Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #112: Eddie Claypool’s DIY Whitetail Hunting Strategies

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #112: Eddie Claypool’s DIY Whitetail Hunting Strategies · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:11
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
0:16
Speaker 1: your host Mark Kenyan. In this episode number one twelve,
0:20
Speaker 1: Tayn the show, We're joined by Eddie Claypool, a freelance
0:24
Speaker 1: outdoor writer and super successful white tailed bow hunter, and
0:27
Speaker 1: our topic is going to be d I Y, public
0:30
Speaker 1: and private land white tail strategies. All right, Welcome to
0:51
Speaker 1: the wire to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sitka Gear,
0:55
Speaker 1: and today I'm joined by Eddie Claypool, a longtime freelance
0:59
Speaker 1: outdoor writer and can tributor to Peterson's Bow Hunting magazine
1:02
Speaker 1: and one of the most successful d I Y and
1:05
Speaker 1: public land bow hunters in the country. He is an
1:08
Speaker 1: avid white tail hunter and a guy who knows how
1:10
Speaker 1: to get it done on wily old bucks in tough conditions.
1:13
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what we're gonna chat with Eddie about
1:16
Speaker 1: today in the next hour or two. My goal is
1:19
Speaker 1: that we can get an inside look into how Eddie
1:21
Speaker 1: is able to have such great success across the country
1:25
Speaker 1: chasing mature bucks all on his own and on a
1:28
Speaker 1: reasonable budget. And I want to do this because I
1:30
Speaker 1: know there are a lot of people out there, maybe you,
1:32
Speaker 1: who want to go on that dream white tail trip,
1:35
Speaker 1: but you're not exactly sure how to pull it off,
1:38
Speaker 1: or if you can afford it, or where you should
1:40
Speaker 1: even start when trying to plan it. So that's what
1:42
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to talk about today, hardcore d I
1:45
Speaker 1: Y private or public land tactics that can help you
1:48
Speaker 1: pull off the white tail hunt of your dreams, whether
1:51
Speaker 1: that's fifteen miles from home or fifteen hundred. But before
1:55
Speaker 1: we do that, we need to pause briefly to thank
1:57
Speaker 1: our friends at sick Gear for the supp or of
2:00
Speaker 1: this podcast, And as have been the case for the
2:02
Speaker 1: past few weeks, I'm recording again at their headquarters here
2:06
Speaker 1: in Bozeman, Montana, And in a couple of days, the
2:09
Speaker 1: Hunting Film Tour is gonna be launching their two thousand
2:11
Speaker 1: sixteen tour here in town, and one of the films
2:14
Speaker 1: that I believe is going to be on that tour
2:16
Speaker 1: is called Beyond the Roar, and it features actually a
2:20
Speaker 1: past podcast guest of ours, Aaron Hitchens. You might remember
2:23
Speaker 1: that episode last year. I think now over the past
2:26
Speaker 1: few months As you likely know, we've been sharing short
2:30
Speaker 1: sitcast stories here featuring different hunters, and they're interesting or
2:34
Speaker 1: exciting experiences that have taken place while wearing clothing. Well
2:38
Speaker 1: Beyond the Roar the film is without a doubt interesting
2:42
Speaker 1: and exciting and remarkably profound, and it's also a sitcast story.
2:47
Speaker 1: So rather than regale you with that story here, I
2:50
Speaker 1: just encourage you to check out that film, which you
2:53
Speaker 1: can view online when you get a chance. It follows
2:55
Speaker 1: Aaron and his friend will Is the embark on a
2:58
Speaker 1: wilderness moose hunt in the UK on by way of
3:00
Speaker 1: canoe as they seek out adventure and a way to
3:03
Speaker 1: honor their recently past friend. We just posted the video
3:07
Speaker 1: over on wired to Hunt dot com, so head there
3:10
Speaker 1: and check it out. Beyond the Roar is very well
3:13
Speaker 1: done and very much a sick story. So with that said,
3:18
Speaker 1: let's now get back to the show and give Eddie
3:22
Speaker 1: a call. Alright with us Now on the line is
3:26
Speaker 1: Eddie Claypool. Welcome to show, Eddie. Thank you. Yeah, I'm
3:31
Speaker 1: very excited to finally chat with you. You know, like
3:33
Speaker 1: I just mentioned off the air, I've been reading your
3:36
Speaker 1: articles for a long time now, and uh, I've definitely
3:39
Speaker 1: learned a lot myself, so I'm excited for you to
3:41
Speaker 1: be able to share some of your experiences and um,
3:44
Speaker 1: some of the things that you've been able to do
3:45
Speaker 1: over the years have so much success because I for
3:47
Speaker 1: you to share that with our audience. UM, So, you know,
3:50
Speaker 1: before I dive too far, and I'm gonna be kind
3:52
Speaker 1: of eager, I want to pick your brain about a
3:53
Speaker 1: lot of things though. But before we get to that, Eddie,
3:56
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit about about your background.
4:00
Speaker 1: How you got to this point as you such a
4:02
Speaker 1: successful outdoor writer. Well, you know, I don't know how
4:06
Speaker 1: successful i'm outdoor writer I am, but I do take
4:09
Speaker 1: pride in being a h very you know, hardcore do
4:14
Speaker 1: it yourself bow hunter. That that started as a teenager
4:19
Speaker 1: and I've displayed it through all my life. I have
4:22
Speaker 1: never really been interested in going on guided hunts. I
4:28
Speaker 1: would rather fail on my mom than succeed with help.
4:32
Speaker 1: I guess you could say I'm kind of hard headed
4:34
Speaker 1: old cuss uh been an independent fella. And so you know,
4:39
Speaker 1: when you climb the ladder of hard knocks all on
4:43
Speaker 1: your own, you learn things the right way and you
4:45
Speaker 1: eliminate the the you know, the inferior stuff. And for
4:50
Speaker 1: the past thirty forty years, I've just been you know,
4:53
Speaker 1: I started out whitetail hunting and progressed in the western
4:56
Speaker 1: hunting and even have taken you know, whitetail hunting out
5:01
Speaker 1: west quite a bit too. I I hud a very
5:04
Speaker 1: large percentage of my stuff on public land, but I
5:07
Speaker 1: mean on whitetail hunting. I have traveled all around the
5:10
Speaker 1: country just you know, knocking on doors and gaining permission
5:14
Speaker 1: and to hunt on private land too. So I just
5:20
Speaker 1: take probably being well rounded and what I do, and
5:23
Speaker 1: I do it like the average guy. I was not
5:25
Speaker 1: born in the privilege or money, or I didn't have
5:29
Speaker 1: a grandpa with a big amount of land. I've just
5:31
Speaker 1: kind of been a construction worker all my life, which
5:34
Speaker 1: did give me an occupation that allowed me to take
5:36
Speaker 1: off more time than the average guy. So the one
5:40
Speaker 1: ingredient I have supplied for the many years of time,
5:44
Speaker 1: and I insisted upon it one way or the other.
5:46
Speaker 1: I made it part of my life. And usually, you know,
5:50
Speaker 1: in the fall of the year, I'm never working and
5:53
Speaker 1: just both hunt seriously and I'm not ashamed to load
5:57
Speaker 1: the pick up up and drive to a state I've
5:59
Speaker 1: never been and start ferreting out some stuff and it's
6:04
Speaker 1: led to you know, a lot of good types of
6:08
Speaker 1: habitat that I've learned to hunt, and and a lot
6:11
Speaker 1: of good you know, getting away from the maddening crowd
6:14
Speaker 1: type hunts too. It's getting to be tough nowadays because
6:17
Speaker 1: of the you know, mass commercialization of the hunting industry
6:21
Speaker 1: here in the last ten or twenty years. Things are
6:24
Speaker 1: getting a lot tougher than the way I come up.
6:27
Speaker 1: But it can still be done, and I still have
6:29
Speaker 1: good success by this going around and hunting either public
6:32
Speaker 1: land or private land, and I access usually through a
6:35
Speaker 1: handshake and hard work. Now, you said you started white
6:39
Speaker 1: till hunting and then moved to try some different things
6:42
Speaker 1: out west, in different species and whatnot. How does wait
6:45
Speaker 1: to hunting stack up with all the other big game
6:47
Speaker 1: you've hunted now? Is it still doesn't still have that
6:49
Speaker 1: special appeal? You know it? Whitetail hunting has been my
6:54
Speaker 1: main squeeze all my life. But also I'm kind of
6:57
Speaker 1: a closet Western guide to the point of I've had
7:01
Speaker 1: a hard time differentiating between which of the two is
7:04
Speaker 1: more important to me because they each had their own appeal.
7:08
Speaker 1: White Tail has been my main squeeze because I grew
7:10
Speaker 1: up around him and I cut my teeth on him,
7:12
Speaker 1: and I've always had a special place in my heart
7:14
Speaker 1: for him. But I'm not gonna lie to you. I mean,
7:17
Speaker 1: you know, I know I'm probably a minority nowadays. Uh.
7:20
Speaker 1: You know, everything's turning into a kind of it seems
7:23
Speaker 1: like the whitetail world has become a money sort of
7:27
Speaker 1: deal where you either have to have land that you've
7:29
Speaker 1: bought or least or something. And you know, I just
7:35
Speaker 1: don't fit into that world anymore. Um, It's been hard
7:39
Speaker 1: on me the last half dozen years. I've lost access
7:42
Speaker 1: to most all my good places, and I've had to
7:44
Speaker 1: really dig in scrap to stay in the game. And
7:47
Speaker 1: I've went out West to the big public plans out
7:49
Speaker 1: there to try to hunt white tails to get away
7:51
Speaker 1: from the you know, the what's going on back here
7:54
Speaker 1: in the Midwest with this mass commercialization stuff. But white
7:59
Speaker 1: tails have lost a little bit of their appeal to
8:01
Speaker 1: me over the last half dozen years due to the
8:03
Speaker 1: fact of just what simply is going on in the
8:06
Speaker 1: industry itself. It's turned me off. It's a lessened the
8:11
Speaker 1: average guy's ability to hunt at a high level. It's anymore.
8:16
Speaker 1: It's become more of a dog eat dog, competitive money
8:21
Speaker 1: minded industry, and I come from a different place in time,
8:26
Speaker 1: and that's just kind of turned me off a little
8:28
Speaker 1: bit on light tills recently. But it sounds like you're
8:32
Speaker 1: still you're still able to have some success. Would you
8:34
Speaker 1: say that the average guy or girl still can get
8:37
Speaker 1: it done without having the big money and the big
8:40
Speaker 1: property and all that. Oh, it's absolutely doable. It's just
8:44
Speaker 1: way harder than it used to be. I mean, you know,
8:47
Speaker 1: in my heyday, you could drive to any of the
8:49
Speaker 1: premium white hill states, you know, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas
8:54
Speaker 1: when it opened and access just virtually anything. The farmers
8:59
Speaker 1: were open. They wanted their dear killed, and they wanted
9:02
Speaker 1: decent people on their property. And you know, even though
9:06
Speaker 1: it's evolved now into more of a money thing, it's
9:09
Speaker 1: still very available. I travel a lot now and and
9:13
Speaker 1: just rather than mass with headache of trying to get
9:17
Speaker 1: on private property anymore, which is almost undoable in the
9:20
Speaker 1: quality states, I either go to the lesser, you know,
9:24
Speaker 1: highlighted states or just hunt public land. And I've had
9:29
Speaker 1: good success last few years on public land, and some
9:32
Speaker 1: of my friends had even astronomically better success because they're
9:37
Speaker 1: not as much of a wild goose chaser as I am.
9:40
Speaker 1: They'll they'll stay right there at home and work on
9:43
Speaker 1: a good commodity at their fingertips while I'm out running
9:46
Speaker 1: around like a nuts and we're looking for a pot
9:49
Speaker 1: at the end of the rainbow. They'll they'll stay home,
9:51
Speaker 1: and they're a little honey hooles. And you know, there's
9:53
Speaker 1: a lot to be said for that, because really that's
9:56
Speaker 1: the way the average guy hunts. He doesn't get to
9:58
Speaker 1: travel all over a lot. And you know, if you
10:02
Speaker 1: really learn how to ferret out, you know, how to
10:04
Speaker 1: beat the system on the public lands, you can you
10:09
Speaker 1: will soon find out that the guys at hunt Um
10:13
Speaker 1: really forgive me, but they're not really dangerous per se. Uh.
10:19
Speaker 1: And if you can beat that the way they're doing
10:21
Speaker 1: it and get into that ten percentile that does it
10:24
Speaker 1: differently on public lands and usually usually come out with
10:28
Speaker 1: a real good tax termy bill. That's always a nice
10:34
Speaker 1: problem to have when there's a big text dvermy bill,
10:36
Speaker 1: that's for sure. YEA. So for a little context here
10:40
Speaker 1: where all, have you hunted white tails out what states? Well,
10:44
Speaker 1: if I had to spread it out as why as
10:46
Speaker 1: I could to give you an overview, I mean, the
10:48
Speaker 1: farthest east I've hunted him is New York State. Farthest
10:52
Speaker 1: north Alberta, Canada. Farthest west basically Washington Idaho line, and
10:59
Speaker 1: the far south if you include the cow's deer, the
11:04
Speaker 1: desert white tails, I've hunted them to the Mexico line.
11:07
Speaker 1: So just about most of our geographic country I've traveled through.
11:12
Speaker 1: And you know, and just an old Ford druck and
11:15
Speaker 1: uh ice chest and a camp were on back and
11:19
Speaker 1: I've driven a many a thousand a mile of back
11:22
Speaker 1: roads knocking on doors. So I've hunted them. I've been
11:25
Speaker 1: blessed to get to do more than most people because
11:28
Speaker 1: I've had the time for thirty years. I've just taken
11:30
Speaker 1: the fall of the year off every year and went,
11:34
Speaker 1: you know, through these cycles of going to different areas.
11:37
Speaker 1: And I've been blessed so many different types of habitat
11:40
Speaker 1: from from mountainous big woods northern white tails, to urban
11:46
Speaker 1: white tails, to farmland white tails, to high plains to
11:50
Speaker 1: desert white tails. So I like them all ever, ever
11:55
Speaker 1: type of habitat has its own challenges, and I'm by
12:00
Speaker 1: about like a new challenges. When I get something kind
12:02
Speaker 1: to go in my way, it's usually not long until
12:05
Speaker 1: I start looking somewhere else for something to tackle. Um,
12:09
Speaker 1: I'm not dissatisfied and mastering something and setting on it
12:13
Speaker 1: and you know, builping the good out of it forever.
12:16
Speaker 1: I like to try to match with with something that
12:19
Speaker 1: might get the best. To me, you know, it sounds
12:22
Speaker 1: like we share the same disease. I definitely have found
12:25
Speaker 1: that I can't seem like I don't get too comfortable.
12:28
Speaker 1: Once I get comfortable, I kind of want to move
12:30
Speaker 1: on and try new things, new states, new areas. There
12:33
Speaker 1: is a certain appeal to that new adventure kind of
12:35
Speaker 1: that you never know what's around the next corner and
12:38
Speaker 1: trying to figure it all out so right, and it
12:41
Speaker 1: keeps you at your edge, to you on your edge,
12:43
Speaker 1: you know, it makes you makes you study hop and uh.
