Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 852: Wrestling with a Weird Rut and What Comes Next with Dan Johnson

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Ep. 852: Wrestling with a Weird Rut and What Comes Next with Dan Johnson · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the whitetail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Dan Johnson to discuss the
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: particularly challenging whitetail rut that we both just experienced and
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: our ideas and strategies for the weeks to come. All right,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: you by First Life and their Camel for Conservation initiative.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: And today I am joined by my good buddy, mister
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Dan Johnson, and we are going to be discussing and
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: breaking down kind of oh, I guess, like a Monday
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: morning quarterback kind of session on the rut, what we
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: just experienced here in November of twenty twenty four, the
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: hunts that we had, the experiences that we had, some
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: thoughts on why we and so many other people thought
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: this was such a weird, slow, bizarre.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Challenging rut for so many of us.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: So we're going to discuss that, kind of discuss some
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: of the different thoughts that we had on what we
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: personally saw as well as some higher level maybe impacts
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that are kind of hitting folks across the board. And
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: then we're also going to talk through some of the
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: things that worked, some of the things that led to
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Dan having success, so we get a success story for
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Daniel Johnson here in November. And then finally we're going
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: to walk through some of our thoughts on what all
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: this means for the future, how we can take some
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: of these lessons learned and apply them to the weeks
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: to come. And this kind of second maybe it's more
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: like the third, the last third of the season, maybe
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: second half, maybe last third of the season, whatever it is,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: We're we're on the downward slope. We are past mid November.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: We are entering a different phase of the year, and
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: it's been a weird one for me, as Dan and
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I will talk about, it's been a doozy.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: I've had some just.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Funky, strange things going on, both hunting and outside of hunting.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: So I'm personally ready to move on. I'm ready to
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: move into a new part of the year. Trying to
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: feel good, trying to have fun, trying to be healthy,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: and make the best of the rest of the twenty
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: twenty four season. So that's what we've got in store.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I will just give you one very quick heads up,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: which is we do have this big old, crazy Black
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Friday sale going on for Meet Eatter and first Light
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: and all of our brands up to fifty percent off
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: stuff like logo areas. I know it's fifty percent off,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: great deals on things like the Furnace hoodie which I'm
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: wearing here today. This hat's one of those pieces that's
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: fifty percent off, so check it all over Themediator dot
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: com or first Light dot com. There's plenty of other
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: sale adds, all that kind of stuff everywhere else you look.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I don't want to belabor the point anymore. So thanks
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: for being here. I hope you all have an incredible Thanksgiving.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: I hope today is a day if you are listening
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: on the day this launches, where you are spending time
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: with friends and family and appreciating the many blessings that
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: we all have and the incredible opportunity that we have
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: here as hunters.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: So I'll also just note that I.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you, appreciate you all tuning in being a part
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: of this community and being good stewards of our traditions,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: our resources, and all those wild critters out there. So,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: without any further ado, let's get to my chat with
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Dan Johnson as we recap the twenty twenty four rut
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: and our thoughts were moving forward. All right here with
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: me on the line for a much needed therapy session,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: is my good buddy, mister Dan Johnson.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: How the hell are you?
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Man?
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: Oh?
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Your therapy is and understatement, my friend, Uh, have you
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: ever woke up? Or maybe it's when you wake up?
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: Maybe it's when you Usually it's when I go to
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: bed where I feel And this is a sick joke,
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: but I feel like an Alzheimer's patient where I'm just
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: like lost and confused and I don't know where I'm at.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, dude, you have no idea how much I can
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: relate to that I have.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: I'm going through a weird thing right now where I'm
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: having insomnia. I have not been able to sleep like
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: three out of the last four days. Really, I've been
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: up till like three or four in the morning. Can't
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: get my head to turn off.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: So, is there a major decision you're about to make
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: or dabbling in in life.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: No, it's it.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: There's actually I think there's a reason I'm taking some
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: medicine for some weird health issues I've been going through
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: the last month, and suppose me that can cause insomnia, okay,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: and so that and then stress, I think. So I'm
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: getting stressed out about what's going on and not sleeping,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: and then I think those two things combined have led
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: to me not being able to. Like I just lay
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: there and the switch never happens, It never turns off,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: it just stays there.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: It's like the wheels keep spinning and spinning and spinning,
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: but about nothing.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: It's not like I'm worrying about any specific thing other
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: than just why can't I sleep?
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Why can't I sleep? What's wrong with me?
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: Yep? I have two solutions that your doctor will probably
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: argue against. But though, yeah, one is bourbon AH and
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: the other one is THHC. So so I'm telling you, dude,
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: you put a little bit of gummy in your mouth
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: and you slide it down the hatch, and in about
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: thirty minutes you will be going to sleep. I gain
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: almost guarantee it.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: You know, you're not the first person to recommend that
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: to me.
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: I think I know who the other person is.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: So I very well might consider that it's twenty twenty four.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: It's a brand new world that's totally in the wheelhouse exactly. Yeah, man,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So I don't know, it's all sorts of the last
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: month for me has been six weeks.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: Five weeks.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Last five weeks have been one of the weirdest five
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: weeks of my life, let alone hunting life. So yeah,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: we've got a lot to cover as far as hunting
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: and what's been going on, because I think other than
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: just my general weird stuff that's going on, there's also
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: the hunting stuff, and this has been my.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: It's hard to say.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we're biased to always thinking like what's happening right
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: now is the best of the worst or the most.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: You know, there's a freak like a recency bias, I
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: think is what they call it. But still it seems
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: like this has been the weirdest, most frustrating white tail
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: rut I've personally ever experienced.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Yep. And this isn't just something that you and I
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: have experienced. I am very active on my Instagram messages
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: and I communicate with people all over the nation. Right,
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: so when people when people reach out to me. I
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: tend to like respond back to whatever, like whether it's
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: a question or hey, dude, how's your rut been? Things
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: like that. If I have a little bit of time
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: and I'm waiting at a practice or I'm waiting in
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: between hunts or in my truck waiting for something, I'm responding,
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: and the traditional Midwestern rut from about Nebraska to the
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: East coast. I am getting hundreds of people responding to
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: me that are having the exact same outcome in their rut,
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: and so it's not just us.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: It makes you feel a little better, yes, right, yeah, yeah,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I have not seen I've not seen a single buck
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: chasing a doe. No, I've not heard any grunting snort wheez,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: And I haven't seen a fight. I haven't seen. I've
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: seen bucks cruising. That's the only running activity I've seen.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: It just like bucks kind of doing the march. Yep,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: that's all I've seen. And I have not seen a
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: single mature buck in Michigan since October fourteenth, and I
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: have one.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: No, that takes back. I have three mature buck pictures
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: since November one.
