Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 579: 5 Hard-Earned Lessons for This Deer Hunting Season

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Ep. 579: 5 Hard-Earned Lessons for This Deer Hunting Season · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and today in the show, Tony Peterson and
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I are breaking down five hard earned white tail lessons
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: but the two of us were recently reminded of and
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: that we believe can help you become more successful this season.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: to you by First Light. And I'm back. I'm back
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: from whatever thing Tony has been saying I've been doing.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's been, uh, filming a fantasy
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: movie with Spencer, or collecting seashells or god knows what,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: but I'm back from it. And hunting season has kicked
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: off for me and my partner in crime, Tony. So
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: today we are back together and we're here to discuss
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: what we learned from our first hunts of the year.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: We've had some highs, we've had some lows, and we've
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: had a whole bunch of what i'd call learning opportunities
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: in between. And I think Tony, I think you'd agree
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that there's been some hard earned lessons here. Early on
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: like right out the gate that we can you know,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: as an individuals, but then I think also for everybody
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: else listening, I think we can all learn from some
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: of these things and take it through the rest of
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the Deer season. So we're gonna talk through our first
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: couple hunts of the year. You know, that would be
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: my early season hunt in Idaho with further and your
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: hunt Tony in Wisconsin, or your hunts I should say,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: with your daughters. Um, And then what I want to
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: do is as we use these stories, as we talk
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: through these stories, we're gonna highlight and break down maybe
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: four five, six major lessons that we can taking these
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that we can take from these hunts, and then you know,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: used throughout the rest of the year. So that's that's
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: my game plan, Tony. Uh, good plan, bad plan? Are
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you indifferent? Are you already bored? What do you think? No?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I think it's a good plan, man. I Uh. I'm
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: just continually amazed at how often I bump into something
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: out there that just teaches me a valuable lesson. And
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I think you and I have both gone through some
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: stuff already this season. That's that's worth sharing in this episode. Yeah,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that's uh. It's it's both depressing and encouraging that we
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: can You know, I've been hunting since I was three
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: or four. You've been hunting for gosh knows how long,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and we're still learning stuff or being reminded of stuff,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: or bumping up against something and saying, damn it, what
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: do we do now? You just never stop learning. So
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that's that's a good thing. I think. Oh I do.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I do too. I mean, I think you know. There's
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: one one reminder you get when you're when you create
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: content in this space, you know, doing the job that
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you and I do. It's like you hit March and
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: you're like, I don't know what to talk about. I
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: don't know what to write about. And then you hit
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: September and you're like, I have a million different ideas
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: I want to cover because you're out there living it
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and there's so many of those things that happened to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: you were like, man, you're just just such a valuable
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: lessons and in that encounter or that experience or that
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: blood trail or whatever, it's just this is this is
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a wild time year. I'm excited for this Mark. Yeah,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I agree. Hey, real quick, I just remember before we
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: get into these hunts. I do have to make a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: couple of plugs. Uh, first off season eleven of meat Eater,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the newest season, the brand new season of meat Eater
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: is going to be Oh gosh, I'm gonna get real
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: trouble here if I get the date wrong. So I
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: better get this date right. Um. The new season is
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: going to be launching, uh on October twenty six. Yes,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: October twenty six, the new season will be launching. But
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: here's the kicker. This is different than before. The new
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: season is only going to be available on the meat
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Eater website. It's gonna be free. You don't need a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: new account for anything, Like, you don't have to pay
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: for anything. You just need to be signed into the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Mediator website and then you can watch that new season
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: for free October. And in the weeks leading up to that,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be putting season seven, season eight, season nine,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: and season ten all on the website to watch. Two.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: So that's plug number one. If you want to see
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: some cool new Mediator stuff that's coming your way, to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com to miss anything on that one, Tony,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: you're you're on the same emails as a mean they
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: get that right. I think you nailed it, buddy. Okay,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: plug number two and this one I know pretty well
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: because I've been so involved in it. Uh my show
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Deer Country, my brand new whitetail show Deer Country. We
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: now have three. No, by the time you're listening to this,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: there will have been four episodes up on the meat
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Eater YouTube channel. So you've heard me mention the Washington
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: d C. Hunt. You've heard me mentioned the Arkansas back
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: country hunt. You last week hopefully saw me chase white
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: tails with a handheld decoy and the great planes. And
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: this week's episode, I went up to Maine to learn
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: how to track deer in the snow, um and learning
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: under the tutelage of how blood just like a legend
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: in that world. Uh, really really interesting hunt Like. There's
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of great learning opportunities in that one. So
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: highly recommend you check that stuff out. Tony. Pretend I'm
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: not here. You don't need to, you don't need to
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: butter me up, you don't need to fluff me. Can
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you give us your review so far off Dear Country?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Or what should people expect or be looking for if
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: they haven't watched it yet? I think they should check
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: check it out because it is not like any other
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: You're Hunting show out there, And I truly mean that that.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: The concept is great and it's just a different thing
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: than the industry has been delivering for a long long time.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So they should check it on. On that recommendation alone,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: there you go, I think, I think that's accurate, and uh,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I think it's worth watching. Like you said, it's different.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: It's not a bunch of big trophy bucks delivered on
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: a platter. It's all about new places, new styles of hunting,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and learning and uh that's what we try to hear
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: on the podcast too, So I'm proud of it. Well,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and the good thing about it too is you're right.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: It does highlight the reality of so many different hunting
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: situations based around white tails, and we tend to get
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: so myopic and almost like xenophobic over our own white
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: tail hunting, and we forget that there's this huge world
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: out there of people hunting all these different styles and
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: all these different places. And it's kind of nice to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: be reminded of that because if you consume a lot
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: of hunting media, you you tend to see hunts that
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: occur in the same places in the same style because
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: you know, usually they're filmed or whatever, and it's like
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: you kind of got to go to some of these
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: places to get an easy hunt on film, and that's
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: what happens over and over again. And this is I
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: would not say that, this is that. I would say
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: this is a different thing. Yeah, we don't need any
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: more hunts over a food plot in Iowa, do we Noh? Yeah, Okay,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: So speaking of that, then let's let's continue talking about
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: some different kind of stuff because the hunts that you
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and I are talking about today are not the kind
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: of thing that gets shown on TV either. Um, so
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: you want to kick it off, you you had a
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: lot of interesting stuff happened in your first couple of hunts.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Can you can you fill me in on what happened
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and what you learn from it? Should we start with
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: a good story? Yeah? Yeah, good story first, because because
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I know we're gonna we're gonna break bad here eventually
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: on this one. Uh yeah, you know. Was we go
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: over to Wisconsin a lot, and my my little girls
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: started hunting last year because there's no minimum major limit
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: over there, and you know, they were nine last year,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and my one daughter killed the dough and my other
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: daughter killed a dough in a little buck, and so,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: you know, my plan this year was to get him
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: over there every weekend I could that I was gonna
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: be home, and my one daughter, who hadn't killed a buck,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: she was up first. And so we had gone over
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: in the summer and put up some blinds and some
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: cameras and caught some trout and kind of made a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: made a couple of weekends out of it. And when
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: we went over there the friday before the opener, it
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: was hot, like I don't I don't know if you
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: dealt with this level of heat out and Idaho on
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: your hunts, but it was it was like humid hot,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: which is the worst you know when you're when you
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: go out in the morning and you're like, oh, it's
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you know, opening day of deer season, but it's like
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: sixty five degrees with like a hundred percent humidity. It
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: just feels it feels weird, you know, like is it
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: not not what you typically expect. But I knew from
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: running cameras, I knew we had a decent chance of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of running into a door or a buck. And she
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: was she was hunting anything that didn't have funds or
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: anything that didn't have spots, and we sat, you know,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: opening day, we sat you know, basically four hours in
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the morning, four hours in the evening, never saw a deer,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: which is really typical up there where we're hunting. And
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: then the following morning we got in super early because
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I think, I keep thinking it's more more important to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: let let our spots settle down, especially when I take
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: these girls out, because we have to go into a blind.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not like we're super mobile, so the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: spot the blind is in, I need to preserve that
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: movement around there as much as possible. And so they
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: get they get kind of pisted about it, but I've
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: been making them get up earlier and earlier and earlier,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and we get in there way before first light. And
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: you know, the second morning of the season, we did
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: that and just randomly looked up and here's this bike
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: buck walking in from like twenty yards out. And my
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: daughter that was with me is like really good at
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: rushing her shots, like you never know what's going to happen.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: And so our our deal is, you know, like I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: want you to aim at them and then you tell
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: me when you're ready. Then I'm going to take the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: safety off because there uses a crossbow and then you
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you choose your shot. So I'm kind of eyeball in
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the situation until they square up up in their broadside
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: or quartering away, and you know, it's kind of like
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: a little team effort that way, because if I didn't