12:47
Speaker 1: You know, I have friends that have some premium properties
12:51
Speaker 1: out in Iowa, and you know, the Illinois type, managed
12:55
Speaker 1: type properties we might call them. And I've watched them,
12:59
Speaker 1: you know, settle into the little places and over a
13:01
Speaker 1: period of years, you know, they get everything groomed, and
13:04
Speaker 1: they get the big bucks grown, and they got the
13:07
Speaker 1: tree stands all placed, and over a period of time
13:09
Speaker 1: it's kind of almost becomes like a I don't know,
13:14
Speaker 1: a staged act or something. I mean, they got the
13:17
Speaker 1: deer name, they know how old they are. They they
13:19
Speaker 1: won't shoot him till they're so many years old. And
13:22
Speaker 1: they got their tree stands, they know every single spot
13:24
Speaker 1: they're going to get everyday pre rehearsed, you know. And
13:28
Speaker 1: to me that I got close to that a couple
13:31
Speaker 1: of times, because you have to you have to mature
13:34
Speaker 1: through stages, and you need to taste the stages to
13:37
Speaker 1: really know what you think of them. And I attempted
13:40
Speaker 1: some of that and realized that it wasn't really for me.
13:43
Speaker 1: I don't either. I'd rather go try somewhere new and
13:47
Speaker 1: hunt and unknown and kill a hundred in dear maybe
13:50
Speaker 1: even off public land somewhere, because the challenge is so
13:54
Speaker 1: much greater, and I hunt for the challenge not just
13:57
Speaker 1: to large antlers. I I love large antlers, and I've
14:02
Speaker 1: got enough something that I got two kind of I
14:04
Speaker 1: guess mature to mature through the stage of just being
14:08
Speaker 1: focused on acquiring big antlers, and so, like you, I
14:12
Speaker 1: like to challenge of new places and new hunts, and
14:16
Speaker 1: so I don't even really fantasize anymore about owning this
14:20
Speaker 1: premium piece of Iowa or Illinois property that I can
14:24
Speaker 1: homestead for twenty years, because it wouldn't be long I'd
14:27
Speaker 1: be looking to sell it and try something different. So
14:32
Speaker 1: so this is perfect because I think this is exactly
14:34
Speaker 1: what I want us to try to focus on. It's
14:36
Speaker 1: for that for that listener that doesn't have a big property,
14:40
Speaker 1: they don't have a family member's got the big farm,
14:42
Speaker 1: but they still want to chase this idea. They want
14:47
Speaker 1: to chase this idea of of you know, a mature
14:49
Speaker 1: buck or traveling to hunt one of these other places.
14:52
Speaker 1: And you obviously have just you know, share with this
14:55
Speaker 1: the fact that you've been able to do this successfully
14:56
Speaker 1: all over the country, you know, from north to southeast
14:59
Speaker 1: to west on a budget. So I really want to
15:01
Speaker 1: dig into how you're able to do that, and I
15:05
Speaker 1: think you can correct me if I'm wrong, um, but
15:07
Speaker 1: I think a good way to do that might be
15:09
Speaker 1: to actually reference something I read in one of your
15:11
Speaker 1: articles a while back. You'd written about how you like
15:14
Speaker 1: to break down how you hunt mature white tail box,
15:17
Speaker 1: and you break it down to four categories for the
15:19
Speaker 1: d I Y guy or girl. First you talked about
15:21
Speaker 1: you need to figure out where you hunt. Then you
15:23
Speaker 1: need to talk about when you hunt. Then it's finding
15:26
Speaker 1: the exact location, and then finally sealing the deal. So
15:29
Speaker 1: I kind of want to walk through each of those
15:31
Speaker 1: four steps to understand your process. Uh that does that
15:35
Speaker 1: sound like a good plan? Yeah, that sounds fine with me.
15:39
Speaker 1: Just jog my memory on each one them in order
15:41
Speaker 1: and I'll address him a little bit. Yeah. So, so
15:44
Speaker 1: where are you hunt? Obviously is that first question? You know,
15:46
Speaker 1: for a lot of people maybe who live on the
15:48
Speaker 1: East Coast or you know, one of these non famous
15:52
Speaker 1: deer areas, they have these dreams of going out there
15:54
Speaker 1: and hunting there, but they might think it's impossible or
15:57
Speaker 1: super expensive. So I guess I'm curious, how do you
16:00
Speaker 1: go about deciding where to hunt from a region standpoint,
16:04
Speaker 1: or just beginning that process? How do you go through
16:05
Speaker 1: that to the whole situation figure out where and how
16:09
Speaker 1: you're going to go somewhere? Well, I think mainly it
16:13
Speaker 1: boils down that's a very individual and very personal, you know,
16:17
Speaker 1: topic for each hunter. It depends on what your priorities are.
16:20
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know where the the main genetics are,
16:23
Speaker 1: the biggest bucks, the biggest antward ones. And you know,
16:26
Speaker 1: if that's all you're after, then you know you know
16:29
Speaker 1: the direction to go there, you know about you know
16:31
Speaker 1: which places to go, and you know you're probably gonna
16:35
Speaker 1: have to either go outfitted or have a silver spoon
16:37
Speaker 1: to get into those type of hunts. I don't even
16:39
Speaker 1: think about them. I don't even mess with them anymore.
16:42
Speaker 1: Um my priority being uh poority outing, uh reasonable mature buck,
16:49
Speaker 1: you know. And that is basically real realism to the
16:53
Speaker 1: average get Joe, and you don't have to travel to
16:57
Speaker 1: the most elite places to do that. Most any state,
17:00
Speaker 1: virtually any white hill state has some good quality gear
17:03
Speaker 1: in it somewhere. I live in Oklahoma, and we're not
17:06
Speaker 1: known for big gear at all, even though the state
17:10
Speaker 1: does kick a few out or like pink elephants, it
17:12
Speaker 1: just doesn't happen. It's a rarity instead of a you know,
17:17
Speaker 1: normal thing. And yet you know here, I have traveled
17:20
Speaker 1: around my home state and come places. My my closest friend,
17:24
Speaker 1: uh he stayed local here last year and hunted on
17:27
Speaker 1: a piece of public land here in the state and
17:29
Speaker 1: killed a hundred and fifty eight in class ten point buck,
17:33
Speaker 1: which is beating the system. Uh, I myself, you know,
17:38
Speaker 1: I can find what I'm looking for in any state.
17:43
Speaker 1: Basically I have driven east, you know, which is not
17:46
Speaker 1: considered ko shirt if you're looking for good deer. But
17:50
Speaker 1: when I went to New York that time, I hunted
17:52
Speaker 1: some ground up there that you know, I had a
17:54
Speaker 1: chance to kill a hundred and fifty class buck up there,
17:57
Speaker 1: which I know that's an exception to the rule. And northeast,
18:00
Speaker 1: But anywhere you go, it's just a matter what your
18:03
Speaker 1: priority is. If it's large antlers, you know enough set
18:06
Speaker 1: about that you know where you've got to go and
18:08
Speaker 1: what you've got to do if you're looking for a
18:11
Speaker 1: good hunt. The Midwestern states and the Western states are
18:15
Speaker 1: still very available as far as plenty of public land
18:20
Speaker 1: and plenty of the game and fish departments have a
18:23
Speaker 1: lot of what they call walk in type hunting areas
18:26
Speaker 1: in these states. And if you're willing to go out west,
18:29
Speaker 1: which is you know, a far stretch for most people,
18:32
Speaker 1: there's unlimited public land out there, unlimited. You couldn't touch
18:36
Speaker 1: it in a lifetime, and lots of it has quality
18:41
Speaker 1: white toil hunting. It's not like your average Eastern type hunt,
18:46
Speaker 1: but it is certainly, you know, a quality experience because
18:51
Speaker 1: of the habitat the environment and the lack of people
18:55
Speaker 1: generally speaking. And so to me, that's a priority from me.
19:00
Speaker 1: I've always been a wilderness type fanatic. Um. I do
19:04
Speaker 1: not like, you know, fighting with people over a hunting resource.
19:07
Speaker 1: And a lot of times I'll hunt an area that
19:11
Speaker 1: won't have as many deer or as good a deer
19:13
Speaker 1: just to have a quality outing. So you know, where
19:17
Speaker 1: I go or where you go, that's a personal thing. Uh.
19:21
Speaker 1: You know, I could go ramble on a list of
19:25
Speaker 1: countless spots that I have hunted that are good, um,
19:29
Speaker 1: but ever one of them to me, did not weigh
19:33
Speaker 1: the other one in any facet. Uh. Some of them
19:35
Speaker 1: were bigger buck places, some of them were better you know,
19:39
Speaker 1: overall hunting experiences. But I can't tell you, you know,
19:43
Speaker 1: if I would suggest anywhere or other than just pick
19:46
Speaker 1: a state close to you. If not, if you're not gonna,
19:48
Speaker 1: if you're looking to travel, if you're at home, you
19:50
Speaker 1: already know what you're dealing with. But if you're wanting
19:52
Speaker 1: to go out of state, as I have so much
19:54
Speaker 1: over my life, just pick any of the common sense
19:57
Speaker 1: states and have white tails and then it's you do
20:00
Speaker 1: your homework ferret out. You know the hidden public places,
20:06
Speaker 1: and all states have numerous low profile hidden public lands.
20:14
Speaker 1: I have hunted some little patches of public and Kansas
20:18
Speaker 1: in different states that were acres, little spots that don't
20:22
Speaker 1: even show up on the radar and taking good bucks
20:25
Speaker 1: off them with very little people around. Um, so you
20:29
Speaker 1: know where if we addressed the topic of where, that's
20:34
Speaker 1: just a total personal preference because you can hunt them
20:37
Speaker 1: in any type of habitat, from the northwest of the
20:41
Speaker 1: United States to the east, to the south to the north.
20:44
Speaker 1: Just uh, I just leave that deep individual will make
20:48
Speaker 1: his own decisions on where he wants to go because
20:51
Speaker 1: other than going to Iowa or some of these premium spots,
20:54
Speaker 1: and you know, whether outfitting and everything is so prevalent
20:58
Speaker 1: where they grow the big deer are they then those
21:01
Speaker 1: which go without saying yeah and going on a guy
21:04
Speaker 1: an hunt. If you have average Joe, just whatever tickles
21:08
Speaker 1: your fancy is my description of whortigo. So so let's say,
21:12
Speaker 1: then I pick a state. I've just got a fancy
21:16
Speaker 1: for state. We'll just say state X. I don't know
21:18
Speaker 1: what state is, but I picked a state. Now, now
21:21
Speaker 1: we need to figure out, Okay, where are these hidden gems?
21:24
Speaker 1: Where are these pieces of public that will provide a
21:26
Speaker 1: quality experience, however much you're willing to divulge? How do
21:30
Speaker 1: how does someone go about finding those places? You know,
21:32
Speaker 1: when they're back home. Let's say I'm I'm eight hours away.
21:35
Speaker 1: What can I learn from home to help me point
21:38
Speaker 1: myself in the right place in that state far far away. Well,
21:42
Speaker 1: I'll tell you there's almost an endless amount of avenues
21:46
Speaker 1: a guy can pursue on that game and fish is
21:49
Speaker 1: a starting place, you know, to see what they have
21:51
Speaker 1: shown on their hunt and lightless is and on their
21:53
Speaker 1: walk in programs. And you know, every state has numerous
21:57
Speaker 1: countless names for the different types of land they have accessible.
22:00
Speaker 1: Some of it will be public, some of it will
22:02
Speaker 1: be private. You know, they have you know, access yes,
22:06
Speaker 1: programs and whatever you want to call them for pub
22:09
Speaker 1: private land hunting. So you've got to dig through the
22:12
Speaker 1: game and fish and dig deep. I mean, you've got
22:14
Speaker 1: to go through each link and to the next link
22:17
Speaker 1: and look and you'll find what you can find. Then.
22:21
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times, a lot of the
22:23
Speaker 1: ones I've found that are off the map are little
22:26
Speaker 1: ow pockets that are you know, uh, county park type
22:31
Speaker 1: things or around impoundments. There will be little public areas
22:37
Speaker 1: that don't show up on game and fish radar. There
22:39
Speaker 1: are more of a local level thing. Uh, You've got
22:42
Speaker 1: to dig deep. You know. Sometimes I haven't found my
22:46
Speaker 1: gems until I actually got into an area and actually
22:49
Speaker 1: started physically hunting it. I didn't even know they were
22:51
Speaker 1: their pre pre trip. Um. You know, it's a lot
22:56
Speaker 1: to be said for being local. We know how the
22:58
Speaker 1: locals all over the ground on like the back of
23:01
Speaker 1: their hand. But you know, if you pick a good
23:03
Speaker 1: area and go there and become semi vocal to it
23:05
Speaker 1: over a period of time, you're you're gonna find some
23:07
Speaker 1: hidden gems that will be there. So there's always that
23:11
Speaker 1: unforeseen blessing that you'll get from picking in an area
23:15
Speaker 1: and going there for a year. Um. And I'm the
23:18
Speaker 1: world's worst about you know, spending maybe three trips in
23:23
Speaker 1: a year to go to the spot. I'll use it
23:24
Speaker 1: going to Debta winner, Uh, take a long weekend and
23:29
Speaker 1: take two or three to four days and travel to
23:31
Speaker 1: a spot and camp in it in the winter and
23:34
Speaker 1: learn it and scout it. Do my reconnaissance, uh invaluable
23:38
Speaker 1: if you've already got a piece of dirt to hunt on,
23:40
Speaker 1: to go and look at it in the debt of
23:42
Speaker 1: winter for the scouting, you know, is so great that
23:45
Speaker 1: time of year. All the rutt sign is there, the
23:47
Speaker 1: people whore gone, and you can really do some power
23:49
Speaker 1: scouting in the winter. But you also just get familiar
23:54
Speaker 1: with the people of the country and you'll start picking
23:56
Speaker 1: up these little hidden gems. It will be there, you know,
23:59
Speaker 1: people talk and all this stuff is. You know, the
24:02
Speaker 1: localist guard it pretty carefully usually, and unless you're there
24:05
Speaker 1: and giving yourself a chance to you know, to be
24:08
Speaker 1: in the frying pan, you may not be able to
24:11
Speaker 1: research at ahead of time. There are plenty of places
24:13
Speaker 1: to research, and you know, you may need to pick
24:15
Speaker 1: a larger or higher profile area from you know, off
24:20
Speaker 1: the internet or game and Fish or local websites and
24:24
Speaker 1: go and start it, and then you can get into
24:27
Speaker 1: finding these other little spots of your own. And there's
24:31
Speaker 1: always landowners, there's always some, there's always a few left
24:34
Speaker 1: here there that will let you hunt. I've never been anywhere.
24:37
Speaker 1: I don't care how taken up it is with commercialization.
24:41
Speaker 1: There's still some landowners that will, but you hunt, so
24:45
Speaker 1: overall it ain't rocket science, you know, it's just a
24:48
Speaker 1: matter of you know, you've got to pick a spot
24:51
Speaker 1: and say, well, I'm gonna give this a couple of years.
24:55
Speaker 1: And you know, I've I've been through about four cycles,
24:58
Speaker 1: maybe five cycles, and why kill hunting? Lifetime of picking areas,
25:03
Speaker 1: going to them, trying to homestead them for a given
25:06
Speaker 1: amount of time, and losing them eventually and every time
25:10
Speaker 1: barnet and it's been to the commercialization of the sport
25:14
Speaker 1: that's run me out of it. I mean, you would
25:16
Speaker 1: go there, you know, knock on doors and have open
25:19
Speaker 1: hunting opportunities and end up somehow another cancer of money
25:24
Speaker 1: hunting shows up and you know, you go down the
25:27
Speaker 1: road five six years later, but you just got to
25:30
Speaker 1: stay ahead of a little bit. Moved to another state
25:32
Speaker 1: that's not getting as much attention. Uh. You know, in
25:36
Speaker 1: the past half dozen to ten years, the main focused
25:39
Speaker 1: states of Iowa, Illinois, Kansas and stuff like that. There
25:43
Speaker 1: just as a whole lot left there on private property
25:45
Speaker 1: to access for the average guy. I live right beside Kansas,
25:49
Speaker 1: right beside it and have spent over twenty years in it,
25:52
Speaker 1: and I don't have a single private land place left
25:55
Speaker 1: in that state time. It's that bad. And so you know,
25:59
Speaker 1: I'm missed pretty well, alligated to hunting little nuggets of
26:02
Speaker 1: public here and there. But I've been able to take
26:05
Speaker 1: you know, bucks that will you know, hundred five to
26:09
Speaker 1: thirty five inches off of those places pretty well every year.
