Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 251: Buckman Juice on the Back 40

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Ep. 251: Buckman Juice on the Back 40 · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody right up top here before anything happens.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I owe everyone listening a huge thank you. A couple
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: episodes ago, we released an episode called Begging and Pleading
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: re Ducts. In that episode announced the release of our
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: latest book title, The Meat Eater Guide to Wilderness Skills
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and Survival, in which I had gone on the pot,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in which the podcast episode that is, I had implored
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: you to make the purchase not only for your own benefit,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: but because I have a lifelong dream of having one
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of my titles hit the New York Times bestseller list,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and you guys knocked it out of the park. The
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: mea Eater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival debut as
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: number four on the New York Times Bestseller List. So
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: thank you to everyone who went out and bought a book.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It's still for sale, it's still a good book, but
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: you did it. Thank you. This is Me Eater Podcast
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: coming in you shirtless, severely bog bitten, in my case,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: underwear listening podcast. You Can't Predict Anything presented by on X.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play store.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Nor where you stand with on X. All right, we're joined.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I hate to say this, people, I hate to say it,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: but we're joined remotely. It's like the COVID deah COVID.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We're joined remotely by Clay Newcomb Newcombe h and Mark
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: back Forty, Kenyon Houdy Clay. How you doing, man, I'm
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: doing good, doing very good. Mark? Are you well? Arrested
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: right now? Finally, for the first time about a month,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I do feel arrested. It's been a been a busy
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: spell here. So the last two days I got to
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: sleep in and that like, uh, you being like, um,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of a like a white tailed rut
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: fanatical kind of guy. Um, there's there's still raging around though,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: So why are you resting now? Yeah, So it's kind
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of just I'm not completely resting. I'm gonna start hunting
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: again tomorrow. But I needed to take a couple of
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: days because the last thirty I've hunted of the last
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: thirty days, so starting October that was when it all
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: got crazy. So I got to see my wife and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: kids a little bit, get a little sleep, and then uh,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and then yeah, I'll get back after it. I need
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a good job like a job like you got, Mark,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I'm work. I'm still getting the regular working too. Don't worry,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it's just after dark. It's amazing what one day of
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: sleeping in will do for you after you've been pounding
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the daylight hunting. I've got an equation. I think one
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: morning of sleeping in makes up for ten days of hunting.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: It's amazing what one little break can do. Yeah, I agree, Yeah,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: that's true. You come back pretty reagged and recovered pretty quick,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: and it almost makes you think like you could build
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: a system out of it, and it's worth it. I have.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I used to think that I would feel really guilty
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: if I wasn't hunting every single possible moment I could,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: But I think that you get that eventual point of
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: diminishing returns where you you go ten days straight and
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: you've just lost focus and you've lost some edge. If
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: you get that one morning, it's totally worth sacrificing four
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: hours of hunting to get the much you know, much
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: more effective seven more days after that. I think, Uh.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: The thing that messes with me about it is all there.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of really compelling research um that sleeping
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: is real, real good for you. And that there's possible links.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: And I usually hate when people say there's possible links
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: between you know this and that. But um, early onset
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: dimension stuff man from not sleeping enough. M hm, like
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: you need to do it. And I used to not
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: do it much, and when I did, I was mostly
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: kind of like sleeping, like like a lot of times
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: they kind of hung over and whatnot. Now I try
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to really prioritize, uh, getting enough sleep. Do you know
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: what your magic number is? A lot of people kind
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: of feel like they find that sweets about how much
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: they need every night. Yeah, but I'm embarrassed to say
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: eight hours. Dude, you don't need about that eight hours.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Did you guys catch this news this news item ott
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: of Wyoming? In Wyoming, they have are you Are you
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: guys similar with the one shot the one shot Antelope Hunt? Yeah,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I know that. I'm an alumni, an alum of the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: one shot so for eighty years in Lander, Wyoming, the
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: governor of So for eighty years in a row. I
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: think it's been like what sixteen governors or something have
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: been involved in this. Uh. They host this antelop punt
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: and you have these like it's very uh. In describing it.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: It can sound a little compromised, but it's like this.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You have these teams, right, and the governor hosts it.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: It raises money for some habitat improvement work. UM. The
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: governor hostet and all these groups come out and you
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: make these little teams, and the teams go out to
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: hunt antelope and even get special game commission analope tags. Right,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: the teams come out to hunt antelope and uh, you
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: gotta you can only shoot once. Okay, if you shoot
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: more than once, you can't, You're you're disqualified. So everybody
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: has to shoot one time and get an antelope. And
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: so if you're group of three people can go out
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and fire three shots one eat, one shot for each
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of you and get an antelope any basically throughout the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: whole day. There's like a timing element to it. But
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: basically if you can accomplish that and all three people
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: get one with one shot, you have a very good
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: chance of of winning. And they do it in conjunction
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: with UM a local tribe, and there's all these like
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: banquets and everything. I did this a couple of years
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: ago where I was invited by UH so, I was
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: invited by Colorado's governor, and I went with a former
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Special Forces soldier who's on our team. He said he
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: likes to get ringers. M So it's me a Special
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Forces guy and him and we went out and did
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: this thing. Now, at that time, there was starting to
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: be a lot of like heat, a lot of heat
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: on the one shot Annelope Hunt Club because it was
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: dudes only, bros only, and had been dudes only for
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: eighty years. And like usually I do all kinds of
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: things with just guys that just happens to be just guys,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: but I usually would shy away from anything meant to
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: be just guys. Like the minute someone says it's just guys,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it gives me a creepy feeling.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Like anything like just for men or like a men's
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: club or a men's group, I'm like, home, why you mean?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Like if I wanted to bring my super good buddy
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: who's a woman, she can't come. It's against the rule.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: It just strikes me as so weird, right, I'm surprised
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that was still the case. Well, with a lot of
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: old stuff that's been going on a long time, Like
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I honestly, honestly didn't put too much thought into it
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: because there's so much like culturally, there's so many old
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: institutions that are dudes only that it's almost like it's
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: not like it's stand it's beginning to stand out. But
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: for a long time it didn't like stand out because
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: my old man, uh like growing up mild man belonged
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: to well, he's big at he liked to go to
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: drink at the VFW after you ice fished, and that
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: wasn't men only, but at that time it was men only.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And then he belonged to a thing called the Wise Men,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: like a philanthropic group that raised money for the y,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and you had to be a dude to be a
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: wise man. And then his church group was for dudes only,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: like his particular group within the church was a dude
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: only group. Like if a woman wanted to go, they
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: would like not let her go. So it was very
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: it's like very to me, right or wrong, very normal, appearing,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: normal feeling to have like these gender exclusive things. I
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: didn't pay much attention to it, but when I went,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I was just the buzz. There's buzz around two issues.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: There's buzz around that these people that participated got these
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: dedicated tags which chapped the asses of a lot of
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: people around town who are like, I have to draw
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the permit, but like if people go to this, they
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: like get permits, and that that was irritating to something
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And was this like a unit that was tough to
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: draw otherwise and it would have been but a good unit,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: a good union, and it would have been invitation only
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: sum you have to apply. But I was there like
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I was invited. So the governor of Wyoming always has
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: a team. The governor Colorado always has a team. This
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: has always been like the thing. The new governor of
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Colorado apparently the first guy and forever like the new
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: governor of Colorado his uh I gathered that his husband
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: is um big anti hunter. Yeah, so this dude isn't
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: going and he broke the whole tradition of it being
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: like the governor of Wyoming and the governor of Colorado
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: hunting together. I was there like like I had met
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Wyoming's This gets a little complicated. I was at a concert.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I was at an event one time where Wyoming's governor
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Matt Mead in Colorado, those governor John Hick and Looper
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: who are who are friendly and there on the other
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: sides of the political spectrum, but they're friendly in respect,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you know, respectful to one another. I met them both, like,
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  Speaker 1: we had a cocktail one time at of an event
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: where they were being honored for their collaborative work around
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: sage grouse habitat Okay. So they were being honored as
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: this like Democrat and Republican who set their differences aside
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: and came together around sage grouse work and habitat work.