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: do that, especially with this daughter, she'd probably shoot the
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: moment he stuck his nose. Always like to just get
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: it over. And so this buck walks into like twelve
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: yards and poses up up and I take that safety
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: off and I'm I'm like, I'm thinking, you know, she's
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: gonna take a little time or whatever. And I popped
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: that safety off, and that crossbow goes off like point
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: one seconds later, and all I hear is that bolt
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: slam into a tree and I just go, honey, you
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you have to take your time and aim. And she's like, Dad,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the crosshairs were right on its chest. It was perfect,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't think so I thought she
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: missed completely. So we have this little argument in the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: blind because she's like, I think we could go get
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: him right now. And when he ran off, you know,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I lost sight of him right away. But it's sounded
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: like he fell over. So I was like, maybe maybe
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I am wrong, Maybe she zipped it right through him.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: And so we gave him a half hour and got
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: up and as soon as we got out there, I
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: could see blood all over the brush, and so I
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: let her start blood trailing and he only made it
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe fifty yards, and she had hit him perfect.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: But it was like in my in my head with her,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: and if you met her, you'd be like, Okay, I
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: get I get his concern a little bit because she's
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: real squirrely, but she's just perfect, just lay stems. So
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: that was that was a lot better than the second
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: week and when I brought my second daughter over, which
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: we can talk later, but it really was, you know,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: it was a good lesson on two fronts, right, Like
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: I always preach about hot weather, cold weather, windy, rainy
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: would ever go, especially in the early season, because those
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: deer used to that and it was not nice deer
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: hunting weather. And the other thing was, you know, you
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: we're putting in enough time in these spots and and
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: trying to preserve the movement so much that I feel
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: like it's just paying off in you know, not like
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: tons of deer sightings because we'd never have them there
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: but good encounters and it just it just worked out
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: for us. So so tell me a little bit more
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: about you know, this is something you teased up before
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: we start recording. You were talking about how the amount
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of time you let something settle matters on a hunt
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: like this, even and you you kind of I thought
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: it was interesting mentioning the fact that this warm weather,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: cold weather, whatever, you know, get out there. But I
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: think one thing that I have been guilty of sometimes
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: is that when the weather is not that good, if
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: it's like really warm or lousy, like a day you're
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: talking about, I'll go in late. I'll be like, they're
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: not going to move to the last half hour or
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: something like that. So like those of the days are
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: tempted to get in late or you know, whatever might be.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: If it's raining and nasty, you might be like, well,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get in there an hour before dark,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: you know, or before daylight in the morning. I'll get
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: out there right at daylight and just go out because
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I don't want to get silk and wet um. But
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I know you're someone who sometimes advised, you know, putting
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: in that time regardless. Yeah, I mean I think I
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: think it's so important man, And I learned this, you know,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: at least I should say. This is sort of drilled
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: home in my head when I go on these hunts
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: where you know, you're hunt in public land somewhere and
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: you don't have anything else to do, and so I'm like, well,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: am I I'm better off being in a tree if
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the if the wind is gonna work for me, then
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: being back at camp and you know, you start killing
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: deer at off times. And you know, when I when
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I elk hunted earlier in September, I was primarily sitting water,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and I kept thinking about that, like, you know, I
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: don't know when a bull is gonna get thirsty and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: come in, but I know if I'm back at camp
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: taking a nap, it's gonna suck if that's when he
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: comes in. And so it's like, I'd rather just be
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: out there as much as possible. And you know, for me,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: it's different. I can go sit all day and I
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: can you know, not go too crazy. When I've got
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: ten year olds with me, there's a different consideration. But
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to get them to learn that lesson to that,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: like you know, yeah, you might be tired at nine
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, but why not just sit till
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: ten just in case, let's figure out a way to
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: make it happen. And the more that we do that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: or you know, I know they don't like getting up early,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: but man, I'd rather get in there pretty early. Not
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: as early as you did on the back forty when
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: we filmed together. That was ridiculous, but like somewhat some
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: happy medium there in between where you're not pushing it,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Like you're like, I feel really good about us getting
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: in super quiet, and that's that's the other thing, you know,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: if you're talking about getting in the morning or getting
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: out a little bit later in the afternoon, if you're
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: if you're like, man, you know, I'm kind of pushing
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: it here. You're gonna go faster, and you're gonna make
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: more noise, and you're gonna notice fewer things, right, Like
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: you're not going to notice the signs the same way
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: you might run into one walking in, or you're just
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: you're just not in the zone quite as well as
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: what's just make mistakes to Like, if you're rushing, you're
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: more prone to all sorts of mistakes. Yeah, I mean,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: you forget stuff, you step on sticks. It's just like
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: it's not a good state to be in when you
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: want to go out there and really not have your
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: presence be known by everything. Yeah. Yeah, so true. So
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: if we're if we're tying a bow on something here
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that you know we should think about for the rest
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: of the year, it's always give yourself some extra time
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and don't assume the worst. Always assume you know what
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: this might work out. I'm going to give myself proper time.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Don't give into that temptation to say it's not going
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: that great, I'll go I'll sleep in for half hour more.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: It's not that great, I'll lay in the couch for
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: half an hour more. The half hours always more valuable
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: in the field, whether even if it's just because it
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: gives you a better state of mind. I think that's
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that's so true and something that's hard to stick with,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: especially as you go throughout the year and you get
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: more and more exhausted. It's easy to start, you know,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: giving into that. Yeah, And I mean, you just feel
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: better about yourself, even even if you go out and blank.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: If you're like I'm hunting until ten o'clock, in the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: morning because I feel like there's my chance. It's kind
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, if you if you're like I'm
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: going for a six mile run after we do this,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I don't like I could feel okay about myself if
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I quit after three I'm like, well, it's still ran
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: three miles. But that's not what I'm there for. You know, like,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: you feel better if you just get it done and
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: go do go do the work you need, and that's
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: that's part of being successful as a deer hunters. Like,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna this, this is my plan and I'm going
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: to see it through until something tells me I really
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: should you know, abandon it and do something else? Yeah? Yeah, true.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Well what happened next? What was the what was the
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: next weekend? You want to get into that one? I
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: think so so. Uh like a good dad, I pulled
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: my daughter out of school early so we could drive
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: over and sit, and then I took her out of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: school the next day. Uh, so we could make a
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: long weekend out of it. Because you know how it is,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: once you get into October, you're you've got a lot
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: of stuff going on for work in the in the field,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: and not necessarily enough time to take the kids out,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: and so I said, let's make a long weekend of
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: it and go see what we can do. And we
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: got over there, man, and it was like, you know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the first night we had to do on a fun
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: come in close like eight maybe eight ft from the blind,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and they winded us right before they came out. But
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: it was a really cool encounter because it was a
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: beautiful night, and you know, by then the weather had
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: gotten really good, like it was, you know, sixties and
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: kind of overcast, and you know, in the morning it
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: was maybe like fort and so it was it was
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: gonna happen. And then you know, the next day of
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: rain starting, the rain started move in. We still we still,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: we saw some deer got really close to shooting a
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: dough and just didn't didn't quite step out where we
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: needed it too. But up there, you know, if you
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: have deer encounters every day, I feel really good about it.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So then we went into the third morning and it
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: was pouring rain. We got up and there was just
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: it was coming down. But I told my daughter, I'm like, well,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: we're gonna get wet going through the woods, but we
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: get into the blind will be pretty dry. And it
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: was supposed to end at like eight thirty nine o'clock
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: in the morning, and I was like, we need to
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: get out there and just be there for a while.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And we get out there, you know, it's one of
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: those mornings it takes four ever to get light out
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: because it's overcast and rainy and you're in the woods.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: And finally got light out nothing and she was pretty tired,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: and you know, it just randomly, maybe forty five minutes
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: into shooting light I looked up and there's a little
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: five pointer coming in and he he either winded us
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: a little bit or he saw uce because and I
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I think he saw us because the the light was
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: so low and so even it was just not great
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: scenario to be in a blind, like they're gonna be
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: able to see him there pretty well. But you know,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: he's a little buck and he wasn't that smart, so
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: he started get a little wiggy, and she got on
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the crossbow and he kind of started to trot a
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: little bit, and I just murped at him, and he
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: stopped twenty yards quartered away, and I took her safety off,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: and a couple of seconds later, she shot, and I
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: heard that that bolt zipped through him and he bounced
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: off there, and I was like, man, I can't believe
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: that just happened. And I asked her and she said
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: it felt really good, you know, like I think I
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: hit him really well. And so I thought, man, we're
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: gonna have another blood trail and be back in town
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: eating pancakes. And we gave him, you know, some time,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and got out there because I really needed I was
