of it? Yeah? I
- 1:42:58Speaker 1: get that, but he likes in the elks so much.
- 1:43:02Speaker 1: In the end, it's worth it. But he says, every
- 1:43:04Speaker 1: day I gotta just be like, you can't just don't
- 1:43:06Speaker 1: let yourself. You can't go home. I don't give in.
- 1:43:11Speaker 1: Don't let yourself go home. I have moments like that
- 1:43:14Speaker 1: every day, doing these all day sets too. It's so
- 1:43:17Speaker 1: much of of hunting. The rut in particular is like
- 1:43:20Speaker 1: is mental. It's mental toughness. So every year leading is
- 1:43:23Speaker 1: the point I have like a little self pep talk.
- 1:43:26Speaker 1: It is all about mentally being in it. Are you
- 1:43:29Speaker 1: gonna grind it out? Are you going to simply make
- 1:43:31Speaker 1: the decision that no matter what goes wrong, no matter
- 1:43:33Speaker 1: how tired you are every morning, every morning you wake
- 1:43:35Speaker 1: up at four or four or thirty or whatever, He's like, jeez,
- 1:43:38Speaker 1: all I wanna do is hit snooze and keep sleeping.
- 1:43:41Speaker 1: But are you going to dedicate yourself to say no,
- 1:43:44Speaker 1: I'm not going to give into that. You're gonna go
- 1:43:47Speaker 1: out there, You're gonna do what you know you need
- 1:43:49Speaker 1: to do. You're in a tough adout you're in a
- 1:43:51Speaker 1: you know, it's just every single year when I look
- 1:43:54Speaker 1: at the rut, we kind of call the white tail
- 1:43:56Speaker 1: Worls kind of the rut marathon, because there's like two
- 1:43:58Speaker 1: to three weeks where everyone who really loves of stuff,
- 1:44:00Speaker 1: he's using all the vacation time or whatever. I'm sitting
- 1:44:02Speaker 1: in the tree all day for two weeks straight or whatever.
- 1:44:05Speaker 1: And that definitely wears on you mentally and physically, and um,
- 1:44:10Speaker 1: and there's something to be said about coming out of that,
- 1:44:13Speaker 1: and you can look back and it is it's not
- 1:44:15Speaker 1: like climbing a mountain physically, it's not that kind of
- 1:44:17Speaker 1: physical challenge, but it's a mental challenge. And that I
- 1:44:20Speaker 1: was telling Lauren today, like, as long as I come
- 1:44:23Speaker 1: out of Hunt like this, knowing that I gave it
- 1:44:25Speaker 1: everything I could, Like I didn't leave anything on the field,
- 1:44:28Speaker 1: or I left it on the field, I'm not I'm
- 1:44:30Speaker 1: not in any way sports sports, sport ball, analogy forest you, Um,
- 1:44:34Speaker 1: you don't cut any corners. If if as long as
- 1:44:37Speaker 1: I can know that in my head, I can drive
- 1:44:39Speaker 1: home tonight or tomorrow morning feel okay about the song.
- 1:44:42Speaker 1: I think that one of the things that gives people
- 1:44:44Speaker 1: discipline in all aspects. This isn't just hunting advice. But
- 1:44:48Speaker 1: one of the things that I've starting to think gives
- 1:44:51Speaker 1: people discipline is it comes as much from it comes
- 1:44:55Speaker 1: as much from self hatred and self loathing as it
- 1:44:59Speaker 1: does any kind of of for something in particular, because
- 1:45:04Speaker 1: what you wounded, what you oftentimes wind up getting driven by,
- 1:45:07Speaker 1: is hatred for the version of yourself that would quit.
- 1:45:12Speaker 1: So it's not that you love the woodpeckers and chicken
- 1:45:14Speaker 1: ea so much, and you do. I'm sure everyone does,
- 1:45:18Speaker 1: or you know, anyone that gets into this game does,
- 1:45:23Speaker 1: but it winds up being that you are like, I
- 1:45:26Speaker 1: recognize that the smart thing to do would be be
- 1:45:30Speaker 1: able to sit here all day or stay out overnight
- 1:45:34Speaker 1: right now, or like sit up on this hill and
- 1:45:36Speaker 1: keep glassing, or you name it, take one more cast right,
- 1:45:43Speaker 1: go over the next hill and do one more shot gobble.
- 1:45:45Speaker 1: You're like, I recognize that that's the way to be
- 1:45:47Speaker 1: successful at this thing that I care about, And I
- 1:45:50Speaker 1: hate myself for wanting to do otherwise other than what
- 1:45:57Speaker 1: I recognized to be the best thing. And you're motivated
- 1:46:01Speaker 1: by You're you're motivated by that as much as you
- 1:46:03Speaker 1: are by uh, the positive end of things. I hear
- 1:46:10Speaker 1: this from a lot of people. I have it, and
- 1:46:12Speaker 1: my brother has it. Yeah, even like writing a book,
- 1:46:16Speaker 1: you know, like I I hate the guy inside of
- 1:46:19Speaker 1: me that wouldn't finish this. To Yanny's point earlier about
- 1:46:23Speaker 1: how this might change with age, have you seen that
- 1:46:26Speaker 1: change with age? Do you feel that way less than
- 1:46:28Speaker 1: you used to or is it still just just as much.