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  Speaker 1: So I shot the ship with both of them, and
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: afterward I was invited to go down and do this deal.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: So here I get one of these tags, and I
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: don't do ship to get it. I just get it, okay.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: So you someone could look and say, oh, that's not fair.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: But then the Wyoming Game Commission um they put like
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: apparently they put value on this sort of like collaborative
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: conservation thing that has been going on for eighty years
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and fuels a lot of economic activity in the area
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: and brings different politicians and figures together to in this
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: like collaborative mood of doing habitat work. So right, like everything,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: like everything, there's two sides of the story. But the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: women thing was just becoming an issue, and they started
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: like somehow they got other commission tags to start, like
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: a woman's antalope hunt. So now you've created Now they
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: had like two of these things at this point. Now
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: this new story just came out that now for the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: first time since nine women will be allowed to compete
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: in the twenty one lander one shot antelope hunt. So
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: they combined them, they didn't. I don't know if they
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: officially combined them or if they got competitive, you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: remember like when I don't know if it's like a
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: situation where remember how the UM girl Scouts and boy
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Scouts gotten a little piss and match because the boy
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: scouts were gonna let girls into the boy Scouts and
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that piste off the girl scouts. I don't know. I
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: don't know enough about what went on, but a lot
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: of people are applauding this, even even like people who
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: are participating the Another body of mine sent this article
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: to me, and he had done the one shot UM
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: and had a good time there. He was also a governor.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: He was like on a governor team. He had done
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the one shot and thought that this is a step
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: in the right direction. So it's like a similar all
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: women like you can have all women beyond a team
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: or you can have you know, men women groups. And
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the way this thing works is you apply. So when
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: I was there, like some there was like I think
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: some a group of firefighters right had applied to come
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: down and they were accepted into it. And like I said,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of banquets and elbow robin, what's the what's
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the prize? What do you get if you win this thing? Oh?
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I think that the Governor's I know, between the two governors,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: there's this statue, this little ship and statue of an antelope,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and it lives at the governor's mansion and it swaps
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: back and forth, and there's a lot of spirited uh,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of spirited you know, rivalry around who
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: did it? So when I was on it, it went
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to it flew home with the Colorado governor. M hm,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: so say it again, I says, Colorado is not gonna
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: have a team. Then this year I heard that the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: governor of Colorado, hick and Looper always took a lot
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of heat. You know, it could potentially take a lot
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: of heat, and took some heat. And after hick and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Looper had gotten involved in some things that uh, Hicky
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Looper had gotten involved in some gun control measures that
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: were very unpopular with hunters and gun owners. And when
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I was there with uh, when I was there with him,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: that was an issue, and I thought it was um
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: bold of him to go right, but he went and
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: took it and tried to you know, and and like
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that collaborative spirit even though people being on different sides
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: of the aisle on such an important issue. Um yeah
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: he But yeah, now apparently the Colorado's governor won't go well.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And just I say that some women tend to better
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: long range shooters than men when it comes to like
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: sitting on a bench. You know, if you were to
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: like train man and a woman the same a lot
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: of times, that woman would be a better shot. Have
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: you heard that? I mean, I don't know why that
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be true, But no, I don't. I don't know that.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I've heard that. You've heard that
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: wouldn't kind of surprise me. I've heard that from a
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: guy that that had a long range shooting school. He
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: told me that. Yeah, I wanna Danielle Prewitt, who man her?
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Have you guys made Daniell's Um, have you guys made
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Daniell's Uh, whiskey butter sauce heart recipe just looking at it.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: But I haven't tried to ship man anyhow. She did
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: though she did the I think she did the woman's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: one shot aloud. I gonna ask Danielle I should have
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if Danielle and Karin our producer. I
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: feel like they should apply and go down apply for
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the old boys one get a little team going go
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: on down there. Yeah, she'd place up. Can you are
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: you allowed to ever go back against Eve or is
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: it a once in a lifetime opportunity? No? I was allowed. Weirdly,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: yeah you are, and there's all these stipulations to it,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: but you are. Um, and it's it works in various ways.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: But just for scheduling and other reasons, I was not
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: able to go um. Someone tried. There was a because
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Hick and Looper, Uh, Hick and Loopers U in Colorado.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: You know, he's kind of a centrist, so he won
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the he went from he turned out as a governor
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: in Colorado and just took a sentence. See he's a
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: centrist Democrat, right, So he gets a lot of heat
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: from the left and he gets a lot of heat
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: from the right. Um, someone had done. Uh. There was
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a hit piece out on Hick
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and Looper for have for um, a hit piece out
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: on him for having participated in the one shot. Well
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: did he do you know if he killed Nlop with
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: one shot? I mean that's the main thing I think. Well,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. No, he did not. He did not.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: And I heard that back the other direction, if you Yeah,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I had heard people say there was like grumblings, Um,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I should ask him about this. There was grumblings some
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: people either like I don't the guy doesn't do it,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Like I don't. Think it's like an avid hunter. There's
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: grumblings that he throws his shots. Yeah, yeah, that's I
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: was going. It's like I went. But so the reason
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: but the reason he got to return with the statue,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: with the to bring it back to his I think
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: he had had the thing in the first place. It
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: was like he has it in his office quite a lot,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: or had it in his office quite a lot. I
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: think the reason he got to do it is because,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: like I said, he brought in some ringers, you know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And um, so I did. I got mine very I
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: got one early in the morning and this former Green beret.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: He got one early in the morning. UM. And then
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Hick and Looper did not get one. UM. But then
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Governor mead the way it worked was like he can't
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: fill he can't get all ringers. Like he gets a
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: signed there's some weird tradition where he could to sign
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: someone like and like like some person who's been involved
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: for a long time gets as signed to him. And
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I think he can only get one ringer. You're tracking me.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: It's a strange institution. Oh, listen, listen, you don't. Yes,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I had quite a good time. I had quite a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: good time. But yeah, and they you know, they're evolving
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: with the times. Do you think is that is? This
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: is this thing pretty well received by the people in Colorado?
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And I mean because it kind of it does kind
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: of make people uncomfortable sometimes these even the governor tags
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and and I understand, Yeah, it's controversial. It's controversial for sure.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't like. I didn't. I'm guilty of having not
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: known what it was until I was until I was invited,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and I didn't give it. I didn't spend too much
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: time on it. Um. When I got invited, I called
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Rourke Denver because Rurk Denver had who's a former Seal
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Rourke Denver had been brought down there by Governor Mead
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: as as a ringer on that side, and he got you.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: You were recruited as a ringer though, Is that true? Well?
