Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 311: Pre-Rut Tactics and Getting to Full Draw On a First Buck

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Ep. 311: Pre-Rut Tactics and Getting to Full Draw On a First Buck · 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,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and eleven, and today in the show, we're gonna be
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: talking about pre rut hunting strategies and then we're joined
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: by two new hunters to discuss some close buck encounters
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and our recent mentor hunt in Michigan. Welcome to the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx. Today,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: we've got a fun show, We've got an interesting show,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a couple of different things we're gonna be covering. Joining
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: me here shortly is Josh further Hilliard and two new hunters,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Dan Jo Joe and Mike Romine, who joined us recently
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: for a Field to four event here in Michigan. Now,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: this is a program ran in this case jointly by
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: the Quality Deer Management Association and back Country Hunters and
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Anglers in which we trained up eight new hunters and
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: paired them with mentors for a weekend of hunting and camaraderie.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: And I was privileged to get to be one of
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: those mentors. So today we're going to recap that event,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and here from Mike and Dan about you know, what
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: brought them to hunting, what brought them to this event,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the challenges they've faced trying to learn how to do
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: this whole thing, and this whole experience they had this
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: past weekend meant to them, and how it hopefully helped
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: arm them for the future. And I just gotta tell
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: you the at least for me, the experience was was awesome. Uh.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm just I'm gonna be doubling down on doing
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: this kind of thing and trying to help mentor more
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: people because I just can't tell you how much fun
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it was to share my love of hunting with someone
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: who was actively interested in learning, like craving a learning
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: opportunity and just not having anyone else to go to. UM.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: It was great. It was very fulfilling, and it's a need.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of people out there who want to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: learn who don't have a friend or a family member
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: or a place or a resource to help get started.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: So I hope coming out of this you will I
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: don't know, I think after you hear from these two
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: guys who both had really cool close encounters, I think
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: once you hear they're they're raw motion from these experience,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It just brought me back to my
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: early days and I loved it. So that's what we're
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: gonna chat about here in a second. But before we
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: get to all that, I do want to make sure
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: we talk some deer hunting strategy because when this podcast drops,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: if you're listening to it on the day it comes out,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: that's October nineteen, and that's basically what I consider the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: beginning of the pre run for most parts of the country.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: That means things are going to be getting real good
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: here soon. So I want to make sure I'm arming
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: you all with at least a few ideas or reminder
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: as we head into these important hunting dates. Um, So
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I thought I would give you kind of a real
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: quick cliff notes set of advice to keep in mind,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: kind of a compilation of high level pointers that that
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I picked up over my years hunting, or from the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: many conversations we've had with so many great hunters on
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: this podcast. So you know, if you listen to the
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: podcasts all the time, this isn't brand new stuff. This
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: is reminders. But hopefully we can put it together an
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: assistinct way here to to make sure we're thinking about
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the right things as we get into the we're really
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: approaching it, the super Bowl, the white tail season, I mean,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: it's getting good. So some quick ideas to keep in mind.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Number One, this upcoming time time frame, let's say October
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: through the thirty one or so Halloween time frame, This
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: can be one of the absolute best times of year
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: to kill an old mature buck that's local to your property.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've got a home buddy bucket deer
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: that maybe you've seen a bun or you know he
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: spends a lot of time in your farm, or maybe
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: it's a deer that you're always getting on camera all
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: over the place, but it's always after dark. This is
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: possibly your best chance to kill him because in the
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: coming days two stosterone levels are really going to be
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: getting high for your local bucks, and they're gonna be
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: feeling real frisky. But the does probably won't be ready
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to breed yet, at least not in any kind of
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: really high numbers. So what you're looking at and what
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have is a mature buck that wants to
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: get on his feet a little bit earlier than usual.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: To scope out does. But he's not going to be
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: going full bore yet. He's not gonna be cruising all
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: over the country. He's gonna be sticking close to his
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: local stomping grounds. And if you know what the buck's
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: usual routine is, or at least no some of the
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: like the key stopping points along the way, you can
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: really take advantage of that knowledge right now and catch
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: him when he's just a little bit more vulnerable. But
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: if we wait, and if you're not doing this, if
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: you're not getting after it right now, if you fast
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: forward two weeks and we're into November, man, all bets
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: might be off. I mean that buck could be chasing
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: does all over the place. He could take a mile
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: sojourn in a new direction and maybe never makes it back.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: You just can't predict what these deer will do with
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: much certainty once the rut gets cranking. So the point
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: of all this is to say that if you have
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: a homebody buck right now and you've got him nailed down,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: if you know where he's bettered, or if you know
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: where he's feeding after darker, some kind of intel like that,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: this is a really good time to get aggressive. So
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: if the conditions are right, get after him hard. But
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: but remember you still want to hunt this deer on
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: October patterns, So you want to be intercepting him going
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to his bed or leaving it or heading out to feed.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And you're not going to be shifting into those full
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: bore rut strategies yet. Now Number two, speaking of conditions
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: being right at this time of year, if you get
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: a good cold front pushing through, it is game time.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, cold fronts are exciting any time of year,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: but it just seems like a big cold front, and
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: late October just takes things to a whole different level.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: If I'm seeing a front hitting during that last week
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: of the month or so I'm looking at is just
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: as good as anything happening in November. I mean, I'm
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: canceling work, I'm rushing to get all my chores done, uh,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: putting the out of office email up, turning off my phone.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I'm getting in the tree. No matter what. You just
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: gotta be out for there for those days and aggressive
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: because you can definitely get it done. Um, So keep
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: that in mine. Number three, as we're trying to build
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the strategy further and we're looking at the conditions. Yes,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: conditions are good, the time of year is good. That
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: boxing me a little bit more vulnerable now. Number three,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: look back on trail camera pictures from prior years to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: help predict what's going to happen over the next few days.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: If there's a buck that you're after this year and
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: you've had pictures of him from previous years, you've got
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: a hugely important tool at your disposal. Use those pictures
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to inform your future strategy. They don't just tell you
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: what he did, they can also help tell you what
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: he's going to do. Bucks oftentimes have kind of an
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: annual pattern in which they'll start visiting the same general
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: areas at the same time each year, or they'll start
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: moving in daylight right around the same time each year. Um,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: there's it's not hard and fast rule, but oftentimes we
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: see this trend. So look for that and use it
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: to predict when and where to hunt that buck over
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: these final October days, you know, because things are gonna
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: get wonky soon. So use that past intel to tell you. Okay,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: maybe you can look back at all the pictures of
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: of your big eight pointer and the big eight point
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: maybe last year the first daylight pictures of them were
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: October and the year before that, the first daylight pictures
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: were October. If you see that man, you sure his
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: heck better being a tree during that time period. This week, um,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: if everything lines up, so look at that stuff. Think
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: about that stuff. Number four. Another thing to think about
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: at this time of the year is we're transitioning. Is
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: that calling can start working very well. Right, everything's ramping
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: up to stop thrones rising, Females are edging closer and
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: closer to being an estrus. Uh. Tensions are just really
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: high in the woods. So if you see a buck
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: out of range, it's definitely time to consider making some noise. Now.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I personally like to start with something light, like a
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: little contact run just a little, just to try and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: get a box attention, to see if I can get
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: him curious. Now, if that doesn't work, and if his
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: body language seems okay, he's not getting spooky, next I
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: might try snort. We'se Now, this is a really aggressive call.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: It sounds like this that's basically like walking into a bar,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: pushing a guy in back and flipping him the bird.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's fighting. If it's a real
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: big old buck, you know he's probably or at least
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: hopefully going to come in for a fight. But if
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: it's a wimpy little guy or a little buck, he's
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: probably in a tocktail and run. So so make sure
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you keep in mind that's not something to do if
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: you're trying to call in a year and a half
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: old buck. Now, finally, it also might be worth trying
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: to rat, you know, smashing antlers together simulate a fight.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: But I do think this really depends a lot on
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: where you hunt. You know, here in Michigan there's there's
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a ton of hunters and there's relatively few mature bucks
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: compared to other places. So here I don't like to
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: prattle very much at all, especially not early. Um, but
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: if you're in a state like Kansas or Nebraska or Iowa,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: one of these states where the fewer hunters but many
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: more mature bucks, you definitely can try cracking the antlers
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: because man, there's no doubt there are a lot of
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: real fights happening at this point. Now, the biggest thing
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to keep in mind, uh, if you're gonna do this,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna try some kind of calling, whether it's rattling, grunting, whatever,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: doble eats. Bucks almost always want to approach a sound
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: they hear a call from the downwind side, if it's possible,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: they're gonna try to circle down wind of view, So
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: be really careful about that when you choose to call.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've got a buck that is close
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: to being down into for you, but not quite there
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and isn't walking in that direction, if you grunt all
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're going to trigger him to turn
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: and get down wind of you. You're gonna four him
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: to get down wind of you, and he's gonna wind
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you and run away. So don't call him that situation.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: So either try to call when he's way up wind
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of view, or if you have some kind of barrier
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: behind you that's gonna keep him, you know, keep him
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: from winding your Maybe that's a river or some nasty
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: tangle that a buck's just not gonna get through, make
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: sure you're thinking about that wind uh Number five. If
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: you're ever wanting to use scrapes within your hunting strategy,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: now is the time. Research has shown the buck visitation
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: to scrapes peaks and late October. So if you're new
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: to hunting and you're not familiar with I'm talking about. Basically,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: scrapes are these big kicked up patches of dirt that
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: you're gonna find out in the woods, maybe the size
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: of I don't know, like a computer desk kicked up.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: You're gonna see this big patch of dirt and there's
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: gonna be a branch hanging over top of it. This
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: is where a buck will come in. He's gonna kick
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that I was gonna make that sign. He's gonna take