26:13
Speaker 1: And there are bigger so you know, it's just a
26:17
Speaker 1: matter of doing restarts. Get on Google Earth and you know,
26:21
Speaker 1: get plat books, call counties biplat books. I have a
26:25
Speaker 1: stack of flat books that's ridiculous. Some people may consider
26:29
Speaker 1: an old fashioned, but you know they certainly give you
26:33
Speaker 1: land ownership of every bit of the county, show the
26:36
Speaker 1: road systems and different things. It's just mass research and
26:41
Speaker 1: then putting a putting a warm body in that spot
26:43
Speaker 1: for a year or two and doing the footwork and
26:46
Speaker 1: the leg work and the driving. And you know, if
26:50
Speaker 1: you within you know a year, you get a strong
26:53
Speaker 1: feeling you're wasting your time in a spot, which I
26:55
Speaker 1: have done. I went to a spot last year. It's
26:58
Speaker 1: been a month in it and just walked away from it.
27:01
Speaker 1: So this is waste of time and time to cut
27:03
Speaker 1: my losses and go to Plan B. But you'll win something,
27:07
Speaker 1: you'll lose some, but overall, if you do the work.
27:10
Speaker 1: It's like anything else in life. If you spend the
27:12
Speaker 1: time and do the work, you will reap the benefits.
27:14
Speaker 1: You know. So on these trips where you're you're trailing
27:18
Speaker 1: out there to this new area. Um, from what I've
27:21
Speaker 1: heard from you, it sounds like most of the time,
27:23
Speaker 1: or maybe all the time, you're camping up there. And
27:25
Speaker 1: I imagine that's a big part of how you can
27:26
Speaker 1: do this on a relative relatively small budget. I'm assuming, Um,
27:32
Speaker 1: is that true? Is that something you do to to
27:34
Speaker 1: make these trips more feasible? And if so, you know,
27:36
Speaker 1: how do you go go about pulling that off? One
27:38
Speaker 1: of the logistics of your of your mobile camp right, Well,
27:42
Speaker 1: you know, I usually try to start on an area
27:46
Speaker 1: and the like I said, because I'm gonna move somewhere
27:48
Speaker 1: and explore a new state or a new area, I'll
27:51
Speaker 1: do it. I'll try to start it off in the
27:54
Speaker 1: late winter and I'll go there and yeah, I usually
27:56
Speaker 1: just camp out on those little short trips for a
27:58
Speaker 1: few days. I'll you know, use my I have a
28:01
Speaker 1: lot of gear from being a Western hunter, you know,
28:04
Speaker 1: good bags and tents and you name it. Or now
28:07
Speaker 1: I've actually, at my age now migrated up to a
28:09
Speaker 1: little pick up or to a bolt camper. But I
28:13
Speaker 1: lived got to pick up shellf campers for many years,
28:16
Speaker 1: and you know it's rough. I'm not lie to you.
28:19
Speaker 1: If you ain't got to wherewithal to tough it out some,
28:23
Speaker 1: then you probably ain't going to get this whole picture
28:25
Speaker 1: painted anyway. If you're not mentally tough and physically tough,
28:29
Speaker 1: you probably won't paint a good to it yourself white
28:31
Speaker 1: tail pictures. So that's a warning right up front. If
28:34
Speaker 1: you're scared of camping out and you know, putting up
28:38
Speaker 1: with a little bit. Uh God forgive me, but I
28:42
Speaker 1: just basically say, you know, go play golf or something,
28:44
Speaker 1: you know. Um uh anyway, Yeah, I camp out a lot,
28:49
Speaker 1: and then by the time that I have decided whether
28:52
Speaker 1: the place is going to get an entire season of
28:54
Speaker 1: my attention or not. Um I usually by then I
28:58
Speaker 1: will take my you know, trailer with me and stay
29:02
Speaker 1: in yet or if it's not logistically sensible. I have
29:06
Speaker 1: actually rented a room in a place in or rent
29:09
Speaker 1: room for a month. Uh, there's places to be found.
29:13
Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes even if you have to get
29:15
Speaker 1: a motel room, if you're rent by the month and
29:18
Speaker 1: have a hut anybody with you, you can get very
29:21
Speaker 1: budgeted on on things. So when it comes down to
29:24
Speaker 1: that month in November, you know, a lot of times
29:26
Speaker 1: I try to set myself up a little bit better
29:28
Speaker 1: than camped out if I can, though I have had
29:31
Speaker 1: to camp out in a lot of really remote, rugged places.
29:34
Speaker 1: But um, I don't always camp out. I like being
29:38
Speaker 1: able to get up in the warm room, put my
29:40
Speaker 1: clothes on, and have a shower, you know, in different things.
29:42
Speaker 1: But um, I just go with the flow. Um. I
29:46
Speaker 1: just try to tackle each thing as I face it.
29:50
Speaker 1: And I live out of my truck most of the time,
29:53
Speaker 1: even if I'm not camping out, I don't go eat
29:56
Speaker 1: out at two or three times every day and things.
29:59
Speaker 1: And U I'm a very you know, low uh low
30:04
Speaker 1: overhead guy. So all right, let's say what we're there. Now,
30:09
Speaker 1: We've picked a state, We've picked an area. We're gonna
30:11
Speaker 1: camp out for a week or a couple of weeks
30:13
Speaker 1: or something like that. How do you start that process
30:16
Speaker 1: on a new property. You've done some digital scouting maybe,
30:18
Speaker 1: and maybe you did your winter trip, but what how
30:21
Speaker 1: does this process start your first couple of days. Are
30:23
Speaker 1: you just scouting? Do you jump right and start hunting?
30:26
Speaker 1: What do you do? Well, let's just say it it's
30:29
Speaker 1: a public land place. Because we don't have any strings
30:32
Speaker 1: attached to that, we can do what we want pretty
30:34
Speaker 1: well most any time of the year. What I try
30:36
Speaker 1: to do is, you know, I will usually get there
30:40
Speaker 1: in early to mid October and spend another week, possibly
30:46
Speaker 1: the five days for sure, hopefully UH had another little
30:50
Speaker 1: camping trip and put the boot to it. Uh. I
30:54
Speaker 1: will drive. I want to go around the perimeter and
30:56
Speaker 1: learn the access points and figure out, you know, where
30:59
Speaker 1: most of the man says are going to be coming from. Then,
31:02
Speaker 1: if I've done my you know, digital scouting properly, I'm
31:05
Speaker 1: going to know where the most remote areas of this
31:07
Speaker 1: public area are the most inaccessible. Those are the priorities
31:12
Speaker 1: to me. That will that's what separates, you know, the
31:17
Speaker 1: the doers from the hoopers, you know, the ones that
31:19
Speaker 1: hope to kill a good deer. Um, I will find
31:24
Speaker 1: access to these remote areas one way or the other,
31:26
Speaker 1: however it might be, and get that set up and
31:30
Speaker 1: get it figured out. Gett my some stands, sights prepared,
31:33
Speaker 1: you know, get in there and do the physical scouting
31:35
Speaker 1: and figure out where and how I'm gonna hunt and
31:39
Speaker 1: if I access it's difficult. Like there's some spots hunt
31:42
Speaker 1: that I have to have a boat, you know, I
31:44
Speaker 1: may use a canoe whatever. I just get that figured out,
31:48
Speaker 1: get all of the gistics you know, lined out, so
31:51
Speaker 1: that when I come back a few weeks later in
31:53
Speaker 1: early November to do the killing. Um, you know, how
31:58
Speaker 1: ever I got and never keeps. That's what my October
32:01
Speaker 1: trip will do for me. It'll get me, you know
32:05
Speaker 1: a lot of time saved and a lot of heartache
32:09
Speaker 1: saved by physically being there and getting myself prepared so
32:14
Speaker 1: that when I come in November, I can spend my
32:17
Speaker 1: time in you know some spots that have already got
32:21
Speaker 1: prepared and um, I don't have to, you know, I
32:26
Speaker 1: plan on them. I'm a rut hunter. I'm not a
32:28
Speaker 1: real preseason rut pre rut hunter. I don't pattern there
32:33
Speaker 1: early season well and hunt them on food sources and
32:36
Speaker 1: different things. I know there's guys that do that, but
32:39
Speaker 1: that's a different line. I'm not there. I'm a I
32:41
Speaker 1: killed ninety nine of my dear in the rut, and
32:45
Speaker 1: I may not never have even seen the deer even
32:48
Speaker 1: though it exists. I like to hunt what I call
32:51
Speaker 1: kind of rutting corridors where I feel the bucks are
32:54
Speaker 1: going to walk film at some point during the rut.
32:56
Speaker 1: There may not even be a lot of sign there.
32:58
Speaker 1: I just kind of have learned what these places are
33:01
Speaker 1: and how to you know, you know, through your digital
33:04
Speaker 1: and foot scouting, you can kind of narrow down it,
33:06
Speaker 1: don't scientists. If you break it down in every square
33:10
Speaker 1: a mile there there's a lot of factors like access
33:14
Speaker 1: by the people, and if you if you start marking
33:17
Speaker 1: off the areas that are going to not be any
33:20
Speaker 1: good because they're way too easy to get to and
33:22
Speaker 1: way too many people be them, and then take what's
33:24
Speaker 1: left and just figure that the deer will be hiding
33:27
Speaker 1: pretty well in that amount of country, then it shouldn't
33:30
Speaker 1: be you know, rocket science to figure out how they're
33:32
Speaker 1: gonna walk around in that country during the rut and
33:35
Speaker 1: get from one area to the other. And what I
33:37
Speaker 1: try to do is pick some either penchpoints or types
33:41
Speaker 1: of funnels that when they're moving from one area to
33:44
Speaker 1: the next, they're going to walk through it. And there
33:48
Speaker 1: isn't often a lot of sign in those spots, and
33:50
Speaker 1: there isn't often a lot of hunting in those spots.
33:52
Speaker 1: It may be a fence row across the pasture, you know,
33:55
Speaker 1: between two creep drainages or something. Everybody hunts to two
33:59
Speaker 1: creek drainages. I'm liable to be setting out there in
34:01
Speaker 1: a tree in the fence row, you know, in that
34:03
Speaker 1: past year. But you until you get ready to go
34:05
Speaker 1: out on a limb and kind of do some of
34:08
Speaker 1: that stuff, you really will not know what you're missing,
34:11
Speaker 1: you know, on big running white tails. So when you're
34:14
Speaker 1: actually out there doing that on the ground scout, if
34:17
Speaker 1: you're not looking for some of the kind of stereotypical
34:20
Speaker 1: type of dear sign that lots of guys think about,
34:22
Speaker 1: what is it specifically that you're looking for when you
34:25
Speaker 1: are scouting for your style? You know, I've said this
34:29
Speaker 1: for years among my friends, and some of them have
34:32
Speaker 1: come to get a grip on it, and I don't
34:33
Speaker 1: even know what it means myself, but I just say
34:36
Speaker 1: that I hunt by what I call feel, just by feel,
34:39
Speaker 1: And I guess it'd be like, you know, maybe you
34:42
Speaker 1: get a photo album of pictures or something, you sigm
34:46
Speaker 1: through it and when you're done, you shut it up,
34:49
Speaker 1: and then your mind floats back to what you just
34:51
Speaker 1: looked at through that hole, you know, compilation of photos.
34:55
Speaker 1: It will have, you know, have a theme. Well, when
34:59
Speaker 1: I out there, either whether I'm on foot scouting all
35:03
Speaker 1: this country or I'm done at by Google Earth or
35:05
Speaker 1: topographic map or whatever, aerial photos, whatever, I let each
35:10
Speaker 1: one of these factors be a photo to me in
35:13
Speaker 1: my mind, and I'm logging everything that I see down,
35:17
Speaker 1: everything from what people might call you know, betting areas
35:21
Speaker 1: or trails or food sources, to you know, open fields
35:26
Speaker 1: versus thick vegetation, creep bottom coming up against a bluff.
35:32
Speaker 1: I look at the over over the basically, I look
35:36
Speaker 1: at the lay of the land. That's what I try
35:38
Speaker 1: to do and put the whole picture of it together,
35:40
Speaker 1: and then I'm just going to buy steel. I'm gonna
35:43
Speaker 1: kind of know or get a pretty strong indication of
35:47
Speaker 1: where I can set in the month of November and
35:51
Speaker 1: have running bucks passing through as they're traveling around because
35:56
Speaker 1: we you know, we all know that they're going to
35:58
Speaker 1: be up on the moon even during the day in November.
36:02
Speaker 1: And no, they're not going to be in of the
36:06
Speaker 1: habitat during the day, but that five, yeah, they're going
36:10
Speaker 1: to be up in it during the day trying to
36:12
Speaker 1: breed a dough or find another dough. And I just
36:15
Speaker 1: kind of look at the whole picture of an area,
36:18
Speaker 1: and after time I will get a feel for two
36:21
Speaker 1: or three spots that have all the ingredients right to
36:25
Speaker 1: the highest percentage, and then you know, that's where I
36:29
Speaker 1: will set in November, and it's the best you can do.
36:31
Speaker 1: From that point on. You've got to toss it to fate.
36:34
Speaker 1: It ain't it ain't a perfect science. There's no perfect
36:37
Speaker 1: formula that can be given to make it work every time.
36:40
Speaker 1: That's why we like it. It's hunting. Just you know,
36:43
Speaker 1: don't put so much pressure on yourself, do your best
36:47
Speaker 1: to have fun and learn, and you'll get good at
36:52
Speaker 1: it over time. I didn't. I didn't get where I'm
36:55
Speaker 1: at in ten years, you know. So you talked about funnels.
37:01
Speaker 1: They're one of the main things you're looking for, these
37:03
Speaker 1: travel quarters, these running funnels or pinch points, and you
37:06
Speaker 1: know that's that's it was the term that we his hunters,
37:08
Speaker 1: white to hunters talked about all the time. And you know,
37:11
Speaker 1: there's the very generic type of pinch point where two
37:14
Speaker 1: big pieces of timber pinched down into a little narrow section.
37:17
Speaker 1: But other than that, I think sometimes a lot of
37:20
Speaker 1: guys I don't know exactly what to look for when
37:23
Speaker 1: it comes to some of these slightly little more subtle
37:25
Speaker 1: pinch points or funnels. Can you can you kind of
37:27
Speaker 1: walk us through some more specifics of specific types of
37:31
Speaker 1: terrain or cover or whatever it might be that that
37:33
Speaker 1: youth key and on when trying to find those those
37:35
Speaker 1: funnels or travel quarters. Right, well, I'll tell you one,
37:40
Speaker 1: there are so many different facets and it's so many
37:43
Speaker 1: so much depended upon what type of train. But like Frenches,
37:46
Speaker 1: I had a lot of habitat in Kansas that has
37:50
Speaker 1: a good mix of open and wooded. It's you know,
37:53
Speaker 1: let's just call it fifty fifty. Maybe it's farm land
37:56
Speaker 1: or pastures. And then what did great bottoms and what
37:59
Speaker 1: did old and if it thinks there's a lot of
38:01
Speaker 1: edge cover, you know, even in a creek bottom that's
38:04
Speaker 1: a long landing or a creek bottom that's open on
38:07
Speaker 1: both sides. Rutting bucks. You know, you want to travel
38:12
Speaker 1: that edge. They want to travel the edge and if
38:15
Speaker 1: if not, possibly more shade down into the open um
38:19
Speaker 1: during that peak of the right now. And I'm not
38:21
Speaker 1: talking about October or December. I'm talking about when they're
38:25
Speaker 1: you know, on the psycho bench and uh so I
38:28
Speaker 1: will often rather than get down in the creek bottom
38:31
Speaker 1: where most of the sign is and we're traditionally, you know,
38:34
Speaker 1: everybody thinks, well, you know they're gonna travel along the
38:37
Speaker 1: creek down there in the cover. Well that's not always
38:40
Speaker 1: the case at all, especially sometimes for the bigger bucks.