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: really fighting the urge to go right away because of
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the rain, but the light just was like not great
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: like he was. It was light enough to see anything,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: but looking for like backs of blood on the wet
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: ground while it was raining. I was like, let's just
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: let's give it time. We don't we don't need to
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: rush it. So we got out there and started looking
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and there's blood everywhere, and I'm like, okay, this is
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: pretty good. But then we hit that point of the
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: blood trail where it was like a hundred yards and
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I just told her. I was like, honey, I don't
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: think I don't think this is going to break the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: way we think it's going to now, because this is
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: not making me feel great. And then you know, he's like, okay,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: do we push it or do we go back? But
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the rain was heavy enough and we had a good
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: enough blood trail where I was like, I was really conflicted,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: like I don't know, I don't really know what to
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: do here, Like I don't want to push it, but
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I know this blood is going to wash away, and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: then I'm mad at myself for even hunting in it,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: you know, because then you're like, if we lose this
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: deer because of these decisions, I'm like, this that really sucks.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And so real quick stepping back one half second, that
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the dilemma is you can follow right now because you
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: have the good blood, but there's the risk that the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: hit wasn't as good as you thought. That deer might
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: still be alive and you might be pushing that deer
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and then you'll never find it. But on the flip side,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: if you wait, that deer might bet up and die
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and you'll find them up there. But the risk is
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: that if you wait, the blood trail might disappear with
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the rain, and then you've nothing to go off of
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and you have a really hard time finding. So that's
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that's the two. You know, possible paths and passable sets
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: of outcomes in these kind of rainy situations, and it's
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: it's a hard decision. Well it is, and what kind
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of ultimately, you know, put its finger on the scale there.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: For me was the fact that this is like Northwood's thick, nasty.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: This is not like a nice deciduous forest where grid
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: searching is going to be like a real good possibility.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: And I knew if we lost that blood trail, it
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: was really going to be like a needle in a
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: hay stack type of thing, because this is even the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: higher woods they're they're just thick and nasty. They're like
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: good grouse cover type of stuff. And I knew the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: direction he was heading. There's an enormous swamp there. You know,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: it's part of cat tails, part alder thickets, part willows,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: just just like rough stuff to to a grid search.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: And so I said, we're gonna go slow, but we're
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: gonna stay on this blood and see how it shakes out.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, you get two hundred yards into it
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and you go, now, I know this is not what
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I thought it was. Right. There's no way she shot
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: him through the ribs the way we were hoping. But
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: you've got good blood, and so you keep pushing it
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and sneaking along. And it was It was really rough
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: because you know, a couple of hundred yards into it
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and you're soaked, and it's like there's you know, every
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: every advancement you make on the trail, you're like, well
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: this this feels good because we're still on blood, but
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: we're going farther and the odds of us running across
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: this dear dead, you know. And so what I started thinking,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure, but listening to this, they're going, I
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: was a muscle hit And that's what I started thinking.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: She hit it too low, or she hit it too
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: far forward, and you know, hit a whole bunch of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: muscle right away, and you get a lot of that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: promising bright red blood, and then you start to lose
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: it a little bit. And I would say probably, I
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: don't know, maybe between like four hundred and five yards
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: into it, I started finding just like clotted up blood
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: on stuff that he would brush up against. And then
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is this does not make
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: me feel good. And it hadn't stopped raining when I
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: was supposed to, and so we got into that swamp
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: and I lost it completely, Like I'm like, I got
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: no more blood and I was just standing there and
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: this happens a lot. I'm just standing there and I'm
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: looking at her, and she's soaked and she's cold, and
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: it's been hours, and that buck got up and ran
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: away through that swamp like he wasn't even hurt. And
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: what he went through I was. I stayed. I had
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: her stay there, and I went to get on it
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: again and and I was like up to my nuts
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and swamp water, I'm like, I can't even go anymore.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And it was just like he went through there like
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: he had no problem. And so we ended up trying
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: to get around there and and pick him up again
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and lost it again. And it was just like one
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of those deals where you're like we're blood trailing or
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: you know, now we're just like looking for sign on
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a deer that I don't think it's dead. And it
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: just was one of those deals where it was like
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: just not fun. It went it went from real fun
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: to real frustrating and disappointing, and it was a long day.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: How did how did she take it? Like, what did
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: you say to your daughter to get through something like that?
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: You know, she was really beating up on herself on
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: the blood trail, especially, you know, being out there and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: being soaked and just knowing because she was she went
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: from you know, like she went on the roller coaster. Man.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: She was she was convinced she smoked it. And then
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: when we started a greanell that this wasn't the case,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I think she started to accept it and she was
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: really bummed, like really bummed. But you know, by the
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: time we got back and got dried out, you know,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: she was asking me about the deer I've hit loss.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't we have how much time do
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: you have? You know, like, if you do this stuff
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: long enough, that happens, And you know, I think with
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: her especially, I think you'll leave a real mark. And
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I think she'll think long and hard about her shots
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: in the future, and I think she'll take better shots
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and it. And it's not like this wasn't a good
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: shot to take. I think it just happened fast, and
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I think she rushed it. And she's she's usually really
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: solid with that stuff, like she's killed deer in turkeys
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and usually pretty good at it. And I think this
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: one she'll go, I'm gonna make sure that I'm going
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: to hit that deer right where I want to from
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: here on out, And so it was, you know, it
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: went okay. So what's the what's the takeaway from this one?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Is it to do with the shot? Is to do
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: with the tracking? Like, is there any major lesson you're
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: reminded of or that you can learn that we can
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: all think about from this, you know, I think I
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: think the lesson is, you know, you you can say, Okay,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: well I hit like this, you need to wait six
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: hours or eight hours, or hit like that you need
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to wait this amount of time or this kind of
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: blood or this kind of reaction, and all of that
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: stuff is okay. But really, what this, you know, the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: post shot recovery boils down to is experience level. And
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: when you go through something like this, it just reminds
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: you that even you know, even I've been on I
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: don't know how many blood shils now, you know, hundreds
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: between me and all my buddies and everybody, like you
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: still go through those emotions and that those times on
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: a blood trail where you're like, I don't know. And
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: what I felt the worst about on this one was
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: like I felt like I had to push it because
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: of the rain, and I'm norm only really cautious about
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: blood trails like I'd rather give them way more time
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: than not enough. And on this one, I was just like,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: should I even have been hunting in this stuff? You know,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: like should I? Because I know one of the things
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: that I can't stand is when I feel rushed on
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: a blood trail. And you know, when you walk out
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: there and it's pouring rain. Unless you're a total idiot,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, well, if we shoot one and it
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't go perfectly, we're gonna be rushed on this blood trail.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: So my my biggest regret there was not really factoring
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: that in and and deciding whether it was worth it
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: to hunt in those conditions or not. So what do
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: you stand on that, now, Tony, As far as do
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: you hunt when you know there's gonna be a steady
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: rain or not? I mean that's something that for a
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: long time I thought, oh for sure, because I grew
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: up in the school of of a certain person who
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: reaches always hunting in the rain, it's great hunting. And
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: and so I started hunting all the time in the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: rain and saw a lot of good actions. So I
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I'm into it. But then you know,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: the more you have bad things happen. Like what you discussed.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: The more I start to think more and more about, gosh,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: what happens if I do have that blood trail disappear.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: And so I've I've gone back and forth and back
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: and forth and back and forth on it myself. Um,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: when I'm in a spot where I'm close to home
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: with with a buddy that has a tracking dog, that
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: makes me a lot more comfortable because they can do
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: very well in the rain. Actually, Um, but I'm curious
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: what your take is because I don't I don't have
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: a I don't have a conclusive answer for every situation.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: It's kind of up in the air for me, still
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: on kind of situation dependent. Yeah, you know, for me,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I'm the same way. I love hunting in the rain.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I just you know, the deer moving the rain big time.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: But I'll probably be a little more cautious because this
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: was This wasn't like a nice drizzle where they're gonna
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: come on the beans and it's gonna be awesome. This
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: was like pretty heavy and it was probably too heavy
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to take a ten year old in, you know. Like that.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: That was my lesson there. If it was me, you know,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: and I was sitting out there, I would hunt that situation,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: but I would be I'd be like it's twenty yards
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: or in or I'd be really really selective. And this one,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I don't. You know, I'm hoping this buck shows back
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: up on camera. I'm hoping he didn't die. But I
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: suspect what she did was just shot a little too
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: far forward, and so she probably wasn't off by much.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: It might have been a couple inch difference or something
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: like that. But it doesn't matter, you know, Like this
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: is this is the outcome that happened from it, and
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: so it just does make you think, like, and it
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: might be different for me. If I took her to