- 1:46:31Speaker 1: It's only different now because I recognize it more. I
- 1:46:35Speaker 1: used to just be like driven to do some things,
- 1:46:37Speaker 1: but I didn't really think about it very much, you know,
- 1:46:41Speaker 1: Like here, here's here's an example. Uh, when I was
- 1:46:45Speaker 1: brought up. My mother still lives in the house I
- 1:46:47Speaker 1: was brought up in, and my room was on the
- 1:46:49Speaker 1: second floor of a house and that overlook the lake,
- 1:46:52Speaker 1: and there was these large oaks still are large um
- 1:46:57Speaker 1: oaks in the backyard between my bedroom window in the lake.
- 1:47:03Speaker 1: And I knew my mornings that we were supposed to
- 1:47:05Speaker 1: go bolt wake up and go bowl hunting early in
- 1:47:07Speaker 1: the morning. Um, I knew that it feels super rain
- 1:47:10Speaker 1: and rainy and super wendy. We probably wouldn't go. And
- 1:47:13Speaker 1: I would wake up and I would look out and
- 1:47:17Speaker 1: would hope to see tons of rain and the limbs
- 1:47:22Speaker 1: just going nuts because it meant we didn't have to go,
- 1:47:25Speaker 1: And how guilty I would feel for hoping to see that. Yeah,
- 1:47:33Speaker 1: this is the guilt, ship man. The self loathing and
- 1:47:36Speaker 1: the guilt is a powerful, powerful force in life for me. Yeah,
- 1:47:44Speaker 1: that's really interesting. And Quentin hunting or quit and fishing
- 1:47:49Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. There. Day I took my daughter,
- 1:47:51Speaker 1: my five year old daughter, We're all duck hunt and
- 1:47:53Speaker 1: she's crying. She's laying inner waiters on the bank of
- 1:47:58Speaker 1: a pond, crying. And there was a real part of
- 1:48:05Speaker 1: me that like that. There's a real part of me
- 1:48:08Speaker 1: that wanted to push against that very heavily. And I
- 1:48:12Speaker 1: let her, made her do that for quite a while,
- 1:48:16Speaker 1: because in the end, when she's my age, I think
- 1:48:22Speaker 1: that's just gonna do her a lot more. That's gonna
- 1:48:25Speaker 1: do a lot more for her than the other than
- 1:48:28Speaker 1: anything else you could have done. Not I don't want
- 1:48:32Speaker 1: to be sound statistic, and it probably does no I
- 1:48:35Speaker 1: understand her getting She's definitely gonna love duck hunt. You
- 1:48:40Speaker 1: know what, I spent most of my childhood cryings. My
- 1:48:43Speaker 1: feet were cold, man, Not most of it but not
- 1:48:45Speaker 1: just I don't want exaggerate. I spent a lot of
- 1:48:47Speaker 1: days crying because I was cold to no one caring. No, man,
- 1:48:53Speaker 1: I wonder about that too those days too, huh. But
- 1:48:56Speaker 1: I look back on it now and I go, why
- 1:48:58Speaker 1: did I become a hunter? Because I was yelled at
- 1:49:01Speaker 1: for my nose running and sniffling my nose and I
- 1:49:05Speaker 1: was cold. I was yelled at for this, that and
- 1:49:07Speaker 1: the other, and it was just something inside of me
- 1:49:09Speaker 1: that just like, like, no matter how much that was shitty,
- 1:49:13Speaker 1: there was some other part, the chicken eas and the
- 1:49:16Speaker 1: woodpeckers that I loved, and it kept me out there.
- 1:49:20Speaker 1: But I feel like I've heard just as many stories
- 1:49:23Speaker 1: now because I pay attention to it about raising kids
- 1:49:26Speaker 1: in the outdoors and the kids are like fuck that.
- 1:49:31Speaker 1: I just got pushed and pushed and pushed, and I'm
- 1:49:34Speaker 1: not really into hunting. I think you got to weed
- 1:49:38Speaker 1: them out. Those are the ones that gotta be weeded out.
- 1:49:40Speaker 1: Maybe Rich you got any final thoughts? Um, Yeah, I do. Well,
- 1:49:48Speaker 1: it's more of a question. I had a bunch and
- 1:49:50Speaker 1: then I kind of got that was a good little comment. Man.
- 1:49:52Speaker 1: I got kind of caught up in it. Um, One
- 1:49:55Speaker 1: of the questions that I had earlier was like, do
- 1:49:59Speaker 1: you think I don't know if mastery is the white word,
- 1:50:02Speaker 1: but when you mark when you were saying that, like
- 1:50:04Speaker 1: you got all these ideas about like what to do
- 1:50:06Speaker 1: next and the next hunt, and you're like a really
- 1:50:09Speaker 1: good white tail hunter, do you, like, do you feel
- 1:50:13Speaker 1: like you'll ever get to a point where you like
- 1:50:17Speaker 1: are mastering this kind of hunting? And I like that
- 1:50:21Speaker 1: can't that's not like, you know, there's there's so many
- 1:50:24Speaker 1: variables when it comes to animals that it's like that's
- 1:50:26Speaker 1: not really like a fair word. But do you think
- 1:50:28Speaker 1: you'll get to the point where you just like have
- 1:50:30Speaker 1: it just like you'll know where something's gonna be when?