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Are you are you questioning the lot that? Are you
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: saying that that wasn't Are you Are you trying to
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: consulting to me? No? No, no, no no no. I
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: just I mean, you know, you're like making a little
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: dig I mean, I guess I'm just kind of like,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you know, like an NBA draft. You know, it's like
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: first round draft picks like that, dude's a ringer. You
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: get into the second round and it's like, you know,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: he's good enough to play an NBA, but he's not.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: These references, these NBA references are gonna fall flat on Steve.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: He's not following you. I know, I know, I know
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: that's not true because I just watched um the last
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: dance M fascinating, dude. I now know everything about basketball.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I know all about the field they play onsten that
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: was a little dig clay and all I can say.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: All I can say is, let's just take a look
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: at the facts. At daybreak at daybreak, I got a buck. Yeah,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: can I argue with that? The cold gray lighted on? Yeah,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I'm with you. How far was the shot? How far
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: was the shot? Too? Okay, one seventy six? Maybe if
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: I remember digging back in the old memory bank. Mm
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: hmm what like what dude, Phil, can you cut him off? Yeah?
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Clay is getting little old. It's like wow, man, for
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: he like half quarantined. And then I gotta have like,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: all right, so that's a great that's a great shot. Man.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Too late, buddy, too late? Uh? Yeah, this is this
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: is this is coming from a guy who lives in
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: a state you can't see more than fifty yards in
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: any direction. Yeah, like a long shot for me is
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: like a you know, twenty two yard traditional archery shot.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: So I uh, I for the first time in quite
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a while missed a big game animal with a rifle
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: this year. And now I'm not saying that all my
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: hits are great hits, because that's definitely not true. But
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: just to like flat out um to flat out miss
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: really shook me up. Man. You know, I thought you
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: guys did. Uh. Your description of all the factors that
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: went into that miss was pretty compelling, though, I mean,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: you know, the the length of the hair, you know,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the you know, there were a couple there were two
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: factors I think that were causing you to maybe shoot
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit high. That had to do with the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: with the gun itself. And so anyway, I appreciated the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in depth look into the miss and I didn't want to.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't really want to bring that up. But you know,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: you're Clay's referring to a previous episode called the Miss
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and the Return. Um, Clay, what is the name of
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: the now like super famous bear that that that has
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: roamed into your home state there? Yeah, Bruno. It's a
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: bear named Bruno. You're familiar with the legacy of Pedals
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: the bear, right, yes, Yeah, in New Jersey was missing
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the front leg, would walk on two legs all over
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: all over the place. Yeah, he had a real penchant
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: free and bird seed. I'm talking about pedals. Clay is
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: going to tell us the saga of Bruno the Bear
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: in a minute. Here. It was like now and then
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a bear really makes the news, and right now Bruno
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: is in the spotlight. But Pedals the bear had some
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: sort of deformity um where it would walk around a
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: fair bit on its behind legs. Yeah, you know, we
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: had a to put a pause on pedals for a minute.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: When we were floating a river up in Alaska this
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: year looking for moose. We had a sow grizzly who
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: was irritated with us, stand up on her back feet
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and just swinging her pause wildly and agitation, but a
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: hundred yards away. Have you ever seen that? I never have? Yeah,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: like shadow boxing, like like shadow like swiping her paws,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: like just all worked up and stood there for a
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: remarkably long time. M hmm. And then later kind of
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: around the next bend, kind of like half charged of raft,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: all worked up so pebbles and petals would get around
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: on his back feet and he got real famous around
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: New Jersey. Um, and it was very popular with like
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: New Jersey cat ladies and whatnot. So then some dude
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: New Jersey had a bear hunting season and some dude
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: knowingly or unknowingly, I don't know what, shoots petals and
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: New Jersey has this kind of awful practice, had this
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: maybe Yeah, the governor New Jersey, if you if you
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: live there, like, don't vote for that dude ever. Again.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: The Governor New Jersey sort of ran on an anti
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: bear hunting platform, like a plank in his platform was
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to be anti bear hunting. Yeah, just a joke of
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: a position, and you know, contradicting his own state phishing
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: game agency. So he Uh, they had this unsavory practice
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: which is like where you had to go to these
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: check stations when you're bear hunting, and they would allow
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: like like open to the public, so people could go
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: down and like get riled up about. So if a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: hunter goes out legally kills a bear and is trying
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: to you know, follow the letter of the law and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: bring the bear into a check station, you gotta go
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: in there and deal with hecklers. You know. It would
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: be like if if planned parenthood, Like you could come
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: into the lobby if you didn't like what they had
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: going on in there and standing a lot, Like how
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: would that go over with people just asking for trouble?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Pedals everybody had a ship fit. There was
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: even a newspaper that ran an obituary on Pedals and um,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I read that he was assassinated. Wow, you know there's
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: there's some new stuff with that. Steve. You probably you
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: may have seen it. We we ran an article in
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: it about it. But he's so it's the guy's name
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: is Phil Murphy, and he is who's the guy named
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Phil Murphy? Phil Murphy? Sorry, yeah, Governor of New Jersey's
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: name is Phil Murphy, and he has vowed that in
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: one there will be no bear season in New Jersey
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and on state land. Right, that's right, But you can
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: still hunt on private land, which quite a bit of
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: bear hunting in New Jersey does take place on private lands.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Hasn't totally shut it down, but you know, obviously all
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the game officials are trying to find ways to manage
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: this large population of bears, which is it's a super
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: dense population of bears and people. So I mean, it
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: just you know, I mean we're preaching to the choir
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: talking about it here, but I mean it just makes
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: common sense. It just makes rational sense from every single
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: perspective that that hunters would manage that bear population. But uh, yeah,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a sticky situation. Does new do you
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: guys know someone could even look real quick, does New
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Jersey have the have have they gotten the right to
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: hunting fish? Uh? Constitutional amendment? I don't know that one.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: We'll find that out in a second, So start telling
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: us about Bruno the Bear, who's now like the latest
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Internet Darling. Yeah, so it kind of here here's the timeline, Steve,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: and here here is what we believe has happened. Some
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: of some of this is like very documentable, some of
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: it is speculation. But so Bruno the bear they believe
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: came out of northern Wisconsin. And I've talked to multiple
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: people about this that are in the know. I've talked
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: to the Arkansas bar biologist, Missouri bar biologist, and another
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: guy named Darryl Radajack and who's a biologist who's kind
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: of covered the whole story of Bruno the Bear. But basically,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: in as I understanding, northern Wisconsin would be where most
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: of the bared density, you know, high bared density areas
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: are Southern Wisconsin would be like farm ground in in
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: southern Wisconsin. They started noticing this bear traveling through urban
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: areas and agricultural areas, and it was enough of of
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: oddity that people in southern Wisconsin started saying, Hey, there's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a bear in an odd place. Okay, that bear gained
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: some recognition on he's wearing a collar. The bear to
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: this day has no tracking collar. The bear he does
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: not Okay, the bear. Let me just give you the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: general overview and then we can talk about the details.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: The bear traveled from what they believe northern Wisconsin into
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: southern Wisconsin, into Iowa, crossed, swam the Mississippi River into
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Illinois state. In Illinois for some time, swam the Mississippi
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: River again. All this is very I mean, people videoed
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: him doing this. Came back into Iowa, and then in
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: early July ended up in Missouri. Traveled, traveled south in Missouri,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: basically got himself cornered into a very populated area north
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: of St. Louis, where the bear would had no way
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: out other than the across major interstate highways. The Missouri
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Department of Conservation sends their bear team in. They capture
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the bear, sedate the bear, and take the bear to
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: southern Missouri where they have a a population of bears
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and good bear habitat. So they, you know, the Missouri
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Department of Conservation, they handled this bear just like they
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: would have any other, you know, nuisance bears. I'm trying
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: to take the perspective of the listener here, as a
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: listener to this story, what is it without a distinguishing markings.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I just assumed it had a collar on, because how
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: in the hell else would they know? Like, what is
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: it doing that? People are like, Oh, there he is,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: that's him. Okay. I asked the exact same question to
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Darryl Raderjack and he said that the bear has an
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: uncanny desire to walk down roads, to walk through crop fields,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: and basically to stay extremely visible and to be undeterred
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: by humans. Man, I'm serious. There are videos with forty
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: fifty people standing relatively close to this bear, like following it,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: and it's a four to five year old male. They think,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: so it's I mean, it's a good sized male. It's
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: not a young male, which is odd because usually a
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: dispersing male would be a young one. That's what's so
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: odd about this is this is an adult male. The
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: only time it's been marked was when the Missouri guys
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: got it. They put in they put ear tags in
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: it that are distinguishable. Okay, Can I can I add?