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: my buddy's place in southwestern Wisconsin with nice open woods
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: and deciduous forests, that might be a different deal than
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: being up in northern Wisconsin where it's just thick and nasty,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you might have the same consideration.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: You know, if you live in Nebraska, you might hunt
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: in the downpour all the time and never worry about
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: losing a deer, But if you hunt Louisiana, you might
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, that's a good point. Well, ah, that
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: is the toughest of lessons, right there, No doubt about that. Yeah,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: it was. It was a pain. And what really sucks
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: is that little five point was like the buck we
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: were hunting. I was like, that's the guy who's living here,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: and I think that's the one we're gonna kill. And
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: now we don't have anything to work with, so I
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: gotta wait for somebody else to move in. But you know,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: it is what it is. It's it's a learning experience
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: every year, and that one, that one was a lesson
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: that she was going to learn eventually and I was
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: gonna be reminded of and it just happened to happen
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: this year. Yeah. Well, I hope things trend back up
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: for you and your daughters here in the coming weeks.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Do you wanna want to hear about my story and
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: lessons learned? I do. I can't wait. All right, So
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Idaho year three. I've done full recaps of the previous
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: two years of hunts here on the podcast, so any
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: long time listeners should should know what's happened here. But
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a really quick cliff notes to
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: lead you up to this point. Because when I set
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: out for the first hunt, first day of our season,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I said, all right, this is like day sixteen, and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: our buddy Sam who tagged along for some of it. Uh,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: I was like, what do you mean day sixteen? This
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: day one. I'm like, no, this is like day sixteen
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: because we hunted two different times the previous two years.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And I feel like now today is like the accumulation
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: of all these other hunts leading up to it, Like
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I've been whittling away, whittling away of figuring out, figuring out,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: and finally like I know the spots within the spots,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: I have a plan A, and I have a Plan B,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and I know where these things are and like I've
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: got it nailed finally. Okay, That's how I thought going
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: into this. And um so year one, the very quick
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: cliff notes like me and my buddy Josh further showed
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: up to this brand new piece of public that I
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: had just like Blast one night in summer was the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: extent of experience I had out there in Year one.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: We start hunting it and right away like we're seeing
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of deer and like we have some close
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: calls with nice bucks. But then very quickly like we're
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: seeing people like every night walking past us or walking
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: or we're walking past them or we're seeing trucks at
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the trailheads, and like every day there was some kind
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: of bump, some kind of running with folks, and like
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: very quickly, dear behavior change. I saw a couple of
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: really nice bucks, but then had like a bunch of
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: kids drive UTVs all around me and like just destroy
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the whole area. So that was year one. It was
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: promising in a way because we saw a good deer
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of deer, but discouraging because like hunting
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: pressure like blew up everything. We thought we might be
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: able to make a move on. That was year one.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Year two we go back in and we said, all right,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: hunting pressure is a problem. We're gonna just get past them,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: like we're gonna get deeper and both like farther in
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: from the access points and then also deeper towards the
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: deep deep bedding cover that's along this river corridor. And
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: we start doing that, and right away we uh start
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: you know, seeing dear, we kind of edge in a
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: little bit further. Each day we have close calls. Josh
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: had several nice close calls with good bucks. Missed a
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: buck twice. I had to throw that. I always have
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to throw that in is that why he isn't on
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: this podcast. Yeah, he didn't want to relive that again.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: And then I pushed in discover this new betting here
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: on these islands and had you know, two different shooter
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: bucks within the arrangement behind brush and saw a bunch
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: more movement that you know, really gave me a firm
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: idea of okay, like we're so close, but we just
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: ran out of time. So that was year two. Again
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: though we're seeing people like there were folks going in
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: two miles with us. I couldn't believe it. There was
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you know, bumped into folks here and there, trail cameras,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: so we knew pressure was still a thing, but we
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: were we were in it, like we were getting deep
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: enough that we were still in it. So year three
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I've said, okay, I know we have to get into
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: where we kind of finally settled on there at the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: end last year. Um, I know it'll be deer moving
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: back there. I know their patterns. We just have to
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: tweak things. We are so close. So this summer I
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: went back in there and did a little more scouting,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: scouting out a few more areas, went further than I've
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: gone in the past, kind of the spots that I
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: had observed last year from afar, I went and walked
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: on foot and so, okay, this is why the deer
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: were doing this thing, and okay, this is why they
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: were doing that other thing. So, for example, at the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: end of year two, I had been on working this island,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: and you might remember this, Tony, I was texting you.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: I was like, I had these bucks come through heading
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: kind of northwest to southeast and the head of that
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: way in the evening, and then the morning they came
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: up the opposite side of the island, like seventy yards
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: across this little opening and went back the other way.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: And then the next day they went back that way again.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: And so I was trying to figure out, like, are
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: they gonna come on the north side of the island
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: to the south side of the island, and why did
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: they always kind of hook down at the end of
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: this island. I didn't quite know the answer to that.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: So the summer, when I back in there, I walked
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: it all and I found that there's this channel that
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: where I've been crossing. It was pretty narrow and relatively
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: easy to cross, but if you kept going down to
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: the east, that channel went from being like a creek
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to all of a sudden expanding into like a great
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: big backwater and basically impassable, like they could if they wanted.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: But none of these deer, we're going to go across
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: this like fifty yard sixty yard wide big pond when
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: they could just cross here at the beginning of that
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: little shallow spot. And what I realized when I got there,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I saw that, and then all this sign showed like
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: oh wow, all of those deer, they're they're going on
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: opposite sides of the island, but when they get to
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: this point, they're all coming. They're all funneling down to
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: this crossing. So I realized, like, all right, I found
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the spot within the spot here. And then I found
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: like a similar kind of thing, different specifics, but another
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: one of these like spots within the spot on another
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: section of the public and another zone I kind of
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: explored a little bit. Year one and two, I found
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: another one. So I had like three of these spots
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: that were fine too, And I thought this summer, so
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: coming into the hunt, when I talked to Sam, like man,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: this is day sixteen. I got him dialed. I knew, like,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: all right, I've got this Plan A that is like
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: keyed up, and then that that doesn't work, Okay, I've
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: got this other Plan B that I think is just
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: going to be a great opportunity to and if that
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't work, I still know this other spot that I've
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: really you know, worked and figuring it out, and they're
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: gonna be there. I should at one other point, which
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: is that because of all that hunting pressure we experienced
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: in year one and year two, that first week, we
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: got to thinking that this might be like the opening
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: week effect that you've experienced and I have experienced, and
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of folks I think over the last I
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: don't know, five plus a or something like that. As
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: as kind of this early season opener hunting has gotten
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: more and more popular. It seems like everybody's out there
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: opening day in these early states, Nebraska, Kentucky, North Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, wherever.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: If you've got that early September thing, it's it's kind
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: of rare still, right, Not all states are open, so
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: everybody floods to these states to hunt those first few days.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: So I thought, how about I just devoid that first
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: week of crazy, come back two and a half three
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: weeks later and come in like late ish September, when
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: maybe all these guys that have been hunting or off
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: to other states now or they're off to hunt Elk
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: or Mulety or something, and maybe we'll have the woods
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: to ourselves now and hopefully, you know, with three weeks
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: under their belts, maybe these deer have like they got
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: blown up that first week and got really pressured, but
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: if it died off the next two two and a
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: half weeks, maybe they'd get back to being comfortable again,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and you know, we'd have this shanger a lot of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: type situation. That was my hope and my theory. So
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: we decided to show up on September I don't know,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: or something like that to hunt that like third and
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: fourth week of September. So those are my thoughts letting
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: into it, Tony and listening to this, does it just
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: make you laugh? Are you just sitting Chuck? You're just
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: like following I feel like you're just following my thought
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: process from like the last couple of years. And I
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: know how it shakes out. I know how it chok
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: out for you, and I know how it chook out
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: for me. And man, there is just a saturation point
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: out there with pressure that it takes a while to overcome.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: And I know your thought process seems sound when you're like, well,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it's been a couple of weeks the opening, the opening
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: week for first should have died down and things should
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: be back to normal. That has not been my experience
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: in some of these early opener states. It's like maybe
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: maybe a month later, maybe five weeks later, you can
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: start getting back on them in a in a natural
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: kind of movement pattern. But man, it's it's tough when
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: you hunt those states that open early in the in
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the velvet pressure is real, and it's just it's just
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of people out there pushing them around. It
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: changes things in a hurry, and it changes them for
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, And and that's that's what we came
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: to see two. Unfortunately, because that first night I went
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: to this that location I told you about with the