- 1:50:32Speaker 1: Or I think that anyone who is really really good
- 1:50:37Speaker 1: at white tail hunting will always believe that they have
- 1:50:40Speaker 1: not yet mastered it, because I think that's a good answer, dude.
- 1:50:45Speaker 1: I think that the I think you're constantly learning it
- 1:50:49Speaker 1: isn't always evolving. I keep saying chess match, but it is.
- 1:50:53Speaker 1: There's so many new lessons learned I get every single year.
- 1:50:57Speaker 1: I mean, certainly people achieve levels of consistent quote unquote
- 1:51:02Speaker 1: success that are on a different level than a lot
- 1:51:05Speaker 1: of people. Um, but there's always more and that's the
- 1:51:09Speaker 1: fun of it. That's why I think that we keep
- 1:51:11Speaker 1: coming back to your in your near out never it's
- 1:51:15Speaker 1: never the same. I love that. Yeah, you're nineteen. More
- 1:51:22Speaker 1: things you wanted to bring up? No, uh no, oh,
- 1:51:27Speaker 1: the age thing about sitting in a tree, I would
- 1:51:30Speaker 1: say that I did have a thought today or past
- 1:51:33Speaker 1: couple of days that if the pressure of filming and
- 1:51:35Speaker 1: not screwing up a hunt because of the filming presence,
- 1:51:43Speaker 1: Like if if I was just sitting in a tree
- 1:51:45Speaker 1: for twelve hours, I think I'd be into it, Like
- 1:51:48Speaker 1: I wouldn't be bombed distressed. You'd like it, I'd like it.
- 1:51:53Speaker 1: Hold you, will you take me up on the hunt invitation?
- 1:51:58Speaker 1: Which at your place? Yeah? Definitely, dude, definitely. All right.
- 1:52:04Speaker 1: I have a new freezer that I don't have anything
- 1:52:06Speaker 1: that's empty. Alright, I have a whole fridge that has
- 1:52:08Speaker 1: nothing in it. Then you gotta make a trip up
- 1:52:11Speaker 1: to Michigan. I'll do it. I'll do it. Let's do it, Seth.
- 1:52:16Speaker 1: Have you said anything yet? Yeah? Early, okay? Um, I
- 1:52:21Speaker 1: shot my first bucket twelve o'clock noon, and I just
- 1:52:25Speaker 1: remember not wanting to be there. And I was twelve
- 1:52:29Speaker 1: years old, but now what time? And you have been
- 1:52:33Speaker 1: up there since, David, Yes, since it was it was
- 1:52:35Speaker 1: an all day sit. So you were sitting till noon
- 1:52:37Speaker 1: at twelve years of age because my dad was like,
- 1:52:41Speaker 1: you're sitting all day and and that was the last,
- 1:52:46Speaker 1: very last day of the rifle season and you were
- 1:52:49Speaker 1: a hunter trapper. Yeah, I could. I love sitting all
- 1:52:52Speaker 1: day now seven. Yeah, so you got it's a little
- 1:52:59Speaker 1: a little tough to do, like first week of the season.
- 1:53:02Speaker 1: I mean, I don't I don't see. So you you
- 1:53:08Speaker 1: came from school hard knockers. Yeah, you like it. I
- 1:53:13Speaker 1: love it. You're glad now, I'm glad. Now I'd do
- 1:53:16Speaker 1: the same with my kids if I ever do that.
- 1:53:19Speaker 1: That's what That's what you wind up struggling with, man,
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: because there was so much stuff that I hate it
- 1:53:24Speaker 1: about my dad. And the older I get, the more
- 1:53:26Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I kind of see now where he
- 1:53:28Speaker 1: was coming from, A kind of see where he's coming from.
- 1:53:31Speaker 1: And one of the biggest things he had is he
- 1:53:34Speaker 1: was not interested in being friends with his kids. And
- 1:53:39Speaker 1: I used to be just baffled by that. And now
- 1:53:42Speaker 1: I'm like, I kind of see what you're getting at.