38:44
Speaker 1: They will literally walk right outside the edge of the
38:47
Speaker 1: you know, the edge of the creek bottom timber along
38:50
Speaker 1: the open um. So I will set out there, you know,
38:54
Speaker 1: in a tree and the edge of the open where
38:55
Speaker 1: I can see a large area because I've learned to
38:58
Speaker 1: prioritize getting eyes are reading buck over necessarily setting in
39:04
Speaker 1: a spot that he was going to walk by within
39:07
Speaker 1: bow range. That's good if you can figure that out
39:10
Speaker 1: and get set that close to where one's going to
39:12
Speaker 1: walk right by. And I have places that are that defined,
39:16
Speaker 1: but I would rather be setting in a general area
39:18
Speaker 1: and get my eye on a rudding buck, even if
39:21
Speaker 1: it's a two hundred yards or something, because I'm going
39:24
Speaker 1: to probably call that deer in uh. You know, those
39:27
Speaker 1: deer are crazy that time of year, and if they
39:29
Speaker 1: haven't been educated or harassed to death, they're very susceptible
39:34
Speaker 1: to calling. And so I'll set out on the edge
39:37
Speaker 1: of a tree line instead of down in the cover.
39:42
Speaker 1: And most people don't even look at that edge as
39:44
Speaker 1: a funnel, but it is. I don't call it a funnel,
39:48
Speaker 1: it's more of a h corridor. They will travel along
39:53
Speaker 1: the edge, um, instead of be down there in that
39:56
Speaker 1: thicker cover. They're down in the creek bottoms at night
39:59
Speaker 1: and are going crazy down in there because that's where
40:02
Speaker 1: you know, all of those go down in there to feed.
40:04
Speaker 1: But during the day, I've watched more big bucks to
40:07
Speaker 1: lot and lay in the open, even by themselves, whether
40:10
Speaker 1: with hot bulls or not, bed out in the open,
40:13
Speaker 1: and then make their way down to that cover in
40:15
Speaker 1: the evening, you know. And people kind of got to
40:19
Speaker 1: break away from traditional logic on you know, just hunting
40:24
Speaker 1: the you know, the standard spots of cover I've killed
40:27
Speaker 1: more big deer out in the open or virtually semi open,
40:32
Speaker 1: than I've ever killed in the thick cover. And there's
40:37
Speaker 1: there's different habitats. There's places where what I'm saying is
40:39
Speaker 1: not feasible. I'm not giving you a cover all here.
40:43
Speaker 1: I'm giving you about an instance of one of my
40:45
Speaker 1: more popular types of habitat, I hunt. But I've seen
40:48
Speaker 1: places to where I've hinted in Illinois, places in the
40:51
Speaker 1: farm country to where if you could find the thickest, nastiest,
40:56
Speaker 1: wooly boger place to get in, then yeah, that's where
40:59
Speaker 1: you need to be during the middle of the day
41:01
Speaker 1: because the bucks are gonna be done in there. They're
41:03
Speaker 1: not gonna be laying out in a farm field. There's
41:05
Speaker 1: too much human activity. But everything is relevant. But you know, bottlenecks,
41:11
Speaker 1: to me, are just some kinds as simple as a
41:14
Speaker 1: change of terrain, like um, you know, in Kansas, where
41:19
Speaker 1: a hunter's a lot of rolling hills and and um,
41:23
Speaker 1: there may only be a little swag in one of
41:25
Speaker 1: the ridge lines. You know, a thirty ft deep saddle
41:29
Speaker 1: in a ridge line between two creek languages. If that
41:33
Speaker 1: has any type of uh, you know, I'll even setting
41:37
Speaker 1: homemade ground blinds in those saddles. Most people would think
41:40
Speaker 1: you're out of your mind hunt there. But during the
41:44
Speaker 1: month of November and especially mid to late November, those
41:47
Speaker 1: bucks will won't jump drainages. They'll jump drainages, and they
41:50
Speaker 1: won't do it traditionally by going all the way down
41:53
Speaker 1: and bending around to the well. The next creek comes
41:56
Speaker 1: into verms that and going up there, they'll jump over.
42:00
Speaker 1: I've killed some of my biggest bucks jumping over open country,
42:04
Speaker 1: and I look for my saddles between you know, drainages
42:09
Speaker 1: that are a perfect spot for a reading buck to
42:12
Speaker 1: hop over from one drainage to another. So there's just
42:15
Speaker 1: a lot of different little things to do with habitat
42:18
Speaker 1: and you know, the geography to look at that can
42:22
Speaker 1: become semi bottleneck type features. You know. Yeah, something something
42:27
Speaker 1: you mentioned just a second ago kind of jumped out
42:29
Speaker 1: at me, and that was the fact that you put
42:31
Speaker 1: it seems like you put a lot of confidence in
42:33
Speaker 1: your ability to call to these deer, which kind of
42:36
Speaker 1: surprised me because you know, from some of my experiences
42:38
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have talked to a lot
42:39
Speaker 1: of these public land deer are pretty weary when it
42:42
Speaker 1: comes to calling. Have you had a lot of success
42:45
Speaker 1: with that in specific areas versus others? Is that something
42:48
Speaker 1: that will only work out west versus the East? Or
42:51
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on calling and how do you
42:52
Speaker 1: go about doing that on these public pieces. I won't
42:56
Speaker 1: lie to anybody and tell them that there's not a
42:58
Speaker 1: big difference. It's just like anything matter if it's you know,
43:03
Speaker 1: fishing or a bird dog. If your fishing fishing hole
43:05
Speaker 1: has been beat to death, you're not gonna have nearly
43:07
Speaker 1: as good luck there. I mean public land in the
43:09
Speaker 1: Midwest and back east. Now, I don't put a lot
43:13
Speaker 1: of stock in calling because those deer are hammered, they're educated,
43:18
Speaker 1: and you know, it just makes common sense. It's not
43:20
Speaker 1: going to be as good. Uh. You know, you try
43:24
Speaker 1: to do everything you can to get the odds in
43:25
Speaker 1: your favor, and one of those things would be you know,
43:29
Speaker 1: the average hunter is going to look for as quality
43:31
Speaker 1: as spot as he can find, and that means, you know,
43:34
Speaker 1: some of always got in a good number of deer
43:36
Speaker 1: and it's got a lot less people. So a lot
43:38
Speaker 1: of my hunting over the years, I spent a lot
43:40
Speaker 1: of time looking for spots that are right and depending
43:44
Speaker 1: on whether I'm hunting. You know, a public land spot
43:47
Speaker 1: that's out west, it just the deer are fairly uneducated
43:50
Speaker 1: and unbothered versus a private land place. You know, you
43:53
Speaker 1: may hunt a private land area here in the Midwest,
43:56
Speaker 1: it doesn't get bothered in the deer fairly at ease.
43:59
Speaker 1: If the deer are fairly unbothered and fairly at ease educated,
44:04
Speaker 1: calling is deadly on running bucks. I've had, you know,
44:08
Speaker 1: like astronomic results calling deer right into bow range and
44:12
Speaker 1: just you know, has them commit suicide from two to
44:16
Speaker 1: three four hundred yards away. But you've got to use
44:20
Speaker 1: your head. It's like every aspect of this outings, every
44:23
Speaker 1: aspect of the whole game. If you you'll know in
44:26
Speaker 1: your in your heart whether or not or brain, whether
44:29
Speaker 1: it's smart and if you're hunting, you know, like there's
44:32
Speaker 1: some areas of hunter in Kansas to the public plan
44:35
Speaker 1: that I spend more time avoiding what the people are
44:38
Speaker 1: doing and how they're messing me up than I do
44:41
Speaker 1: actually hunting deer, and I don't do a lot of
44:44
Speaker 1: calling there. I've I've had good success calling here there,
44:47
Speaker 1: but I've had I've had some bad experiences too, because
44:51
Speaker 1: you can tell. I mean it's if I call it
44:54
Speaker 1: an elk out west, you know, if it's a wilderness
44:57
Speaker 1: elk or urban elk, you know, you blow people an
44:59
Speaker 1: urban out, you'll run another direction. But you go to
45:01
Speaker 1: wilderness and call one and you'll run in there. Well,
45:04
Speaker 1: there are out and jump on it for you. But uh,
45:07
Speaker 1: you know, white tails are kind of basically the smartest
45:11
Speaker 1: of all the species and resigned and if you're if
45:14
Speaker 1: you're hunting deer that are fairly you know, unbothered what
45:17
Speaker 1: you're going to be trying to do because you're gonna
45:19
Speaker 1: try to have all you know, the percentages in your favor.
45:24
Speaker 1: Then calling running white tails from around you know, the
45:27
Speaker 1: fifth and November on can sure enough double you know,
45:34
Speaker 1: punch tags. So what specific calling techniques or process do
45:39
Speaker 1: you actually use in these situations? Are you rattling guy
45:42
Speaker 1: or just grunts or all the above? I would love
45:44
Speaker 1: to hear the specifics of exactly what's working for you. Well,
45:48
Speaker 1: I'm about as refined on my calling as uh. It
45:51
Speaker 1: doesn't get I don't go into science about it, and
45:55
Speaker 1: I don't make no big to do about it. I
45:57
Speaker 1: carry a runt call, and for the first twenty years
46:00
Speaker 1: my life, I didn't mean he's a grunt call. I
46:01
Speaker 1: did it with my own voice. And you know, I
46:05
Speaker 1: just got to where I carry one now and rattling antlers, yeah,
46:09
Speaker 1: I'll carry him. I don't use them very often, and
46:11
Speaker 1: a lot of times when I do use them, I
46:13
Speaker 1: don't try to mimic the big classical rutting fight, you know.
46:17
Speaker 1: I do a little time kickling and things. Uh, I
46:22
Speaker 1: just look at the deer. When I see a running
46:24
Speaker 1: buck somewhere, I can look at him for a minute
46:26
Speaker 1: and see where he's going, what he's doing, what's on
46:28
Speaker 1: his mind. And usually I can pretty well decipher, you know,
46:32
Speaker 1: whether or not calling him as even more twile. And
46:35
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll judge your rudding buck and just go, that's
46:39
Speaker 1: a waste of time. I'm not going to even blow,
46:41
Speaker 1: you know, at him or rattle at him. But I
46:44
Speaker 1: just look each case, you know, and if I think
46:48
Speaker 1: the deer is, you know, susceptible. A lot of the times,
46:51
Speaker 1: the older bucks, you know, three and a half plus
46:55
Speaker 1: year old bucks, they've been around, they're not dumb. He's
46:58
Speaker 1: they've been called to and they don't get it. Uh.
47:01
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm in an out west place, I
47:04
Speaker 1: don't worry about it much because those deer are just
47:06
Speaker 1: far less educated. They have not, you know, over the
47:10
Speaker 1: generations of time, have not been refined down like the
47:14
Speaker 1: eastern white tails, you know, you honey, until in Pennsylvania,
47:18
Speaker 1: New York, and his great great great great grandpa has
47:22
Speaker 1: been messed with. It seems like that the dumb ones
47:25
Speaker 1: don't survive in some our another we refine a specie
47:28
Speaker 1: down to them more intelligent animal, you know. And I'm
47:32
Speaker 1: not going to tell you that you don't have things
47:33
Speaker 1: you weigh a little better out west with those western
47:36
Speaker 1: white tails because they haven't been hunted the way the
47:39
Speaker 1: eastern ones have. But I just look at the rutten
47:42
Speaker 1: buck and what's going on and everything considered, and I
47:44
Speaker 1: decide whether to call him or not. I usually try
47:47
Speaker 1: to grant and call the bucks um, you know, and
47:51
Speaker 1: don't overcall. That's the first thing that will kind of
47:54
Speaker 1: get them out of sorts, you know, because just get
47:58
Speaker 1: their attention. Soon as you get their attention with it,
48:00
Speaker 1: give him about one more sound so that they know
48:03
Speaker 1: they heard that sound, and then leave things alone. If
48:05
Speaker 1: they're going to respond they're going to respond. If they're not, uh,
48:09
Speaker 1: you know, if first, if they're scared of it or
48:12
Speaker 1: educated about it, then they're you know, you can mess
48:15
Speaker 1: with them for the next five minutes usually and all
48:17
Speaker 1: you do is is further you know, educate them. But
48:22
Speaker 1: if they're going to respond in the rut, it's usually
48:24
Speaker 1: a quick, quick deal um and rattling. I'll clack my
48:29
Speaker 1: horns wants to get them to stop and look in
48:31
Speaker 1: my direction, and then usually I'll just give him a
48:33
Speaker 1: grun or two and leave it alone. If they want
48:36
Speaker 1: to come, they come. And if I'm calling to the deer,
48:39
Speaker 1: it's because I figure he will come. And you know,
48:44
Speaker 1: half or better of the ones I call to do
48:46
Speaker 1: respond positively to my calling. But I don't sit there
48:51
Speaker 1: and call for three or four or five deer a
48:53
Speaker 1: day either, you know, I may go or five days
48:56
Speaker 1: at a time. I never make a call until I
48:58
Speaker 1: see the right can do with the right deer, you know.
49:02
Speaker 1: So can you elaborate on that? What specifically are you
49:05
Speaker 1: queuing in on to tell you whether or not it's
49:07
Speaker 1: a buck you showed or you're not called to. Well.
49:11
Speaker 1: One of the greatest fail safes is if it's a
49:13
Speaker 1: like a two and a half year old buck. You know,
49:16
Speaker 1: they're just at the age to where they're extremely active
49:19
Speaker 1: in the breeding process. But they're not old enough to
49:21
Speaker 1: be real educated and refined in their senses. Yet they
49:25
Speaker 1: they're aggressive, they're frustrated. They're looking for or not trouble,
49:30
Speaker 1: but they're looking for just something and they don't know
49:34
Speaker 1: what they're well, they know what they're looking for, but
49:36
Speaker 1: they can't get at the bigger bucks. Keep them run
49:38
Speaker 1: off a frustrated two and a half year old, We'll
49:41
Speaker 1: usually it's hard to not call one in. You know.