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: I was trying to find it email someone sent me
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: about this and it has to do with what's that
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: guy's Charles.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: El Sheimer and moon. You think the moon theory.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: Not necessarily moon, but he it was something about a
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: synchronized rut versus a traditional rut. Yeah, and so this
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: year was definitely the trickle rut. I mean I had
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: I had guys telling me that they saw breeding in
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: mid October and then recent like then nothing. So it's
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: it basically has told me that there dose were not
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: coming into heat in a group, right. I saw, dude,
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: when I was leaving Iowa to come back home for
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: a couple of days before I left to go to Kansas,
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  Speaker 4: I was watching doe groups and I was watching three
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: year old bucks and four year old bucks come downwind
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: of dough groups sent check them and not even bump them,
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: just leave. And that was going all the way up
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  Speaker 4: until I believe November fourteenth, when you would think that
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: there would be Now, did I see a little bit
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: of chasing, Yes, I saw the bare minimum of chasing.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: But when you have three year olds ignoring, does dude
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: something like they did their due diligence, they came down
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  Speaker 4: wind of them. And when a three year old is
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: telling you this dough isn't even close to coming in,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: and they're they're basically just cruising. Now, that's one thing
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: that I did see this year, and that was a
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: ton of deer on their feet for longer periods of time,
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: almost like it was, you know, the post rut cruise
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: that we talk about. I saw a ton of that,
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: but just not buy mature bucks.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's do this.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Let's let's recap real quick, yep, kind of what our
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: last month or so has been like, and then maybe
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: try to break down a couple takeaways and then what
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: that means for us going forward. We're going to try
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: to put this into an abbreviated time slot since we've
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: got stuff after this. But you have at least a
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: happy ending to some of your story. Yeah, so I'll
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: lead because I don't have any happy endings. So, as
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: I mentioned, I haven't seen a mature buck since October fourteenth,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I think it was or fifteenth or whenever it was.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I killed that buck in mid October in southern Michigan.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Since then, I have hunted my normal southern Michigan properties
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: that I've hunted for years, the ones that I talked
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: about with you this summer where I had two bucks
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: I was after, and then I've hunted Kentucky public land,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: and then I've hunted up north at our deer camp,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: and then a really quick trip to Illinois. That was
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: a quick kind of turnaround bust. But the big things
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: for me, if I were to summarize everything done, I
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: spent the most time hunting my southern Michigan local stuff
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: where I've been after those two deer, and it turned
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: into three deer. Actually, the headline of the story there
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: is that the bucks are just gone, like I'm hunting
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: a ghost.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Or a non existent deer.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: It seems like I've never had something quite I've never
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: had it happen quite to this degree. Those deer disappeared
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: on October third and has not showed up ever since,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: So I feel like, probably a good chance that deer
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: is dead. That was that really big, like one hundred
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: and fifty maybe type class buck that I thought was
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: a four year old probably this year that passed on
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: a ton last year.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: My kid called him bear deer. He's he's a wall.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Then the other deer that was the five year old
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: I found his match set this spring.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: We were super.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Excited about this big old bodied buck Bulldozer and he
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: disappeared September third, and didn't see him for six weeks,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: and then late October he did show back up. But
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: this is a deer that has been a homebody for
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: the last two years. I mean I passed him a bunch.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: I have countless pictures.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: I went and.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I should have have got these things on a piece
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: of paper. I went and mapped out every single picture
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: I have of him last year during the hunting season,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: and it was almost every single day he was so
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: on these properties.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: I've permission on.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Tons of daylight everywhere, same thing the year before, and
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: then this year, like a light switch gone. So he
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: showed back up like October twenty something, and then one
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: more time at the end of October, and then twice
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: in early November. So I think I have three or
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: four appearances of him now from late October until November ninth,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: and that's it since September, So from September to almost
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: the end of November. So in the three month period,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: he's been here three or four times that I can tell.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: And that's from you know, fifty times last year, fifty
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: times the year before. I don't know what else to
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: do about him. I don't know where he is. I
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: don't know what happened. I don't know why he would
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: change his behavior as a five year old like that.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I've never seen a five year old totally change. Usually
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: they get more and more tight to a core area.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: I usually get to learn them more, and I know, Okay,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: this deer really likes this zone.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: This dear really likes this zone.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: The only thing I can think is maybe that his
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: zone that he is gravitating towards now is just not
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: on somewhere I permission. So that's one possible theory. But
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: to make a long story short, with this area, I've
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: hunted a pretty good amount. I've hunted all the best
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: like rot places that I would usually find these deer
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and just seeing nothing but dozing young bucks, dozen young bucks,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: dozen young bucks. I've not had a single mature buck encounter.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I have searched into new places. I've moved cameras into
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: areas I usually don't have cameras. I've been trying to
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: hunt and observe some places that I usually don't, just
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: trying to seek it out and figure out like where
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: have these deer moved to?
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Nothing?