- 1:53:46Speaker 1: It's kind of see because he's dead anyway. Yeah, he's like,
- 1:53:52Speaker 1: I'm gonna die. I think you're doing to be good
- 1:53:54Speaker 1: friends of me, couple be friends with your friends. That's yeah, Mark,
- 1:54:00Speaker 1: any concluders, Um, you know, I'm lacking any kind of
- 1:54:07Speaker 1: terribly poignant concluder today except for I'm really glad you
- 1:54:10Speaker 1: guys got to come up here and do this when
- 1:54:12Speaker 1: it was fun to get to share my passion with
- 1:54:14Speaker 1: you guys a little bit um and you know, teach
- 1:54:17Speaker 1: you guys about sund control, which I appreciate the effort,
- 1:54:23Speaker 1: but it was it was subpar. Still, I saw you
- 1:54:28Speaker 1: saw some major I saw some major infractions. Yeah, well,
- 1:54:31Speaker 1: he's okay, can we bring this up next time we
- 1:54:34Speaker 1: talk major infractions? You pay for him, and you pay
- 1:54:37Speaker 1: for him, and Mark is Mark has a lot of
- 1:54:41Speaker 1: things he does, and Mark admits I don't know, uh
- 1:54:46Speaker 1: what they all work. But if I do all of
- 1:54:49Speaker 1: them and it makes a ten percent chance, I'll just
- 1:54:54Speaker 1: keep doing them all. Yeah, that's that's a big enough Yeah, exactly,
- 1:54:58Speaker 1: that's enough help. I was skeptical at the beginning of
- 1:55:01Speaker 1: the week. Now after seeing all these deer hit that wall.
- 1:55:05Speaker 1: I'm like, I get it, dude. Then we had I
- 1:55:09Speaker 1: was going to okay. So we had a number of
- 1:55:12Speaker 1: different incidents where we got winded, even though I was
- 1:55:15Speaker 1: doing a lot of things that I try to do.
- 1:55:17Speaker 1: But it was definitely a compromise scent control regimen, just
- 1:55:22Speaker 1: it wasn't perfect given all the different things going on.
- 1:55:25Speaker 1: Twice as much smell, twice as much smell. Um, I'm
- 1:55:29Speaker 1: just a really smelly guy. I think that was it.
- 1:55:31Speaker 1: Lauren might be a smelly guy wears very loud jackets.
- 1:55:35Speaker 1: Uh no, but you're not gonna get away with with
- 1:55:40Speaker 1: your sent all the time. But just last week I
- 1:55:44Speaker 1: had a five and a half year buck go down
- 1:55:46Speaker 1: wind of me and not hit a wall at all.
- 1:55:48Speaker 1: So sometimes taking all of these precautions does help. Um,
- 1:55:53Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it does, but I'm willing to
- 1:55:55Speaker 1: do it all the time to get those few times
- 1:55:57Speaker 1: where it does. I'm all for it, dude. Nothing you're doing,
- 1:56:04Speaker 1: there's nothing you're doing about saying control that. That was
- 1:56:07Speaker 1: like something I hadn't heard of or I mean it's
- 1:56:10Speaker 1: all like pretty much industry not industry standard, but like
- 1:56:13Speaker 1: you don't have like what you don't have weird like
- 1:56:17Speaker 1: magical things you think. No, I mean you have things
- 1:56:21Speaker 1: that like are like very practical things you don't have, Like, um,
- 1:56:24Speaker 1: I find that if I, you know, eat celery three
- 1:56:28Speaker 1: days before and then do a cleanse, you know, it's
- 1:56:31Speaker 1: just good stuff. Like it's very similar to what fur
- 1:56:34Speaker 1: trappers would do fox trappers. I was surprised, though, no
- 1:56:38Speaker 1: sense of any sort you're saying like a cover cent
- 1:56:42Speaker 1: or yeah or attract incent. No. It's illegal though now
- 1:56:46Speaker 1: in Michigan to use any kind of natural um yearine
- 1:56:49Speaker 1: based center or anything. So that's I never used them before.
- 1:56:53Speaker 1: But really you can't buy what you can. You can
- 1:56:59Speaker 1: you can, and I think still can't use it because
- 1:57:03Speaker 1: of chronic wasting disease. Really can I get my concluding thought?
- 1:57:09Speaker 1: My concluding thought is if one wanted to go find
- 1:57:15Speaker 1: all kinds of um awesome merchandise, mediator podcast stuff, soon
- 1:57:24Speaker 1: to be wired to hunt merchandise, all kinds of T shirts, Um,
- 1:57:28Speaker 1: your blout shirt. We got some amazing other new stuff
- 1:57:31Speaker 1: coming out, and then a uh and if you've been
- 1:57:33Speaker 1: watching the new episodes of the show on Netflix and
- 1:57:37Speaker 1: you see like cool ship there first light apparel. We
- 1:57:43Speaker 1: have all this stuff for sale. Um, go to the
- 1:57:46Speaker 1: meater dot com and going to the store and check
- 1:57:48Speaker 1: it out. That's my first concluder. Second concluded was I
- 1:57:51Speaker 1: thought that was pretty good deep fried turkey, very good
- 1:57:54Speaker 1: deep fried turkey, deep fried turkey nuggets. Where's that turkey from?
- 1:58:02Speaker 1: He's wild turkey There two rests, two lobes like that man,
- 1:58:08Speaker 1: two lobes. Deep fried turkey chunks, hard to beat, sweet
- 1:58:15Speaker 1: sweet chili sauce, birthday Birthday dinner A hundred and seventy.