49:44
Speaker 1: Now you've got to decide if it's something you want
49:46
Speaker 1: to shoot, because a lot of people like to call
49:48
Speaker 1: there just for the fun of it, and that's great,
49:50
Speaker 1: but it ain't profiting nobody if you're not going to
49:53
Speaker 1: shoot the deer or leave the thing along, you're just
49:55
Speaker 1: educating it, you know. But when you get up to
49:58
Speaker 1: the three and a half year olds, what I look
50:00
Speaker 1: for is like if the buck, a lot of times
50:03
Speaker 1: the buck will be following the dough and you're just
50:06
Speaker 1: going to have extremely limited Since says calling the buck
50:09
Speaker 1: off of a dough, that he is right in the
50:13
Speaker 1: you know, presence of if I see an older buck
50:17
Speaker 1: that's on a good stiff walk curly when I call
50:21
Speaker 1: trolling or you know, just staggering around in a rut
50:24
Speaker 1: stupor uh yeah, he's a prime handed, especially you know,
50:34
Speaker 1: if he's looking like he's traveling looking for another deer,
50:37
Speaker 1: if he's down in the middle of a group of
50:39
Speaker 1: other deer and doing his thing, I'm not probably calling
50:42
Speaker 1: him out of there, but I like to catch him
50:44
Speaker 1: out by their self covering ground, which is what they're
50:46
Speaker 1: doing a lot when they come by me, because I'll
50:48
Speaker 1: set out in places that when they go through there,
50:51
Speaker 1: they're usually covering ground to get from point A to
50:53
Speaker 1: point B, and they don't really expect much out there,
50:56
Speaker 1: so when they do hear a dear out there, they
50:57
Speaker 1: will often respond to it, you know, because a lot
51:00
Speaker 1: of times it's my thought that these bucks, these running
51:03
Speaker 1: bucks that are covering that ground through the sagum overs
51:08
Speaker 1: or you know, travel corridors, when they hear another buck
51:11
Speaker 1: out there runt or something, they will immediately think that
51:14
Speaker 1: there is a buck that's got a hot dough out there,
51:17
Speaker 1: because they take those dough it's out of standard habitat
51:21
Speaker 1: during the breeding cycle and take them out into the
51:23
Speaker 1: more open and more off the wall country. And when
51:26
Speaker 1: another buck's covering that ground to get from one place
51:28
Speaker 1: to another and he hears a running call out there,
51:32
Speaker 1: he will automatically think there's a hot dog close, so
51:34
Speaker 1: he will usually come over there at least take a
51:37
Speaker 1: look and see if he thinks he can get in
51:39
Speaker 1: on the action. You know, makes a lot of sense. Yep, sorry,
51:46
Speaker 1: go ahead now, I mean I'm just saying that, you know,
51:50
Speaker 1: I don't know what level I'm talking at here. I mean,
51:52
Speaker 1: it may may not make sense to anybody, but to me,
51:57
Speaker 1: hunting is an individual sport and you've got to this
52:00
Speaker 1: a science down for your own things. And if you've
52:02
Speaker 1: got confidence in what you do and and you know,
52:06
Speaker 1: put it into practice, you'll be successful people that go
52:10
Speaker 1: out there. You know, I've been around them that have
52:12
Speaker 1: hunted for twenty years for white tails, and they never
52:16
Speaker 1: seem to get it. They never seem to learn, and
52:18
Speaker 1: it seems like they're always trying to, you know, get
52:20
Speaker 1: this secret bit of advice. Uh. And there's a lot
52:24
Speaker 1: of big shot experts out there today that want you
52:28
Speaker 1: to believe that have some secret advice for you that
52:31
Speaker 1: they could make you Fudini bow hunter of white tails,
52:35
Speaker 1: you know, but that's so they they can market yourselves.
52:39
Speaker 1: The bottom line is it's not really like it's a secret,
52:42
Speaker 1: you know. What it is is the fact that you
52:44
Speaker 1: get a brain, you know, get a warm body out there,
52:48
Speaker 1: do what you do, learn what you learn, make mistakes,
52:51
Speaker 1: have successes, get confident in what you're doing, and and
52:55
Speaker 1: you'll you'll get good at it. Don't go around all
52:58
Speaker 1: your life searching for the hidden formulae and you know,
53:02
Speaker 1: getting some expecting some guy like me to be able
53:04
Speaker 1: to tell you just exactly how to do it, because
53:08
Speaker 1: it's more it's a personal experience. Bow Hunting white tails
53:11
Speaker 1: is something that there is no magical potion for. Just
53:17
Speaker 1: do it, as Nike says, you know, yeah, it's it's funny.
53:21
Speaker 1: This this is it resonates with me so much, especially
53:24
Speaker 1: in over the last shoot. It's two or three years
53:26
Speaker 1: now we've been doing this podcast and I think this
53:28
Speaker 1: is episode I think it's episode of hundred and twelve.
53:30
Speaker 1: So we've interviewed, you know, over a hundred different very
53:33
Speaker 1: successful hunters and probably the biggest takeaway I've I've gotten
53:38
Speaker 1: is that to your point, there is no secret. There
53:41
Speaker 1: is no single thing that we need to As soon
53:44
Speaker 1: as we know that or as soon as we have
53:45
Speaker 1: that product, or as soon as we've got that perfect thing, oh,
53:48
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden is gonna change. You know.
53:49
Speaker 1: There's there's so many different ways to do this, oh absolutely,
53:54
Speaker 1: you know. I mean it's man, it's human nature to
53:56
Speaker 1: take anything difficult and master it. That's within the human
54:01
Speaker 1: you know, way of doing things. And I've been fearful
54:04
Speaker 1: that we're gonna master whiteheil hunting. But it's not gonna happen.
54:07
Speaker 1: The closest they've gotten to the courses some of these
54:10
Speaker 1: you know, managed properties in the Midwest were you know,
54:14
Speaker 1: they've refined it down to almost an art killing great
54:17
Speaker 1: big deer. You know, by the time you put enough
54:19
Speaker 1: trail cameras out and put out enough feeders, put out
54:22
Speaker 1: enough food plots, and monitor them every where they go
54:26
Speaker 1: and everything they do, you can almost get it down
54:28
Speaker 1: to an art, you know. And but the average joe
54:32
Speaker 1: it interested in all of that. He's interested in learning
54:35
Speaker 1: it on his own and the challenge of it. And
54:37
Speaker 1: so now if you're just the average guy, you're never
54:40
Speaker 1: going to taste that that conditioned whitetail hunting success that
54:45
Speaker 1: comes with Usually there's a lot of money involved in it.
54:48
Speaker 1: But you know who cares. Let them, Let them video
54:52
Speaker 1: jockeys have their star status. I don't care, you know,
54:55
Speaker 1: let them put them on peace public somewhere and let's
54:58
Speaker 1: see how they do. You know, we've we've talked about
55:01
Speaker 1: that before. That would be really interesting to get some
55:04
Speaker 1: of these big, big name people, put them on some
55:07
Speaker 1: more completely new and see how they go about it.
55:10
Speaker 1: I think it would be very interesting. It would, but
55:13
Speaker 1: it won't happen because people that get to that late
55:16
Speaker 1: status are going to protect theirselves, you know. And and
55:19
Speaker 1: I don't worry about anymore. It used to threaten me.
55:21
Speaker 1: I used to be bothered by them, you know, TV
55:24
Speaker 1: stars that are killing all these great big bucks consistently.
55:27
Speaker 1: And I even know guys that aren't TV stars or
55:29
Speaker 1: just average guys that have got places like an Iowa
55:32
Speaker 1: and Illinois and places. And every year I got a
55:35
Speaker 1: guy up here in Kansas said, you know, they're on
55:37
Speaker 1: a massive, massive branch up there with him and two
55:40
Speaker 1: buddies have least it, and you know, every single year
55:44
Speaker 1: they both kill whitetail buck that will be over hundred
55:47
Speaker 1: and seventy That is that is um. I don't know
55:52
Speaker 1: what can you say about it. I mean, that's just
55:53
Speaker 1: not really even in the realms of abnormal. It's almost
55:57
Speaker 1: unbelievable to think that the guy could do that. But
56:00
Speaker 1: when you add at what they do every year to
56:02
Speaker 1: get that done, and you saw the picture that's painted,
56:05
Speaker 1: it's it's really just what I call phony. It's phony.
56:09
Speaker 1: I mean, they spend thousands upon thousands and thousands of
56:13
Speaker 1: dollars on dumping giant corn piles out and they have
56:18
Speaker 1: leased up tens of thousands of acres for multiple tens
56:22
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars so that these deer are totally
56:24
Speaker 1: like in a zoo like atmosphere all year. They don't
56:27
Speaker 1: mind walking into a corn pile. I mean, it's so phony.
56:31
Speaker 1: But yes, they end up with giant antlers every year.
56:34
Speaker 1: But God forgive me, but who cares? I mean, uh,
56:39
Speaker 1: I I just don't think that's what white tail hunting
56:42
Speaker 1: and bow hunting is all about. It's not the end,
56:44
Speaker 1: it's the means. And uh, people like you and me
56:47
Speaker 1: and the people who are probably gonna listen to this
56:49
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what I'm talking about. And so you know,
56:52
Speaker 1: we can just get off of that. It's entertainment to
56:55
Speaker 1: watch it on TV. But I don't consider it hunting.
56:57
Speaker 1: I consider it entertainment, you know what I mean. And uh,
57:00
Speaker 1: I think it's a really important distinction to make. I
57:02
Speaker 1: think a lot of people watch TV and that it
57:05
Speaker 1: unfortunately affects their own expectations of what their hunts supposed
57:08
Speaker 1: to be like. And then you got a lot of
57:10
Speaker 1: very disappointed and frustrated people out there. And so to
57:13
Speaker 1: your point, it's so important to realize that this is
57:15
Speaker 1: an entertainment. You're not seeing all the stuff that goes
57:18
Speaker 1: into it that you know, it gets this twenty minute
57:21
Speaker 1: that twenty minutes show that's packed with big bucks. Um,
57:24
Speaker 1: you know, set expectations based on where you're at, what
57:28
Speaker 1: makes you happy, what's realistic, and then I think you're
57:31
Speaker 1: a lot more fun doing it. Oh, absolutely fun. It's
57:34
Speaker 1: been lost in the thing. I don't know how it
57:35
Speaker 1: comes about, but it's involved to a state of you know,
57:39
Speaker 1: and this is a real touchy topic. And it's even
57:41
Speaker 1: touchy for me because I it's just like man hugging
57:45
Speaker 1: each other. You just don't want to do it, you know,
57:48
Speaker 1: I mean, you do want to do it, but you
57:49
Speaker 1: don't want nobody to see it. You know. It's kind
57:51
Speaker 1: of it's a it's when I talk about the male ego.
57:56
Speaker 1: You know, we don't like to address that, but we
57:58
Speaker 1: all have egos, and a lot of time it's all
58:00
Speaker 1: about you know, me the man, the hunter, killing the
58:03
Speaker 1: big thing and having the bragging rights and being a
58:07
Speaker 1: big story, you know, and and you know you've got
58:10
Speaker 1: to evolve. I remember the day when I was in
58:12
Speaker 1: that stage way back there. I mean, I wanted to
58:14
Speaker 1: kill something and take it around and show it off
58:16
Speaker 1: and be admired. I don't run that down. There's nothing
58:20
Speaker 1: wrong with it. But ultimately you're going to evolve, especially
58:23
Speaker 1: if you're trying to become a good white tiled bow owner,
58:25
Speaker 1: you're going to evolve way past that one day and
58:28
Speaker 1: and you're going to get to where it's all about
58:30
Speaker 1: the means not the end. And uh so you know
58:34
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about here, is how to get
58:36
Speaker 1: some means together and go do it. Have fun, don't
58:39
Speaker 1: forget fun. You know, even when you go do it
58:42
Speaker 1: on your own, you can get in that binge of
58:44
Speaker 1: trying to be so successful that you put too much
58:47
Speaker 1: pressure on yourself. And that's one of my greatest problems.
58:50
Speaker 1: I I slow. I'm kind of like a you know,
58:53
Speaker 1: an addict there. I have a problem. I don't watch myself,
58:55
Speaker 1: I'll fall off the fence, you know, and on and
58:57
Speaker 1: I get on that side of wanting to put pressure
59:00
Speaker 1: on myself, you know, and I just have to stop
59:03
Speaker 1: and have a complete change of heart, mind and approach
59:06
Speaker 1: and start over. And that's happened many times in my days.
59:09
Speaker 1: And I you know, I'm I'm doing my best to
59:12
Speaker 1: stay on the bandwagon of have fun, because whether you're
59:16
Speaker 1: under pressure, whether your anals, or whether you're just having fun,
59:21
Speaker 1: it's not really going to change what goes on in
59:23
Speaker 1: the fields. A matter of fact, I think people do
59:26
Speaker 1: worse when they're under pressure, you know what I mean.
59:30
Speaker 1: You know. So it's all about bow hunting for white
59:33
Speaker 1: tails in a fall setting, doing it on your own,
59:38
Speaker 1: learning from the good and the bad of the trip,
59:40
Speaker 1: and you know, and trying to get better at it,
59:43
Speaker 1: and just having fun. Yeah. I definitely find myself in
59:47
Speaker 1: a similar camp as you, and that I'm so so
59:51
Speaker 1: passionate about it, so invested in it, that I put
59:54
Speaker 1: so much pressure on myself. And to your point, you know,
59:57
Speaker 1: I'll be out there and I'm getting angry at myself
59:59
Speaker 1: with situation, frustrated, and then all of a sudden you
1:00:02
Speaker 1: have those moments. Hopefully you have a moment where like
1:00:05
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Like, yeah, this is supposed to
1:00:07
Speaker 1: be fun. Why are you doing all this if you're
1:00:10
Speaker 1: just going to be miserable the whole time? So it's
1:00:12
Speaker 1: exactly and to your point, I really do think that
1:00:16
Speaker 1: when you flip that mindset, when you're able to catch
1:00:18
Speaker 1: yourself and keep that positive attitude, that's when you end
1:00:22
Speaker 1: up being the most ready for the moment. That's when
1:00:24
Speaker 1: you're the most you know, prepared and emotionally and physically
1:00:28
Speaker 1: capable of pulling off a successful hunt or seeing that
1:00:30
Speaker 1: deer and getting a good shot or whatever it might be.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: So really, your mindset can have such an influence on
1:00:35
Speaker 1: how an actual hunt plays out. Well, just take that
1:00:39
Speaker 1: to sports. I mean, when you're in a good mindset,
1:00:41
Speaker 1: you get on the field and you feel in control
1:00:43
Speaker 1: and happy and you know everything's going well, you're going
1:00:46
Speaker 1: to perform at a superior level. Versus if you go
1:00:49
Speaker 1: out there browbeating one day, some guy just knocked the
1:00:51
Speaker 1: fire out of you, and you're like, whoa, you know,
1:00:55
Speaker 1: I feel like a little insignificant punk out here. You
1:00:58
Speaker 1: know you're not going to perform al or maybe you
1:01:01
Speaker 1: know the height you just had a fight to watch
1:01:04
Speaker 1: that you know you're not gonna play ball is good.
1:01:07
Speaker 1: So it's like that one hunting, it's you know, go
1:01:10
Speaker 1: out there and forget the TV hype and forget all
1:01:14
Speaker 1: of the you know, industry hype, and go out there
1:01:17
Speaker 1: and perform at a personal, private level. You'll be You'll
1:01:20
Speaker 1: be satisfied whatever the results stand. You know. Yeah, such
1:01:24
Speaker 1: such great advice. Now, Eddy, I want to take it
1:01:27
Speaker 1: back a step to something we're talking about. I want
1:01:29
Speaker 1: to go back out to this piece of public land hunting.
1:01:32
Speaker 1: And one of the things I always think about a
1:01:34
Speaker 1: lot when I start out on one of these trips
1:01:36
Speaker 1: on a new piece of property is you know, how
1:01:38
Speaker 1: do what? What's my plan for how I'm going to
1:01:40
Speaker 1: hunt this property? You Know, sometimes I think, Okay, gonna
1:01:42
Speaker 1: start in an observation stand and then we're gonna try
1:01:45
Speaker 1: to learn something and then I'm going to try to
1:01:47
Speaker 1: dial in from there. Um. One of the questions I'm
1:01:49
Speaker 1: always curious about to hear other people approach this is,
1:01:52
Speaker 1: you know, how long or how do you go about
1:01:54
Speaker 1: hunting a property? You know, are you gonna hunt the
1:01:55
Speaker 1: same spot repeatedly or is it once and if you
1:01:58
Speaker 1: don't see what you want to see you move on?