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a leak, he's gonna pee in that dirt. He's gonna
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: rub his head on that overhanging branch. He's gonna deposit
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: a bunch of scent. He's essentially leaving a message for
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: other deer. And now oftentimes these visits they're happening after dark,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: but at this time of year, late October, that's been
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: shown to be the top time for them visiting the scrapes,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and it's probably your best opportunity to catch one of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: those visits during daylight. So especially if you find a
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: fresh scrape that's way back in the cover, it's in
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: some thick stuff, it's in the timber, that can be
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: a dynamite location. UM I personally don't set up very
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: often just to hunt a specific scrape. But what happens
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: for me a lot is I'm in an area for
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: another reason. Maybe I know this is a transition between
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: betting and feeding. I've got pictures of a deer stepping
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: out of this piece of timber or whatever it might be.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: If I'm in the zone of interest and I'm trying
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: to find the spot within the spot, that's where a
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: scrape comes in really helpful. If I can find that scrape,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: that helps me zero in on the specific location I
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: want to be within range of. So keep that in mind. Finally,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: number six, when you're heading out for your next hunt
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: or your next couple hunts here hopefully this week sometime
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: or this weekend, I want you to head into the
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: field thinking and believing that you're going to send an
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: arrow Think through your plan set up with attention to detail.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Don't just go out to a random spot for says
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: and giggles. Really try to think it through. Think about
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: you know, what's the wind doing, where do I think
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the deer betted, Where do I think that they're going
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: to go feed? What do I know from previous sightings,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: What do my cameras tell me? What do the conditions
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: make me think is going to happen tonight? Think through
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: all that, look at all the data. Put together a
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: well informed, confident hunt. A few well planned hunts like
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: this are just worth so much more than a whole
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: bunch of Willie Nearly hunts. And when you do head
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: in for a hunt with with this kind of background
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: in preparation and place, you're gonna have this sense of
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: confidence and anticipation. That's that's both really exciting and really
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: helpful because when you go in with us old plan
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and that confidence you get this it's it's like a
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecy effect. You're gonna walk into a little
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: bit slower and a little bit more quietly to your stand.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: You're gonna be just a little bit more careful moving
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: in the tree stand. You're gonna scan with your binoculars
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: just a little bit more. Your senses are just gonna
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: be cranked, and you're gonna be mentally ready for whatever
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: steps out and that mental readiness that can absolutely make
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: or break your hunt. So get out there over these
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: coming days, be confident, be prepared, and have fun. I mean,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: this is what we've waited all year for. This is
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: this is it, and I, for one and stoked. So
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: with all that said, the rest of our conversation today,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: it's about introducing other people to this thing we just
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: talked about. I mean, how how lucky are you and
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: I that we get to hunt and enjoy experiences like
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: this and geek out over laid Tower strategy and dream
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: about November. I mean, this is this is living, but
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of people never get introduced to it or
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: they're intrigued, they're interested, but I don't know how to
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: get started. They don't know how to do it on
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: their own. That's where mentoring comes in. And and I think,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and I hope that after hearing about this mentor hunt
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: experience that I just had that these guys just had,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and hear how pactful it was for these new hunters,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I think maybe a few more of you will will
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: hopefully be as energized as I am to keep introducing
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: more and more people to this crazy thing we love
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: so much. So that's the game plan. I'm thinking. We
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: take a very quick break here and then we're gonna
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: get right into it all right here with me. Now,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I have the infamous Josh further Hilliard, I have Dan
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: jo Jo and I have Mike Romind. Thank you guys
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: all for hopping on to do this chat after we
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: just spent so much time together over the weekend. Absolutely
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: thanks for having us. Yeah, definitely thank you. Hey, it's uh,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: it's it's my pleasure. I mean, this whole experience we
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: just had, at least for me, was a whole lot
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: of fun. But I like getting to have this kind
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of debrief opportunity, Like we just had an experience of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the last three days, and it's easy to sometimes just
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: get caught up in life and just running forward to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: whatever the next thing is. And having this podcast afterwards,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: at least for me, is giving me a nice opportunity
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: to kind of reflect back on it and think about, Okay,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: why was that such a cool thing, Why would I
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: want to do that again? What did I learn? Um?
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: What could I have done better as a mentor? Um?
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So I've had an opportunity to do that, and maybe
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: this will give each one of you a little bit
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: of an opportunity to do that too, and hoping maybe
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: folks listening will either learn something or be inspired or
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: get intrigued by what we have to say. So I
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: think I think we're gonn need to start then, Josh,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: is a quick cliff notes on what this whole thing is,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: because just before this I had I introduced the basic concept,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: but we need to hear from you on on what
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: field the fork is. We had a podcast all about
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: this earlier in the year. There's an episode on Mediator
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: where we did a great job explaining this. But for
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: those that haven't heard those, what was this thing that
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: just happened over the weekend? Yeah, so, UM, this was
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a this is a it's actually a joint UM event
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: this weekend with UH Michigan Chapter of back Country Hunters
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and Anglers and then Quality Deer Management Association UM. And
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it was our Field of Fork program UM and b
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: h A has a similar program called Hunting for Sustainability UM.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Very similar programs I'll talk about like our Field of
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Fork program though, UM it's basically what was modeled after UM.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So we started this program a few years ago now
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: down at our our national headquarters just outside of Athens, Georgia, UM,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: where Hank Forrester, who's our Hunting Programs or Hunting Heritage
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Programs manager UM, and one of his colleagues, UM, Charles Evans,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: got together and and UH this this program had been
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: out there, and they said, hey, I think we can
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: kind of take this to the next level. UM. So
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: their plan was to go to farmers markets and try
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: to you know, hand out venison samples and then uh
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: kind of use that as a lead into asking people
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: if they would ever um consider hunting or be interested
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: in learning how to hunt UM. And then they would
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: take these people that they signed up with the farmers
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: market and they put him through training UM about dear
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: behavior in the biology and uh hunt shot placement and
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: ethics and UM hunting one on one stuff, just trying
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to give them a good baseline knowledge of of what
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: they're getting themselves into. And they spend a lot of
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: time at the archery range for this. For this particular program,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: most people are using cross bows UM just from a
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: proficient see standpoint UM. And then they take them out
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: on a on a hunt UM at some properties that
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: we have at a national headquarters. And it was it
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: was a program that was targeted at adults who are
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: interested in sourcing you know, their own protein or their
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: own local, you know source of food UM. And we
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: kind of thought, what better way or what better resources
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: out there than a lot of these deer in people's
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: backyards for people to have a sustainable source of protein UM,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and it was really a big hit. It kind of
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: just took off right away. We had waiting lists for
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: the events that we were putting on in uh in Georgia,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and we really piloted it down there for a year
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: or two, and we're starting to expand it out across
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the country now UM in states where we have branches
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and a good q DM, a volunteer base in certain states,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and I think this year we're gonna have between twenty
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: and of these Field of Fork events across twelve states UM.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: And again it's it's an adult focused program where we're
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: we're focusing on adults UM who can then go out
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and replicate UM this type of hunt on their own
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: UM without somebody taking them or without needing to call
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: someone for a ride, or you know, who may have
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: disposable income where they can go purchase gear UM, et cetera.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: So that's kind of a really high level overview of it. UM.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Is that good for for this discussion? Mark, you want
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: me to go into a little bit more detail. No,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's perfect. So, so essentially,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: what we have here is you and in your partner
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: over at b h A helps set up a version
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: of that kind of event here in Michigan, um where
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: we had eight hunters and eight mentors I think was
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the number, right, Josh Um and we did that pretty
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: cool situation, rented some cabins in a local state park
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I guess you would call it, and a bunch of
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: public land all around there, and we were all able
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: to get together for the weekend for the weekend of
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: hunting and camaraderie and all that kind of stuff. And
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: two of the hunters that were there were Mike and Dan.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: So for you too, what I wanted to hear to
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: start is a little bit of your background because you
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: both have different situations, different circumstances that led you to
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: meeting us this weekend. Um So, I kind of want
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: to just dive into that a little bit because I
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: think it's a it's an interesting thing for for us
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: experienced hunters to be reminded of, you know, how other
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: people might you know, be looking at hunting, how other
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: people might be intrigued by hunting but not knowing where
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: to go to figure out how to do it. Um. So, Dan,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: do you want to kind of give us a little
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: bit of your background, how you developed an interest in hunting,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: What the things were, you know, what other outdoor activities
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: maybe brought you into this kind of world and and
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, definitely definitely. So. I grew up in
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: southeastern Michigan. I guess you could call it the metropolitan
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Detroit area. UM. Not really coming from a hunting family, UM,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: not really having any peers or friends that really got
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: into hunting at an early age. UM. But what I
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: did have was some brothers that got me into fishing. UM.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: So I was kind of always into fishing, and then
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: as I got older, it started kind of expanding my
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: interest in the outdoors to you know, mountain biking, backpacking, hiking.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: So UM. Kind of developed that interest early on of
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: just being outside and exploring nature. But I always had
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a curiosity around, you know, the hunting realm of things,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and always thought it was something I could see myself
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: getting into, but I didn't necessarily have any avenues to
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: really pursue it with elders that could show me the
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: ropes or friends or friends parents that could take me along.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I guess staff forward to uh, the college I had
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: hated a girl that her family had some property in
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: northern Michigan and uh lucky enough to have her dad
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: take me out on a couple of hunts, um, which
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I thought was super cool and super interesting, and um
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: immediately you know, started to develop that interest of you know,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: really seeing myself doing this in the future. UM. Kind
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Of around that same time, I uh, you know, I
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: kind of fell into inheriting a bow from um a
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: brother's friend, and uh, right there, I started shooting it
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: and having some fun with it and kind of saw