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Can I add another thing in here too? That, um
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the has to do with this, the Wisconsin component of this.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Real quick. We've had Dr Carl Malcolm on the show
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: many times when Carl is a bear researcher. Came early
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: in his career, he was a bear researcher and did
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of work on looking at these bears that
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: were coming out of northern Wisconsin um into southern Wisconsin
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and how successful they were. He had this thing about
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: this animal he named the Wisconsin supersow that put off,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: put off and raised to one pounds two litters of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: five cubs mhm. In such a mild climate in southern
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin that when she went to hibernate, she would just
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: lay down under a tree mhm. And if you look
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: at bear, I think it's helping with this story. If
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: you look at like bear populations and clay, you know
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: this way better me you can speak to this for
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: people that it's like it's like bear black bear populations
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: in the country aren't aren't like intuitive and it's patchy.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: You know. If you look at like moose, right, you
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: look and be like, Okay, there's a bunch of moose
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: across the north or whatever. Right with bears, there's like
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: they're here and they're there, there's holes in between, and
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: it might not make immediate sense to someone right like
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: how could you have why do you have bears in
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Arkansas Missouri? But then north there could be holes in
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: their distribution to the northeast, south, and west right, So
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: if you don't mind speaking to that a little bit. So,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the the natural range of the black bear in North
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: America was would have been from the Atlantic Ocean to
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean, from the boreal forest all the way
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: down into Mexico with a small, a sizeable hole in
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: the Great Plains. Okay, but all these populations would have
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: been connected, you know, pre European settlement. And so now
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: just with urban urbanization, fragmentation of wilderness just that has
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: happened with civilization. We now just have these pockets of
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: really quality bear habitat and it's it's relatively big. I mean,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: there there's surprisingly for such a large carnivore. There's a
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: lot of black bears, and black bears are thriving. But
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: what it does create is what they'd call in the
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: biology world Alipatrick populations, meaning like isolated populations like for instance,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: like the Arkansas, Oklahoma, Southern Missouri bear population they would
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: have said was an Alpatrick population. That population is not
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: breeding with bears from East Tennessee, that that population is
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: not breeding with bears from northern Wisconsin. But That's what's
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: so crazy about this is that now we're seeing like
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: a connection between these really vastly separated populations of bears.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And so this bear ends up in Arkansas, I mean
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: to to fit to kind of give the whole macro view.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: The bear started in northern Wisconsin and is today in Arkansas.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: And the question how many just linear. I think it's
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: around a thousand miles. And so here here's the most
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: interesting thing, Steve, is that there's with talking to all
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: these biologists. I just asked him, like, what do you
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: why do you think this bear did this? And there
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: was some interesting responses like a bear disperses for two reasons,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: to find new territory because he's being pushed out of
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: his territory, or to find mate. To find a mate,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: or to find a food source. And essentially, Darryl said,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: if this bear was looking for a mate, he wouldn't
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: have had to go all the way to Arkansas. He
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: could have stopped in southern Missouri. Like he passed through
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: lots of like pretty good bear areas, so he clearly
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: wasn't looking for mate. He wasn't looking for food because
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: he passed through all kinds of great food sources, and
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: he's an older male, so he wasn't dispersing just to
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: find new territory, or he would have just found new
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: territory in southern Wisconsin. The only thing that makes any
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: sense from a biological perspective is what they call the
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: homing instinct on these bears, which they relocate these bears
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: all the time when they get in nuisance trouble, you know,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: so they'll they'll bearrel be getting in trouble, you know,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: digging into somebody's trash can. They'll capture that bear. They'll
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: drive it thirty forty miles away, turn it loose, and
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: the next day the barrel be there eating out of
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: that trash can. Again. There's so many incredible stories up
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: to you know, guys taking bears a hundred and fifty
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: miles away and that bear ended up back. This bear
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: acted like he was coming home. That's that's the only
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: like biological driver. The way he was just headed due south.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: There was nothing I'm looking at it now like if
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: you remove any zigzagging around, he covered between seven and
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: eight hundred miles as the crow flies. Yeah, yeah, hey.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: In in that whole time, Steve, he never got into
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: any nuisance trouble, that that that thing walked on roads.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: It chose populated areas rather than like walking in like
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: river drainages. So Tomyron means the Arkansas Bear Coordinator. He
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: told me that to his knowledge, the bear never got
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: a single nuisance call, Like, it didn't go on people's porches.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: It ate natural food. It kept its nose out of
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the out of the you know, out of the bad stuff.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: That's incredible. Okay, now here's here's the coolest part. So
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: if the bear was coming home, why did he like,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: how did he get up there? And there's a theory.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: And you're gonna like this theory, Steve, it's it's it's
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: it's crazy. There is a theory that this bear got
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: trapped in a grain barge on the Mississippi River in
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Arkansas and he was transported up the Mississippi River, got
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: out into Wisconsin and has been on a journey back home.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: I love that's well, you know what, there's a story
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you guys grew up reading about Paul Revere, right yeah,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: one by land too, by sea. You know the British
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: are coming. Yeah. Later historians really started, uh poke some
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: holes into the story of Paul Revere and I don't
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: know the details of it, but it seems like there's
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: this this idea that it was a little more a
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: little more fiction than fact, right, or like an embellished legend,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: and some politicians I can't remember who it was, said
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I love Paul Revere, whether he wrote or not. Yeah,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: so that I like that theory true or not, I'm
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: sticking with that ship. That's that's what I'm buying. That's
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: what I'm buying. Story. Hey this uh so here, here's
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: the the social odd thing about this is that this
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: is the first time that something like this has been
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: documented on social media. There's a Facebook page with two
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand followers that's called keep Bruno Safe.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that's the name of Yeah, I Keep
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Bruno Safe. And so Mayron means Arkansas Bear Coordinator Large
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: carnivore coordinator received the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission when
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: they found that bear was here, received an incredible amount
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: of pressure to collar that bear so that he would
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: then be protected by law in Arkansas because you cannot
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: shoot a collared bear in Arkansas the world. But back
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: back up hold on a secondary Bruno is coming from
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: a state that has bear seasons. Yes, his journey began
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: in a bear season state, right, Yeah, but then he
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: spent some time in a couple of states with no
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: bear season and got famous. Correct, that's right, people start
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: falling in love with him. And then now in his
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: southern journey, he has now re entered a bear hunting state,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: that's right. And now people are like, I don't care
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: about all the bears that live where he used to live,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: and I didn't care about him when he lived there,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and I don't care about the bears that live in
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Arkansas normally anyway, I don't want anyone to hurt that
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: bear because I know about that one. That's right, Okay,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: so go on, Well, I was proud of the Game