1:02:00
Speaker 1: Or what's your minds that when it comes to breaking
1:02:02
Speaker 1: down your actual hunts over the course of a week
1:02:05
Speaker 1: or two weeks, for however long, is you're that you're
1:02:06
Speaker 1: into place right? Um? You know that's that brings back
1:02:11
Speaker 1: when you asked the different approaches like that. I just
1:02:14
Speaker 1: my mind is flashes to so many different episodes of
1:02:18
Speaker 1: my hunts over my life in different places. You know,
1:02:20
Speaker 1: I've I've had plenty of times where you know, I
1:02:23
Speaker 1: went to a place and I just beat it down
1:02:25
Speaker 1: during the offseason and felt like I had a really
1:02:27
Speaker 1: strong game plan when I first went into it the
1:02:30
Speaker 1: first time. And I've had instances where those game plans
1:02:33
Speaker 1: worked out great. I've had instances where I realized that
1:02:37
Speaker 1: I was backwards, just you know, really felt stupid because
1:02:41
Speaker 1: by the end of the season, I've changed everything, was
1:02:43
Speaker 1: doing everything different. So once again, there is no perfect
1:02:47
Speaker 1: rule for it. And other times I've went in and
1:02:50
Speaker 1: not had a game plan and just you know, started
1:02:52
Speaker 1: maybe hunting and working my way in as you might say, observed,
1:02:56
Speaker 1: observing and things. I've killed some good bucks out west
1:02:59
Speaker 1: by doing that. It depends on the habitat. If you're
1:03:01
Speaker 1: in a habitat where you can do a lot of observation, uh,
1:03:05
Speaker 1: especially if I have a hunted the place. I like
1:03:07
Speaker 1: that approach. Start in the early early stages of the
1:03:10
Speaker 1: rut and get that observation done, and start working your
1:03:14
Speaker 1: way in so that by the you know, the really
1:03:16
Speaker 1: high movement time in November, you'll already be into the
1:03:19
Speaker 1: you know, the core spots. But you know, once again,
1:03:22
Speaker 1: there ain't no pad answer for it. It's a matter
1:03:25
Speaker 1: of everything as individual to its own spot. And uh uh,
1:03:30
Speaker 1: I like to have a game plan when I go
1:03:32
Speaker 1: somewhere from my digital and all my other scouting. But
1:03:36
Speaker 1: like this public that hunt up here in Kansas, Um
1:03:40
Speaker 1: I went into it the first year I lost a
1:03:43
Speaker 1: private place. That year I had everything set up and
1:03:45
Speaker 1: it comes November the tenth I went up through the hunt.
1:03:48
Speaker 1: No landowner kicked me out. Some guys with money had
1:03:50
Speaker 1: come along and got it here. It was November the tenth.
1:03:53
Speaker 1: I had all my stuff set up to hunt, and
1:03:56
Speaker 1: I'm at ground zero. I have to pull all that,
1:03:58
Speaker 1: you know, drive to a place, walk in their public
1:04:01
Speaker 1: and start over. On November basically eleventh or twelve. Talk
1:04:05
Speaker 1: about feeling like a lost pup, you know, I mean
1:04:07
Speaker 1: I I was intimidated. I mean, here it is already
1:04:10
Speaker 1: time to get the good stuff done. And I'm back
1:04:13
Speaker 1: at ground zero. And I went in there, and you know,
1:04:16
Speaker 1: I had to make a decision. Am I going to
1:04:18
Speaker 1: go in here and really, you know, try to learn
1:04:20
Speaker 1: this place inside out and beat it down and then
1:04:23
Speaker 1: make plans, or am I just going to hunt my
1:04:25
Speaker 1: way in? And it was about fifty fifty open thick
1:04:30
Speaker 1: habitat where I felt I could observe a lot. So
1:04:33
Speaker 1: I just started going out into the to the most
1:04:36
Speaker 1: remote harder to get two spots and climbing some trees
1:04:38
Speaker 1: where I could see for good ways in any direction
1:04:41
Speaker 1: around and trying to observe you know, running bucks moving
1:04:44
Speaker 1: through the habitat and you know, dose or whatever, and
1:04:49
Speaker 1: I'll be doggone. I called a couple of deer in,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: you know, from a distance, they were not going to
1:04:54
Speaker 1: have come by where I was at, but I spotted
1:04:56
Speaker 1: them and called them in and you know, got success.
1:05:00
Speaker 1: They were not huge deer, you know, they were just
1:05:02
Speaker 1: barely poping young caliber deer. But for the first year,
1:05:06
Speaker 1: the first week on a place, you know, I mean
1:05:09
Speaker 1: I felt good. They have just gotten in places to
1:05:11
Speaker 1: where you know, there would be ten cars parked in
1:05:14
Speaker 1: the parking lot at daylight and if you want in
1:05:17
Speaker 1: about that available habitat from there, you weren't to have
1:05:21
Speaker 1: people problems, but there would be ten or of it that.
1:05:24
Speaker 1: If you really could ferret that out, you could get
1:05:27
Speaker 1: away from most all them. People will guess where most
1:05:29
Speaker 1: the deer we're going to be, I mean them deer
1:05:32
Speaker 1: are going to figure that out pretty quick. Wherever the
1:05:34
Speaker 1: people are coming going from that activity is gonna slowly,
1:05:39
Speaker 1: you know, migrate away from that. And you know that's
1:05:42
Speaker 1: just a public land key right there. Figure out where
1:05:44
Speaker 1: the people are going to be and spend your time
1:05:47
Speaker 1: where they're not. That sounds like overly simple, but public
1:05:51
Speaker 1: land deer are sharp and there's always nooks and crannies
1:05:55
Speaker 1: on public places that for some reason they're not getting
1:05:59
Speaker 1: hit US artists arrest those deer figure that out way
1:06:02
Speaker 1: before you do, and those will be the places you
1:06:05
Speaker 1: want to be, so you know, get in there and
1:06:07
Speaker 1: and if you want to just go all out, go
1:06:10
Speaker 1: in there and set up and just sit there until
1:06:13
Speaker 1: you know, you know what freezes over fine, because you know,
1:06:16
Speaker 1: during the peak of the rut, you know, if you
1:06:18
Speaker 1: get throwed into something like I did in the peak
1:06:20
Speaker 1: of the rut, you ain't got time to make a
1:06:21
Speaker 1: big game plan and start trying to refine it down.
1:06:24
Speaker 1: If you're throw it into something like that, and you
1:06:25
Speaker 1: can't leave home until November the tenth, and you're gonna
1:06:28
Speaker 1: drive to north South Dakota or somewhere and and go
1:06:32
Speaker 1: into this place, then just you know, if you've done
1:06:35
Speaker 1: your preceding h work, you don't know about where you're
1:06:39
Speaker 1: gonna get, get in there and and and either go
1:06:41
Speaker 1: in and basically get it a bunch and stay all
1:06:45
Speaker 1: day in the tree. And you know, we don't none
1:06:47
Speaker 1: of us like to rely on luck. We like figure
1:06:49
Speaker 1: it out and kill him on our own. But hey,
1:06:52
Speaker 1: if you don't have any luck, uh, and won't rely
1:06:56
Speaker 1: on it, which I used to not. I used to say,
1:06:58
Speaker 1: if I kill one by luck, I'm not even gonna count.
1:07:00
Speaker 1: You know, I wanted to, you know, kind of know
1:07:03
Speaker 1: what I was doing, and figure I had a good
1:07:05
Speaker 1: hand in it. But if I kill them by luck
1:07:09
Speaker 1: or by skill. Nowadays there's still bow hunted white tails
1:07:13
Speaker 1: and and and I'm still appreciative of them. So don't
1:07:16
Speaker 1: be bashful to get into an area and stay all
1:07:19
Speaker 1: day and call ever so often, and don't be bashful
1:07:22
Speaker 1: to set out on the edges and hunt your way
1:07:24
Speaker 1: in whatever makes you happy, um and the most Hey,
1:07:29
Speaker 1: there's certain formulas for it that can't be you know, overlooked.
1:07:33
Speaker 1: Once you do everything you can do, then nothing more
1:07:35
Speaker 1: than sheer. Time in the field is the greatest odds upper,
1:07:39
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And from about November the
1:07:42
Speaker 1: tenth th I can't tell a person one thing better
1:07:46
Speaker 1: than more time in the field to have better success.
1:07:49
Speaker 1: That's the number one odds increasing factor. And very few
1:07:54
Speaker 1: people got to work with all of a sud all day.
1:07:56
Speaker 1: You know, Uh, you're an all day hunter during the ruck.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: I try to be once again it's case specific, but
1:08:03
Speaker 1: I try to have places that I can go to
1:08:06
Speaker 1: and said all day. Uh, there's places it's not good
1:08:09
Speaker 1: for it. And if you're you know, halfway an outdoorsman,
1:08:12
Speaker 1: you'll know when it's not really common sense. You're not
1:08:14
Speaker 1: gonna set, you know, right out beside the edge of
1:08:18
Speaker 1: a fairly accessible farm field probably all day long. You're
1:08:21
Speaker 1: gonna go back in there, off down in the river,
1:08:24
Speaker 1: bottom in the brier thicket down there and set. But
1:08:26
Speaker 1: out west it's a different matter. You know, there's lots
1:08:29
Speaker 1: of places that are excellent for all day setting because
1:08:31
Speaker 1: those deer can move freely all day. But yeah, I
1:08:35
Speaker 1: said all day most of the time, and I've killed
1:08:39
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say one out of every three probably of
1:08:43
Speaker 1: my better bucks during a time between ten and the
1:08:46
Speaker 1: morning and two in the evening. To youive, any advice
1:08:49
Speaker 1: for people that struggle staying out for that those long hours,
1:08:52
Speaker 1: any advice for just handling the full day, said, yeah,
1:08:56
Speaker 1: the best thing you know. Of course, it varies with
1:08:59
Speaker 1: that age. And I'm an authority on that because I've
1:09:01
Speaker 1: been doing this for thirty years, and so I've watched
1:09:04
Speaker 1: myself change. But you know, when I was younger, in
1:09:07
Speaker 1: my twenties and thirties, it wasn't that hard for me
1:09:09
Speaker 1: to adapt all day setting. I was mentally and physically
1:09:12
Speaker 1: psycho and uh, it didn't get too tough for me.
1:09:16
Speaker 1: Is I've gotten older, it's tougher. But the main thing
1:09:19
Speaker 1: I do nowadays to make it easier on myself is well,
1:09:23
Speaker 1: of course this is no a no brainer. Number one,
1:09:25
Speaker 1: have a place you feel confident and setting all day.
1:09:27
Speaker 1: If your mind ain't with you, if you're setting somewhere
1:09:30
Speaker 1: thinking you're wasting your time, you won't stay hooked. So
1:09:33
Speaker 1: number one, you know, Number one, get in a spot
1:09:37
Speaker 1: that you definitely feel about, could come walking by in
1:09:40
Speaker 1: the middle of the day past number one. Number two,
1:09:43
Speaker 1: you know, take the time that if you if you
1:09:45
Speaker 1: can ahead of time, and it's not always possible, but
1:09:47
Speaker 1: get in there and get it set up properly to
1:09:49
Speaker 1: get it to where you feel happy hunting it. In
1:09:52
Speaker 1: other words, don't get in there and jump up in
1:09:55
Speaker 1: a tree that you can't shoot your bow twenty yards
1:09:57
Speaker 1: out of in any direction and you can't see, and
1:09:59
Speaker 1: you're it just mentally beats you down. Get in there,
1:10:02
Speaker 1: may be an offseason, clean it out a little bit,
1:10:04
Speaker 1: and get things kind of where you're gonna set in
1:10:06
Speaker 1: a pleasant spot and you're gonna be able to see
1:10:08
Speaker 1: things happening, and get an extremely comfortable tree stand. As
1:10:13
Speaker 1: you get older, that's more important. You know, some of these.
1:10:16
Speaker 1: I put up some stands that are more like a
1:10:17
Speaker 1: little loungers, you know, And I mean it's kind of
1:10:21
Speaker 1: embarrassing compared to the point I used to. I used
1:10:25
Speaker 1: to set fourteen hours on a little homemade thing that
1:10:27
Speaker 1: was I mean, you couldn't even barely have enough room
1:10:31
Speaker 1: for your feet to stand up on and your butt
1:10:33
Speaker 1: was setting on a little six ins round circle. But
1:10:35
Speaker 1: that's when I was tough and dumb, you know. But
1:10:38
Speaker 1: but anyway, nowadays, get a really comfortable stand and getting
1:10:41
Speaker 1: a good spot and take a good lunch. You know,
1:10:44
Speaker 1: here's my thought. I'd rather be caught in that tree
1:10:47
Speaker 1: stand goofing around once in a while trying to eat
1:10:49
Speaker 1: my lunch, then be at home and never even be
1:10:52
Speaker 1: out hunting. Uh. I mean, forever, time you get caught
1:10:56
Speaker 1: moving or doing something in the middle of the day
1:10:58
Speaker 1: and you scare your deer off, there's gonna be two
1:11:01
Speaker 1: or three other times you don't get caught. You're gonna
1:11:03
Speaker 1: kill that dear. So just play the percentages, you know,
1:11:06
Speaker 1: take you a good lunch, take you a book if
1:11:08
Speaker 1: you want a lot of you know, we're high tech nowadays.
1:11:11
Speaker 1: Everybody sitts out there with their phones and messes with
1:11:14
Speaker 1: them all day. Which here's my advice for that. You're
1:11:18
Speaker 1: gonna sit out there and play its electronics all day,
1:11:21
Speaker 1: Take up golf, okay, get out of the woods and
1:11:24
Speaker 1: quit messing. A good hunt up for me, okay. But anyway,
1:11:27
Speaker 1: that's another line of thinking. But you know, do something
1:11:30
Speaker 1: to have a good time while you're sating there, and
1:11:32
Speaker 1: be comfortable. Dressing layers and dress comfortably because setting in
1:11:35
Speaker 1: a standballing around all day can get uncomfortable. You know.
1:11:39
Speaker 1: Don't get bound up in clothing that's you know, really uncomfortable.
1:11:44
Speaker 1: I actually even use a in the colder weather, I
1:11:46
Speaker 1: use a thing called the heater body suit rather than
1:11:50
Speaker 1: a layer up real real thick and bulky with clothing
1:11:53
Speaker 1: because it gets uncomfortable. I'll setting out heater body suit
1:11:55
Speaker 1: and I'll have very much on underneath it, you know,
1:11:58
Speaker 1: and uh, I can move round inside of it, not really,
1:12:02
Speaker 1: you know, it's not visible to the outside, you know.
1:12:05
Speaker 1: So you know, just use common sense tactics on all
1:12:08
Speaker 1: day sets and whatever makes you happy and comfortable. That's
1:12:12
Speaker 1: what you've got to learn. And one last thing you
1:12:15
Speaker 1: probably ought to start trying a few all dayers about
1:12:19
Speaker 1: a week or ten days before you're ready to really
1:12:22
Speaker 1: really get serious about it. Because it's amazing how after
1:12:27
Speaker 1: you do it for a little while, like maybe you
1:12:29
Speaker 1: said all day, you know, three or four days out
1:12:32
Speaker 1: of one week, and in the next week you might
1:12:36
Speaker 1: might go five or six days. It's amazing how you'll
1:12:38
Speaker 1: work into it not being nearly as bad. You're toughen
1:12:41
Speaker 1: up to it, you know, it is it's it's you know,
1:12:48
Speaker 1: it's not fun. It literally I've never probably said a
1:12:53
Speaker 1: fourteen hour set that I called fun. But you know,
1:12:57
Speaker 1: if we're serious white tailed bow hunters, there's a point
1:12:59
Speaker 1: where you to balance to fund versus productivity, and when
1:13:04
Speaker 1: it gets to be miserable, no, I'm gonna say, you know,
1:13:07
Speaker 1: go playing around golf, rebalmeny and watch football. But if
1:13:11
Speaker 1: you can keep it at a you know, tolerable level
1:13:14
Speaker 1: and be productive, then you know, you got to sacrifice
1:13:18
Speaker 1: because if it was easy, if it was easy, everybody
1:13:21
Speaker 1: would be done it, you know. So oh yeah, it
1:13:24
Speaker 1: can be a grind, but it's definitely one of the
1:13:26
Speaker 1: things that um I always talked with the different types
1:13:29
Speaker 1: of fun, and there's type one fund, which is you know,
1:13:31
Speaker 1: playing golf, drinking a beer, watching watching football game. But
1:13:34
Speaker 1: then type too fun is that it's a challenge in
1:13:38
Speaker 1: the moment. You know, it can be whether it be
1:13:40
Speaker 1: hiking up a mountain with a bowl kuck on your back,
1:13:42
Speaker 1: or sitting all day. But once you get through it,
1:13:45
Speaker 1: it's a great story. You're so glad you did it,
1:13:48
Speaker 1: and it's fun looking back on I think those all
1:13:50
Speaker 1: day said, especially the ones where you see a nice buck,
1:13:53
Speaker 1: or you kill one, or you have some kind of
1:13:55
Speaker 1: cool experience, that is a lot of fun once you're
1:13:57
Speaker 1: able to to push through and actually do it. Yeah. Here,
1:14:00
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, I've sat quite long and
1:14:02
Speaker 1: hard on my public place something Kansas, and I'd passed
1:14:05
Speaker 1: up a number of you know, good deer, nothing over
1:14:09
Speaker 1: hundred twenty five or thirty inches. But finally it was
1:14:11
Speaker 1: getting late in the season there, I mean, it was
1:14:13
Speaker 1: getting close to Thanksgiving, and you know, I'm like, dang,
1:14:17
Speaker 1: I gotta get I takes to another level, you know.