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: So I'm running out of I'm running out of ideas
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: with this. I'm kind of down to three thoughts with
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: my local situation. One is to just keep searching, keep
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: moving around, keep you know, glassing from afar, and the
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: idea to hope that something will show up eventually. Like
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I am hunting tonight and I'm gonna hunt a part
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: of the farm I've not hunted since the very beginning
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: of October that I don't I don't think they'd be
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: there because it's not where the best food is right now,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: and there's there's kind of like a really really strong
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: late season food source on a neighboring property that I
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: think is pulling mostly activity, and so this is not there.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: But it's a place that I've ignored because of that,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: And so I've got to think, well, maybe I just
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: need to go to the place where I haven't been
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: at all, And even though I have a couple of
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: cameras there that have not picked them up or picked
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: up anything, maybe maybe it's worth a shot. Just you know,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: can't trust the cameras entirely, So I'm going to explore
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: a new area tonight and just see. So one, I
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: just keep searching, keep moving cameras, keep scouting, YadA.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: YadA. The second thought.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Is to just wait and basically hope that something's going
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: to move into the area. Hope that the late season
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: you know, move to food will make them return. Hope
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: that once we finally get a really good cold front
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: and snow, that'll get something moving.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: And again one of the one, the one.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Big thing there was I guess two possible big things
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: that I think could be going on here. Three I
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: guess one these deer could have gotten killed, and it
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: just might be that there just isn't mature bucks now.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: One of them, I feel pretty confidence is probably the case.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: The other one I haven't seen since November ninth. It's
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: now like November twenty sixth or twenty seventh or something now,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: so it's been three plus weeks, so maybe he's dead too.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: So they just there just might not be a mature
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: buck in this area anymore. So I might be chasing
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: the complete ghost. But the other thing that could be
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: is that there might be a hunting pressure change that
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: has pushed these deer out of the areas that they
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: usually feel comfortable. I do share some of these properties
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: with other people. I was scouting earlier this month and
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: found a pop up blind right on the edge of
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: a betting area that has historically been a sanctuary that
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I never go into. That I've always viewed as like
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: that core place, and now there's you know, a blind there,
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: So maybe these other people are walking right through that
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: and hunting more than I realized.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: That could be a thing.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing is that, like I mentioned,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: on a neighboring farm, there is a sixty acre farm
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: field that this year has been planted in the cover crop,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: so it is basically a sixty acre food plot of
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: you know, brassicas and turnips and wheat and oats and
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: clover and all sorts of stuff. So it's a huge
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: food plot in a place where there usually isn't. That's
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: probably pulling a lot of deer activity in an area
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: that's a little bit different than usual. Now I can
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: intercept some of that, and I've hunted trying to intercept
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: some of that and haven't seen what I'm looking for lately.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: But that maybe has changed some behavior, and maybe deer
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: are betting in different places and accessing that food and
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: just not hitting the areas that I hunt because there
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: does not seem me much they're feeding on on my permission.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Pieces.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: So one thought though, is that if I continue waiting,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: eventually the cold, snowy snap will happen and maybe bulldoze
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: are still alive, or maybe some other bucks gonna move in.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe because I have left most of my property pretty untouched,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: maybe that gun season sanctuary that I've talked about in.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: The past will work.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: You know, we leave it kind of untouched and everybody
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: else hunting all around me. Hopefully they would feel comfortable
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: in my areas, and you know, one of these deer
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: that's still alive starts moving. I've not hunted my pieces
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: since gun season opened, which has been more than a
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: week ago. So that's a hope. And so that's that's
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: kind of where I'm at right now as far as
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: trying to kill a buck in this zone.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: That's what's happening.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: I got a question, mark, I got questions, all right.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: Question is this is a long question. Iowa dry all
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: August dry the first part of September. They did get
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: lots of beans out in Iowa. But as they because
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: usually beans get combined first in your area, is there
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: a lot of standing corn because during harvest there was
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: a lot of rain.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: We do not have that problem Okay, everything came out
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: early here. Okay, So yeah, standing corn isn't the problem,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: all the corns down. We have the opposite, and that
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: a lot of fields are have been chisel plowed, so
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: there's a lot.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Of dirt around if anything.
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Iowa, my farms, the counties that I hunt, I
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: mean we're talking beans got out, okay, but right when
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: they started transitioning to corn, we're talking lots of rain,
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: and then it dried out. And then right when I
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: didn't even hear a combine running this year, wow, okay,
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: And so we had a scenario where right has it
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: started to dry out? It rained again? Right has it
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: started to dry out? And it was substantial rain to
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: where on the farms that I hunt surrounding these farms.
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: Most of my main farm was in beans this year,
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: and so something happened too in my farm where they
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: combined the middle and then they left the edges of
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: the beanfields. So I don't know if there was some
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: kind of rot or mold or something on these beans
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: and they just didn't pick them. But the deer are
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: eating them. So this isn't this is a late season
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: opportunity for me, per se. But we'll see what the
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: shotgun season does. Outside of that, we have I mean,
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: we're talking hundreds of acres of standing corn, and throughout
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: my travels in Iowa down through Missouri into Kansas, I've
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: seen more standing corn this year than I've ever seen driving.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: And so I think that that played potentially has a
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: huge role in some of the spread out numbers. Maybe
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: I know northern Missouri, southeast southern Iowa has been impacted
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: by EHD. I typically don't see a lot of dead
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: deer or find a lot of dead deer, but I
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: know that on certain properties, especially all the way even
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: up to where my dad lives in north central Iowa,
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: massive amounts of deer found by pheasant hunters this year
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: that were found dead. So that has and this is
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: one of those scenarios that we talked about, like the
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: death by a thousand cuts type thing. Where we have drought,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: we have standing crop, we have potential illness, and then
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: just a variety of hunting pressures as well. I'll mirror
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: the sentiment that you shared with October thirty first one
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: on one of my farms, I had three shooters all
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: show up on camera that day. I was down there, Honey,
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: I think I started my rut vacation on November first
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: with high anticipation. There had not been another four or
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: five year old or older on trail camera on that
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: farm until I got back from Kansas on November twentieth.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Who yeah, so they all showed back up. So essentially
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: I was hunting ghosts right Like, I didn't have trail camera,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: I didn't see him on the hoof. And this is
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: a property where I can get a very good idea
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: of travel of age class of what deer on the property.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: And and I don't know, man, it just it was
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: a wonky year. Like I'll say this again. I rattled
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: in one buck and it was a seven year old
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: that I have Last year, it was a one seventy
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: six this year, or he was like a one to
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: seventy class six year old, like a beautiful ten with
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: some junk. This year he dropped down to like a
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: mainframe seven, same time link on tie lengthened mass on
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: his G two's. But I rattled him in the last
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: morning before I left to go to hunt Kansas, and
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: he showed up. But guess what else? I rattled in
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: a frickin horse on one of the horses that are
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: on the property came to investigate all the noise, and
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: so that buck was coming straight to me, but so
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: was the horse, and so then that buck flanked me.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: I want to say sixty yards. I had no shot
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: and I wasn't going to take that uphill through thickness.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: And did you have a shot at the horse?