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: and Fishes response here is Myron. Myron said that bear
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: is no different than any other bear that we have
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: in this state, and we're not going to call her him.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, they just they just said we're not going
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: to call her that bear because they don't call her
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: male bears. The only reason they call her bears and
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: expend resources to do salve studies, den studies and whatnot,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: and so the bear right now, they think they know
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: where it's at supposedly a hunter took a photo of
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: this bear in a den cavity tree and it is
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: just outside of one of the bear zones um in Arkansas.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: But but it's a deer hunter. Yeah, deer hunters. Yeah, yeah,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: so it's not it's not even in a bear zone
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: right now where the bears out. It is not in
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: a ari zone as I understand it. But hey, you'll
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: like this, Steve. So all this happened in the summer,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: and then the bear came into Arkansas and September, okay,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the Arkansas bear season opens in September. My mother, my
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: sweet mother, calls me on the phone and says, Clay,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: don't kill Bruno. My mom's like my pr manager, and
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: she's like, whatever you do, don't kill Bruno. And I said, okay, mom,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: got it. I won't do it because she doesn't want
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you to take the heat or she doesn't want oh yeah, yeah,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah. She she she could foresee you know, me
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: killing this famous bear. Which there is a thing though, man,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: where there are dudes out there, like like for there
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: are dudes out there who would be like I want
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: that bear, And there are dudes out there which would
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: imagine most people I hang out with will be like,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I want anything to do with that bear. That seems
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: like trouble. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, here's what happened to
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: is that, so they were posting all over social media,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: like these daily updates on this bear, like you could
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: have tracked, you could have known where this bear was
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: any given day of the year. Some day, like when
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: the bear came into Arkansas, somebody got online, a hunter
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: and made a comment and said, wow, I've got two
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand guides telling me exactly where a bear is,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: you see. And so after that the thing shut down
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: on the daily updates exactly where. That's that. That's what
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: I heard. That's what that's what. That's what one of
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: the biologists told me. I mean, like they kind of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: went quiet. They were like, oh wow, we're giving out
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: too much information. There is a there is a bird
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna name. I'm not gonna name the species.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: There is a non native There is a very small
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: population of a non native bird that lives in one
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: state in America. Um and they live in one specific
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: mountain range in one state in America. And you're allowed
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: to hunt for this bird non native. It is exceedingly
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: difficult to get one. They live in very inhospitable, very
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: high elevation, cliffy terrain, and they're hard to find. And
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: we took an interest in seen about going and checking
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: this whole situation out. And I realized that when birders
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: see the bird, they they log it's where they saw it.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: And I remember thinking that that was not that great
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: of an idea to do that over the line. In
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: a similar situation, something we've covered in the past is
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: in the state of Montana, the state has gotten I
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: can't remember in the in what timeline twenty four requests
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: for radio collar data off game animals, and they have
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: a little choice about to comply what's coming from who hunters?
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: You can just get that information. Apparently they don't. It
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: has through through whatever legal structure they work under. It's
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: public information because it's a state project. So if the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: state puts a collar on a elk, a bull elk,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: apparently someone can come and say, I would like to
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: see the collar data off that elk, and they don't
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: have I think they don't have a way in which
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: they can say screw you. M hm. That's surprising. Yeah,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: I was in Fairbanks one time during moose season, and
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: I was talking to a biologist and she was telling
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: me she's got collars on a handful of bulls that
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: live right around the edges of Fairbanks and she could
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: have any minute tell you where those bulls are standing.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: M hm, and doesn't want to do that. And maybe
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: they have different rules up there. But it was an
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: interesting conundrum. You gotta be pretty like, you gotta be
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: pretty pathetic if that's your hunt plan. Hey, this was
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: this was public knowledge, so I'm not like divulging a secret.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I saw it on social media. But our buddy Mike Chamberlain,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the Turkey dock, he uh you know, he's radio collar
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: and all these uh gobblers and places I think in Alabama.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: He at one time gave information to um. Well he
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: tells the story on this podcast. Okay, okay, Well there's
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: no okay, got it, No need for me to like,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: they couldn't kill it even when they had the information.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: They were studying how he was I can't remember the
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: name of that episode, U Mike, guess Mike Chamberlain. They
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: were studying how turkeys respond to various stimuli and how
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: turkeys respond to hunting pressure. They had his bird no
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: one could kill, and he would tell people where it is,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: just to watch what it would do. And then but
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: here's they had this one bird no one could get
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: and some dude gets in a fight with his wife
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: and storms off, gets in his car and drives down.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: And the second he enters the um, the second he
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: enters like the game management area, wildlife management area of
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: some sort, pull is over like at the entrance gate,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: walks over a hill, sits down against a tree, does
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: a hand clock, and kills the turkey. The name of
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: that episode was Gobble your ass off. If anyone wants
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: to listen to it, Gobble your ass off. Yeah, so
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: he sent all these stone cold killers after this turkey.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: You couldn't get him. And then some guy gets in
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: a fight with his wife and storms off and a
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: huff and gets it. I remember you asked, Mike if
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: you knew what the fight was about between the husband
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and wife. So, so where does it stand right now
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: with Bruno. He's alive, he's alive, he's he's denning in Arkansas,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and uh, he's he's all okay. So that we had hoped,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I'd hope that they had pulled a hair sample off
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: the spar. If they had a hair sample, they could
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: tell from d NA where the spare came from. And
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: they didn't do it, and I'm it was unclear. It
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: just wasn't protocol to pull a hair sample off a
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: nuisance spare. And so they don't want to do anything
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: out of the They don't want to do anything special. Yeah,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and and so, but that would have told us because
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: we have all this DNA data here in Arkansas. They
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: got it in Wisconsin. But here's the kind of my
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: last thought on this, Steve, is that you know, all
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: the biologists said, like, this is really unusual, but bears
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: are notorious, and large carnivores are notorious, notorious for these
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: wild like travels. I mean, there's there's stories of mountain
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: lions that started in the Dakota is getting hit by
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: a car in Connecticut. Uh, there have been there've been
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: gray wolves in northern Missouri. There's there was a linx
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: that was seen or killed in Missouri. Like these these
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: animals do these big wild migrations. And and the question
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: I asked all the biologists was do you think this
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: is more normal than we think? And because you know
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: how many bears you know, there's eight hundred thousands of
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: million bears in North America right now, probably you know,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: probably less than five hundred or radio collared that we
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: can actually track, and we never would attract this except
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: for social media. If this bear had just been a
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: little bit different, we would know nothing about this bear.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: There just be a bear in northern Arkansas that it