1:14:20
Speaker 1: So I got my body suit and my lunch, and
1:14:24
Speaker 1: I had been practicing the old man way of hunting,
1:14:27
Speaker 1: which is, you know, a break during the middle of
1:14:29
Speaker 1: the day, and uh, I thought, well, you know how
1:14:33
Speaker 1: bad do I want to get a deer, you know,
1:14:34
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, I still want one bad enough,
1:14:37
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna do it. And I went out there
1:14:39
Speaker 1: and got, you know, on an all day set, and
1:14:43
Speaker 1: sure enough, leven forty five, you know, fifteen minutes till noon,
1:14:47
Speaker 1: here comes to the deer for me that I want,
1:14:49
Speaker 1: you know, and I kill it basically right up noon.
1:14:53
Speaker 1: And you know, it was on public land, heavily heavily
1:14:55
Speaker 1: hunted public land. And I'm gonna bet nine out of
1:14:59
Speaker 1: every ten and people that had been there that morning hunting,
1:15:01
Speaker 1: we're probably not there then, you know. And that deer
1:15:04
Speaker 1: probably who knows it, might have got to run out
1:15:06
Speaker 1: of some other more frontal habitat. And I was back
1:15:11
Speaker 1: in the back in a hard access place. And I mean,
1:15:15
Speaker 1: use your brain once again, you should brain God gave you.
1:15:18
Speaker 1: I mean, where do you want to be in the
1:15:19
Speaker 1: middle of the day. You want to be back into
1:15:21
Speaker 1: places where the deer are going to be hiding out right,
1:15:23
Speaker 1: you know. I mean when you got public land and
1:15:26
Speaker 1: people get up roaming around at nine or ten in
1:15:28
Speaker 1: the morning, and then they're coming back in it too
1:15:31
Speaker 1: in the evening. Pretty safe bat you want to be
1:15:34
Speaker 1: back in there where the teer are going to be
1:15:36
Speaker 1: avoiding that at you know, but you know it just
1:15:40
Speaker 1: as a matter of I guess, slowly but surely getting
1:15:43
Speaker 1: a wherewithal to put it all together, you know, And
1:15:46
Speaker 1: and it does a forever perfect example like I just gave.
1:15:50
Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way, uh one once out of
1:15:54
Speaker 1: what ten times? You know, there's a whole lot of
1:15:59
Speaker 1: more mistake some failures than than a few successes. But
1:16:02
Speaker 1: it's all worth it right when it does come together.
1:16:05
Speaker 1: That's it. And to me, it's always builed down about
1:16:09
Speaker 1: mental outlook. I mean, it's perspective and a really really
1:16:12
Speaker 1: successful white tail bow hunters or Western bow hunters whatever.
1:16:16
Speaker 1: To me, I have one thing in common mental. I
1:16:20
Speaker 1: don't know what the word would be, desire, I guess
1:16:22
Speaker 1: I want to perspective is his success. The pain is
1:16:26
Speaker 1: never not worth the gain. They're going to put out
1:16:28
Speaker 1: what they gotta put It's a labor of love, all
1:16:30
Speaker 1: those old things. It applies to the the people that
1:16:33
Speaker 1: are diligently successful. I've been that way. It's just who
1:16:38
Speaker 1: I am. I don't put on a face about it.
1:16:41
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm any better or any worse. I'm
1:16:43
Speaker 1: just a human being, but I love bow hunting and
1:16:46
Speaker 1: I like to try to be successful. And I don't
1:16:50
Speaker 1: know why, but that's why I'm wired. You know, I
1:16:54
Speaker 1: can definitely relate. I think we have similar weary and
1:16:57
Speaker 1: when it comes to that, now you talk, it's a
1:17:00
Speaker 1: little bit ago about uh, you know, having a comfortable
1:17:03
Speaker 1: stand for these all day sets. And they got me
1:17:05
Speaker 1: thinking about your stands setups. You know, it sounds like
1:17:07
Speaker 1: you're moving around a lot or you're setting up stands
1:17:09
Speaker 1: during a hunt on public land. You know, what types
1:17:12
Speaker 1: of stands or what's your stands set up look like
1:17:14
Speaker 1: that you use for these d I y public polic
1:17:17
Speaker 1: land hunts. I kind of got two levels of it.
1:17:19
Speaker 1: I got some stands that are very very lightweight that
1:17:23
Speaker 1: I will just strap on my backpack. And of course
1:17:26
Speaker 1: you're going to develop a system for if you're running
1:17:28
Speaker 1: and gunn and I call it, you know, living off
1:17:31
Speaker 1: your back in other words, if you're walking into areas
1:17:33
Speaker 1: and scouting them and maybe just throwing stands up and
1:17:36
Speaker 1: getting them on the spur of the moment, you gotta
1:17:39
Speaker 1: work on that. You gotta work a system out, you know,
1:17:41
Speaker 1: you gotta have all the support gear. You've gotta be
1:17:45
Speaker 1: able to get it up quickly and quietly. I mean,
1:17:48
Speaker 1: I've spent many hours just setting up a system for
1:17:52
Speaker 1: running and gunning where I take stands around and walk
1:17:55
Speaker 1: into new spots, still hunting almost and I will see
1:17:59
Speaker 1: some thing that just makes her stand up on my
1:18:01
Speaker 1: neck maybe and go, okay, I'm in that tree right there,
1:18:04
Speaker 1: and you know, ten minutes later, I'm up that tree.
1:18:07
Speaker 1: I try to not even make a sound getting that
1:18:09
Speaker 1: stand up that a deer could hear, you know, a
1:18:11
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. And I've I've killed a lot of
1:18:14
Speaker 1: deer like that, just running and gun and just popping
1:18:16
Speaker 1: stands up. You know, Uh, you can call it a
1:18:19
Speaker 1: hunt in as you go approach. You know, it's similar
1:18:22
Speaker 1: to it. You know, I wasn't really planning on killing
1:18:24
Speaker 1: one that first set in that spot, but it will
1:18:26
Speaker 1: happen more times. And there's a lot to be said
1:18:29
Speaker 1: for a first hunt. I don't know what it is
1:18:31
Speaker 1: about white tails, but a first hunt is worth a lot.
1:18:34
Speaker 1: You know, every time you hunt in a spot thereafter
1:18:37
Speaker 1: you're not up in your odds. Usually you're down on them,
1:18:40
Speaker 1: especially if you understand too much. But then there's the
1:18:44
Speaker 1: other approach where I have a heavier, bigger lounger type
1:18:47
Speaker 1: stand and it has a receiver on it that you
1:18:50
Speaker 1: can put on the tree to where you're hanging the stand.
1:18:52
Speaker 1: So you know, if I'm on public land, i have
1:18:54
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with people. I've got to be
1:18:56
Speaker 1: careful because people were not only I've had stand stolen,
1:19:00
Speaker 1: but I've actually come to get him and had guys
1:19:02
Speaker 1: sitting in them, and I mean all the stuff that
1:19:05
Speaker 1: you can imagine. I've been through it, and I'm not
1:19:08
Speaker 1: real good at dealing with that stuff. So I don't
1:19:11
Speaker 1: want to deal with it because I'm not real diplomatic
1:19:17
Speaker 1: and I don't need to be getting in them. I'm
1:19:18
Speaker 1: not good at getting in them situations, so I try
1:19:21
Speaker 1: to avoid him. So look at the situation. If you're
1:19:23
Speaker 1: gonna put a stand up, it's big and comfortable, and
1:19:25
Speaker 1: you're gonna try to hunt it quite a bit, you
1:19:27
Speaker 1: just got to decide if it's something to get away
1:19:29
Speaker 1: with here at this spot, at this time. I do
1:19:32
Speaker 1: leave some of my stands like that up for periods
1:19:34
Speaker 1: of time, but some of them I will take down
1:19:36
Speaker 1: each time and carry him out with me. I'll leave
1:19:38
Speaker 1: the receiver in the steps or something, because a big
1:19:41
Speaker 1: stand like that will catch somebody's eye, you know, And
1:19:44
Speaker 1: you're setting yourself up for some problems on public land
1:19:47
Speaker 1: by going in and thinking that you can just set
1:19:49
Speaker 1: up a bunch of stands and leave them and do
1:19:51
Speaker 1: your thing, because don't work that way. Yeah, do you
1:19:56
Speaker 1: do much, you know, shooting line clearing on a on
1:20:00
Speaker 1: and gun hunt like that? Or is that you know,
1:20:02
Speaker 1: too much of a disturbance and you just can't deal
1:20:04
Speaker 1: with what you have. I leave it alone on those
1:20:06
Speaker 1: type hunts. It's always a dilemma for me because I
1:20:09
Speaker 1: don't like climbing up somewhere and then realizing, you know,
1:20:12
Speaker 1: you get up there ten minutes later and you get
1:20:14
Speaker 1: set and you're looking around you and you're going board.
1:20:15
Speaker 1: This is dumb, you know, this is d u M
1:20:18
Speaker 1: dumb because I can't shoot nothing if it comes in here,
1:20:22
Speaker 1: you know. But really, over the years, I've done it
1:20:26
Speaker 1: both ways, you know, I've I've done everything between just
1:20:30
Speaker 1: leaving everything alone and getting up there and feeling like
1:20:32
Speaker 1: I can't shoot nothing, to maybe doing a little bit
1:20:35
Speaker 1: of trimen to just help myself a little bit plumb,
1:20:37
Speaker 1: to just get in Psycho and going okay, I'm I'm
1:20:41
Speaker 1: fixing this up, and get just you know, spend the
1:20:44
Speaker 1: thirty minute session of raping and pillaging, and then get
1:20:47
Speaker 1: back Montree. I've done it all the ways, and it
1:20:49
Speaker 1: always seems to me that it's worked out better if
1:20:52
Speaker 1: I'm running and gunning to leave things alone and just
1:20:54
Speaker 1: get up there, do the best I can to be
1:20:56
Speaker 1: in a spot where I can shoot the best I can,
1:20:58
Speaker 1: because you're better of to have the deer in there
1:21:01
Speaker 1: and then worry about how you're gonna get it killed,
1:21:03
Speaker 1: then to get away to kill it and not have
1:21:05
Speaker 1: it in there. Um and light tells you know as
1:21:08
Speaker 1: well as I are supersensitive. And any time you do
1:21:11
Speaker 1: a big to do around a tree, um, you've just
1:21:14
Speaker 1: about done away with your running gun tactic to begin with.
1:21:17
Speaker 1: You know, you uh running buck ya that's coming from
1:21:20
Speaker 1: a half a mile away. He can still stumble by there,
1:21:23
Speaker 1: But chances are he may not, because if you've run
1:21:26
Speaker 1: all the local does off with your tremming and your
1:21:28
Speaker 1: banging and going and doing. It's funny how they just
1:21:31
Speaker 1: don't seem to wonder by whether they ain't no, does
1:21:33
Speaker 1: you know? And so anyway on running gun I usually
1:21:38
Speaker 1: leave things alone. I'll try to you know, I'll stand
1:21:40
Speaker 1: there for maybe a minute or two and stare at six, eight,
1:21:44
Speaker 1: ten trees right here, and I'll try to make an
1:21:47
Speaker 1: educated decision on the best one to get in to
1:21:49
Speaker 1: put myself in the best position. And that means, you know,
1:21:53
Speaker 1: worthy wort. I expect most of these deer may come
1:21:56
Speaker 1: from where it's the best place for my when to be,
1:21:59
Speaker 1: according to what tree I'm going to get in and
1:22:02
Speaker 1: what tree can I possibly shoot out of the best
1:22:04
Speaker 1: over this area that I want to look at, you know,
1:22:06
Speaker 1: So all of all those things are just factors that
1:22:09
Speaker 1: are unique to each scenario. But I'll climb up there usually,
1:22:12
Speaker 1: and you know, I might trim a little old thing
1:22:14
Speaker 1: or two right there where the stands at real quietly.
1:22:17
Speaker 1: But I don't do much opening up on running gun hunts. Yeah,
1:22:21
Speaker 1: like you said, sometimes it's not worth the risk of
1:22:25
Speaker 1: ruining the chances of any potential encounter. So so you
1:22:29
Speaker 1: start talking about the shot, you know, getting to that
1:22:31
Speaker 1: point where you can actually get a shot. And that
1:22:33
Speaker 1: brought me back to those original four categories that I
1:22:37
Speaker 1: brought up at the beginning, and the final of those
1:22:39
Speaker 1: four categories you've mentioned in the article was about that
1:22:42
Speaker 1: moment of sealing the deal, the final steps to actually
1:22:45
Speaker 1: see that deal. So I gotta believe over all the
1:22:47
Speaker 1: years you've been bow hunting, you've learned some things about
1:22:50
Speaker 1: how to best make sure you're ready and and execute
1:22:54
Speaker 1: on that final moment when that buck shows up in
1:22:57
Speaker 1: your shooting lane or is coming in. Could you share
1:23:00
Speaker 1: of this, maybe some of those great lessons learned, or
1:23:02
Speaker 1: maybe something now that you see is that big turning
1:23:05
Speaker 1: point for you that helped you seal the deal. Well,
1:23:09
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't rocket science, and everybody pretty well
1:23:12
Speaker 1: knows it and probably heard it hashed out to them
1:23:13
Speaker 1: to Earth. But for me, I plainly remember in my
1:23:17
Speaker 1: hunting bow hunting life, what was the big changer for me. Now,
1:23:20
Speaker 1: it didn't it didn't make me go from you know,
1:23:23
Speaker 1: totally inadequate to totally perfect. But it was a big
1:23:26
Speaker 1: game changer. It made me go from you know, rarely
1:23:30
Speaker 1: successful to mainly successful. And that was the ability to
1:23:35
Speaker 1: control buck fever. Because I've always been a person that
1:23:38
Speaker 1: you know, I turn in and see a big white
1:23:40
Speaker 1: tail buck coming to me, I would go into a
1:23:43
Speaker 1: sort of automatic pilot mental psycho mode of excitement. Well,
1:23:49
Speaker 1: buck fever is a debilitating thing. It's debilitating and I
1:23:53
Speaker 1: had it for years and it costs me dearly. As
1:23:57
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I can't stand to talk about
1:24:00
Speaker 1: it because if I had not had it, some of
1:24:02
Speaker 1: the deer that I should have killed back in my
1:24:05
Speaker 1: early days would have been game changers for me. Because
1:24:08
Speaker 1: my God, I run into some of the biggest ones
1:24:11
Speaker 1: and should have killed him back to him, but I
1:24:12
Speaker 1: didn't because I'd get too excited. Your mind goes into
1:24:15
Speaker 1: kind of a fog. I call it automatic pilot mode,
1:24:18
Speaker 1: and you're just you know, you're functioning out of a
1:24:22
Speaker 1: subconscious set of movements. Well, that's not gonna work because
1:24:29
Speaker 1: if you can't keep your right mind and assess the
1:24:32
Speaker 1: situation that's unfolding and react accordingly, you're gonna blow it
1:24:36
Speaker 1: most of the time. And that's what buck fever does
1:24:38
Speaker 1: for you. It causes you to not think through and
1:24:41
Speaker 1: blow it. So getting past buck fever? Now, how to
1:24:44
Speaker 1: get past it? I've been asked out a million times
1:24:47
Speaker 1: and I've dealt with it with my wife for fourteen
1:24:50
Speaker 1: years now. She is a world class buck fever psycho woman.