- 1:58:25Speaker 1: That's why you can make that turkey calls huhdy halfa
- 1:58:31Speaker 1: to ninety six halfway. That's a rough way to position
- 1:58:39Speaker 1: oldest guy in the room. That's it. Does that turkey
- 1:58:44Speaker 1: purer again? I've got my hair. Just give me one
- 1:58:47Speaker 1: more turkey purer. I love that ship. Thanks for asking,
- 1:59:00Speaker 1: so you never get to me, big, big room of people. UM.
- 1:59:04Speaker 1: I was thinking, if you wanted to become better white
- 1:59:07Speaker 1: tele deer hunter, you should go check out Wired to
- 1:59:10Speaker 1: Hunt because anything anything you ever want to know about
- 1:59:14Speaker 1: white tales and more, it's all there. That's why I
- 1:59:18Speaker 1: wanted to bring I meant to bring that up. I'm
- 1:59:20Speaker 1: glad you brought that up because Mark talks about this
- 1:59:22Speaker 1: ship all the time. Yes, and all that stuff now
- 1:59:27Speaker 1: is actually on the meat either dot com website though, Yanni.
- 1:59:31Speaker 1: So you go to the media dot com and you're
- 1:59:33Speaker 1: see all my new content with the word Hunt podcast
- 1:59:36Speaker 1: is available and where you find pod The word on
- 1:59:38Speaker 1: podcast is available anywhere you find podcasts. My video series
- 1:59:41Speaker 1: is on the website and on our YouTube channel. Regular
- 1:59:44Speaker 1: blog posts and the Wired Hunt merchandise is not soon
- 1:59:48Speaker 1: to be available on the store. It is actually on
- 1:59:50Speaker 1: the store as of right now. It is. So you
- 1:59:53Speaker 1: got Wired Hun hats, word on t shirts and there'll
- 1:59:57Speaker 1: be some new things come down the coome. I don't
- 1:59:59Speaker 1: have one of those. It's where you've never given me one.
- 2:00:02Speaker 1: I didn't Well, I don't know you'd be like, I
- 2:00:04Speaker 1: feel like you should present one to me. What the hell? Mark,
- 2:00:08Speaker 1: what on word to Hunt podcast? What would you say? Like,
- 2:00:11Speaker 1: what percent of the time you guys talking about like
- 2:00:13Speaker 1: white tail stuff? Oh, nineties seven percent? Three? Like one
- 2:00:19Speaker 1: one episode of a year, I'll go on an elkhon
- 2:00:21Speaker 1: or something one episode a year. We'll talk turkeys, um
- 2:00:25Speaker 1: no merrill, marrit soul advice. Well, there's little bits of
- 2:00:28Speaker 1: marital advice and family advice sprinkled within each episode. Usually
- 2:00:32Speaker 1: give me a piece of marital advice. Oh gosh, I'll
- 2:00:36Speaker 1: only been married. Uh uh advice to every one. Know
- 2:00:42Speaker 1: you're I got married chosen thirteen, so just over five years.
- 2:00:44Speaker 1: Give me, yeah, my best piece of marriage rate. All right,
- 2:00:48Speaker 1: and I stole this from someone else, but it is
- 2:00:51Speaker 1: uh piece before justice. You still have, Randy Newberg. Yeah,
- 2:00:54Speaker 1: I told you I stole it from someone. But that's
- 2:00:57Speaker 1: the best advice I avergant. I stole my piece from
- 2:00:59Speaker 1: be honest, what's that. It's a good one. My best
- 2:01:01Speaker 1: piece of merril advice. Okay, when you're fighting with the
- 2:01:05Speaker 1: mrs or the early mister, Okay, let's say you're in
- 2:01:09Speaker 1: the fight. Let's say you're like you're fighting over give
- 2:01:12Speaker 1: me something. People fight about whether you how to load
- 2:01:15Speaker 1: the dishwasher. Who fights about that, Steve? Yeah, well, not
- 2:01:21Speaker 1: how to load it, but whether it should be loaded
- 2:01:22Speaker 1: at all. There's a book about marriage. It's called marriage.
- 2:01:25Speaker 1: It's it's got a name. It's like it's about it's
- 2:01:27Speaker 1: a plemt because it's like it's about marriage. It's marriage
- 2:01:30Speaker 1: worth it. And there's a line in the book where
- 2:01:32Speaker 1: the author says, marriage is an institution that makes it
- 2:01:36Speaker 1: so you cannot load the dishwasher in the way that
- 2:01:38Speaker 1: makes the most sense to you. The cynical right. However, Okay,
- 2:01:45Speaker 1: let's say you're fighting about, uh, the dishwasher. Here's another
- 2:01:52Speaker 1: example of the color of the paint that you're gonna
- 2:01:55Speaker 1: put in the newly remold bathroom. Yeah, fighting about the
- 2:01:59Speaker 1: color paint in the bathroom because you got you've always
- 2:02:02Speaker 1: pictured in your head and it's just gonna like that white.