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Oh yeah, thought trust me, I thought about it.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: I thought about it. And so this horse has been
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: a kind of a thorn in my side since I
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: started hunting this property. Long story short, that was the
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: only time I saw a deer, and I mean deer
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: period respond to grunting, calling, snort, wheezing, anything, man, not
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: even a dumb two year old came in to investigate
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: rattling this year.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: And I swear to God, it's it's so funny you
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: say that because I have I didn't have a chance
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: to grunt to any deer in Michigan because I haven't
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: seen a single deer I'm interested in shooting. But when
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: I went to Kentucky, I was there and I was
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: hunting public land, all brand new stuff. Had never set
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: foot on any of this stuff. So it was basically
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: like if any buck I would shoot, and I did
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: see some deer, and I called to a bunch of
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: them in zero interest from anything. I mean, I couldn't
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: grunt in a one and a half year old, couldn't
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: grunt in the possible three or four year olds I saw.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: So again, I mean, this is all anecdotal, it's probably random,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: but it just has been such a strange year, and
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know how to hand I don't know how
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: to handle that other than just try to like press
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: on and try not to get frustrated by Yeah.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: So, so two things I'll add to this right. Number one,
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: there is a recession proof type of conversation that I
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: definitely think that needs to be had, and that is
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: the people who hunt on managed properties with food plots
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: have the ability to do habitat improvement, hingecutting things like that.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: They did not. And this is the people that I've
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: talked to. They did not see the disparity that many
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: of us saw. Okay, so, if you have the ability
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: to plant food plots, plant, and I mean substantial food plots,
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: I'm not talking about like the quarter acre clover vidield stuff, Yeah,
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: that's on ten acres. I'm talking about the ability to
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: manage a property they didn't see that. They didn't see that,
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: and so maybe that has something to do with it, right,
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: And then just from I don't know, like there was
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: something else I was going to mention about the I
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: got a brain fart here, but it had it had
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: to do with like basically no three year olds. Right.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: There was people claiming that they saw the four year
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: olds and older, and then the two year olds and younger.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: But there was a gap this year that and I
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: saw one or maybe two three year olds this year.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: And usually I'm seeing a real, real good like next
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: year's bucks pop up, and so this year I saw
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: some you know, I saw good two year olds. I
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: actually passed probably a low one fifties, high one forties.
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: I was at full draw with him and I was like,
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: he's three, definitely a young body. And I down and
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: let them walk, knowing or and that was like day three,
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: knowing that I potentially had other deer in the area.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: And so I don't know, man, I am okay, and
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: a lot of it. Usually I have a sliding scale
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: definitely when I go on my out of state trips.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: But this year I set at bar really high in Iowa,
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: and I held that this year, my goal was to
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: shoot fill four tags, two tags in Iowa, my South
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Dakota tag and I did it, and my Kansas tag
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: and I did it. This year. I had high standards
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: for Iowa. Could I have filled my tags, yes, but
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: I want something that is baseline or higher than that,
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: basically what's in my basement. And so I had high
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: standards and I held to them.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: So we've been doing this a long time.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: We've been doing the Rout Marathon and talking about it
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: here together for I don't know, ten to fifteen years
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: We've been through a bunch of these How these days?
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: How are you dealing these days with that Rout grind
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: when it turns sour the way it has for so
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: many of us this year, when it's been slow, when
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: it's tough. I mean again, you know, I've been wrestling
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: with this this year. It's like, jeez, it's just been brutal. Yeah,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: But I feel like I'm older and wiser now I
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: should be able to deal with that better and recover
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: from that better and not take it so hard. Some
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: days I do, some days I don't. I'm curious where
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: you're at with that now and now that we're approaching the.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: End of November. Where your head's at right.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: Now, That's a great question, because I was less frustrated
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: and more curious and confused and wanting to know the
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: answer of why the deer movement and deer behavior was
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: so strange and less like, oh my god, because Mark,
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: there were days that went by where I did not
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: have a deer within shooting range yep, and I was,
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: you know, and that's the thing, Like, you know, we talked,
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: we talk about the strategy standpoint where I'm not hunting
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: field edges anymore. So I'm not seeing like ten, fifteen,
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: twenty deer in a single set. But I'm not having
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: button bucks, young fawns, spike antler deer. I'm not having
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: them in front of me. And when I'm not, when
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: I have consistency over the course of a decade and
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: then all of a sudden we have a massive change
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: that happens, I am my frustration turns to curiosity and
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: I'm like, Okay, something has to something has changed. I
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: want to know what it is. And then you get
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: in your car and you drive around the sections and
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: you're like, okay, well they're standing corn here, and you
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: start to look at precipitation levels, you start to look
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: at drought. You start to hear rumors because hunters they
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: bitch the most out of anybody that I know, right,
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: and I'm one of them, where I just I'm like, Jesus,
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: what is wrong here? What is wrong here? But most
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: of the time it's just shitty hunters complaining. Some of
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: the best hunters. And what I mean shitty hunters, I
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: mean the guys who the weekend warriors, right, and maybe
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: they're not shitty, but the guys who have less time
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: in the field than we do, right. And so you
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: start to hear guys like that who become frustrated. But
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: then something happens when you have guys who are spending
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: multiple weeks in the field and they are they're starting
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: to be curious and confused, and they're starting to get
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: frustrated because when you say to guys like us, it's
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: just a matter of time, right, it's just a matter
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: of time till something shows up, nothing shows up, and
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: nothing shows up, and then you're not seeing you're not
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: having the encounters with three year olds and two year
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: olds that you typically have. The only person who's not
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: affected by this somehow is Andy May that son of
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: a bitch, Like I love that guy, but I hate
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: him at the same time because he gets it done
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: no matter what, and so I wish I had a
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: little bit of his mojo, that dude can find him
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: and kill him. But I also think that you know,
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: when the honey holes dry up, and maybe it's maybe
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: there is something to what we've already discussed, or maybe
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: it's just you know, the timber, it starts to grow
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: up and get thicker in certain areas and deer patterns shift,
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: and I don't know, maybe it's one of those things
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: as well, and then I need to shift as well.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: But when you have ten to fifteen to twenty years
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: of experience on a farm, it'll usually allows you to
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: have a good indication of deer behavior and movement and
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: to features and things like that. And as again, I'm
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: just beating a dead horse, but it was off.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: So how are you handling that? Mentally?
• 32:07
  Speaker 6: Though?
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: I guess it's like, what's your advice? Now you've shifted
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: a little bit from being less frustrated more just curious,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: But how are you handling that in the moment when
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: you've hunted Iowa day after day after day after day
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: after day in incredible places and not seeing anything at
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: all like you're supposed to. Yeah, what's the Dan Johnson
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: mental game in twenty twenty four.