1:24:54
Speaker 1: And I've done everything on the earth on the earth
1:24:58
Speaker 1: that I can think of to get her past it,
1:25:00
Speaker 1: and she's no further past it than the day she started.
1:25:03
Speaker 1: I don't know that there is any solution other than
1:25:05
Speaker 1: maybe getting drunk before you go get in your tree.
1:25:09
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just saying, take take um sleeping pill
1:25:14
Speaker 1: or something, but get past it one way or the other.
1:25:17
Speaker 1: Go out and start shooting does. I'd say, forget big
1:25:21
Speaker 1: buck hunting. Go out and shoot does until you think
1:25:25
Speaker 1: killing deer or the bowl is not fun anymore. Maybe
1:25:28
Speaker 1: that'll get you past it. Just do something to get
1:25:31
Speaker 1: past buck fever, because that's the big obstacle. And then
1:25:34
Speaker 1: after that, what I've refined down over the years is
1:25:37
Speaker 1: just the fact that you know, you just learn how
1:25:40
Speaker 1: to set up everything that you're doing, from the tree
1:25:43
Speaker 1: stand to your gear two your mental you know. I
1:25:48
Speaker 1: mean I said earlier that you know, he maybe take
1:25:50
Speaker 1: a book and read it or blah blah blah and
1:25:53
Speaker 1: all day sets. Well that's fine if you got to,
1:25:55
Speaker 1: because here's my opinion, you're better setting and reading the
1:25:57
Speaker 1: book than cannot be setting there reading a book. Now
1:26:01
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is I I don't want
1:26:03
Speaker 1: to say I don't set and read a book because
1:26:05
Speaker 1: I'm just sure that Buck's gonna walk up on me
1:26:07
Speaker 1: before I can get ready, you know what I mean.
1:26:10
Speaker 1: And that's why all these sets are so hard on me,
1:26:12
Speaker 1: because I make myself set there scanning the country like
1:26:15
Speaker 1: an eagle all day and it just wears you out,
1:26:17
Speaker 1: you know. But just be sensible, you know on what
1:26:21
Speaker 1: you're gonna do in the moment of truth, you know. Uh,
1:26:24
Speaker 1: And always remember, here's the biggest thing that gives people
1:26:26
Speaker 1: buck fever. They don't really prepare for the unexpected. In
1:26:31
Speaker 1: their mind. They have kind of fantasized about this big
1:26:33
Speaker 1: Buck's gonna walk in right over there and there he'll
1:26:35
Speaker 1: being and Bob. But it don't work that way. They
1:26:38
Speaker 1: always do something different. They come from behind you, you
1:26:41
Speaker 1: don't know, they're they're unil they're under you, or they
1:26:43
Speaker 1: come and chasing and oh by you. Nothing goes as
1:26:46
Speaker 1: you kind of picture in your fantasy mind, so that
1:26:49
Speaker 1: throws you into a automatic panic mode. You know, don't panic.
1:26:54
Speaker 1: That's the worst thing. That's what causes buck fever. Keep
1:26:56
Speaker 1: a level head. And when I try to tell people,
1:26:59
Speaker 1: is this just picture in your mind that you're nothing
1:27:02
Speaker 1: but a casual nature observer until you've killed a deer
1:27:08
Speaker 1: and kill the moment that you have shot that deer
1:27:10
Speaker 1: and harvested it with a bow, you might as well
1:27:12
Speaker 1: have just been out there with a camera setting there
1:27:14
Speaker 1: taking pictures, because you really ain't accomplished nothing. If that
1:27:18
Speaker 1: bug comes in there and freaks you out and gets away,
1:27:20
Speaker 1: you're gonna go home and tell people about it. Nobody's
1:27:23
Speaker 1: gonna care about it. Nobody saw it, you ain't got
1:27:25
Speaker 1: no proof of it. You might as well just not
1:27:27
Speaker 1: even tell it. But if you take it home with
1:27:30
Speaker 1: you and eat it and put the otlers on your
1:27:33
Speaker 1: wall and tell a story about it, people are gonna
1:27:35
Speaker 1: make note because if you don't stay calm, you blow it.
1:27:40
Speaker 1: You're just a nature observer. So don't get excited. There's
1:27:44
Speaker 1: nothing exciting about nature observing. What's exciting walking up and
1:27:48
Speaker 1: wrapping your hands around the rack when he's laying there.
1:27:51
Speaker 1: So try to just condition your mind to the fact
1:27:54
Speaker 1: that you're not really doing nothing worth being excited about.
1:27:58
Speaker 1: Until you have arrowed the buck. Then you can let
1:28:02
Speaker 1: your heart go through the roof, because you can go, oh,
1:28:05
Speaker 1: I just did it, you know, and so I don't
1:28:08
Speaker 1: know if it's just a mental game, but anymore, when
1:28:10
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and a big deer shows up, of
1:28:12
Speaker 1: course that first one second to me wants to lead
1:28:15
Speaker 1: to the roof, you know, But then I I just
1:28:18
Speaker 1: immediately go, you know, Claypool, you know you gotta you
1:28:22
Speaker 1: gotta just kinda get this done. You know, people think
1:28:27
Speaker 1: that you know what you're doing, so don't disappoint him.
1:28:31
Speaker 1: Just kind of act like you act like you know
1:28:33
Speaker 1: what you're doing. And you know, yeah, that's a hundred
1:28:36
Speaker 1: and sixty ins er there, but you know, so what,
1:28:39
Speaker 1: he ain't going to Oklahoma with you if you don't
1:28:42
Speaker 1: follow through. And I just stay calm. And um. I
1:28:46
Speaker 1: lost the largest buck in my life here not too
1:28:48
Speaker 1: many years ago because I thought I was completely over
1:28:52
Speaker 1: buck fever and I found out that I was not,
1:28:56
Speaker 1: and it attacked me in a debilitating way and costs
1:28:59
Speaker 1: me the largest antlerd buck of my life. And this
1:29:04
Speaker 1: buck was one hundred percent dead. He should there's no
1:29:08
Speaker 1: way he should got away. So we can still happen.
1:29:12
Speaker 1: Can you tell us that story, Eddie? Yeah, real quickly.
1:29:14
Speaker 1: I mean I was sitting with my wife, won't eating
1:29:16
Speaker 1: up in Kansas, and I had got her a tag
1:29:19
Speaker 1: for dough and this was back before you had to
1:29:23
Speaker 1: get a buck tag to get a dough In the
1:29:25
Speaker 1: earlier days, you could just get a dough tag. So
1:29:27
Speaker 1: I trying to teach her to bow hunt, and she
1:29:29
Speaker 1: was just wanting to kill it here. So we had
1:29:30
Speaker 1: a bow tag, dough tag and me sitting there and
1:29:32
Speaker 1: I was like, I watched your shoot doing and saying
1:29:36
Speaker 1: well towards Eden and nothing to come by, and we
1:29:38
Speaker 1: were freezing and we're gonna get down, and it's almost,
1:29:41
Speaker 1: you know, time to get down, probably ten minutes before
1:29:43
Speaker 1: time to get down, and I said, well, I said,
1:29:45
Speaker 1: give me this second. I got my grunt call out
1:29:47
Speaker 1: and made a couple of quick grunts and up through
1:29:50
Speaker 1: the woods up there out of side, I heard one
1:29:51
Speaker 1: just do that roar that I mean that raw back,
1:29:55
Speaker 1: you know, that grunt that sounds like unbelievable, you know,
1:29:58
Speaker 1: and I, holy smokes. I turned around her and I said,
1:30:01
Speaker 1: did you hear that? And she said yeah, she said
1:30:03
Speaker 1: what was that? And I said that was a buck
1:30:05
Speaker 1: and I said probably a really big one. And I'm
1:30:08
Speaker 1: kind of turned around talking to her. She sitting behind me,
1:30:10
Speaker 1: on the back side of the tree and I hear something.
1:30:12
Speaker 1: I turned around. Here comes a behemoth thing trotting right
1:30:17
Speaker 1: up to me. Just and I didn't even have a
1:30:20
Speaker 1: mentality of even being bow hunting that evening. I had
1:30:23
Speaker 1: took my bow to the tree, but I had done
1:30:26
Speaker 1: something I've never done in my hunting life that I
1:30:28
Speaker 1: know of. I had hung that bow up without an
1:30:30
Speaker 1: arrow on the stream. And I didn't even realize. I
1:30:32
Speaker 1: did not realize I had done that. And when I
1:30:35
Speaker 1: turned and see this thing coming, it's instantaneous giant. So anyway,
1:30:39
Speaker 1: I didn't I looked, I didn't have an arrow on
1:30:41
Speaker 1: my bow, and I had I I just don't do that,
1:30:43
Speaker 1: but I did it that day because I wasn't even hunting.
1:30:45
Speaker 1: And by the time I grabbed my bow and tried
1:30:48
Speaker 1: to pull an arrow knock it, the buck was running
1:30:50
Speaker 1: literally up in under the tree stand and I went
1:30:54
Speaker 1: ahead and got my self reddy, and I kind of
1:30:56
Speaker 1: turned around and I looked and he was standing maybe
1:31:00
Speaker 1: off yards in front of the tree, which would be
1:31:02
Speaker 1: behind me, in front of the wife, standing there, quartering away,
1:31:05
Speaker 1: just looking around for whatever he'd heard. And uh, by
1:31:10
Speaker 1: the time I got slowly turned and drawing on him.
1:31:13
Speaker 1: He got nervous and he trotted right back off the
1:31:15
Speaker 1: way he'd come from and disappeared back up in the woods.
1:31:18
Speaker 1: I got back on the grunt call, and here he
1:31:21
Speaker 1: come again, coming right back down there, and I got
1:31:24
Speaker 1: the full draw on him, and he got to us
1:31:25
Speaker 1: in about thirty yards of me on that second approach,
1:31:28
Speaker 1: but he was so cautious. He's on full alert and
1:31:32
Speaker 1: he was hanging to the thick cover and he never
1:31:35
Speaker 1: gave me a shot. I had him standing there at
1:31:37
Speaker 1: thirty yards and had to just let him walk away.
1:31:40
Speaker 1: And to make a long story short, a little bit
1:31:43
Speaker 1: later the can's gun season opened and the landowner there
1:31:47
Speaker 1: killed that buck and he was a hundred ninety in
1:31:50
Speaker 1: typical and uh so that was basically my one in
1:31:55
Speaker 1: a lifetime chance. And when he come up running up
1:31:57
Speaker 1: on me like that, I remember going into his just
1:32:00
Speaker 1: this main straight line brain leage activity. I had no
1:32:04
Speaker 1: thought processing and I it was like a really out
1:32:09
Speaker 1: of body experience because I was totally unprepared, and I
1:32:12
Speaker 1: let it really freak me out. If I had kept
1:32:15
Speaker 1: my head, I did some things wrong. You know that
1:32:18
Speaker 1: I won't go through. But I didn't think things too.
1:32:21
Speaker 1: I could have got that deer killed, and I still
1:32:23
Speaker 1: have a hole up here on my wall where he
1:32:25
Speaker 1: would have been. I have a place up here where
1:32:27
Speaker 1: I left an empty spot in all of my whitetail
1:32:30
Speaker 1: mounts for that one in a lifetime er, you know.
1:32:33
Speaker 1: And he was headed, he was headed for that that day.
1:32:37
Speaker 1: But but faver got me and uh a big another
1:32:43
Speaker 1: big another big one that got away. Yeah, well, I
1:32:45
Speaker 1: think that's that's a pretty good story for us to
1:32:48
Speaker 1: end this one on, because I think it's a great
1:32:49
Speaker 1: example of that even the most successful, you know, one
1:32:53
Speaker 1: of the most successful bow hunters out there, we are
1:32:55
Speaker 1: still all just human beings. We are still infallible. We
1:32:59
Speaker 1: make mistakes, and nobody, nobody else there should feel bad
1:33:03
Speaker 1: when things don't go right because it happens to us.
1:33:06
Speaker 1: All That's very true. Have fun, be happy and take
1:33:11
Speaker 1: it as it comes, and if you do, you'll end
1:33:13
Speaker 1: up better at the end of the days and trying
1:33:15
Speaker 1: to become a expert. So so true. So so Eddie.
1:33:20
Speaker 1: If if our listeners want to hear more of your stories,
1:33:23
Speaker 1: read some more of your work, where should they go
1:33:25
Speaker 1: to find them? Well, currently I'm on staff for Peterson's
1:33:29
Speaker 1: bow Hunting, and I kind of keep my work with them.
1:33:32
Speaker 1: I'm not freelancing anymore, so I don't spread it around
1:33:35
Speaker 1: over many of the other archery magazines. I haven't got
1:33:39
Speaker 1: dedicated enough to do any books yet. Maybe that will
1:33:41
Speaker 1: come in the future, but currently I just say, you know,
1:33:44
Speaker 1: look for me at Peterson's bow Hunting or humped me
1:33:46
Speaker 1: up on Facebook if they want. I love to have
1:33:49
Speaker 1: bow hunting friends, and uh, we'll all will compare notes.
1:33:54
Speaker 1: Sounds good. Well, this has been a lot of fun, Eddie.
1:33:57
Speaker 1: It's been great to be able to compare some notes
1:33:58
Speaker 1: with you, and uh, I've just really enjoyed this conversation.
1:34:01
Speaker 1: So thanks so much for join us likewise, uh any time,
1:34:06
Speaker 1: and God bless and have have good success whether it's
1:34:10
Speaker 1: fill a tag or not. You know, absolutely well, thanks Eddie.
1:34:13
Speaker 1: Good luck this season too, and with that, we're going
1:34:16
Speaker 1: to call it a show. I don't know about you guys,
1:34:18
Speaker 1: but after this chat, I am stoked to head out
1:34:21
Speaker 1: on a bow hunting adventure of my own. Now, real quick,
1:34:25
Speaker 1: before we go, if you have not left a rating
1:34:27
Speaker 1: or review for this podcast on iTunes yet, it would
1:34:30
Speaker 1: be so awesome if you could do that. It's a
1:34:32
Speaker 1: huge help. Just takes a minute. So thank you in
1:34:35
Speaker 1: advance for taking a look and giving us a review.
1:34:38
Speaker 1: Also when need to give a big thank you too,
1:34:39
Speaker 1: sick Gear, Trophy, Ridge, Bear Archery, Redneck Blinds, Hunter a, maps, Ozonics,
1:34:45
Speaker 1: Carbon Express, Maybe Optics in the White Tail, Institute of
1:34:49
Speaker 1: North America for supporting this podcast and wire dot Com.
1:34:53
Speaker 1: And finally, thank you all for tuning in today. I
1:34:57
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this one. I hope it inspired you
1:34:59
Speaker 1: a little bit to get out there and try something new,
1:35:01
Speaker 1: and I hope you'll stay wired to hot m m
1:35:07
Speaker 1: mmmmmm