- 2:02:04Speaker 1: Everybody paints your bathroom white. And maybe it's not necessarily
- 2:02:06Speaker 1: a fight, but it's like a heated discussion, and it's
- 2:02:10Speaker 1: getting towards being a fight just because someone might be tired,
- 2:02:14Speaker 1: someone else might be thinking about hunting. You are you
- 2:02:18Speaker 1: feeling to get the paint and you're kind of sitting
- 2:02:24Speaker 1: there like, I think it should be white? And because
- 2:02:28Speaker 1: of managing your relationship, do you want to give the
- 2:02:33Speaker 1: advice because you're the one who gave it to me? No,
- 2:02:35Speaker 1: I I just know I just want to co host
- 2:02:38Speaker 1: this place. He's the color comments. So you're like it
- 2:02:41Speaker 1: should be white, you know, because that's what I that's
- 2:02:43Speaker 1: what I got in my head is white and and um,
- 2:02:46Speaker 1: your partner is so I was thinking to be blue,
- 2:02:49Speaker 1: and then pretty soon you're like you're in it and
- 2:02:53Speaker 1: you're fighting about it. Your honestest thing is you then
- 2:02:58Speaker 1: need to say your break to fight for a second,
- 2:03:03Speaker 1: and you rate on a one to ten, not how
- 2:03:07Speaker 1: much you care to win, but you rate on one
- 2:03:10Speaker 1: to ten how much the issue actually matters to you?
- 2:03:14Speaker 1: And is this a verbal like you say to each other, Hey,
- 2:03:18Speaker 1: time out, how much does this actually matter to you?
- 2:03:21Speaker 1: Your wife? Yeah, and you say how much matter to you?
- 2:03:24Speaker 1: You'd be like, you know, so you just throw the
- 2:03:27Speaker 1: number out before you even asked. You just say that's
- 2:03:31Speaker 1: to be my wife right now. We've been using this
- 2:03:34Speaker 1: a great effect, and I don't need to say. I'll
- 2:03:36Speaker 1: just say like this is this is a seven for
- 2:03:38Speaker 1: me man, And she's like, this is a seven for you.
- 2:03:42Speaker 1: This is like a three for me. That means you win,
- 2:03:48Speaker 1: and you wind up because I wind up being in
- 2:03:51Speaker 1: these I wind up being in these fights with my
- 2:03:53Speaker 1: wife about things that once I stop and think about it,
- 2:03:58Speaker 1: it's I'm fighting about things that are twos and threes
- 2:04:01Speaker 1: because you just get so wrapped up and like that,
- 2:04:03Speaker 1: you get so wrapped up just like winning battles very
- 2:04:08Speaker 1: interesting and I have in their day, like there's this
- 2:04:11Speaker 1: there's this rug that doesn't oh it doesn't Like every
- 2:04:16Speaker 1: kid that runs through the house gets laid up by
- 2:04:18Speaker 1: this trip and on this ruck this like skidder across
- 2:04:21Speaker 1: the floor and smashed into the wall. And one day
- 2:04:23Speaker 1: like roll the rug up. My wife's like into the ruck,
- 2:04:25Speaker 1: like I got rugs gone, and she wants the ruck back,
- 2:04:29Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, this is like a way I'm
- 2:04:32Speaker 1: going inspired to say, this is the seven or eight.
- 2:04:34Speaker 1: This is a seven or eight on me. And she's like,
- 2:04:38Speaker 1: it's like a one. I'm annoyed that you took my rug,
- 2:04:41Speaker 1: But really, when I think about it, I really don't.
- 2:04:43Speaker 1: It's a one. I don't know why I'm arguing with you, Bob.
- 2:04:45Speaker 1: If you hate the rock, you hate the rug. Cool. Wow,
- 2:04:49Speaker 1: that seems like a life good marriage advice. Man, it's
- 2:04:52Speaker 1: quite simple. I like that a lot. Noted. It's gonna
- 2:04:58Speaker 1: get me another five more years of marriage? Can I
- 2:05:00Speaker 1: give you one more? Um, When there's like a large
- 2:05:07Speaker 1: decision that that needs to be made, and the decision
- 2:05:10Speaker 1: is made of a big great bundling of interests, say
- 2:05:14Speaker 1: buying a house. I have found my wife and I
- 2:05:17Speaker 1: have found that it works really good. If I say,
- 2:05:21Speaker 1: here's the parts of this that I care about. I
- 2:05:26Speaker 1: care about this element of this, and I care about
- 2:05:29Speaker 1: this element of this. You run the project. Everything that
- 2:05:36Speaker 1: I'm not mentioning right now is you. But do not
- 2:05:39Speaker 1: screw me on these two things. And then you run
- 2:05:43Speaker 1: and go and assigning ownership of something and in clarifying like,
- 2:05:49Speaker 1: but you own it. But here's the deal. And this
- 2:05:55Speaker 1: is an instance where the other person wants as much
- 2:05:58Speaker 1: ownership as possible. M hmm, yeah, and you don't want
- 2:06:01Speaker 1: to relinquish it because you don't want to get screwed
- 2:06:03Speaker 1: on a couple of points. Clarify the points, and then
- 2:06:06Speaker 1: give the person autonomy to go do what they needed
- 2:06:08Speaker 1: to do. It's a big old vacation. Vacation vacage would
- 2:06:13Speaker 1: be like, listen, man, I want to be able to spearfish.