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: just we just thought was an Arkansas bear, you know,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: like this was just such an the bear. The reason
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: the bear we know this is because of how visible
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: he was. But maybe this happens more often than not
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: and we don't know it. I'd put my money on that. Yeah.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I think biologically, and in doing quite a bit of
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: just looking at research projects and stuff, I think there's
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: biology favors the odd bear that does something crazy, because
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: you have these populations that pretty much all do the
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: same thing, but there's always these outliers. And I think
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: over like long long periods of time, sometimes that outlier
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: is the one that survives because of maybe some catastrophe
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: in the home range. Do you understand what I'm saying.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: So like, inside the mechanism of bear populations, there's the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: crazy uncle, wild hair, you know, bear that just leaves
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: and does something crazy. Maybe he's not biologically successful, but
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: maybe he is, and he is what passes on jeans
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: to the next generation when all those back home got
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: killed in some catastrophe, you know. So anyway, it's kind
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: of like a broad view of bar biology. There seems
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: to be a reward for doing crazy stuff. Sometimes not
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: all the time. I think about that often. Um. An
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: interesting example is how we love the fact that and
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: celebrate the fact that sam and have fidelity to their
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: natal spawning stream. Right, it's kind of amazing that, like
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: a salmon could be born in some little stream and
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: go out as a little fish to the length of
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: your finger length to your pinky spent a few years
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: out on the ocean traveling around, probably leave us international
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: waters right and come back twenty pounds and go up
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: and lay an egg right right where that sun bitches
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: was born. But some don't, Some like screw up and
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: go to the wrong stream and think about the ramifications
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: of that like you always have. If everybody was spot on,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: you would never be able to as climates change and
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: habitat changes, and forest fires burn and phill rivers full
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: of soot, right, you'd never have the possibility of like
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: expanding your range, but here you always have these freak
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: outliers probing new spots to see, right, and that's got
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: to be how things shift around. Another example, I think
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: about the way the Polynesians, seafaring Polynesians were able to
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: colonize these insane places, Like to find the Hawaiian Islands,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: people had to have just gone off and died and
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: gone off and died. But for whatever reason, people would
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: like make a boat and head off towards ship that
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: you had no concrete idea, maybe from birds or cloud
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: formations or whatever. Maybe you had a suspicion there his land,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: but all of a sudden, bam, like you just found Hawaii. Mhmm.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Your family is loving so yeah, that ability to strike
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: off is um, it's probably richly rewarded, yeah, or it's
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: quickly cut off or you or you're just like one
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: of the ones that get screwed. How many Polynesians didn't
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: make it to Hawaii? I would you know? That's one
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: of the questions I would most like to know is
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: just probably just the awful heartbreaking stories of people that
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: just didn't find land. Man. Mm hmm. Yeah, all right, Mark,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: We think about that whole bear story, Mark, I love it,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: and it's actually I've been following a somewhat similar bear
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: story over there in Wyoming and the Teatimes. You know
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: about Bear three, that whole thing that's that's a saw
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: with four cubs that's been there for twenty four years,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: photographed all the time, and just recently she's been leaving
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the park and going into the suburbs around Jackson, and
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: so there's all sorts of news around that worrying that
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: she's going to get into trouble and this famous bear
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: is gonna have issues. So yeah, she's just struggling with age. Maybe.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a weird thing. From everything I've
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: seen and read like she's healthy, she's been happily in
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: the park, and then just recently she's she's got into
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: some human food sources for the first time. So I
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: don't know. Mm hmm, Mark, update, everybody give give people
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: a quick crash course in the Back forty project. Yeah,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: so the Back forty is the complete opposite of a
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: thousand mile roaming bear, and that instead of large stretches
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: of land, we're talking about one tiny postage stamp piece
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: of ground in Michigan. The Back forty is a the
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: little piece of property that we picked up about a
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: year and a half ago, and the idea was to
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: try to find a representative piece of private land that
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: has been farmed and worked over the years and to
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: see if we could take that and transform it into
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: a wildlife paradise. Can we bring this thing back to
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: life for all sorts of creditors and out of it
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: not farm the guts it had been Oh yeah, historically
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: it had been yes. So can we take something like
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: that that kind of been burned to the ground and
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: turn into a wildlife paradise for not just deer which
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: sometimes folks like me or tempted to focus on just
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: the big bucks. But could we do something that's that's
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: that's good for dear good for turkeys and and everything
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: else though too, birds and bees and squirrels and and
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff and still have the good hunting.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: So that was the the question we set off to
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: to try to at least get the beginnings of an
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: answer in two years. So yeah, we started last last
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: summer and we're wrapping it up this winter. So that's
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: that's what we've been doing in the back forty acres. Yes,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: I can get a lot of comments about that. Why
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: didn't y'all name at the back because it just sounds
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: like like something sexual or something man. But like the
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: back forty, it just it feels landish. It feels landish,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: like the back ford is that kind of ubiquitous term
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: that people used for for like, yeah, that's my piece,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: you got twenty four bonus acres man. Yeah, yeah, you'd
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: be like, I don't know, shot it out on the
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: back forty there whatever. Yeah, So this is supposed to
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: be kind of that stand in for everyone's a little
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: back forty. People can follow like the we we chronicle.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: We chronicle the back forty story through a series ye
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: available on YouTube called Back and Mark does a phenomenal
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: job of of bringing viewers along, bringing viewers along on
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: the journey of trying to do this. It's a really
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: compelling story about like land management, because I mean people
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: that like to hunting fish and you know, it's everybody's
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: dream that you're gonna buy this little chunk of land
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: and have your own you know, this little paradise. Like
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: I think about it all the time. Uh, And so
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: it's like what goes into that? What are the heartbreaks
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: and work that goes into that, and you know, and
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: eventually we're gonna hand uh hand off the keys of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: the gate. This isn't something that you know here at
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: meat Eat here, We're not gonna like keep it, We're
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: gonna give it away. But um, when Mark first started out,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: when I came out there, the first summer, Mark was
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: like kind of depressed because you thought like like how
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: daunting it was going to be because you couldn't find
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: like you couldn't find you like, mature bucks on it.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: But then you got like a sweet buck the first year,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: and in this year it's like even better. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, how much do you think is a freak? Like, like,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: how many so here's the place? How many big bucks
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: did you have? Like big like big like mature, Dear,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: how many mature here do you see running around there? Now,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: we've had pictures of relatively consistent pictures of probably eight
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: or nine different bucks that are you know, three four
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: or older than that? Up from zero we had like
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: there was one that was there a lot last year?