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: it as a tool to maybe enable myself to you know,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: maybe pursue hunting. And at a later point in time, UM,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: you know, graduated college. Long story shirt short, didn't end
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: up with that girl, so UM, I couldn't really pursue that.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Having for hunting, moved to Chicago, kind of got away
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: for from all my outdoor activities that I did for
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: a little bit. UM. A couple of years later, actually
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: moved back to Michigan and kind of picked up where
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I left off with fishing and hiking and backpacking. UM.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So you know that kind of started to develop my
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: interest back into you know, shooting my bow again and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: maybe seeing if I could pursue hunting again. Um. You know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I think it was one weekend I came across the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Mediator show on Netflix, and I think I binge watched
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: all the season like a weekend. So that kind of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: inspired me right there to maybe really take it seriously.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Um you know. With that, I also ran into your podcast, Mark,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: so I thought that was a cool resource to maybe
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: learn a few things about, you know, some things in
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: my area, being that you're a white tail hunter, you're
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: from Michigan, and maybe pick up on some things there.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: But what I found was I was getting really excited
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: when I listened to your stuff. I was also getting
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: really frustrated at the same time, because it just made
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: me realize that my situation was super difficult to maybe
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: have a friend tag along or maybe run this by
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: this question I had by you know, uh, an older,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: more experienced person than I was in the whole hunting
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: um realm, so um, you know kind of stuff. Stuck
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: with it, kept shooting my bow and then um um.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I think it was probably a month ago I ran
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: into that Mediator podcast that I think you had mentioned earlier,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and they were talking about the fielding Board program. I said, well, well,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: this could be a cool opportunity for me to maybe
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: learn some things. They meet, some new people, got on
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the website. I had emailed that emails excuse me, Hank
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Forrester and uh, Keith asked my contact information belonged to Josh,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I talked to Josh a little bit.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Josh told me he had a couple of opportunities, and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I figured I'd take him up on it,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: kind of get out of my comfort zone and maybe,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: you know, spend a weekend trying to learn and absorbed
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: as much as possible. And uh, you know, that's kind
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: of what what led me to this weekend and meeting
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: you guys and having some some cool, cool experiences and
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: with some cool memories. And now you're on the podcast itself. Hey,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: there you go, man um out it is. Uh so,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: what about you, Mike. I know you've got a pretty
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: different set of circumstances than that um, but you still
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: ended up in the same place. Give us, give us
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: your story. Yeah, my background is basically the opposite of his. Um.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, so I grew up in a totally hunting
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: family and big time fisherman. I mean, we were outside
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: all the time, and I grew up hunting rabbits and
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: squirrels and trapping stuff and you know, all kinds of stuff,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of gun sport, um, all that kind of stuff.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: But long story short, UM, I took on a career
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: as a professional chefs and later a restaurant tour and um,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: you know, nights and weekends work, you know, eighty nine
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: hours a week and basically, um, living the life of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: a restaurant tour it doesn't leave you a lot of
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: opportunity to get up at four o'clock in the morning
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: because you just went to bet it too. Um. And
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: so it's a it's a tough thing to be able
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: to fit that time in, I guess while you're in
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: that mode. So here I am fifteen years later, and
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: my life is a little bit different, and now I'm
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: kind of seeing to myself, let me work to live
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: instead of live to work, and let me make some
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: time to get back to the things that I love.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that really interested me about
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: this program is that when I was growing up, I
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of what I would call technical
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: training from my dad. You know, he took us out there.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: But you know, I have my two brothers and myself,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: So he was trying to sill us all at the
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: same time, and it was more like, here's a spot
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: in a bucket, sit on it, and wait for a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: deer to come by kind of training. And so I
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: was looking forward to that one on one kind of
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: you know, talks about, you know, how did the deer live,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: how do they move, why do they move? How do
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I choose a good spot to hunt? How do I
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: how do I be a more technically advanced hunter as
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: opposed to, you know, throw a bag of corn out
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: there and wait for them to come by. I think
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: we can't throw a corn out there now, but you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: when I was growing up, that's how it was. So
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: that's kind of my story. And you know, it was
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: an awesome opportunity to get back to my roots and
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: to learn and to just you know, I'll never give
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: up a good opportunity for a weekend in a cabin.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: So it was awesome, awesome experience. Yeah, yeah, it's really
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: cool because one of you came from a hunting background,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: one of you came from no hunting background. But the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: end result was that neither one of you was was
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: a hunter, right Mike, you had an opportunity early on,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and just you know, there wasn't the the experience and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: someone to help teach you along the way, and so
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: you kind of fell fell away from it. Career got
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: in the way, and then still no outlet to then
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: learn how to get back into it. And then with
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Dan increasing increasing interest in the outdoors and then an
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: intrigue and hunting, but no way to really get any
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: hands on experience, no one to show you what's what.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Um So the point being, I think for me at
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: least when I got to meet you guys and hear
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: your stories and hear the stories from all the other
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: hunters there in camp, was there's all these different all
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: these different backgrounds of people come from, and there's all
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: these different challenges that might keep them from being interested
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: in hunting to actually becoming a hunter. Like that jump
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: from interested to actually being a hunter is a big one,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of obstacles in the way. This
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: isn't like, I don't know, This isn't like getting into
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: fantasy football, right, I mean, if you if you're interested
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: in fantasy football, you can go online read a couple.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I don't read a couple of articles, watch a YouTube
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: video and basically know how to do it, how to
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: get involved, sign up for a league. You don't need
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to have friends that are into it, you don't need
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: to have anybody who can share with it you anything.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: You just sign up and do it, and you've got
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a whole new hobby and there you go. You're a
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: fantasy football person. If you develop an interest in hunting
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: just from watching Mediator or having some family that used
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: to do it, but now you don't know how to
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: get back into it. You know, if you're in that situation,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: how the heck do you get going? There's so much
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: gear you need, there's the channel of trying to find
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: a place to go. There's a challenge you brought up, Mike,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: which is, even if you've been out there before, if
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: no one's actually showed you and shared with you the
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: details of what you're trying to do and how to
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: do it, you know, that's a frustrating situation too. Um So,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's really easy for people like me or
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Josh who have been hunting for a long time to
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: take all that for granted, which is which is why,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: at least for me, this weekend was was a really
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: important reminder that you know, it's it's not a given.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: It's not easy for someone to get into it. Um. Now,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: you kind of both alluded to a couple of these things,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: but especially maybe Dan, especially both of you, really can
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: you elaborate a little bit on what some of those
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: frustrations were, Like you said, it was frustrating Dan when
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: you developed this like interest in hunting. You started listening
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: to the wire Time podcast a little bit, but then
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: it was frustrating. Um, can you just elaborate on the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: on that a little bit Like these things I just mentioned,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: is that basically the gist of how you were feeling
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: or or what was it that was making it hard
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: for you to take that next leap and actually get
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: out there in the woods doing this. Yeah, definitely, definitely. So,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: I mean some of the frustrations I had, you know,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: you spoke on it a little bit, Mark, was you know,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: knowing what gear to get get into, right. I Mean,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: you look at the market and there's a ton of
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: different things you can you can spend your money on,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: from tree stands to to UH to jackets to you know,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: our free equipment calls. I mean, you name it. So
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: you know when when people would talk about, you know what,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I got this tree stand that helps me do this,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: I don't really know what exactly they're talking about. I
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: don't have a friend that maybe has this type of
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: tree stand versus a ladder stand that I could ask, well,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: what do you think is better? What would you think
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: would be more applicable to my certain situation where I'm
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: hunting state land versus private land? Um? Some of those
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: frustrations that I couldn't just readily breach out to somebody
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and ask, um, there was that aspect of it. Um,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: there was the whole strategy aspect of it to where
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: you know, some of the the podcast would talk about,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: you know, a certain wind direction that you would need
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: to be cognizant of, two different food sources that you
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: would need to pay attention for, and and getting out
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: there and trying to find and locate and identify those things.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Um was certainly something that I could probably go do
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: by myself, but it would almost be like a guessing
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: game out in the field where I'd point out, okay,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: well this is an acorn tree, and then you know,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: I can see I think what looks like maybe he's
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: a rub I'm not really sure. So you know, I
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: can pull up a Google image of what that might
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: look like, but you know, at the end of the day,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna always question myself to definitely say, like, you know,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I think I saw one, but not totally sure if
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I really did. So, I found myself like just super
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: frustrated with that kind of situation that you know, I
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: just you know, wanted to do something about it. And luckily,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I got involved with a great program and
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: was fortunate to have like a great mentor take me
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: out and point out all those specific things and say,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: you know, this is the rub, this is a scrape,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: this is the wind direction that we're dealing with. We're
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: going to approach the strategy this way. I just thought
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: was just invaluable to me, you know, something that I
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: didn't have before. That kind of opened up my my
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: whole perspective of Okay, this is what I need to
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: do now. So yeah, that's a great that's a great observation.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: You know something else that I think it was Nick,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: one of the other mentees, had brought up when we
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: were all chatting over the weekend. He said that one
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: of the big things that had kind of been intimidating
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: to him as he decided he wanted to get into hunting,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: but was kind of worried about was the whole dealing
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: with the deer after you shoot it, like the all
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: like the whole idea of like, Okay, now I just
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I just shot this deer. What the heck do I do?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can watch a YouTube video, you can
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: see it on mediator, you can read an article about it,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: but it's it's very different there in person. Is that
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: something that kind of weighed in the back of your
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: conscious two? Did you ever look at that and say, Gosh,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: how the heck am I going to handle that? Oh?