- 2:06:19Speaker 1: That's all. That's all. That's all I need to have.
- 2:06:22Speaker 1: That's like relatively good access to some spear fishing. Other
- 2:06:26Speaker 1: than that, I'm out Google Walt Disney World slash to
- 2:06:33Speaker 1: the two come together. That's good stuff. Yeah, guy, you've
- 2:06:39Speaker 1: been married a long time twenty three years, give me
- 2:06:44Speaker 1: a hot marriage advice. Shut up and listen. Married to
- 2:06:53Speaker 1: the best woman on the planet, and she's put up
- 2:06:55Speaker 1: with a lot for me, but a lover to death.
- 2:06:59Speaker 1: I'm sure she trade me in, but I wouldn't trade
- 2:07:01Speaker 1: her for nothing. And uh, yes, marriage just work. It's
- 2:07:07Speaker 1: hard work. It's hard work. But when you truly work
- 2:07:11Speaker 1: at it. You know. We have kids, but we love
- 2:07:15Speaker 1: our kids to death. But uh, we're really growing to
- 2:07:18Speaker 1: love each other too. No, women are awesome, awesome, you
- 2:07:25Speaker 1: know my sorry, I don't mean to jump on the
- 2:07:29Speaker 1: rest of your advice. That's just it. When before my
- 2:07:34Speaker 1: wife and I got married, she had I can't remember,
- 2:07:36Speaker 1: I guess it's a bridle shower or something like that.
- 2:07:39Speaker 1: And um, everyone was asked to write down there like
- 2:07:42Speaker 1: their best piece of advice, what marriage advice or something
- 2:07:45Speaker 1: on a note and you put the notes in the thing.
- 2:07:47Speaker 1: And then after we got married, she got to open
- 2:07:49Speaker 1: up the box and read everybody's marital advice. And I
- 2:07:54Speaker 1: think I either saw some er she showed me some
- 2:07:56Speaker 1: of them, and she showed me what her grandma had
- 2:07:59Speaker 1: wrote to her. And at the time when her grandmar
- 2:08:01Speaker 1: wrote was it was very simple. It was just two words,
- 2:08:04Speaker 1: three words um, And I thought, oh, like that was
- 2:08:07Speaker 1: like the laziest answer, and at the that's all I thought,
- 2:08:10Speaker 1: But it was like I was just like a really
- 2:08:11Speaker 1: lazy answer. And then my wife though, took that that
- 2:08:15Speaker 1: little post and note and she put it on the
- 2:08:17Speaker 1: picture of her grandma Grandpa and it's still in her bathroom,
- 2:08:22Speaker 1: like studying on the counter. And now years later, I
- 2:08:24Speaker 1: see it, like every time I happened to be in there,
- 2:08:26Speaker 1: I see it, and I think about it a little
- 2:08:28Speaker 1: bit more each time. And now when I look at
- 2:08:30Speaker 1: and I think about it, and I think about maybe
- 2:08:31Speaker 1: what she meant by this three words, it's very poignant
- 2:08:35Speaker 1: and it's it just simply her very best marital advice
- 2:08:39Speaker 1: was simply giant box, No that would be good though.
- 2:08:47Speaker 1: It was simply love each other. Yeah, just love each
- 2:08:53Speaker 1: other and all that goes into that. So I see that,
- 2:08:55Speaker 1: Nollie every day, and it just it's kind of like, yeah, yeah,
- 2:09:00Speaker 1: if you're thinking about that with all the different decisions
- 2:09:02Speaker 1: you make, that is kind of the key, like just
- 2:09:06Speaker 1: to remind yourself too. You know what, uh, you know
- 2:09:09Speaker 1: what I did. This is marriage advice. You know what
- 2:09:11Speaker 1: I did. When my kids are born, for all three
- 2:09:14Speaker 1: of them, as I UH wrote them a big long
- 2:09:20Speaker 1: letter that explains our lives, where I think they were conceived,
- 2:09:27Speaker 1: what the circumstances, what our lives look like, what are
- 2:09:32Speaker 1: my sort of apprehensions about them coming into the world,
- 2:09:35Speaker 1: what are my hopes and fears for them, what's going
- 2:09:38Speaker 1: on in general, what their parents were like. And then
- 2:09:42Speaker 1: I uh put my own address on them. And then
- 2:09:47Speaker 1: on the day they were born, I dropped him so
- 2:09:49Speaker 1: they would get postmarked, and then I took him in
- 2:09:52Speaker 1: back and sealed them in my pro I think, bad,
- 2:10:00Speaker 1: you sealed them, and I'll give them to him when
- 2:10:02Speaker 1: they get married. Probably that's cool. That's amazing, big long letters.