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: Well, the mental game is to accept that there is
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: a change and to accept the fact that I'll be
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: honest man, unless it's close to home. I've spent a
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: week at in South Dakota. I spent basically fourteen days
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: hunting Iowa off and on right. I had a couple
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: where I had to come home for some meetings and
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: some conferences or something like that, and then come back
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: and then I went back to I hunted like three
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: extra days at four extra days in Iowa. Then I
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: left for Kansas for a week. So for me, I've
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: used my time right, So I don't necessarily think that
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: I am going to be able to get out and
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: hit it again just from a time like I'm back
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: into dad mode. Now I'm back into work mode. Now
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: here's what I will say. I got home and two
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: of my bucks showed up November twentieth on my farm
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: and now they are basically parading in front of my
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: cell cams on a daily basis. That farm is four
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: hours away from where I live, so I just I'm
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: not going to be able to go do it. Like
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: if I told my wife today, hey listen, she would
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: probably go, oh, okay, she'd accept it. She wouldn't divorce
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: me because we're too far into the marriage, but she
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: would be extremely unhappy with that decision to go do it.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: And so well, it's just something. The rut was in
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Gravy this year, right, it just felt like it was slow,
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: and it happened the trust me deer getting bred somewhere.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: The bucks have started to show back up on some
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: of my farms, and I really do think if I
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: did have more time to get out there and hunt,
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: I would start going into staging areas. I would go
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: into terrain features because I do think they're still cruising
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: right now, and I would not be afraid to hit
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: a rattle. Probably maybe not right away in the morning.
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: I would wait for the doze to come through and
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: get settled, and then I would crack the horns sometime
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: late morning or even early in an afternoon set, and
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: that's what I would do. I would be monitoring trail
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: cameras more often now to try to get something pegged
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: down before the shotgun seasons. Or any time a firearm season,
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: and then I would basically let the firearm season happen.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: I would go like, if for everybody here, they're probably
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: going to participate in some kind of firearm season, go
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: do that. But if not, like me, I'm not going
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: to participate in the shotgun seasons. I would wait and
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: not put any pressure on any of the properties that
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: I have access to hunt, and then I would wait
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: for the late season at that point to see if
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: there is a shift in you know, the shotgun set.
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: The shotgun and firearm seasons usually leave a heavy footprint
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: on the landscape. There's going to be some shifting that
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: goes on, some patterns that go on and over that
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: period of time, you have the the crops. Like now,
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: I always say this, I want the crops to come out,
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: come out, come out, come out. But right now I
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: don't want any more crops to come out until the
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: season's over because what that does is that's just the
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: giant beacon for deer at that point.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I hope I answered your question. It did
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: to to a degree.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: I'll tag onto that and just you know, when it
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: comes to where my head has been at as this
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: month has progressed, you know, went from you know, super
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: high hopes, and you know, I was there was a
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: really nice buck running around down here that I thought
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: might be a three year old, might be a four
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: year old, so I was on the fence about him,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: but I kept thinking, man, my big guys are going
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: to show back up.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: My big guys are gonna show back up.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: So I didn't even get after that bucket all didn't
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: even try to hunt that deer. In retrospect, I wish
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: I had, because I ended up being the best deer
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: that's been around here all year. But but I went
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: from high hopes early to that slowly disappearing and towards
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: the end, and where I'm at now, I've started kind
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: of falling back onto something you said, which is acceptance
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: to a degree and just accepting like, hey, this might
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: just be one of those years that it isn't everything
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: you hoped it would be.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: And you can do one of two things.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: You can either be miserable about it and bitch about
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: it and complain about it and feel bad about it,
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: or you can accept, hey, this wasn't what you wanted.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: How do you make the most of it? Moving forward?
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: And so and so I'm trying to lean in that direction.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: So I'm accepting, Yeah, this wasn't what I wanted.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: What would it? What would this look like though? To
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: have a really fun rest of the season.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: So so part of that is doing the things I mentioned, Like,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: I'm still searching for these bucks. I'm still waiting and
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: hoping that, you know, come late season, there's gonna be
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: these changes and that they show back up. So I'm
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: not going to explode my spots and ruin them now,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: you know. So I'm gonna keep observing, scouting, watching, doing
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: a you know, a couple little hunts like I'm doing
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: here today. But then also I'm getting pretty close to
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: switching gears and getting to taking the kids hunting and
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: shooting does and just doing like the simple fun stuff
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: like inviting a bunch of friends out to go have
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: a dough night and have a good time and do
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff that's less pressure filled that I
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: can do no matter what. It doesn't matter that there's
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: not a mature buck around, because hey, we can go
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: out there and do something really important, which is manage
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: the dos, have a ton of fun doing it, spend
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: time with your buddies or your kids. Like, I'm very
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: close to flipping the switch and shifting that way all
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: the way, or at least starting doing that on like
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: my outside exterior areas and leave a couple core places
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: alone with hopes that something shows. But but yeah, I'm
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: leaning more and more towards you know, I've been asking
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: myself this question throughout recent years, especially this year, whenever
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: I find myself stressed or frustrated with how the hunt's
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: going and stuff, I'll ask myself, you know, what would
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: this look like if it were fun? So, like, what's
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: the fun version of this? Yeah, and so the fun
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: version might be, you know what, I'm not gonna hunt
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: all day to day. I'm miserable, I'm frustrated, this sucks.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna take the I'm taking an hour and I'm
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: gonna go get lunch and I'm gonna feel good again
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: and then I'll be happy and we'll the rest of
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: the day. Or maybe it's Hey, you know what, I'm
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: not going to do a running gun set at three
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: in the morning into a brand new place. I'm actually
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: gonna I'm actually gonna slip in at gray light and
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: glass and scout my way in and that'll be kind
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: of fun and different and it'll be a change of pace.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: And you know, I'm just allowing myself a little bit
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: more flexibility in what I'm doing and how I'm doing.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: It to try to.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: You know, we've talked about this endlessly over the years,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: like keep this from being like a military mission and
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: instead of being like, hey, this is supposed to be fun,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: do the thing that makes it fun. Yeah, work hard, yeah,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: do the right stuff. But you can take it too far.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: And so that's constantly walking that line. And so this
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: year my question that I've been like, the little phrase
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: has been like what would this look like if it
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: were fun? And then I'll be, oh, yeah, it would
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: be chilling the f out and you know, doing this
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: or doing this, or you know what, taking this afternoon
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: off and picking up the kids from school because you've
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: missed the kids and that would make you feel better
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: or whatever it is.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: And those things have helped.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: And I think this, you know, looking forward into the
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: next month of hunting, that's really going to be where
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I spend a lot of my mental time and my energy.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: So one thing that we didn't talk about was and
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: I just want to briefly mention it because I do
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: think it's important. And that was over the state of Iowa,
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: we had this stagnant low pressure where throughout the course
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: of the first two weeks in November, usually what happens
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: is I pray for an east wind, and I'm like,
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: give me one east wind every or a front comes through,
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: and that's going to give me an east wind. I
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: had six days in a row of east winds.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: Wasn't that weird?