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: island and the backwater and everything, and I felt really
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: good about it. And Josh went into this location last
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: year that heat hunted and fine tuned and had these
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: close calls over the nice Buck. We both went and
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: there feeling really good. But I got a couple pieces
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: of bad news leading up to it, Like a day
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: or two before this, another hunter that I bumped into
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: their last year and then exchanged phone numbers texted me
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: and said that, man, it doesn't look good in there.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I've been in there. There's very little sign um and
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: there had been like some development on neighboring private lands,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: some new stuff had been built, and he was just like,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: I just don't know what's going on. Doesn't look as good.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Because I was a little concerning. And then when we
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: drove up one of the access points, not the one
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: that we're going to use, but one of them had
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: three trucks, and so that made me think like, oh, man,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: that doesn't bode well for my theory. Um. But we
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: go in, I go to this spot I set up,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: feels great. I was very confident going in. We brought
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: e bikes this year so that we could come in
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and out faster and hopefully lower impact on these deer
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: when we're rolling by them in the mornings or late
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: at night. Um, because it's like a two plus mile
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: previously have been a hike, So we were doing like
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: two miles in the morning, two miles out midday, two
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: miles in the afternoon, two miles out in the evening,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: so we're doing eight mile days. So this year we
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: brought quiet cats and that was huge, really really nice
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: to have that. Uh So we get in there. I'm
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: feeling great. I'm buzzing along on my bike, just like
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: thinking about how nice it's gonna be to roll one
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of these bucks out here tonight on my little trailer
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: that I've got back in the truck, and YadA, YadA, YadA,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: and uh get in the tree and I see one
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: dough for the entire night, one dough previously in this spot.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: You know, you're seeing fifteen twenty plus deer, bunch of bucks.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: One dough on our first hunt. Josh same thing. First
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: hunt of his in this general area last year, he
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: saw like two shooters a bunch of deer. He saw nothing,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: zero deer. That's day one. I'm gonna fast forward and
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: move quickly through some of these events here because day
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: two we have very similar situations. I decide based on
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: what I saw Day one and based on kind of
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: some funky wind stuff that was happening night number one. Um,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: you know, one thing I did have that that made
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: me a little bit up in the air was that
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: when the wind died, I had like a weird kind
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of like thermal thing with my wind. It was supposed
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: to be going southwest, and every once in a while
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: it would push east, and I think that was what
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I found is in some of these spots along this river,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: it doesn't happen all the time, so it's like you
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: don't you don't know it until you're in this situation.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I haven't been able to figure out why or what
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: features of the land causes, but in some areas you'll
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: get this effect where the current of the river kind
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: of pushes your wind along. It seems to be like
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a very low wind speed um in certain like if
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: you're deep enough or close enough to this like canyons wretch,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: it pulls. In other places it will be true to
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the forecast, and in this particular area that particular night,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: it just gave me a handful of times where it
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: pulled more from an easterly direction, and that wasn't good
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: for the movement I was expecting. So after that first night,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, it might have been bad wind ish,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: but also like that was not the way it should
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: have panned out. I should have still saw more than that.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Josh still should have been seeing something with a good
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: wind he had, So I decided to one second, mark,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: can we can we hit on that point with the
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: river quick? Because I think I think something there that's
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: worth talking about is you know, probably with that the
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: river situation, it's probably the temperature differentiation. Don't we think
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: like the water is colder and it's that's probably have
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: an effect on the wind there, or do you think
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: it was a train thing? Well, I think it's it's
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: definitely a combination of those things, right, because there's like
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: a big hill above the river. So you've got two
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: different things possibly happening. You've got a normal thermal dropping
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: off of these hills right in the evening of things
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: cooled down, so you have that possible thermal feature, uh,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: And then you do have like you said, the water
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: temperature difference that's gonna pull things um. And then you
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: also have just like how like how might a south wind?
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: So this hill is big hill, like almost a canyon.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: It's like a one I don't know how to describe.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: It's like almost a cliff on the north side of
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: this river corridor, but nothing to the south. So if
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: you have a pure south wind, it's like coming from
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the south and hitting that cliff and then is that
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: cycling back and doing funky things too. Um, so there's
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: like three different possible things happening. And over the last
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: three years I've seen I've seen the number of different
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: funky things, but the most consistent thing that I've realized
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: is that if you have a very low wind, more
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: often than not, it's gonna suck. It's gonna turn into
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: a wind that kind of goes with the current of
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the river which is going from east to west. So yeah,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think we don't it's really hard to
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: pin that stuff down, but you know how common it
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: is to like encounter that right And you know, we
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: we talked about thermals, and we write about thermals, and
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: you know, anybody who's ever hunted in the mountains probably
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: understands thermals better than somebody who hasn't, because they're so
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: extreme typically in the mountains. But even even when you
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: do that and you're in a situation like we were
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: this year when we were out hunting where it was hot,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: like really hot for out conditions that especially at the
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: elevation we were at, and it wasn't getting that cold,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you didn't get that huge rush of thermals in the
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: afternoon coming down. It took a while for it to switch,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: so you had this like because it wasn't such a
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: drastic change in temperature. It was more of a like
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: a subdued thermal, which like was terrible because you couldn't
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: count on it for a long time doing you know,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: you're like, hey, you're supposed to be rushing down the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: mountain here pretty soon, and it's doing all kinds of
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: crazy stuff. And I see that in the white tailed
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: world to where it's like if your temperatures aren't, like
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: if it's not really changing throughout the day, sometimes you
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: don't get like really reliable thermals. If it's you know,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: only drop in a few degrees is the sunsets, you're
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: gonna get a thermal, but it's not the same thing
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: as if it was really gonna get cold and you know,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: drop ten or fifteen degrees in the next hour and
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: a half or something. And that's that's like a spot
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: situational type of thing, and it saves a lot of
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: freaking deer. Yeah, And it's yes, it's it's hard to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: predict to like you can't really peg like, oh, it's
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: going to happen this situation or not. It's you have
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: to assess quickly and then make a gut decision on
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: like is this gonna stick? Like is it gonna is
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: this what it's gonna keep doing? And if so, then
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: you need to adjust. But then there's always like I
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: always worry, like you find like a weird wind thing
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: that's going on, and then you're stuck thinking, Okay, do
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: I trust that this funky thing that's happening right now
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: is going to continue? Or in half hour is it
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: going to switch back to the predicted wind? And then
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be like s O L because I
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: didn't set up for that. That's I don't know the
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: right answer, just making a gut decision in the moment
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: based on you know, experience in the conditions. I guess yeah.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: And it's it's so it's so tied to so many
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: different things, right. It's tied to the temperature and probably
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: partially to the seasonality of it, but also, like you said,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: if you have one weird terrain feature around you, like
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I've I've got a spot in North Dakota that I've
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: killed some bucks on and it it's like next to
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: a huge rock wall, like I don't know how tall
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: it is, but if you fell off, you'd be dead
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: if you hit the rocks halfway down, Like it's it's tall,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: and it's always kind of a crapshoot when you get
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: in there, like, well, how is that going to affect
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: the wind? Because depending on which way the wind coming from,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: it might be blowing over you and you might not
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: have any wind hardly, or if it's coming the other
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: way and it's it's blasting against that rock wall, it's like, man,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't even be here, and it's you know, that's
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: only one little small spot there. I bet you if
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: you were, you know, five yards away from that, you'd
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: have vastly different experience with the same wind. True, I
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: think that. I think the takeaway there is just do
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: not trust your wind forecast as gospel ever. Yeah, always takeaway, yes, always, always,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: always be monitoring as you're going along, and and be
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: willing to adjust and accept your new reality. I think
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that's that's a big one right there. Right, So excuse me,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: so back to my next day and kind of a
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: big kind of I don't know if this is a
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: lesson I learned, but this is like a thing I
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: kept reminding myself of on the trip, so like a
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: like a maxim or a like don't ever forget this
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: mark as I'm talking to myself is like, you have
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: to be willing to pivot fast on these kinds of hunts.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: When I only have a way, it's six days. You
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time to ride a dead horse.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: So that first day it was dead. This other hunter
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: was telling me how was dead. I had one trail
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: camera back there that had been dead leading up to this.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Josh hunts his honey hole, and that's dead. And even
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: though I had been in love with this place leading
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: up to the hunt, I just had a lot of
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: red alarm bells going off. And I, like the previous
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: me would have been like a guy, that place is
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: so good, you gotta you gotta go on there more.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: But I decided to pull the plug, and I decided,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: you know what I got, you gotta pivot, Like, there's
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things here that do not seem
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: to be where you want them to. You need to
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: find where the deer are. Now. The pressure thing must
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: be more than you thought it was gonna be. These
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: deer have been impacted more than you were hoping they