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Exacinitely definitely. I mean staring at, uh, you know, an
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: animal that I just shot and thinking, Okay, I know
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I need to do something with that's not exactly sure
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: what and then the fear of messing something up and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: having you know, things go wrong, and um, you know,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I just was a total unknown to me and um
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: unfortunately didn't tag anything this weekend. But I mean having
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: somebody there to kind of help you out, walk you
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: through the whole process is I think so important to
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: learning your way and and figuring out how figuring out
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: how to do things the right way. Yeah, Mike, was
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: there anything else for you that stood as a challenge
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: for you to get back into hunting, or anything that
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you were getting frustrated with or or something that eventually
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: led you to point where you thought, you know, damn it,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta find someone who's gonna help me,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: and that led you to this program. Yeah, Well, it's
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting because I really have, you know,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: have all all the equipment that I need, and I
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: have all the stuff that I need, and I even
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: have some of the background, I guess, at least to
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: do the tough type of hunting that I was familiar
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: with from before. Um. However, when I came across this program,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: it was just like, man, I really need to do that.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: I need to get out there and I need to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: learn a little bit more. And it's just like how
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: sometimes in life you just kind of get stuck in
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: a rut where you have things that you want to do, UM,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: but you just don't necessarily know how to get up
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: and running. And sometimes all you need is just that
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: little bit of a jump start UM that gets you
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: move in. And I think one of the things for
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: me that was really important was that I have these
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: places that are kind of near where I live that
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I've hunted before, and I feel like at any point
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: in time, I could get up and go there and
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: hunt those places because I've done it before, because somebody
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: set me up there, because I knew what to do.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: But right here in my backyard, less than ten minutes
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: from my house, I have a huge piece of state
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: land that I could hunt at any time. But but
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: how do I do that? How do I go in there?
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Where do I where do I look to to find
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the best spot? It was like, how do I get
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: started doing that? I don't really want to drive two
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: hours to and from where I'm going to hunt. UM,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: So that to me was really pretty important. And just
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: to tag a little bit onto what Dan was saying,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: what you guys are talking about with UM dealing with
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the deer afterwards. Interestingly enough, my job, I'm a professional butcher. UM.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: We own a butcher shop. UM. I still get calls
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: every season from people that are experienced deer hunters that
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: still don't aren't SUP We're comfortable with how to deal
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: with it afterwards. So I think it's important to note
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: that the network that's built from this event is also
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: really important just to have someone that you can, you know,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: shoot a text to or send a picture too, and
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and kind of come back and say, hey, does this
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: look right? Just that reassurance I think is pretty powerful,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: very very true. I think that ultimately that might be
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: the greatest win out of this whole thing, Like it
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: was a great weekend, but hopefully the the final outcome
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: is long term relationships between all the different mentors and
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: the different mentees and the fact that yeah, like if
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: you Mike or Dan or any of the other folks
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: have a question, or you hit a deer and you
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: need to help tracking or anything like that, you now
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: have people you can call. You now have folks who
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: can help you, or you can chat in the phone
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: with you and walk you through things. And that's probably
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: harder to come by then, we realize, especially if you
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: if you're in a situation where you're not around a
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: bunch of other hunters, Like if you live in Metro
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Detroit and you're not from a hunting background. Um, I'm
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing Dan, you don't have a whole bunch of
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: buddies that are hunting that could help you do this
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff right based off what you're saying. UM,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: So whether you know, whether you're in that case with
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: no hunting family or friends, or in Mike's case where
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: you had that background, but you just need someone to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: actually show you how to do it on your own
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: and not just to sit there and do a Dad said, UM,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: that's why I think this is pretty cool. So let's
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: get into what happened over the weekend. So you guys
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: found the program, you signed up for it. We all
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: got together Friday night at these cabins that Josh had rented. Um,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: I'll give like a really quick rundown of the basic
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: situation and then anyone of you guys can jump in
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: here and provide more detail or something. But basically, we
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: had these cabins for the weekend. Friday night, we all
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: got together and just you know, have some beverages, talk,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you know, just tell our stories, introduce each other, just
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: get to know each other. Um. And then we cooked
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: a bunch of wild game. We had, Oh gosh, what
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: all do we have? Someone made venison shank, someone made
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: a pheasant stew. I think, um, I made some heart
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: some squirrel yeah maybe that was it was a squirrel stew. Yeah,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I think squirrel stew like venison, tortellini, um, some venison, summersauts,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Um. The goals to have
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: kind of like each mentor bring like a little dish
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: to pass and h preferably wild game. And I think
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: it was all wild game that night. I think. Yeah. Um, Now, Mike,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I know you'd had venus in the past, but Dan,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: had you had venison before that? Yeah? I have a
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: few times just through um, you know my my friend's
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: parents that hell yeah, presented that. Yoh no, have you
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: have venison? Heart? No? I think I missed that this weekend,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: didn't You didn't even get it this weekend? Man? No,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: all right, yeah you missed out because it was a
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: damn good Sure. I'm sure I had some of the
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: bad chefs, so so that definitely I could say that
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: was pretty good. That's good. I'm gonna take your comment,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Mike and hold that close because you're being a professional chef.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: I'm quite proud that a professional chef thought my heart
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: turned out well. Yeah, I was honestly super great. I
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: was impressed by all the food that was there that night. Um,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I've had a lot of wild game and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: that they are may not always be good. Um, but
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: this group had a really nice, nice output. Good. I'm glad.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: The pressure was on. You know, you don't want to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: cook something up for new hunters and then make it
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: terrible and they're like, oh, what the heck am I
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: here for? Yeah, especially one of those new hunters as
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: as a professional chef. Yeah, exactly. So, but Alton turned
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: up pretty good. And um, we had a bonfire and
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: everyone hung out and had a good time that night,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: and we all almost everyone stayed at the cabin's over right,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: So we had very full bunk house of dudes and
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: a lesser full cabin of quite a few. I guess
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: it was. I don't know what was the split, Josh.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: There was six women and twelve guys had so we
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: had five guys and three gals of the hunters, um,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and then we had each of them paired with a
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: mentor of the same sex. So I guess we had
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: we had ten guys and what had have been six ladies,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: So I think I think nine guys were at the
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: cabin and five ladies were in the women's cabin. Yeah,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of room to spread out, they did. We
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: were you and we had to share a futon a
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: bunch of folks and a bunch of folks and bunk beds. Um.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: But you know, I gotta say for taking that many
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: different people who have most almost everyone hadn't met before. Um,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: and everyone bunking up and hanging out for three days. Um.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like it went surprisingly you well, like everyone
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: got along. It seemed like everyone was really included in
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: conversations and having a good time. UM. I don't know,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: how did you guys feel, Mike, Dan, did you feel
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: comfortable pretty quickly? Was it? Or was it really awkward?
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, how did it feel? Oh? I thought no, great.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: I mean it's just like it takes me back to
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: deer camp, you know, my childhood memory. So everyone's there
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: for the same purpose. Everyone's there too to teach and
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: be taught. And um, it was an awesome group. Yeah.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: What do you think, Dan? Yeah, no, I thought it
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: was great. I think that first night it came in
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a little late, and I told you guys straight out, like,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: you know, definitely out of my comfort zone a little bit.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just about to spend a couple of couple of
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: nights with a bunch of dudes. I've never met before. UM,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: but it turned out really well. I mean we all
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: gathered with a with a common interest in mind, and UM,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: I think all the conversations that we had and all
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: the things that we did was just a ton of
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: fun until I think it worked out for a Yeah,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: that's that's stuff. And I was feeling too, it was
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: it was just fun. I mean it was legitically fun,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: which is a which is a nice thing. Um. And
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the next morning, though unfortunately, we had to wake up
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: very early, which I just I hate those early mornings.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: That's the only thing I don't like about hunting is
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: waking up early. But we did. We got up early,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: we went out and hunted, and and I'll kind of
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: fast forward through most of the hunt. Um, I want
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: to kind of zero in on your guys specific experiences.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: But uh, we were a hunting public land. Everyone was
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: spread out different places. Almost nobody had hunted here before,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: so we're all kind of trying to figure out stuff
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: as we went. UM, and we all had our own challenges,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I guess, like that first morning, me and Mike we
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: headed out, UM try to get in one place. It
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: was too wet and flooded, so we had to go
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: to another spot, had to come from a different route
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: that I didn't really like, and we got in there late.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Didn't see anything, UM and what that first morning? I
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: don't think anyone did anone't see any here the first morning?