- 2:10:08Speaker 1: I I I almost would dread seeing what's in the
- 2:10:14Speaker 1: letter from eight years ago. Well, that's how I was
- 2:10:16Speaker 1: gonna say that. Do you regret anything that you wrote
- 2:10:18Speaker 1: in these letters? Or I don't want to know because
- 2:10:21Speaker 1: I don't want to chicken out and not give it
- 2:10:22Speaker 1: to him because they're very telling. It would be a
- 2:10:25Speaker 1: lot better if I was dead. They're very telling, interesting
- 2:10:30Speaker 1: like I would want. It would be smart to read
- 2:10:32Speaker 1: it by yourself. Where did you get this idea? This
- 2:10:34Speaker 1: just came to you or no, I don't think I
- 2:10:37Speaker 1: made it up. Man, I can't remember, but I don't
- 2:10:39Speaker 1: think I made it up. I feel like if I
- 2:10:40Speaker 1: made it up, I'd be pretty proud of having made
- 2:10:42Speaker 1: it up. And I remember making it up. It's good.
- 2:10:46Speaker 1: I don't know why you've never chicken it out about it.
- 2:10:49Speaker 1: I'm not gonna, man, I got a lot of difference
- 2:10:50Speaker 1: between you and you eight years ago. It was so different. No,
- 2:10:53Speaker 1: because they're really like they're really really telling of what
- 2:10:58Speaker 1: who and what were eight years ago? Yeah, just like
- 2:11:01Speaker 1: stuff like around uh we we had two kids and
- 2:11:04Speaker 1: that was all we wanted at the time, and we
- 2:11:07Speaker 1: had a third and telling someone that story. I wouldn't
- 2:11:11Speaker 1: tell him that story when he's eight, Like what was
- 2:11:17Speaker 1: going on in our lives? What led us to the decision?
- 2:11:19Speaker 1: I don't know, just telling stuff. Thank your kids will
- 2:11:22Speaker 1: be smart enough to read it in the voice of
- 2:11:25Speaker 1: you as a late thirty year as the late thirty
- 2:11:28Speaker 1: year old, and not the sixty year old you'll be
- 2:11:31Speaker 1: when they read it. Yeah, I hope. So it feels
- 2:11:34Speaker 1: a good letter. They're pretty good letters. I don't doubt it.
- 2:11:38Speaker 1: Put a lot of effort in writing them name letters.
- 2:11:42Speaker 1: Is that it? That's it? Man, I got one more guy,
- 2:11:48Speaker 1: thanks man for making a fantastic hunting spot. Man. I
- 2:11:52Speaker 1: got to see a lot of deer uh activity and
- 2:11:57Speaker 1: and what am I trying to say? Things that they
- 2:12:01Speaker 1: do behavior behavior that in all my years in white
- 2:12:05Speaker 1: til hunt and I had never seen, yep, all kinds
- 2:12:09Speaker 1: of deer peeing on their tarsal glands and scrapes. I
- 2:12:15Speaker 1: didn't see you rubs happening, but no, yeah, I saw scrapes,
- 2:12:19Speaker 1: no rubs, the licking branch seeing multiple times you guys
- 2:12:23Speaker 1: heard a fight, you know. I got to see a
- 2:12:26Speaker 1: buck come up and rub its orbital gland on the
- 2:12:29Speaker 1: licking branch, work a scrape piste down his leg. A
- 2:12:33Speaker 1: couple of minutes later, maybe more than a couple minutes later,
- 2:12:36Speaker 1: another buck came, didn't do his orbital gland, but worked
- 2:12:41Speaker 1: a scrape piste down his leg, and I got two
- 2:12:44Speaker 1: cup minutes later watch a doe coming camp out on
- 2:12:46Speaker 1: that spot. Nice. That's seeing some dear type ship going on. Man. Grunting,
- 2:12:52Speaker 1: I bet you I heard maybe twenty grunts this week, fighting, grunting,
- 2:12:58Speaker 1: chasing squirrels every which one. Normally when you see, I
- 2:13:01Speaker 1: don't care if it is November ten. In Michigan, when
- 2:13:04Speaker 1: you see a deer running, you're like, oh, goddamn, no no,
- 2:13:08Speaker 1: but here you're like, oh, it must be a buck coming,
- 2:13:12Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's running from other It's really cool.
- 2:13:16Speaker 1: It's really cool, like the just the wildlife habitat work
- 2:13:19Speaker 1: here and watching it like bloom and take shape. Man,
- 2:13:23Speaker 1: we're just getting started, and I mean, it's been a
- 2:13:26Speaker 1: pleasure having you all here, and I would like to
- 2:13:28Speaker 1: know any and all. Thanks you guys. Think we might
- 2:13:30Speaker 1: be able to do to make things a better experience.
- 2:13:33Speaker 1: Cut more shooting lanes, Yeah that's yeah. Yeah, that's how
- 2:13:37Speaker 1: you get it killed, but you're kind of focused on
- 2:13:39Speaker 1: getting it alive. Yeah, don't don't worry. I'll be I'll
- 2:13:44Speaker 1: be trim and lanes here soon. Alright, everybody, thanks for
- 2:13:47Speaker 1: listening to