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: would be. You gotta find him. So day two I
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: went past my night my day one location, worked my
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: way um into a new area about about a half
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: third to a half mile further than my original location.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Scouted my way into a spot and found a spot
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: that was about is deep from like distance between cover
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: and like the distance from river to food was um,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: but gave me a little bit of an observation zone.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: So this is the zone I've never been into before.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I could see, like in a couple of different windows
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: out to a good distance. I had a number of
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: decent runs that were all kind of converging in this
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: um I don't know how to describe it. There's like
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: this little pockety open stuff and then it pinches down
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: to thick cedars heading towards these crop fields like four
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: yards away or something. And I thought, Okay, this is
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: a nice observation location. If deer are in this new chunk,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be some that passed through here. And all
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I wanted to do on this day was like, I
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: just want to know I'm back in the deer. Where
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: are these deer? Where have they been pushed to? So
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: my theories that they were pushed, you know, another third,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: two a half mile back into this stuff. So now
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: we're like two and a half miles from the nearest
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: road access long story shore. In this I sat at
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: the ground because I didn't find the right tree, decided
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be in the right spot. And I
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: saw almost nothing. Again, I saw one little tiny buck
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: like a year probably a year and a half old,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: maybe the worst two year olds you ever saw. Um,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: but that was it. And so again, and this is
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: stuff that should be good. Like in previous years, you
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: hunt this kind of place, this far back off the road,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you'd be seeing a lot of deer. Again, nearly blinked.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Josh stuck it out kind of near his little honey hoole.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: He tweaked it a little bit, but again blanked or
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: saw like one spike or something. So again, now I'm thinking,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: all right, you gotta pivot. You can't ride a dead horse.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Day three now I'm in real desperate search mode, like
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: this is this is not at all like what we're expecting.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: There not any of the places we thought they'd be.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: I haven't been seeing fresh tracks, I've not seen a
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: lot of droppings. I've not seen a single rub, nothing
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: like no early velot rubs, nothing like that. So Day three,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: I go hard. I go all the way to that
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: area that I hunted day two and then decide, okay,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this. There's like there's old two tracks
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: and stuff that cut through a lot of this public
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: land because ranchers run cattle and stuff, there's some of
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: these places certain times of the year. So I decided, okay,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna ride my bike as far as I can
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: take it, which is about two and a half miles.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get off the bike, lock it up, and
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: then I'm gonna walk this two track all the way
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to the river. I'm gonna go all the way. Is
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: is far away from the food as I can possibly get.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: And what I've learned is that they're they're bedding along
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: this river. So I'm gonna go right to the river
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna work that river up. And I
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: had a unique situation here, and this brings me to
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: my third I think it's my third major lesson, major takeaway,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: which is do not ignore tracks. And this is something
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: like early on my deer hunting career. I didn't give
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: him much attention at all. Trail cameras are very sexy,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. But the more and more
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: I'd spend time in the woods in different places, the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: more I find myself falling back on tracks just like
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: they're the thing. They're the thing. And I had a
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: perfect situation here because the night prior it rained a bunch,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and so I knew, okay, that big rain hit. Anything
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: I see today is going to be from the last
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: you know, fourteen hours. I can I can know with
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: one certainty where the deer are right now, and I'm
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: gonna walk until I find where there are significant numbers
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: of deer. And so I pushed. I mean I went
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: back into some good stuff. I went way back to
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: the river, and I crossed all these different tracks, like
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: two tracks, sandy areas where like you could very very
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: clear clearly see if there's any deer. I watched this
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: two track the whole way I biked out, and there
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: was like zero deer for almost three miles, Tony, I mean,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: they were gone, gone, And so I just kept going
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: and I kept pushing. I walked into stuff that like
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the last two years, I never would have touched with
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: a ten foot poll because I've been so paranoid I
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: was gonna spook deer, so paranoid I blow it up.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: But I just had came into this with this idea
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: like you're I'm not gonna settle, Like I'm not just
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: gonna ride something because it looks good. I'm not gonna
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: ride something because it should be good. I'm gonna go
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: until I know there's deer and tracks. We're gonna tell
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: me that story. And so I walked and walked and
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: walked and worked my way past this whole island that
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: last year had been loaded with deer. Nothing. This year
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: worked my way aving further. Now I'm three miles back
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: and I get to this next island, and this was like,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: this is the farthest point from the access points. Like
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: if you came in from the way we were coming,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: you'd be about three point two miles or something. If
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you came in from the farthest other side, the far
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: western side, you'd be another three point two miles to
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: come from that way. So this is like as as
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: deep as you can get from east to west waves
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and this last island, I'm thinking, well, this has got
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: to be where they're at. There should be deer, here.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to get to. I don't know anyone
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: crazy enough from white tail hunting perspective out here that
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: would do this. And so there was a channel where
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: some parts of the year there was water running through
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: it off of the river, but right now it was dry.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: It was covered in rocks on the bottom, but there
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: was kind of raised banks on either side. And so
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: I walked the not on the island, but the main
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: land side where you could see trails and stuff where
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: deer head you know, dropped off the bank and got
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: into the channel to cross, and you could just perfectly
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: see where deer historically had gone down because there's this
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: beaten down you know, kind of gullies, little trails where
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: they coming off that cut off bank, and you can
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: see where there's there's nothing, there's nothing. And then tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: all right, my first like good fresh set of tracks.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: And based on what the wind was doing, I knew
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: like with this kind of river poll with the current,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I gotta get in the west
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: side of this island. So I'm gonna scout my way
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: all the way down this and check and see if
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: this continues to be a thing. Like, are there more
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: dear crossing onto this island different spots, And once I
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: get all the way to the west side, I'll have
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: I'll know what's going on, and I'll be west of
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: where this wind is gonna pull. And so I worked
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: my way down this channel, and like, here's a crossing
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: with a bunch of tracks. Here's a crossing with a
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: bunch of tracks. Here's a crossing with a bunch of tracks.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I would say a bunch. I'm not saying like dozens
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: of deer, but like a few deer per track per crossing,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: a few deer per crossing, which was like monumentally more
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: than anywhere else. It's a long story short. I felt
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: great about this. I finally thought, all right, like I
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: found the deer there in this farthest nastiest part and
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: their back bedded on this like willow nasty thicket island
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: right in the edge of the river set up, and
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: ended up feeling like I was in the game and
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: thought I was gonna like make it happen. I had
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: a little buck pop out of the island, go across.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Another little buck popped out of the island, goes across.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Another little buck pops out of the island goes across.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I see a couple of dolls come out and do it.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I actually had some elk pop out, which I was
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: not expecting. Oh, and then it last light to an
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: unidentified deer cross like as far away from me as
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: I can see down the channel they go out. So
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: that night I felt pretty good, like I saw deer,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I saw some year and a half old Bucks, and
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: I saw a couple of dolls. That was good. That
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: was like as good as it's been. I felt like
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of in the game. I just said, Okay,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, I'm gonna get up on this mountain and
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna glass down into this channel, and I'm gonna
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: confirm where these deer coming in the most, and i'm
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: gonna see some bucks. Like I'm gonna dial it in
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna come back in here and kill him
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: that next night. So I get out there early the
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: next morning, climb this mountain on the other side of
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: the river, get up top their glass this thing, and
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: I watched this channel for four hours or whatever, and
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I just saw two doors the whole morning come back
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: in there, and it just like shattered my my idea
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: I was really confident this thing I found, and then
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I watched this whole area and man, like, there's just
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: nothing going in there. So now it's day four, and
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: again I'm thinking, you're just not in them, like they're
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: just they've they've been blown out of town. And we
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: were actually driving around at mid day that day and
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: right across the road i'm private land where there was
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: no hunting allowed. Apparently there was like twenty thirty deer,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: not thirty, maybe twenty deer feeding in an alfalfa field
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: at noon, including like a couple of nice shooter bucks.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: So now I'm starting to think, man, did all the
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: deer get pushed off the public onto private Like they're
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: not even here anymore. So now I'm in kind of
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: this this continue with this theme of pivoting and not settling.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: I decide, okay, we really got to rethink things and see,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: like what other opportunities are out there. So midday on
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: day four, we went and went to like four totally
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: different public land parcels like half an hour away. Like
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: we explored every different unit for every different like piece
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: of public in our unit, and we went and drove around,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: looked at parking areas trying to see whether the's truck tracks.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: We went and walked a bunch of stuff. We went
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: and glassed a bunch of stuff, just to see like
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: what's here, what's it looked like? Um, and we ended
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: up hunting. We end up splitting up that night. Me,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Josh and Sam hunted three different areas that night to
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: just try to find like, hey, can we find deer anywhere?