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Or are there a few doughs sided off in the distance,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: do you remember? I think there's a I think there's
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: a few doughs that were UM sited. Had a couple
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: of people UM bumped here I think on the way
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: in UM. But yeah, no, like real close calls or anything.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: That first morning. There's a little hectic though. I mean
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: we had people getting ground blind, set up in the
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: dark and all that kind of stuff. So it definitely
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: wasn't an ideal morning. Yeah, you know what you should mention,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Josh explain Also like the gear situation, Like you guys
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: had all sorts of gear for people, right, Yeah. So
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: so UM this is kind of where like a lot
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: of the partnerships of the other organizations come into play UM,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: at least here in Michigan. We're very fortunate we have
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: a couple of trailers that have been UM kind of
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: purchased by different organizations, UH Michigan United Conservation Clubs, UM
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: MWTF for National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever UM Michigan
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: DNR has us learned to Hunt program. So we've got
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: a couple of trailers that through Pittman Robertson dollars UM
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and grants and stuff like that, we've been able to
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: to stock these trailers with crossbows and ground blinds and
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: camo UM and really anything that a new hunter would need,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: um to to go through a program like this, whether
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: it be deer or they use those trailers for turkey
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: hunts or pheasant hunts. UM, they do a small learn
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: to hunt small games. So we've got all the tools
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: that um, these people need. Uh, they just really need
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: to show up with some you know, if it's gonna
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: be it's pretty cold this weekend, so some like cold gear, um,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: you know, keep their hands and feet warm, things like that.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: We've we've got basically everything else for uh, these these
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: new hunters to use. So we're fortunate here that's not
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: available everywhere. That's just um through some partnerships that we've
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: made here in Michigan and organizations working together uh for
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: the same effort. Yeah, that is that was really nice
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to have. So nobody had to worry about. You know,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: if you didn't have a bow, or if you didn't
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: have a crossbow, you could still participate. If you didn't
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: have camouflage, you can still participate. If you didn't have
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: whatever we had you covered. Um, that was great. Now, um, Dan,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: you brought your own crossbow and you got to at
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: least consider using it on that night's hunt. Walk me
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: through your second hunt of the weekend. You were with Jason.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Jason Meekoff from back Country Hunters and Anglers was your mentor? UM,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Walk me through that night you guys headed in and
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I had a pretty exciting hunt, right, Yeah, No, it
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: was awesome. So so, like you said, I would have
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: the opportunity of bringing my own com pombo and UM,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure you know, Josh and Jason
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: are comfortable with me using it before I went out
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: in the field and tried to shoot something with that. UM.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: But it was a cool opportunity for me to use
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: what I've been practicing on a real life experience like this. Um.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So Jason took me out. First thing he told me,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: he said, Hey, I've never hearnded the spot before, but
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I think it looks pretty good. And I told him, Hey,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: my trust is in your hands. So we went out.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: UM got set up and what looks like a really
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: good spot. There's a lot of deer signs, UM got
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: on the ground. Uh. You know, I I had all
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: my gear ready to go. Um Josh had let me
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: a really awesome jacket that I that I took out
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: in the field with me that had a built in
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: face mask, and I was using it to cover up
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: my face to give me a little actual camouflage. But
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: what I found was as I was breathing through the
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: face mask, my glasses a fog off. So UM, I figured, well, hey,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I can't really see anything, so I'll take my glasses off.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Fast forward to about maybe, Uh can I put real quick?
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Let me I gotta ask I gotta ask you one
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: thing before we get to what you're about to tell
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: us about. Just describe for me how you felt and
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe I should maybe this is in the morning,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: but just described to me what was going through your
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: mind when you got out for your first hunt. So
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: maybe this is in the morning when you went out
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: because or no, you didn't go out in the morning
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: because you were shooting your bowl and stuff like that.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: In the morning. Yeah, so this was your first hunt
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: with Jason in the evening. Okay, so you sit down,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you settled, it gets quiet. Where's your head? Are you
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, I can't believe this is happening,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: or are you holy crap, I'm nervous? What if a
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: deer shows up? Like? What are you thinking at this point?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: So first thought is it's definitely a little cold. Um.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: But I mean I was just excited and it was
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: just kind of the realm of the unknown at that point, right,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: So what am I expecting? What should I look out for?
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, my my brain kind of turned off, um,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: you know, to only really focus on the matter at
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: hand was let's see some deer. So it was a
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: mixture of a lot of different emotions between you know,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: not knowing what to expect to you know, okay, if
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I see a deer, what do I do? Um? Making
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: sure I stay cool, calm and collected. Um. So it
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: was a mixture of a lot of different things. Yeah, okay,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: so now with that in mind, now we know what
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: your mindset was. Now you got fogged up glasses, you
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: can't see anything. You take them off. What's next? What's next?
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I was just kind of scanning the woods that were
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: in front of me, and I think I noticed a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: change in the landscape, and I couldn't really tell what
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: it was. I wanted to say it was a deer,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: but I didn't know if it was my mind playing
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: tricks on me. So I spent about five minutes trying
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: to convince myself what I was really looking at. And
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: I finally just gave up and said, you know, excrew this,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw the glass back on and see what's
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: out there. I fumbled around through my glasses back on,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and then what I was looking at once I threw
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: him back on was a deer staring me right in
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the eyes, and I immediately said deer. Um, And I
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: guess where I was oriented. I had like a little
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: window between some trees where um, Jason wasn't really able
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: to see what I was looking at because he was
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: sitting kind of behind me and to the right, so
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: he was looking at a pile of woods. And then
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: I was looking through this window at this deer. And
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: what proceeded was probably a staring contest that seemed to
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: have lasted an eternity, and I became overcome with just
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: a roller coaster of different emotions from being nervous to
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: being excited to being cold attack. Um, and I you know,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: couldn't really control myself and I just started shaking, started shaking. Um.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: You know, I had the fear of failure in my
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: mind here that I would would have gotten busted and
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: spooked off the deer. Um. At one point, I think
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: the deer put it put its head down, and I
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: became a little more comfortable, thinking, oh, you know, all right,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: I think we're okay, but the only to have her
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: pop her head back up and can continue to stare
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: right into my eyes. And I think at one point
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: I told Jason, I think I think she's staring into
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: my soul. Man, it's crazy. Yeah, And that that proceeded. Ye,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: So that proceeded to happen for about twenty minutes. Um.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: She shipped it off to the right to where what
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: seemed to be my shooting RNE and I took that
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: as an opportunity to maybe get into this and um,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: right when I did that, I guess what we didn't
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: notice was that there was deer over off to our left.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: So when I shifted, I had spooked some deer over
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: off to our left, and um, we heard the deer
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: kind of bust out of there and started, you know,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: I think, blowing at us. Um. And then as I
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: waited to have the other dough that was uh, you
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: know in frontomy pop up into my shooting lane, I
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: think ended up walking off. So although we didn't get
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: a shot at, you know, the deer that was in
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: front of us, it was still just a crazy set
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: of events that occurred and a set of emotions that
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I'd never never really experienced before, right, just them adrenaline,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: adrenaline rush that I can't really explain very well. And
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: you were telling us that night, you know, you've you've
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: done all these other things that have given you a
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: rush of excitement, Like I don't remember what your examples were,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: but you've done a roller coaster ride, You've done this thing,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: you've done that thing, and nothing else was this type
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: of feeling, right definitely. Yeah, Like I've been out west
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: snowboarding has been you know, the decent amount of my
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: mountain biking, I've caught a ton of fish, But what
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: I felt that night was was I can't compare it
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: to anything else. Yeah, that's that's pretty awesome. That's just
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: hearing like when you came back and shared that story
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: with us, that was, you know, one of the highlights
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: for me, just hearing about the excitement that you had. Um.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: And that night. That night ended up being doubly exciting
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: because we had some some interesting things going on, me
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: and Mike on our hunt. UM. So we had several
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: interesting things happened. First off, Mike and I went and
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: head back to the same chunk of ground with Hunt
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: in the morning, only to find two trucks parked in
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: the parking lot there. So I'm thinking, well, you know what,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: we passed by another little spot that didn't have any
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: trucks parking lot, and I looked at the map as
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: we were driving. I was like, oh, I like that too,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: So that was kind of in the back of my
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: head already. So when we got to the parking lot
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: and saw two other people, I thought, you know what,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: let's just turn back and go to this other spot.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: So we go to this other spot park, we get
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: all set, we start hiking in and this was there
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: was a crop field up front and then a bunch
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: of nasty swamp behind it, with a couple of pockets
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: of islands and high ground out in that swamp, and
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: I thought there was a couple of regions that we'd
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: be able to sneak way back in there and get
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: in between where deer might come off of those islands
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: where they'd be bedded coming towards that crop field. Um,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: and Mike, you got tall boots or did you have