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Is that the one shot? The one I shot? Yeah?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: What do you think the age was that, dear? You
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: shot Mark? That deer I shot last year was definitely
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: four or older. He was fully mature. Yeah, he's yeah,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: crazy looking old buck. Yeah. Uh. Do you think it's
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: a freak. Is it a freak that it worked, or
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: do you think something happened that. Do you think something
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: happened that made it that all of a sudden these
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: deers start showing up? You know, I think it's a
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: combination of factors. I think. I I'm calm that the
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: changes we have made have absolutely helped, no doubt about it.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: They've helped. But I don't want to claim that it's
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: on me, right, because there could have been these random
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: things going on. We only have a two year sample
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: size to look at, so it's just not it's not
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: enough to draw really really hard conclusions. But you know,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: last year could have been an outlier potentially, right, maybe
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: for some reason that I can't put a finger on.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Last year's just really bad, But the previous five years
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: before that maybe had been pretty good, and we just
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: happened to start on the worst year or the flip side.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe last year is normal and this year our stuff helped,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: but then there was some randomness outside of our control
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: that helped. You know, it's some combination of that. I
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: still believe though, that the things we have done have
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: made noticeable positive differences. Um you can't deny that. Just
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: the way that we're seeing these deer use the property
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: and and all sorts of wildlife use the property. Um,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: so that has been really encouraging. I probably couldn't have
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: written it any better if I had control the world
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: and I could say, all right, this is how it's
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: going to pan out. I probably would have told it
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: would be great if year one was pretty tough and
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: then we see this wonderful transformation in year two it
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: looks dramatically different and deer popping out all over the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: place and we kill a bunch. That's how I would
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: have written it, and maybe we got a little lucky
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: it turned out kind of close to that. Like, explain
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: to people what kind of what are the main things
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: that you did? Yeah, so, like here's a chunk of land,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: you want to fix it up? Yeah, walk people through
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: like you know, the sort of X, Y and Z
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: of how to sort of rehabilitate a chunk of ground. Yeah.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of ways to go about something
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: like this, but we had the somewhat unique circumstances of
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: of just having a couple of years to try to
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: do something, So we did have a shorter time frame
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: in which we were looking at, how can we identify
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: kind of quick turnaround possible projects that can make a
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: noticeable difference quickly, um knowing though that they're still right
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: the long term gain that that could and should and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: hopefully will be worked on by whomever takes it on next. Um.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: So that said, the way I would look at this,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: and the way we did look at this is try
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: to identify, like, what are the missing pieces of the puzzle.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: And on any piece of ground, whether it's public land
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: somewhere or your own piece that you're buying, you can
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: look and see, like, what are the basic things that
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: wildlife need to thrive here? And you know, for for
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: most species dear especially right, they need high quality food.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: They need high quality cover so they feel secure and
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: they can bed and and live safely. Uh. And then
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: you know they need water. And if you look at
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: any piece of property and look at how your piece
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: fits into the larger picture, you can start to identify, Look,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: what's the missing piece here, what's the where's the water
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: seeping out of the bucket and then try to plug
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: that whole. That's a great place to start. So in
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the case of the back forty, you know, we had
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: essentially the property has a big Uh what am I
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: trying to say here? There's two very different habitat types
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: in the property. There's these old fields that are old
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: farm fields that have now kind of been left for
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: two years to grow into whatever was there. So you
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: have these old open fields and then you have this
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: big swamp and some timber in the middle. And what
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: we quickly identified was that deer and critters love that swamp.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: There's tons of security cover. Um, there's a lot of
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: places they feel safe. There's natural browsing there. But these
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: old fields, which are fifty the farm, left a lot
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: to be desired. So fifty of our farm was hardly
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: being used by deer, hardly being used by turkeys except
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: for you know a little bit of starting around first
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: thing in the morning, that kind of deal. Uh. There
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't a lot going on for birds and and all
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: these other things because it was mostly just an invasive
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: monoculture of something called mayor's tail. See a thirty two
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: acres of like a bean pole. Like if you were
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: to look at a soybean field after the soybeans dried down.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: Anyone you know that lives in farm country, I think
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: you can follow me here. Imagine a bean field that's
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: dried down with no leaves and no beans on it,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: just as bean stalks. That's kind of what all these
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: fields looked like. There was no reason that birds or
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: bugs who want to hang out in there. Deer didn't
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: feel safe in there, um, squirrels didn't want to be
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: in there. So a lot of what we tried to
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: do was transform those old fields. Uh. We did that
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: in a couple of different ways, Steve. We did that
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: by one trying to improve the cover out there and
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: the diversity out there. So I didn't want this great, big,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: dry down bean field of of no food, no cover.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: So we we did a few things. We planted switch grass,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: which is a warm season grass. It provides a lot
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: of cover for deer, great polting habitat for turkeys, great
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: for all sorts of different game birds. Um, a grassy
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: cover provides a year round visible, high cover. Animals are
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: gonna feel safe out there. Now. We planted a blend
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: of different pollinators, so wild flowers, certain grasses, and forbes
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: that our bees are gonna like that, our butterflies are
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: gonna like We planted them some milkweed out there, and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: they're great stuff for for butterflies and all these different
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: bugs and small birds help pollinate everything else. That's important
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: for everything, all the plant life. So we wanted to
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: help out there. Uh. Something else we did was plant
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: strips of sorghum, which is essentially a tall grass, really
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: tall grass that looks kind of like corn. But it
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: was just a way too quickly. This this goes back
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: to the quick turnaround in our case. I needed to
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: quickly find a way to take these big, wide open
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: ten acre fields and make them feel much smaller, more compartmentalized. Again,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: most critters don't like to walk out into why don't
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: you know, wide open spaces. They'd much rather be feeling
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: tight to cover, tight to edge deer and turkeys and
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: most of these animals really like to be near edges
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: where they can go from a place where they can
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: feed to quickly feeling like they're safe again. We didn't
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: have a lot of that to start, so by planting
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: these big strips and half circles of this thick cover,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden you had that We planted trees
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: is another thing we did, doug Old Doug Durren came
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: out to help me out and we put fifty some
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: trees in the ground this summer. Um, that's more of
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: a long term play. It's gonna be a while till
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: those are, you know, as as big and as substantial
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: as they could be, of course, but right there were
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: again adding these different pockets of structure. Um. So really
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: we're just trying to take this big, wide open sameness
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: in turn into in a bunch of secure differentness. That's
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: what animals want. And so that was a lot of
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: what we did with the fields. Um. And you could
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: right away see this fall, how much more comfortable, you know,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: in the case a deer season, we're focusing on deer.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: How much more comfortable these deer were coming out and
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: moving and feeding in these pockets where they where they
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: never would have last year. Um. So that was step one, UM,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: going to keep rolling through them. Yeah. Hey, can I
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: say my favorite part of the back forty so far,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: just real quick, because when Doug dur and you were
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: planting trees and the new guy came to help you,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Doug during tells the guy to turn his hat around forward. Yeah.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: I was like, that was a good scene and it
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: really um he did it a very surprisingly forceful yet
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: loving way. And then the next scribes Doug well the
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: very the very next scene the dude has his hat
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: on backwards again, told him he couldn't work with his
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: hat on backwards, and he fixed it. But then later
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: there he used with his hat backwards hard? Do you
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: believe I know this is true, so I don't really
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: care what you say, But do you believe that dogs
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: urine really is especially it's called buck Man juice, that
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: it really is especially attractive to dear that there's something
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: about dogs urine? You know? I used to I actually
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to contradict you here, Steve, because I used
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: to believe that, and then I had him out last
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: October and we had him split some around force and
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: it did not help for ship. So really, yeah, because
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: he's too far from home, that could be it. Maybe
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: the Michigan deers aren't trained up on it like Wisconsin deer.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Probably food source, different food source was he was eating
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: different stuff and everything. So did he leave you the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: bottle of buck Man juice? No? I should ask for
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: some you've seen the evidence, all right, the trail camp evidence.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I and you know, I
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: can't real if we talked about it here somewhere before.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: But studies have shown that human urine is just as
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: effective as an attracting in scrapes as actual deer urine.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: That's proven. We've had a lot of guys right in
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: that deer coming inspect their chew spit piles. When they're
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: spitting chew off the tree stand. That stresses me out
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: that they come in and they like that. Yeah, that's funny.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: One of our one of our cameraman does a little
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: chewing and I kind of gave him the talking to
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: and said, hey, man, I don't think we should be
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: chewing in the tree stands spitting this all over the place.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: So if he had, if he's seen this research you
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: found her or whatever these stories where he might have
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: been able to prove me wrong, it was okay. You
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: know the dear biologists, uh well general biologist but does
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: does a lot of deer work. Jim Heffelfinger, he used
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: to chew Levi Garrett and named his kids Levin Garrett.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Dear like I have it on good authority that dear
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: love Levi Garrett. All right, so continue on. The trees
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: came from Doug During. He brought some pines. He brought
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: some pines, and yes, that was cool. There's a little
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: bit of the dug During legacy on the back forty,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: which you know is a nice is a nice little
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: bit of of history to put in the place. There's
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: so there's so many little memories and stories now attached
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: to this piece of ground that it's nice to have
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Dug add his to that. So, yeah, we we put
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: some white pines in. We put some cedars, We put
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: some spruce again, different kinds of you know, coniferous trees
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: that are going to provide structure and cover out there, right,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: deer gonna eventually bet around, These turkeys are gonna hang
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: out around, their birds are gonna nest in them. And
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: in the way the trees and the way we looked
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: at it was that by playing these pockets the trees
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: out in the wide open, you're gonna have kind of
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the effect like you might see in a lake where
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: you drop a Christmas tree in the middle of a
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: lake or sunk tree and all of a sudden fish
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: congregate around it. Large mouth bass love that structure or
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: cover inside of a water source. That's the same deal
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: with deer. Another what do you guys call croppets clay man, crappy?