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: We did too, and so we had this crazy thing
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: happen where my farm is a vertical rectangle and on
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: the west side of it is where all the cover is.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: So in order for me to hunt that farm on
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: an east wind, I have to go through cover morning
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: and afternoon to get to the stand locations so that
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: that wind blows out into a pasture. And that's pretty
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: intrusive when you're walking through, you know, timber, two times
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: a day in order to hunt that property. Could I
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: done it a little different, probably, but that would have
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: meant I was also extremely aggressive on my wind, and
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: I just wasn't. I didn't want to do it right.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: And so the other thing I want to mention real
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: quick is a lot of this has to do with
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: like filling a tag. And so I have my Iowa
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: buck Archery buck tag, and I think that having it
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: is making me want to fill it, Okay, And so
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: something cool has happened over the course of the last
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: couple months, and I got connected with a group of
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: people who own a vineyard near where I live, and
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: they have suffered a ton of a vine damage because
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: of deer and the deer eat the grapes throughout the summer.
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: They chew on the vines and they're they're basically it's
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: a what it's that called a depredation tag. It's depredatd
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: you know, it's depredation to their crop. And so they
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: have started allowing people, basically employees to hunt that area. Well,
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: they invited me to come out and hunt, because basically
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: they're like, well, you're not some Joe Schmo, you actually
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: have accuracy. We don't want you know, dead deer or
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: some Well. This year, this year, I did. This year,
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: I did. Uh, But it's gonna be cool because I
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: have no problem putting my tag on some spike buck.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: It's five miles from my house, uh it is. It
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: would just that and then I could fill my tag.
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: I could get the meat, and then my tag's fill
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: and then the only thing I have to worry about
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: is a potential late season tag. And so it would
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: be it would be cool to just get rid of
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: that tag and then I don't even have to worry
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: about my archery buck anymore, you know what I mean?
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Man, There's something to be said about how refreshing it
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: is to change your standards for a hunt sometimes, Like
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: some people are very militant about that and like you
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: should never do that, but again, like who cares about
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: how big a dear you shoot, how old a deer
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: you shoot, whatever. If you're not enjoying yourself, if this
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: is not bringing you joy, then you got to change
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: it up. And the like for me, like when I
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: switch to dough season and you go out there hunting
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: and you know, like, man, any dough that comes in range,
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: it's game on.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so fun.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Or even when I was in Kentucky it was really
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: hard and frustrating and all those things, but it was
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: still exciting in moments because I was like, hey, you
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: know what, I'm gonna shoot.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: Any buck that's like half decent.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: And so I was almost doing a full draw on
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: a couple of deer that I would never even blink at,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: you know, here at home. But there, it made it
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: a whole heck of a lot more fun than it
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: could have been because I realized, Hey, this is a
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: new situation, tough terrain, tough stuff. Let's go have some
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: fun with it. And that definitely helped. So if you're
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: in a funk, you should not at all feel like
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: you are beholden to some standard that is set by
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: the Internet, or set by a TV, or set by
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: your hunting buddies. Just do the thing that's exciting and
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: fun in the moment that can cure a whole lot
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: of ills.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and I think, to be honest, Mark, what
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: you're gonna start seeing more out of me is a
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: dude who's filling tags because I like the grind to
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: a certain extent, but I also like, you know, I
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: hope this doesn't sound bad, but I like killing deer, dude,
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: and I like putting that meat in my freezer. And
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: I got what's fun about my non resident trips Kansas
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: and South Dakota. They were so much fun because I
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: wasn't I didn't care one bit about Okay, this buck's
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: a three year old, I think, actually, the buck that
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: I shot this year, would I have passed him in Iowa? Probably,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: But he was a three. He's a big three year old.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: If he's a three year old, he's a four year old.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: Whatever the case is. My uncle thinks he's four. The
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: other guy he hunts with thinks he's three. I don't
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: give a shit. I turned around, I saw his G
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: two and I said, he's toast. And he came in
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: in ten yards and I smoked him and it was fun.
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: Like that whole thing was fun. There was no standards,
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: like I passed small deer because I felt I needed
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: to because my uncle hunts in a place where they
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: have good quality deer, and so I felt like it
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: was my responsibility to hold to that standard somewhat. But
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: I told him like, hey, man, I'm probably gonna shoot
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: a three rolled off your farm if if I have
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: the opportunities, Like, dude, go for it, right. And so
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: this year was a ton of fun because I did
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: have the non resident trips and then I was able
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: to hold to a certain standard in Iowa. But that's
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: because but what I think, what you're going to start
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: seeing out of me is there's certain deer that can
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: get big. And then there's deer that probably you know,
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: if you got a if you got one hundred and
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: twenty inch three year old, there's gonna be years where
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna be shooting. I don't want to say management
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: bucks because I think that's goofy. I will say lower
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: genetic bucks to fill the tag, to get the meat,
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: and to put that euro on my wall because knowing
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: you know, like it's going to take that buck off
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: the landscape, there's gonna be less pressure for the genetically
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: superior deer. Uh. And so on top of that, dude
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: shooting deer's fun.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: Man shooting ear's fun.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me about that Kansas hunt real quick before
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: we get to go, because we haven't covered that.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: You had the rough Iowa, but Kansas, you turn it around.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's a six hour drive or excuse me,
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: seven hour drive from where I live to get to
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: where I hunted in Kansas. And so my stepdad was
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: talking to me about it. My uncle in the past,
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: he's been talking to me about it, and he's like,
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: you're not going to see the number of deer that
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: you saw that you typically see in Iowa. Iowa. And
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: I'm like Okay, week before I go, my uncle sends
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: me a picture. He dropped one hundred and eighty inch
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: nine pointer with two flyers off his g Two's an
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: absolute slammer, five or six year old. And so it's
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: a buck that they passed the previous year and the
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: other hunter missed it. And so long story short, like
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: they hunt in an area. I'm telling you Mark that
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: it's not a ton of deer, and it surprises me
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: because they hunt on like thousands and thousands of acres
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: that are that have maybe seventy total acres of huntable
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: space unless you have a rifle. There are zero deer
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: on this farm until they take the cattle out in
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: late October. Once they get the cattle out, the rancher
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: locks the gates, and then the deer come into it
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: from the surrounding areas. Okay, they're somewhere, but they're not
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: on this farm. And so you have seventy to one
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: hundred acres of huntable space and it's just little fingers
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: of cedars, black locusts, and osage orne trees, scrub trees.