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Can we just get into a place that hasn't been
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: pillaged and that might have deer? And um, we didn't
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: really find him any of those spots. Josh saw like
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: ten tree stands and five trail cameras. I had a
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: bunch of cameras and tree stands. Sam did see a
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: nice buck at last light, but it busted him in
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: his location, But that was the only deer he saw. Um.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: And I should also add that day earlier we had
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: found like three different dead bucks on the original piece
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: of public Maybe this is the day prior, But the
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: picture I'm trying to paint here is like what we
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: were discovering was that everywhere we'd been had been like
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: raped and pillaged. I've I think it'd be conservative to
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: say we we saw at least thirty or more tree stands.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: At least twenty or more trail cameras we found the
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: three dead deer. One of them had its head cut off.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: One of them was a really nice buck that looked
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: like it had been hit in the guts and just
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: not recovered. Um, so it was not a pretty picture anywhere. Mark,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: do you think that this is a there's an outfitter
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: situation going on there, or do you think this is
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: just recreational hunter is just flooding the spot, you know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: because that's a lot of tree stands. It's a good question,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: and I han't the only I guess. I don't know.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: There's two things. One like there's always a lot of
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: trucks of these different trail heads. It's different like access points,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: which makes me thinks just like average dudes, and we've
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: bumped into average dudes and talked to average dudes. This
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: is like it's too close to a population center, and
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: I should preface this, like you and I have talked
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: about this a little bit. But I've been trying to
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: make this work, this place work because it's close to
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: my cabin out there, and I've wanted, like to have
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: a cool white tail spot near my Idaho cabin and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: so like I forced the issue even though it's relatively
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: close to a pretty decent population center, and and I
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: kept hoping, like, oh, you can find a way to
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: make it work. And we're seeing deer, so like you
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: kind of could make it work sort of, But what
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing is that it's it's maybe just not the
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: juice isn't worth the squeeze, because you know, there's just
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: so many people. And I will say that when I've
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: done my when I did my summer scouting this year,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: and when I did more scouting last summer, I guess
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: it would have been when I pushed into like some
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: of this, like three miles back in stuff, I found
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: a bunch of double sets, So someone was in there
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: with two tree stands per tree, Which makes me think
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: that someone was going in there and filming hunts, right,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, why else would you have Like I probably
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: found like six seven maybe more tree stands that were
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: set up as double's, Like why else would you do that?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Um So, I don't know what the deal is, but
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: it was it was pounded and um to to make
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: what's becoming a long story, I guess a little bit shorter.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: Day five is pretty uneventful. We end up hunting in
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: the morning and some new spots. We end up hunting
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: in the evening. On the west side access point, which
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: we hadn't hunted yet, but there've been cars in that.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: They've been cars in that parking lot, so we've been
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: avoiding it, but they've been gone the last two or
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: three days and we hadn't been able to find anything
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: on our side. So I said, all right, well, let's
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: let's give that a shot. I'd scouted some sweet looking
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: locations over there. Maybe these guys are just hunting close
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: up towards the food sources. And if I go deep
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: into the riverbed stuff again and get back on these islands,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: maybe they're pushed back in there. UM went deep on that.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: One thing I felt good about this trip was like
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I and this is like one of those lessons or
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: one of those like takeaways for me, It is like,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: just don't settle for good enough, don't settle for and
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: it looks like it should be good. I decided this year,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: like I'm not just gonna ride something that should be good.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna confirm that it is good. So I'm gonna
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: go until I see that concentration of sign, whether it
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: be you know, you know, if it was a rout
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: hunted be rutting signer. Right now, I'm looking for the
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: fresh tracks or fresh droppings or something. So I kept
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: pushing and went deeper than I've ever been on that
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: side and got into a location it looked money. It
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: was like there was a crossing of the main river,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: and then there was like a flooded ditch that converged
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: with that, that had a crossing over that, and I
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: could see back into two of these different willow covered islands, um,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: and they all came together right there, and I thought, gosh,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: there's gotta be something that's gonna come through here, and
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: all I saw was a dough and a moose. Um.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: So this brings us all to the last evening, which
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: is the last kind of interesting thing that happened. So
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: everything I just told you is now in the rearver mirror.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: We had our plan a's and Plan b's, and those
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: ended up, you know, being devoid of deer. So then
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: I kept pushing and exploring new places, and I really
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: didn't find anything except for that one island, that three
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: point two miles in island where I had the fresh
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: tracks going in there, but you know, and I didn't
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: see anything but the does and the year and a
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: half old. And when I glassed at the next morning,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: I just saw few does. So I kind of, you know,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: lost the confidence in that. And then we went and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: we hammered. We kind of did like a like a
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: shotgun approach, and tried to look at all these different
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: parcels around there to try to see if there's maybe
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: been a hidden gem that nobody else is hitting, but
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: all the signs pointed to it just being pillaged across
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: the board. So now we're to our last night, and
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: I look at like everything I have available to me
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: and everything I've learned, and I tried to think back,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: like is there any place that is there any rock
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: I've left unturned? Is there anything that seems worth my
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: time again? And the only thing I could come back
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: to was that island, that three point two miles in
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: their island where I found the fresh tracks going in
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: and we're I saw less than I expected, but I
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: still did see like that was the best movement I saw. Yeah,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: So I decided, like, all right, I'm gonna give that
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: one more try. A little bit of me thought like
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: that just seems like it could work if if the
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: deer haven't been completely pushed off. The sign you saw
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: indicates that it should be decent, even though you didn't
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: see a good buck like you were hoping and thought
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: you would. And I get in there, I find a
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: good spot to set up along the crossings. They're based
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: on what the wind was doing. And last three minutes
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: of daylight, three or four or five minutes of daylight,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: a buck steps out into the channel about a hundred
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: yards down from me, and then a second one and
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: they're both nice mature bucks step out in this channel,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: make a scrape, like both of them. Like one makes
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: a scrape, one the next one walks up, makes a scrape,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: and then they spar and then it's dark and they
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I see them like in fading light. I see them
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: turn and they don't cross the channel. They go right
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: back into the island. They didn't even leave this island
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: before dark, and that was the end of the hunt.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Way to leave the next morning. So my take away
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: from that, I had two thoughts coming out of that
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: experience that night. One part of me said, one part
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: of me countered that as a win, like a small win,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: because I had done I had thoroughly explored and tested
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: and tried and examined all my options, and finally the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: last night I found a shooter Buck. I found mature
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: bucks in this place that just been pillaged. I finally
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: found him kind of confirmed, you know, that I was
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: on the right track, and if I had more time,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: maybe I could have made a move now that I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: saw him, and maybe would have had a chance. So
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: a part of me said, hey, cool, you you worked
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: hard and you kind of found him. The other side
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: of me said, was I too fast to judge, to
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: make a judgment on that spot. So I talked earlier
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: about some of my takeaways and lessons were, don't settle,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: pivot fast, you know, exploring the move on. But in
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: this case, I checked it out and I made a
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: judgment on it after a night in the morning, and
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: then I moved on, when in fact, there were two
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: mature Bucks there that I didn't know, and now I,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: you know, had skipped the last three days there, that
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: I could have spent their fine tuning and maybe seeing
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: them and making a move on them, and instead I
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: was elsewhere. And now when I finally do see him,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: it's too late. So that's that's how the hunt ended.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Those were like the things I was thinking about, the
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: lessons I learned, or the questions I had, um, what
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: what's your analysis of that last day question? And anything
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: else that talked about. Man, I think you got you
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: got sucked into the conundrum of do I do I
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: put my resources into finding a really good spot or
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: do I put my resources into figuring a spot so
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: I can figuring out a specific spot so I can
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: hunt it really well. And it's tough, man, I mean,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: it's it's really hard to overcome that level of pressure.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: But when you keep pushing it like that and you
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: find those bucks on that island and you see that behavior,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: you go, Okay, they didn't leave, Like there's there's still
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: dear there to work with, but you've got to figure
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: out how to how to beat him at that new
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: game and they're not giving you much and so it's like,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I consider that a pretty big win. Honestly,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: like to see those deer and at least get to
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: that point with them, because you know, I mean, if
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: you if you go check out these other spots there
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: and you guys kind of divide and conquer and you
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: go this is this is the same story everywhere else.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Then it's time to go back and just figure out
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: what you're missing. And I think I think the not
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: settling approach to that is really really important because it
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: did put you in a position to find those deer,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: even though you didn't kill them. Like I think, I
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: think that's a good lesson there. I think it just
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: really sucks to learn. Yeah, yeah it was. It was
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: a doozy and I learned. Like you said, like, I mean,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: there's there, there's that whole not settling thing. The thing
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: I don't have a firm sense of yet is like
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: there's this fine line right as you describe there, Like
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: there's the don't settle, but then there's also like sometimes