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: boots by then? No, you were still rocking the hikers,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: I guess, Um, yeah, so we had hikers, but I
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: thought we could get in there. And we're walking down
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: the field edge and there's a lot of sign like,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was a whole bunch of tracks, weren't there.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, quite a quite a lot of sign. Um,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: So I was feeling good about that. There were definitely
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: dear eating in this field, probably after dark, I figured,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: But if we got in the right intercept zone, we
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: catch these doughs coming out. So we get to the
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: point where I want to cut into the woods, get
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: kind of the inside corners field, and I'm looking at
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: my phone to look at the map, and I'm looking
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: at the ground, and look at my phone, look at
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the ground, and I look up and there's another hunter
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: sitting a tree right in front of us, just like
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: waving like crap. I don't know what you were thinking
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: at that point. We two hunters in one place. Now
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: there's another guy. What were you thinking at this point? Well,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: you know, we saw hunters everywhere, so I wasn't really surprised.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, all right, well, this is another opportunity to
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: see where else we can fit in. So I mean,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: from my perspective wanting some technical learning, I got a
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: lot of good a lot of good options of where
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, I guess you. I guess you learned
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: how the necessity of being able to adapt we had
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: to attach to a lot of stuff. Um, yeah, a
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: lot of changing, Yeah, a lot of changes. So then
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: I slipped back to where we had seen so the
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: tracks coming to the field, because I liked that area too,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and I could see in the map that there was
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: a cluster of of high pieces in the swamp with
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: these oak trees out there, so I thought there's probably
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: dear betted out there as well. So we slipped into
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: the swamp, worked our way towards those and got set
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: up in another zone. Sat there for maybe forty five
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: minutes or an hour, and then we heard a cough.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Do you remember that? Do you remember the cough because
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: I turned to you, I hear the cough, like, oh,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: that's a deer. That sounded like a deer cough, because
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: deer cough just like that. Um. But then in the
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: back of my mind, I'm like, or it's a hunter.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Let's hope it's not a hunter. And and then I
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: don't know, another fifteen minutes later or something like that.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I kept thinking about it, kept thinking about it, and
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, I better just take
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: a peek. So I got, I got around the corner,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: and I don't know, I walked like five yards and
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: then there's another guy sitting on the ground like fifty
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: yards away from us. So that was frustrating. So it's
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: all right, we gotta move again. And so now I
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: decided to move further into the swamp, but got up
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: wind of that guy and trying to kind of cut
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the distance between these two hunters and trying to find
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: some zone where there might be deer moving that weren't
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: impacted by these other people. And we just slipped along
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: the side of this island, getting closer and closer to
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: like a really wet cat tailed part of the swamp,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and it found us about where several trails all came together.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: You could see two different edges of habitat types, and
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: it seemed like probably the best we could get. And
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: it was down to the last hour or less of
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: daylight at that point, so figure this is the best
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: chance we could have, and we settled down. UM. So
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: tell me this though, Mike, before we get to the
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: end of that hunt. UM. One of your big goals
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: for this experience, it seemed from our conversation and for
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: what you said here, one of those things that you
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: really just wanted, like that next level of knowledge, like
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: how do I do this on my own? How do
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: I actually make sense of what I'm seeing? Um? So
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: you can go out there and do this without you know,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: the family saying, oh, sit in that bucket. Uh. Do
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: you feel like? Do you tell us about what you learned?
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Tell about if any of that stuff was helpful that
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I was saying and sharing with you. UM. Did you
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: come away from this experience with some new ideas and
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: ways to look at it? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. UM. One
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: of the tools that I think is really cool and
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you will appreciate this because I think they're
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: your sponsor, is the on X map. UM. That thing
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: is really awesome to get that kind of UM, high
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: level overview of of looking at it. And you know,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: I could say firsthand that as we moved around out there,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: you know, that map was out all the time, and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: it was really helpful to keep track of where we
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: were and where we were going. UM. And you showed
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: me another of different times like the things that you're
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: looking for on the map UM, and that was really
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: cool to see not only from the map, but then
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: to see it also in real life and connect the
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: theory to to the real life action and how that
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: worked UM. Looking for those edges of different and types
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: of habitat, looking for the feeding ground versus the betting
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: ground UM, and kind of keeping in mind the direction
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: of the wind while trying to get in between those
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: different areas. One thing that was really interesting to me
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: that I've never heard before really is sitting in different
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: areas if it's the morning versus if it's the nighttime. UM,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: you know, whether they're moving from betting habitat to feeding
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: habitat or the reverse, and how UM you need to
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: adjust your basically your entrance and exit based upon that UM.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: And so all those things to me were really interesting,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: and we did them firsthand. So you know, I think
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: that's the kicker. It's one thing to hear about it
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: or listen to it or think about it. It's another
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: thing to be doing it. Um So at this point,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: you know, I feel like, um, I can absolutely go
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: find a piece of UHUD that I've never been to
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: before and at least getting get a good starting point. Yeah,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: that's you sound like a pro, Mike. I gotta tell you,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: whoever taught you really knows what they're doing. Yeah. I
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: think it's probably the training though that he had before
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: this weekend that probably well further helped out there too. Probably.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Um So it's okay, I'm very glad to hear that
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: that stuff stuck and that that it made sense. Especially
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: it's it's a great point to think about the fact
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: that these concepts are interesting in theory and interesting here about.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: But it's really hard for to hit home until you're
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: actually in the field and can confirm all those things. Okay,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: so we moved to the new spot. How about you
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: walk me through then how the hunt ended. Yeah? Absolutely,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: so we're thinking in this final spot. I think that
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: was our fourth spot for the day. For the evening
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: the night spots that night yep. And um, you know,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: we sat down there. It was pretty thick area, lots
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: of lots of tall ground um, and so there's not
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of line of fight going on. And
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: we sat there for that last hour so UM, and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: just as it was starting to get dark, we could
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: hear the crunching UM, and that was the moment where
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: you know that's either a deer or a hunter. So
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: we kind of just sat there and we perked up, UM,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: and you get ready, you know, you get into that.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: For me, it's like you get into that kilmo. You know,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: you try to be deadly quiet and just really sit
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: still and really listen hard. UM. And it was so amazing.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: You know, you can almost steal the sticks crunch and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: it's moving um. And we could tell it was really
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: really close and and you could see a market sea
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: from where he was sitting. But I couldn't see it.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I never even did see it um the whole time. UM.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: And it was it was so exciting, but it was
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: at last, you know, eight ten minutes before the end
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: of shooting light and you know, I couldn't see it
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: at all. And then unfortunately it was just too dark,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: and there's nothing we could do about it. But you
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: know what, sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't. UM.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: For me, even that experience, just being so close and
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: and just you know, it's such a multisensory experience. It's
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: just really amazing, uh, to commune with nature in that level. Yeah,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: it was. It was really exciting for me. I mean
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I was pumped. Um. Like you said, we could hear
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: we could hear a deer approaching. And you know, as
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, very tall swampy grass. So I just slowly
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: stood up out of my seat to try to see
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: over these grasses. And as I stood up, I could
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: just see antlers and it was a buck walking down
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: this trail right to us. And the way it was
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: set up, as we were positioned with a trail running
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: across like right and right barely in front of us,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: and then there was a trail that I was running
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: perpendicular to that um on our left, and then there
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: were some trails perpendicular crossing to our right. And this
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: deer was coming from the left side, coming right at us,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: and all he had to do was keep walking, and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: he'd crossed the path that was across in front of us.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: And you could shoot straight down that to this deer.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: And so when I stood up and saw him, I
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: saw this buck walking right down the path and he
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: was only like by the time he stopped, he was
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: probably three steps away from getting into that. And I
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: was just like, he's right here, He's gonna step right
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: in that, like ready, get ready, um. And then you know,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: he stopped and froze up. Whether he heard me whispering
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: because I was so excited, or the wind had died
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: down at that point. There was like no wind, so
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: our wind might have settled or swirled. He might have
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: caught our scent um, any number of things might have happened.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: But he froze up and just didn't move, didn't move,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: didn't move. And I am looking at my phone and
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: seeing how much time is left with shooting light, and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, oh man, we're down to four minutes, down
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: to three minutes, down to like whatever it was. It was.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Right at the end, I was like, you know what,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: I just gotta throw a hail Mary. So I tried
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: just a little contact grunt. I pulled my grunt to
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: just to give a little just on like the off chance,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: like in the last minute, he might take two more
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: steps because he was curious and what the heck was that?