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: I was in a tree stand at one point that
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: was eight feet off the ground right and I was
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: probably ten feet off the ground when I shot my buck,
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: So you're not getting high at all. Saddle Like, saddle
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: hunting is great, but I went back to like this
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: pure basic fun like I was climbing up ladder stands. Dude,
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: you know how long it's been. It's been twelve too,
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: I bet you. The last time I hunted a ladder
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: stand would have been the late two thousand's, early twenty tens.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Like, oh easy.
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: Oh. There was one point where I they had that
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: little thing that you could fold out, and I was real,
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: I was straight, I was leaning all the way back.
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: I could take naps in that thing. Oh dude, it
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: was awesome.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: Huh.
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: And the baiting thing, right, So I did hunt over
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: bait a couple hunts, and so that was something different
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: and unique to experience. And that's a whole nother conversation, uh,
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: as far as that type of strategy. But it was
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: so I that's a long way of saying, I got
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: down there fully expecting to not see any deer, fully
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: expecting to and really what it was is just a
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: continuation of what had I had seen the last handful
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: of weeks, very slow like, so it wasn't like this
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: huge drop off of movement or a huge drop off
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: of deer movement. I was seeing young bucks, I was
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: seeing doze. I was seeing you know, some even some two,
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: maybe some three year old deer past some you know,
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty inch eight pointer or excuse me,
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty inch would have been a nine pointer.
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: I think he was. You can tell he's young. Plenty
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: of deer. And my uncle is just telling me, like, dude,
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: out here, deer just show up, So you put time
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: in the stand and you're gonna see deer. And we
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: bounced around to a river bottom ground that had egg
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: in it, flat as a pancake, and then most of
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: the time we had to wait again. We had to
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: wait for a wind shift. We were getting tons of
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: east and southern type hunts. We had a big front
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: come through wind and rain and things like that. And
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: then all of a sudden, here comes a day with
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: a bright sunshine any northwest winds, and that's the day
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: that I killed my butt.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: So in the setup was like one of these little fingers.
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: Yep, it was. It was a crick bottom that was
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: probably fifty yards wide, and there was cedars and thickets
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: and the cattle had been in there all year, so
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: it was stomped flat and you could see forever this
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: under this canopy where it was like, I want to say,
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: six to six to ten feet tall, and then nothing
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: below it because that cattle had stomped stomped it down
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: and rubbed against all the trees, and there wasn't a
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: ton of vegetation under there, but it's still cover and
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: that's where they were hanging out. And so I was
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: along this creek bed and it was just the perfect
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: funnel where all of these hills kind of came all
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: these this pasture came down to this crick bottom, and
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: then the crick curved on like a half circle to
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: the north and came back to the south. And all
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: it did was just create this perfect pinch point. So
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: I got into the stand, I got to the bottom
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: of the So two days previous we set it up
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: no bait. We basically were just hunting a pinch point,
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: and so we had to wait for that front to
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: come through. And then the front came through an afternoon hunt.
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: We finally got our northwest wind. I climbed up in
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: it and I dropped my ozonics out of the tree
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: at two o'clock. I climbed up, dropped my ozonics down
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: out of the tree, climbed down, climbed back up, and
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: I slipped off of my PSA where your safety harness
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: or your lineman's belt, because it saved I don't know
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: what would have happened to me. I wasn't very high
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: off the ground, but still I have a huge scratch
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: on my knee, and I had a puncture wound on
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: my inside of my leg from the other stand. If
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: it wasn't for a pair of pants getting snagged on it,
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know what would have happened. I had my
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: lineman's belt on, but I would have went straight down anyway.
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: I climbed back up, sit, you know, like I got
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: my saddle on. I'm sitting back, put my hat on,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: and I'm getting ready to record something on my phone
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: and I hear a single snap. I look back. He's
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: at twenty five thirty yards, stood up, drew back, and
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: I had put an arrow in him at two fifteen.
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: So I was in the stand fifteen minutes when he
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: showed up and was cruising that bottom and shot him
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: right in the heart and watched him disappear into some
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: around a cedar tree that I couldn't after that, called
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: my uncle, found him, drug him out, had Coors lights
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: and bourbon.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: A great reminder that it can all just change in
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: a minute. Yeah, after everything's going wrong too.
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: Yep. Man, Now that's the abbreviated version of all what
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: would happen? But I will say this mark Iowa was
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: a struggle. Iowa was fun. But I enjoyed this season
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: so much, not only because I got to hunt with
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: a new guy in South Dakota who's a great dude.
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: I also got to do my thing in Iowa, which
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: is always a blast, regardless of how shitty I've said
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: things are. And then I got to hunt with my uncle,
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: who I shot my first turkey with him, I shot
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: my first pheasant with him when I was like thirteen, twelve,
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: thirteen years old, and it was just awesome to hang
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: out with him again. And an absolute blast, man, absolute
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: blast of a season thus far. And it's not over yet,
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: so who knows what's going to happen.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: Well, that's another really important thing to remember when it
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: comes to what makes this stuff so good oftentimes is
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: the people that you spend time with.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: And it's easy these days there, at least it has
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: been for me.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: When you're so obsessed with trying to kill mature buck,
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: it can become like a solo endeavor. They can become
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: a lone wolf thing, which just like you against the world,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: and you're out there on your own, traveling around or
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: doing whatever in the tree all the time, and you
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: end up sacrificing in the fun hunts with family or
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: going to the family deer camp, or getting breakfast or
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: lunch with the buddies, And man, that's always been a mistake.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Like that's one of the biggest changes I'm trying to
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: make is, Yeah, prioritize the trips with friends, do the
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: things with family. Take a little time to be part
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: of the social element of it, even if that means
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: less time in the tree, or maybe you do a
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: trip that has slightly less chances of killing a big
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: giant buck. But if you're there with people you enjoy
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: and care about, that's the stuff that makes this so special.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this deer camp thing, dude, it was so much fun. Iowa.
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: This year, my dad pulled a trailer down to a
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: local state park that was ten miles away from where
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: I hunt, and I stayed in a camper with my dad.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: He didn't hunt, he doesn't hunt, but he cooked some
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: great meals. I celebrated my Usually my birthday is November fifth,
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: and usually I'm celebrating that by myself most years. This
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: year I was able to celebrate it with my dad.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: He cooked me a steak on the cool out on
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: the camp site. I stayed in his camper, electricity TV.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: Like it was.