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: though you don't want to be too fast to judge,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: and like how do you like, how much time do
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: you give a spot? How much you know, how do
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: you make that decision? I think that just comes down
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: to the experience and gut feel and how much time
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: you have in general. Right Like in my case, I
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: had six days. I just didn't have much time to
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: work with. I think if I had a season to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: work this area, I would have been much more patient
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and willing to give a spot time right, but in
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: this case is like I gotta I gotta get eyes
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: on something, or like I need some kind of confirming
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: sign that I'm in the right zone so then I
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: can start fine tuning. But until I have something that
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: confirms them in the right zone at least, this is
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: my theory. My theory was like, I'm not going to
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: dedicate real time to a spot until I know I'm
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: in the zone. And I just wasn't seeing anything that
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: made me think like this was a this was a
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: spot except for that island. That spot. That island was
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: the one where like I thought, gosh, it should be
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: but I got I got deflated by that morning where
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I thought like I would see something really great coming in,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: I'd see a bunch of deer, I would see what
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: should have been there, what the sign told me should
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: be there, And there's just a couple of dolls. And
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: that made me think, yah, more the same and maybe
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, maybe I should maybe that was
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: a mistake, or maybe hey, that just was the luck
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: of the draw. And they didn't. They didn't come through
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: that that morning, and they did the next night, and
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: that's you know, that's just hunting. Sometimes they do things
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: and they don't repeat them. Sometimes they do something wonky
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: one day and they do something differently next And no
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: matter what you do, you wouldn't know um on a
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: short hunt like that, So it was it was an
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: interesting challenge. I did feel decent about that kind of
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: small wind there at the end. I was happy with
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: the way that I kind of pushed through places and
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: explored things, was more aggressive in my scouting, and I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: really think tracks were big thing that I used all
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: of these hunts that you know, I've used more and
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: more every year, and I think last year, you know,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: on the Deer Country tour, when I went to all
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: these different places, like very different styles, very different regions,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't have trail camera information, I didn't have like history,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: it was all brand new. I kept on finding myself
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: falling back on tracks more and more when you're in
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: those types of situations and getting more comfortable with interpreting.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, even though I didn't
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: kill I think like that was like a really clutch
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: part of my small wind um. I think I think
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: that's one of the biggest benefits of doing on It's
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: like this is you realize what your crutches are at home,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: and you know you I've talked about this a lot.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: When you go on the road and you've got four
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: or five, six days to kill one on public land,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: those trail cameras aren't doing you any good. Like, it's
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: just it's not to me, it's not worth even bringing
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: them along because when you can go out and find
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: fresh sign rubs and scrapes and you can see those tracks,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: especially if you're on a riverbo the situation, that's the
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: best you can do because you can you can gauge
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: how current it is and and how heavy the traffic
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: is so important and you're just not gonna get that.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: You don't have enough time to make a trail camera
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: work for you that way. Yeah, yeah, that's Um, it's
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: an easy trap to get sucked into these days of
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: how prevalent cameras are and how short term satisfying cell
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: cameras are. Right, Um, but I'm finding more and more
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: the same thing that, um, they can they're almost like
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: golden handcuffs, Like they seem so great that you don't
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: want to leave him behind. But if you get too
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: dependent on them, you can get stuck in a marriage
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: you don't want to be in. Yeah, so let me
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: let me ask you the question that everybody really wants
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: to know the answer to. Mark. Uh, how come you're
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: going out to Idaho in mid September and you're not
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: hunting elk? You're going back to the same pressured public
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: land for white tails when you could be out there
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: hunting elk. What's going on there? Yeah? Man, me and
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: Josh when we were driving home, we said, we asked
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: ourselves the same questions. We're like, all right, this is stupid.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: We've been. We've been just like I said, we're trying
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: to make this spot work for white tails because I
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: want to be at my cabin and get my money's
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: worth out of those mortgage payments. And uh, the thing
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: is that we've got running elk two yards away from
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: the cabin. Like what am I doing? Um? So, yeah,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: one of two things is gonna happen next year. I'll
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: tell you one. We're done with this spot for white tails,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: like I've done. I've given it three years. Every year
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: after the hunt, we're like, probably shouldn't do that again,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: and then we get sucked into it. Um we're done. Uh.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do one of two options. Either Number one,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: I could try to get some private permission in some
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: of these places, Like I still I still love being
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: out there in my place. I still want to have
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: a white tail spot, So I might explore some private options,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: knock on some doors, talk to some ranchers, that kind
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: of thing. That's a possibility. Or number two, I'm gonna
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: say forget the white tails. I can hunt those other places.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna finally get back to elk hunting and uh
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: scratch that it so tb D my friend. Yeah, I
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: want everybody to remember that you said you're done with
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Idaho white tails in that spot, because I'm curious what
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: happens next summer when we're bearing down on this season.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: But my my vote would be to say, you know what,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: those white tails, the other guys with seven thousand stands
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: in there can have them. I would go chase those
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: googling bowls for a couple of days. Yeah, man, I'm
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: I'm over it, And I do think you know, in
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: all seriousness, there is like a lesson there that should
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: be just like keyed in on again, Like you can
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: sometimes do almost everything right and do all the things
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to do on a public land hunt, and
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: sometimes you know that that pressure is just maybe not
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: one insurmountable because you know, maybe you could, but is
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: it still fun or or could you just explore some
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: new areas and find some places it's a little bit
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: less pounded, or explore some different opportunities. Um, I don't know,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: there's a there's something to be said for I just
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: not dealing with that bullshit. I guess I'm adress say well,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, I honestly think that, you know, when you
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: talk about that, I'm sitting here and I'm like, I'm
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: thinking about hunts myself. I've had that are just like that,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: and it happens a lot, and it's probably a pretty
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: good thing to talk about in the industry because we've
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: been just painting this picture that you know, go on
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: public land white Tales, it's gonna be a blast. You'll
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: challenge yourself, you'll kill the best trophy of your life.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: But so often when you go, this is more of
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: the outcome where you're like, man, there's way more people
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: here and wayfeer dear, and this is a real heavy
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: lift to get around any decent buck, And you know
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: you don't see that part in a YouTube video or
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: an Instagram post for the most part, Like it's hard
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: to kind of like wrap your head around what that
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: kind of hunt really entails until you're in it, and
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: it's a vastly different thing, and it's real common. It's
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: and like we said earlier, it's really common now that
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: this is so popular and people are really you know,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: turned onto the early season hunts and some of these
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: destination hunts like this is this is not like an
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: unusual outcome or experience, and people should be aware of that. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: And I mean, like there's to your point about how
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: popular some of the stuff has gotten. And I've heard
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: you talk about this in the past two Like right,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: there's some media these days that show public Land like
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: incredible success on public Land all over the place, and
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: it makes you think like it's a piece of cake almost,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: But what you forget is that there's like ninety days
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: of time being invested and there's like ten guys out
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: there all scouting and hunting and doing all this stuff,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: and they still just have like a handful of winds
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: along the way. Um, you shouldn't beat yourself up if
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: you go out there's a solo person and try to
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: pull it off in six or seven days and instead
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: have a a tough, a tough week. Um. And I
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: don't want to paint any of this is like complaining
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: about people being out there right, because I'm like, personally
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: it makes things hard. But at the same time, like,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: I'm glad there's other folks that are getting hunting like
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: this is this is not an indictment of folks getting
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: out there and learning to hunt. Like I'm glad there's
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: folks learning hunt. I'm glad people are out there enjoying
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: our public lands. Um. All the things are are good things,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: but on an individual basis, it does make for challenges
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: sometimes and you just gotta learn how to work around it. Yeah, well,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: and I don't. I don't know about you, but when
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: I deal with something like that, and the thing that
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: just like constantly, like that little voice in my head
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: always tells me like somebody is figuring it out, you know,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: like somebody's in there getting that right, and you're not.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: And that drives me crazy. Oh. I was almost that
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: somebody to those other thirty seven guys out there, and
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: you said one more day, tony, Yeah, one more day,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: one more day, and would have been another ship show probably,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: but I'm gonna take my small win. I'm gonna run
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: with it. I'm gonna say that the season got off
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: to an interesting start. Learn some stuff, and uh I'm
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: ready for Michigan open. Nice, nice, alright, buddy, I think
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: that should be a rap today. Um any other final thoughts? No,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: just get out there and hunt hot weather, cold weather,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: Be careful of your shots in the rain. Don't go
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: hana ida ha white tales. That's the takeaway, right, that's
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: the big one, and flashing lights on the billboard. All right, man,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining me. Thanks all right, and that's a rap.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in. Just a reminder, Season eleven
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: of meat Eater coming to the meat eater dot com
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: on October, and my show Deer Country new episodes out
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: every Tuesday on the meat Eater YouTube channel. Check it out.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: Like those videos, leave me a comment, subscribe and watch
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: Deer Country. I thank you, I appreciate you keep me
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: in a job, folks. Thanks a lot, and until next time,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: stay wired to hum