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: And that didn't work. He didn't move for another minute,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: and then he bounded off, and I don't bounce, bounced
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: ten yards away and then kept walking again. And it
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: was after shooting hours, but it was it was exciting.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: And he was really close, right, like, how how far
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: would you say? Oh, yeah, less than ten yards? I
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: mean the ground was super wet, and so you could
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: literally hear those hooks going in the mud, squishing in
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: the bud. I mean it was, it was that close.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: It was. It was very cool, Yeah, it was. It
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: was fun for me. What was really kind of especially
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: cool um, or at least on my side personally, was
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: that I hunt so much and I've seen so many
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: deer that sometimes, and I hate to say this, but
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: sometimes I take it for granted, you know, seeing a
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: buck or seeing a dough um, because I've been very
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: fortunate to have many of these encounters. But being in
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: this position with someone who is a newer hunter, who
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: who hasn't killed a deal with the ball before like this,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: and who I know so badly wants to get this opportunity,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: it made me so so so excited to have a
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: year and a half old buck walking in. I mean,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: I was just as excited about as when I killed
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: my first dear. So from the mentors side, like that's
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: a really fun thing too. It brings new joy to
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: things that you've done the past, but you're doing it
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: in a new way. And and that was that was
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. So that takes us to the end of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: night number one. No one killed a deer. A few
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: other people saw a few, but tough sledding again. The
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: next morning we go out, you mean, Mike Man, we
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: put in the work. We hyped in more than a
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: mile for every hunt, um, but we didn't not see anything.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: The next morning, Dan, you have a story for the
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: last morning you were. You and Jason found a little honeyhole,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: didn't you. Yeah, I was sure did. Definitely what happened, definitely,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: So we so we went back to the same spot.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: UM figured we'd set up in the same location, and
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: UM got in pretty early, UM maybe an hour and
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: a half before UM legal shooting hours, and UH kind
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: of waited it out, I think, UM probably around eight am.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: UM just kind of doing my normal scan. UM looks
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: to my lapt and I see what looks like a
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: book staring right at me. So once again, UM, kind
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: of that whole slew of emotions kind of overcame me.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: But this time I kind of knew, you know, it's
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: showtime now, so I got up. I gotta make sure that, um,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: I'm cool and I do everything right here to potentially
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: have an opportunity to get a shot off. Um. Luckily
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Jason spotted it as well this time. Um. He gave
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: me a range. He said it was about twenty five
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: yards out, and I said, all right, cool. Um, But
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: what I needed the book to do was maybe take
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: one step out behind this tree to get my my
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: shooting lane, and I would have had a perfect broadside
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: shot at him. So um, I stayed put. Um. Being
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: that the deer kind of saw me, I think he
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: was pretty curious as to what was kind of moving
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: around out there. Um. He ended up turning away actually
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: for a quick second, and Jason brought a grunt tube
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: and gave out a grunt and the deer came right
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: back right back to the same spot, put his head down,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: and I took that opportunity to pull my bow back
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: at full ter off. So I was ready to go.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Um gear picked his head back up, and I was
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: looking at this thing for my people, just ready to
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: let it loose once he took that extra step um. Unfortunately,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: the dear did exactly the opposite of what we wanted
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: him to do, took a step back and ran up.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: But what seemed to be you know, like what felt
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: like five minutes, that thirty seconds of what went down
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: was just absolutely incredible. It was so exciting for me
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: to be able to use what kind of I've been
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: taught and what Jason was letting me know what to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: do and call my emotions and and you know, get
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: myself ready mentally was just so cool. And then I
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: also to have my bow out there and be at
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: full draw at a book was just was so cool.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: It was it was an amazing experience. How do you
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: feel like you handled the emotions compared to the night before.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Was it a similar rush in shaking or were you
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: able to you know, to expect and it wasn't quite
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: the same or what was that like? Yeah, I mean,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I definitely had it at first, and I
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: felt that Russian emotions coming, but you know, I put
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: myself in the check and just said it's game time
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: and let's go. Um. But uh, you know, once the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: deer and off, it was weird. It was like that
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: those same emotions came rushing right back. I started shaking
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: again after, you know, the deer head ran off. But um,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I put myself in the position where I
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: knew what to do. I got the opportunity to pull
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: my bow back and and I was just I was
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: just ready to go, you know, I was, you know,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: putting that position to succeed. And Jason did everything that
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: he could. Unfortunately didn't work out our way. But um,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: it was still just to have that and be so close.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Was um just so cool to be um be out there. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: that's that must have been very, very exciting. And like
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: we were saying yesterday, you know, the first time I
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: drew back on a buck, I knocked my arrow off
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: the rest and the deer right away. The second time
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: I drew back on a buck, I drew back and
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: was so out of my mind that I released without
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: fully aiming, and I hit a tree. Um, so you
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: handled it much better than I did. So nobody ended
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: up shooting a deer, but at least most of the
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: hunters saw some Most everyone had a little bit of
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: an a counter. Um. So what I'm curre about now
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: or curious about now is what things do you still
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: see as challenges or areas where you still wish you
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: had more help? Um? I mean, Dan, do you think
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: that you are armed and out to go out into
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: the field and hunt on your own, or there's still
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: some obstacles You're like, gosh, I wish I could still
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: get help with this, or I hope someone could come
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: help me with this other thing, or what about that? No, yeah,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: you know, I definitely feel inspired to get to get
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: out there on my own. Um. I definitely feel confident
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: enough to to at least make the initiative to go out.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: I think what I would be a little unsure about
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: is making sure that the spot I'm setting up at
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: and the strategy that I have in mind considering everything
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: that we talked about this weekend is robust, um, making
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: sure that I'm playing the win correctly, making sure that
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: I'm picking a spot where I think dear betted and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: would probably go out and feed. I think might need,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I might need to run that by somebody
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: to say, Okay, this is what I'm working with and
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: this is what I'm thinking my strategy is what does
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: it sound like to you? UM? So I think that
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: would probably be the biggest thing for me. UM. But
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely I'm definitely sold on. I'm taking on the challenge. UM.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: I think that's what I like about it most is
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: there's so much um, There's there's so many different layers
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: of complexity and different aspects of hunting that I think
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's super super cool to maybe take on
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: and and try to figure those things out. I think
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: that's what's so attractive about the whole sport to begin with. Yeah,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: I definitely can relate to that. What about you, Mike,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: what are there any things that are still holding you back?
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: Or do you feel armed and inspired to try it
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: on your own? Like where's your head out? Well? I
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: definitely feel like I'm I'm ready. I'm prepared to get
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: out there and try it on my own. As far
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: as like finding a location and picking you know, how
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go about it. I definitely agree with
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: Dan it would be great to have um that kind
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: of soundboard where you can toss some ideas back and
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: now the thing that I'm thinking about next is like, Okay,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: once I found my spot. Um, once I pick out
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: kind of a game plan, I think there's some more
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: learning that maybe isn't necessary to get started, but things
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: that I want to learn, Like, Um, you know when
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: we were out, you pulled out your grunt to try
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: to get that buck to come in just a few
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: more steps. Jason zusing his grunt kind of for the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: same thing to get him to move a little bit.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: It's it's those types of things now that I'm looking
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: to learn a little bit more about. We all know,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: you can pop into a hunting and shooting story. You
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: can find thousands of calls and trinkets and sent this
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: and you know, spray that. I mean, there's so many
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: different things out there, but just that kind of next
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: level knowledge about you know, what are the fundamental UM toolkit.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: I guess that that you need just to make those
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: next level decisions. Yeah, that's a great point. Well, it's
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: good to hear. Like, I'm glad that you guys both
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: feel like you least have a starting point um and like,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: like I talked about with both of you, and I
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: think many of the other mentors did as well. It's
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: our goal as part of this program not to just
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: have a weekend with you, but to have like a
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: long term connection. And so you know you got my
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: phone number. Now if you want to pull up on
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: X and mark away point and say, hey, I'm thinking
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: about hunting here, share that with me, asked me what
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: I think, Like, I'm here for you. I can talk
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: you through like, hey, I think there might be deer
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: in this spot, in this spot and just make sure
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: you access it from the west. Um. Like, those kinds
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: of conversations are so much fun for me and for
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: most other hunters, Like we love seeking out about the strategy.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Um So, I think that's probably the coolest thing. And
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: you guys both alluded to this, having that sounding board,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: having that connection. Now, who can help you think through
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: these things? Um So I said it before I said again,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: please utilize me in that kind of way. Josh too.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: And I know all of your other all the other
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: people who met many of them probably said the same things.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Um and Mark, that's I mean, that's really the only
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: way this program succeeds. Um. You know, Dan, You're you're
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: no different than anybody else going through the program or
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: saying hey, I I feel like inspired to get out there.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: But there's still so many different aspects of it. To
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: do it all on your own as daunting, Um, you've
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: got to have that mentor follow up and in that um,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: you know, relationship where you can still get help because
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: you're gonna need it. Um. So that's that's and that's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: why we try to pair mentors with people that are
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: at least somewhat close to them where they could, um,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: you know, come out and hunt with you or whatever. Um.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: So that's really the only way this this this type
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: of program succeeds as if you have that mentor follow
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: up and um, continuing on that relationship, did you have
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: did you help? How did it work out for you, Jess?
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: Did you have a good mentor some number of years ago?