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: It was not this grind, grind. The time in the
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: tree stand was the grind. But outside of that, man,
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: it was absolutely and it's just one hundred percent success
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: this year period. Yeah, I don't care how it turns out.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: That's the good stuff right there, and a great thing
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: to leave us with here today. As we go into
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: the rest of the season, I think thinking about that
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff, prioritizing those types of memories and moments
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: for the rest of the season. We'll do us all
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: really good. So thanks buddy for making time to do this.
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, good luck the rest of the season.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: Mark, thanks man, you too.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: All right, and that is a wrap for us today.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you joining us, thanks for being here. As I
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: mentioned at the top, Happy Thanksgiving. Hopefully you are having
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: a wonderful holiday, eating lots of good food, getting out
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: there in the woods for some hunts. Please be safe,
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: please have fun out there, and enjoy these most wonderful
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: final days of November. And until next time, stay wired ton.
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: It's that time of the year again. I'm back, Marcus Kenyon.
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: How are you your son of a gadwall? You look terrible.
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: I'm just kidding her, Rema, I'm sorry, I'm late. I
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: crashed my recumbent bicycle into the side of a quiz nose,
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: and I know what you're thinking. I am as sober
• 57:29
  Speaker 6: as a newborn blue crab. I swear to you this
• 57:32
  Speaker 6: is just kombucha. I'm watching the gut health. You gotta
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: do it as you get older. And also, I'm wearing
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: this ankle bracelet that makes a beep beep sound if
• 57:40
  Speaker 6: I have a drop of the stuff. Also alerts the authorities,
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: who in turn alert my parole officer. So there'll be
• 57:48
  Speaker 6: none of that in the studio today, I promise you.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Let's get go.
• 57:51
  Speaker 6: Oh, you're queuing it up already. Okay. I thought we'd
• 57:55
  Speaker 6: learned a lesson this year, but I guess not.
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: Here we go.
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: Of those beagy, big white tails those eaky run beagy
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: big big white tails. I love those beagy big yet
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: eight chats eat tails. I love those beachy, big wide tails,
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great?
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: Hold?
• 58:28
  Speaker 6: What fun it is to sit in the freezing cold
• 58:31
  Speaker 6: tree all day? Big white tails, big white tails, big
• 58:36
  Speaker 6: white tails are great?
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: Hold?
• 58:39
  Speaker 6: What fun it is to sit in the freezing cold
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: tree all day? Dashing through the woods for the morning light,
• 58:48
  Speaker 6: turns grave across the fields and draws, creep in all
• 58:53
  Speaker 6: the way, climb into the tree. Big bucks are on
• 58:59
  Speaker 6: the way. What fun he is to sit and wait
• 59:03
  Speaker 6: for my gosh don deer all day? Oh big, I'm sorry?
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: What is this?
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: Piscato strings? Who do you think I am? And you
• 59:14
  Speaker 6: get this out here? I don't want to hear it?
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: Thank you?
• 59:17
  Speaker 6: Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great.
• 59:22
  Speaker 6: Hold fun it is to sit in the freezing cold
• 59:26
  Speaker 6: tree all day? I hope sund dreams are high the rut.
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: He's finally here, Mark said, it's the most wonderful time
• 59:36
  Speaker 6: to kill o whitetail deer bingch points and pettings where
• 59:40
  Speaker 6: you'll find me?
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: Hang, it's want to feet.
• 59:42
  Speaker 6: In a tree, grunt tubes my bowl inspector Camos really
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: campy be he or two ago. I thought that this
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: was fun, but now I'm frozen to my seat and
• 59:58
  Speaker 6: the good times they are God. I've ate up all
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 6: my snacks, my hands and toes unnumb and we're gonna
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 6: climb down from my stand. That son of a bud
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 6: decided to come.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: On those bagy b Wat tapes, those sky bagy big
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: big Wait tapes. I love those be agy big dupe
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: y'all eight shot gie eat tails. I love those big
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: white tails all Dad.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: I don't know why this is happening, I swear to God,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 6: Oh officer, what seems to be the problem here? Oh this?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 6: I don't know why this is happening. It must be
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 6: a malfunction, you know. Sometimes it happens when the batteries
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 6: run low.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: You don't know.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 6: You don't need to smell that. That's just kambuocha. I okay, yes,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: you've got me. It's ever clear and pacific cooler, Caprice Son.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 6: I am so so sorry. I don't know why my
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 6: life has brought me here. Mark Marcus, I'm so sorry.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 6: Enjoy the rut or whatever. Good luck boys, Good to
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 6: see you, Hayden it's been a while. Hey, sorry, I'm late.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: I crashed my pontiac cast I could do a light
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 6: pole and had to walk the rest of the way.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 6: But I'm here now.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: That's what matters.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 6: Give you a glass of scotch, please, Hayden, just two
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: rocks in there. I don't my guys, we're starting already.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 6: This is happening. Okay, just give me the give me
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 6: the glass, thank you. Okay, here we go. It's the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 6: most wonderful time to kill deer. With the run now
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 6: just starting and dashing and dotting and veins cutting clean,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 6: It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. There's far
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 6: too much ice in this glass. It's the half happy
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: season of all. There's gotta be at least twelve cues
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 6: with grunting and bleeding and call fronts and sleeting the
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 6: last weeks of fun. It's the happiest seedsson of home.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: There'll be pictures for posting and bragging and boasting and
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: truck beds with big bucks in toe. There'll be narrow
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 6: miss stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: missed with our bulls. It's the most wonderful time to
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 6: kill deer, not just one baby two. There'll be no
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 6: dose of blowing and looming knocks glowing and blood trails
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: so clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill dea.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: Excuse me? Can I have a napkin? Please? I just
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: spilled some scotch on my loafers. I can't have dirty
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: loafers in the studio. Thank you Tailgate beers for drinking,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 6: and big Bucks is sleeping and chasing and san jacking
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 6: does They will be fighting and scraping and no more
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: escaping and arrowshot true hitting, Oh key change. But no
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 6: one told me that it's the most wonderful time to
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 6: kill deer. I was very unprepared for this. There will
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: be much morning sitting in cold fronts, are hitting the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: dawn crispin clean. It's the most wonderful time.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: Oh, the most wonderful time.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 6: Yes, the most wonderful time.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: To kill.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: There's too much ice in the glass
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: Rocks.