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: That's funny that yes, because I actually wanted to ask Mike,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: um how it was being mentored by you, because we
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: we've both now kind of had you as a mentor,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: and I'd be I'd be interested that For some reason,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: I feel like Mike's experience is probably much much different
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: than my experience. Yeah, yeah, probably way nicer. So I
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to know them, like what was like marks like
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: blood pressure doing when you kept running into people out there,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: like could you just kind of like see like steam
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: starting to come out of his ears or kind of
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: what was his what was his makeup? As you guys
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: kept running into people. I can only imagine how it was,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: but I'd like to hear it. I mean, honest to god,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: he was pretty calm and collective. Uh, he didn't really
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: get that flighted up. A couple of times He's like,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: oh man, there's still more people, and I'm like, yeah,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: it's okay, We'll just go find another spot, like, no
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: big deal. Well he was pretty calm about it. I
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: know something's happened with Mark. I think this year. I
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. Father, That's what it is. Yeah,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: you could he like he like yell at you and
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: stuff when that deer was come of like don't move
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: like shoot shoot, Like what was like that going? Like
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: what was his directions like when that deer was coming. No,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: I mean he didn't yell at me at all that
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: even while before we now he took the time to
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: ask me kind of like what are my what are
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: my goals? What am I here to learn? What? Why
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: am I you? And he addressed those things really head on.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: I mean the whole time I told him I was
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: like to learn technical stuff and and he just kind
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: of spewed information for the rest of the trip. So
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: it was great. He really did exactly what I asked
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: him to do. So it was a great experience, man.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: And no yelling mom, that's that's great. I'm happy to
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: hear that. I'm happy to hear you had a good,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: positive experience. It sounds like, Josh, maybe you're the problem.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: It's too sensitive. No, I will say though. I remember
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: when that buck was coming in. I was like not yelling,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: but I was like forcefully whispering to try and make
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: sure you heard me. I'm like, he's right here, get ready.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: I was pretty excited. Um yeah, but yeah, it was.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: It was a good time, and I'm glad that you
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: guys had a positive experience. And um, I think the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: final thing I just want to run through is for you, Josh,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: for those people listening, just once again, and I've tried
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: to share this a lot of places, but can you
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: just run down one more time how people can get
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: involved with this, whether they want to be a mentor
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: and help folks out and volunteer, or if they whether
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: they want to be a mentee and want to get
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: help with this program. How can people do that? Yeah,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: no for sure. So so we've got a like a
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: landing page on on qdma's website that's basically everything Field
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: the Fork UM. Any of the podcasts like this one
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: that we've done UM about Field of Fork is house there.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: We've got the video or the film that we just
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: launched on Field to Fork a few weeks back. That's
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: that's on there. It's got a bunch of the articles
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: that have been written written about UM the Field of
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: Fork programs. If you just go to QDMA dot com.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: I believe it's forward slash Field of Fork UM. It
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: takes your right to that UM from a national standpoint.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to to get in touch with someone
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: at q d M a um uh, whether you're a
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: new hunter or someone who wants to mentor reach out
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: to Hank Forrester. UM. H Forrester at QDMA dot com
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: is his email. The market Street could probably put that
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: on your show notes or something like that. UM. And
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: then if you're if you're in Michigan or Indiana or
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: like western Ohio, definitely feel free to reach out to me. UM.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: I can get your pointed in the right direction hopefully,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: UM or really, if you're anywhere you can, you can
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: reach out to me and I can get you where
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: you need to be. UM And my emails is j
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: Hilliard at q dm A dot com. Perfect all right, well,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: highly highly. I can't highly recommend enough for those of
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: you that do hunt. For those of you out there
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: listening to the podcasts that love to get on the
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: woods and love to be out in nature and learn
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: about deer and hunt deer and feed your families and
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: feed your friends. If you've had that privilege in that experience,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: you owe it. And I don't mean to be preachy here,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: but you owe it to everyone else to give it
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: back a little bit and to make sure that other
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: people get to experience that joy and that powerful connection
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: to it's too simply put, it's too awesome of the
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: thing that we have to not share with people. So
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: I can tell you that, go ahead, Josh. No. And
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, and it doesn't have to
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: be a program like this to get someone new out there, right.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you know a friend or a family
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: member or a neighbor, just take them out with you.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be like a formal program like this.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, these are a lot of fun, they're they're great,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: but you know, to really move the needle, it's it's
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: got to be hunters that are just willing to take
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: somebody out with them. So, even if it's not through
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: a program like this, just just take someone with you,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: even if they just sit with you to to experience it. Um,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: it can definitely make a difference. Very true. And what
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: about final thoughts from you guys, Mike, how about you?
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: If you if you were to be able to let's
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: say there's an auditorium full of people that you're standing
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: in front of and they're all folks like you guys.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: Either they've never hunted before, or maybe they had a
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: little bit of hunting experience in the past, but they
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: fell away from it and now they're considering trying to
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: get back into it again. If you had that group
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: of people in front of you, Uh, what would you
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: tell him right now about trying hunting again, or about
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: this programmer or anything that you learned over the weekend. Well,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: I just think that it's such a powerful experience and
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: for me, it's about so much more than just the
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: deer just to kill. It's really, you know, it's the
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: whole experience, Like when do you get an opportunity to
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: go sit in the woods, Like I was telling you, Um,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: you know, after our first hunt. One of the times
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: that I liked the most is after that first forty
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: five minutes or so, when the rest of nature forgets
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: that you're there and everything comes back to life and
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the squirrels are out, and the
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: chipmunks are out, the birds. Um, we had a great
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: experience with red bill hawk. Um. You know, we found
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: a bunch of really awesome mushrooms out there for a
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Simon chef, so I I seek out about the forage
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: and you know, we talked about the fact that you
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: can eat cat tails and like all kinds of stuff.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: And so for me, it's that whole nature experience. It's
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: like it's like going to church. Man. You get a
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: time to sit there with your thoughts and to be
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: a smaller part of a bigger world. And um, hopefully
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: you get the opportunity to to experience with the kill
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: and the stocking of a of a beautiful animal. So
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really something that everybody should take.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: You just got out there and try. You just have
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: to try it. It's a great, great experience. And what
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: about you, Dan, what would you tell to that auditorium. Yeah,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: I means similar to what Mike said. I I mean
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: just being out there. It was just such a great
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: way to disconnect from all the other pressures and and
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: things going on in your day to day life and
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: just turn it off and and focusing on you know,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: what's going on around you out in the field. It's
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: just such a fun experience, whether you see Dear or not,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: just to take a step out and and find some
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: find some land, maybe find some friends, like like minded interests,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: and and head out there and just enjoy enjoy the
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: resources that you have right in front of you. And um,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: you know, I definitely have a lot of respects for
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: what you know, you guys are doing with this programming.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's it's bigger than just teaching
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: people how to hunt, right, I mean, I know, Mark,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: you've talked about how the number of hunters are on
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: the decline, and getting people out there and introducing them
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: to this sport is uh, you know, there's a longer
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: term goal with all of this. It's it's it's going
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: to help protect you know, our wildlife resources, the money
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: that's spent towards you know, different management of habitat. It's
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: it's bigger than just taking us out. It's it's ensuring
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: the future of what we have and making sure that
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: you know, tomorrow is is protected. So UM, it's it's
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: a great it's a great program, and it's you know,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: definitely a lot of a lot of respect for what
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: um these programs are doing and any mentor that goes
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: out and helps get new people involved in the sport.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, well I couldn't
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: have said it better. Um, you guys have got it nailed.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: I might need to hire you to be um to
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: be spokespeople for this. Yeah, you guys are very true. Yeah,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: let me know, Well, this is this is great. I
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: appreciate you guys coming out and taking a leap and
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: trying something new and getting out of your comfort zone
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: and um joining us for this experience. It was so
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: much fun, I think for everyone, and I'm I'm excited
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: and reinvigorated to keep at it and hopefully share this
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: kind of thing with more people. So I will leave
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: you guys with one uh, piece of homework, just one
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: to do list, and that is that you both need
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: to go out and hunt again, and you both need
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: to either call me or text me beforehand and after
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: to talk about what you're going to try to do
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: and how it went, so we can have some strategy
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: debrief sessions. UM. Selfishly, that's probably my favorite thing during
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: hunting season and maybe it'll help you guess a little too.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: So can you do that? Yeah? Hell, yeah, absolutely, man,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: perfect alright, Mark, Can I just kind of just say
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: one more thing here before we wrap up. I just
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: want to give a big shout out and thank you
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: to um all the mentees that that did come out,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: the new hunters that came out UM for this weekend,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: and I also did one last weekend in the Lansing area,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: So between the two weekends we had sixteen new hunters
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: out in the woods. UM. So a huge thank you
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: to all of all of these new hunters that signed
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: up and actually showed up to do it. And another
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: big thank you and shout out to all the mentors
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: who came out. I mean, we can't do these types
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: programs without dedicated volunteers and people really taking the time
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: out of their own hunting schedule, um to come out
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: and and and help out with these types of programs.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: And um, you know we had mentors, you know, sixteen
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: mentors for each weekend, so um we had a couple
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: even double up that did both weekends. So huge. Thank
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: you to all those guys and gals that took time
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: out of their schedules that I'm sure they're busy and
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: and wanted to give back to a program like this.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: So so thank you to all of you who went
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: through this program. It was it was awesome putting both
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: of these on. And um, it's a lot of work,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: but man, it is well well worth it, and I
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: guess I should say well done to you two further,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of work, so good job organizing it.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: It turned out great. You did a day and good
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: job and um and I think on that note, we
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: will wrap it up. So good luck Mike, good luck Dan,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: and let's stay in touch. Sounds good. Thanks, It was
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: an honor. Thank you, Thank you guys, thanks for having
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: us and that's gonna do it. Folk, thank you for listening.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: I hope this gives you just a little bit more
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: information or a little bit more of kicking the behind
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: to introduce new folks to this wonderful thing that we
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: get to do, which is hunting. Uh. And hopefully those
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: tips at the front end on hunting the pre rut
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: we're helpful as well. I'm excited for you guys, I'm
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: excited for my own hunts. UH. Next time we chat,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: I'll be back from the boundary waters with an update.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Hopefully there's some stories to share there, and the rut
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: will basically do haunahs, so holy smokes, hope you're ready
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: hold onto your seats. So until next time, good luck
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: hunting and stay wired to hunt.