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: You guys had some stupid word for it. No, man,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: that's when I yeah, I heard that about that. Go on.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: So anyways, Christmas tree out in the lake. Yes, we
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: we've planted these pockets of Christmas trees or evergreen trees
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: all around these old fields to again give animals a
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: reason to come out into these fields, travel around and
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: and you know, if you could imagine if you ever
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: seen you ever been an urban flying across the country
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: and they have the TV screen in the back of
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: the um chair in front of you, and you can
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: hit that and it will show a map of all
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: the different flight paths from the various cities. That's the
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: effect we wanted to create on a property like this.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: So instead of having just you know, Detroit, Texas and Washington,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: d C. I would rather have you know, eighteen different
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: air ports on our property that these deer want to
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: travel in between and across from. Super interesting. Man, that's
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: an interesting way of looking at it. You make a
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: little ship that he needs to go look at exactly.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna see that every year, as these pockets
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: mature and the fields mature, you're gonna see that happen
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: more and more often. Already this year we've we've seen
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: deer hitting visiting those trees and and rubbing on them,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: scrape underneath them, so they're already starting to use it
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: in that way. Once those trees fell out, we're gonna
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: start to see does bedding in these pockets and then
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, bucks are need to check these
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: pockets for doughs that may be ready to breed. So
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: in a few years, it's it's going to be that
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: airport effect for sure. This year we just started to
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: see a little of it. I like that, I like that,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: look do you cover that? And uh, you cover that?
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: And back forty Yeah, we we talked about it. I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: don't think I used that airport analogy in the actual video,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: but I don't necessarily need that exactly analogy. But it's
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: it's a it's like when you already go away for
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: a week and you come home, you kind of make
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: the rounds to see, like who did annoying stuff to
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: your stuff while you were gone? Like before I walk
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: if it's summertime. Before I even go near my house,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I go into my garden right and you look and
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: you go look, and then eventually, like an hour later,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing if they put the pans back where I
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: like the pans, and that my my my tongs are
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: in the top drawer next to the stove, you know,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: like I just check everything. I got my little circuit.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: I love that idea with like habitat that a buck
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna go see what's going on with
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: the ladies. He's just got a lot of little spots.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: He's got them check out just one little brush patch
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: and then he's off on the neighbor's property exactly. Hey, Mark,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: and I can I ask you a question, just an observation.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: So the aerial video, like the drone shots of the
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: of the back forty, I was struck by how it's
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: there didn't seem to be any real big blocks of
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: timber that the sixty four acres was connected to. Did
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: I miss some of that or or is that common?
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of like being from the kind
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: of whitetail habitat I'm used to, like Central Kansas, seems
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: like it would be void of deer, but you know
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: they're bedding in grass and there's hardly any trees there,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: so maybe that effect happening on me. But it seems
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: like there's not any big timber close to that property,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: so I guess it's all relative when you say big um.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: There are some substantial blocks of timber that our property
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: connects into north and south of us Um. So basically
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: we're in the middle of a little bit of a watershed,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: and there's that swamp that runs through the middle of
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: our property and then farm fields on the east and west,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: and that same pattern follows as you go north or
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: south to the neighbors. But they still have those big
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: chunks of timber in the middle that kind of coincide
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: with that wet with those wet spots, and you see
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: that a lot down here in egg Land where if
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: it's good dry, relatively flat land, it's going to be farmed.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: But the plot the spots you do still have timber
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: and good cover. That's because it couldn't farm it, and
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: and so there's a there's a pretty good amount of
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: that around here. So that's not a limiting factor though,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: because I mean a lot of with a small property.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: You know, you're always trying to evaluate the properties around
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: it because those properties are like for sure going to
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: affect your property. So on the back forty you're not
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: you feel pretty good about the surrounding habitat. Yeah, so
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: it's it's relative to a lot of places around here,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: it's really good. We have a lot more cover than
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: most people do, um a lot more timber than most
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: other places around here do. And that was a big
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: part of why I picked this spot. I was really
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: careful to think about exactly what you describe the neighborhood,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: because when you have a small piece you you don't
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: control everything. You don't don't influence everything. These animals are
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: all over the place, so you really want to pick
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: a spot within a high quality general area because you're
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: gonna be sharing. You know, those wildlife are gonna be
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: passing through all your places. So it's great to be
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: in the middle of really good stuff. And so that's
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: that's what we have. We have a good neighborhood, high quality,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: relatively high quality habitat around us, and we're just able
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: to kind of plug a gap in it and make
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: it extra good in this in this part of it.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: So talk about the buck you found this year. You um,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: the way you hunt deer where are you hunt them?
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: Which is kind of like a little bit different than
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: wilderness type hunting is you often are very specific in
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: particular where you're not hunting like deer, you're hunting a
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: deer yep. And that's usually out of necessity now because
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: well sessy, because you got you gotta you'll have a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: bunch of deer round, but you got one on your mind,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: and you tailor your activities for that one. Yeah. But
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: but usually that's because I'm hunting in this case one
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: small property. In the other places that hunt in Michigan,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: they're also pretty small properties, and I usually only have
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: like one mature buck. So he ends up being the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: one deer I really want to take because he's the
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: only one that meets that age criteria. That for me
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: is what I want with you. So you know, you
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: don't have like you're not you don't have ten to
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: choose from. Yeah, So it was a little different on
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: the back forty this year and that we had a
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: bunch of relatively mature deer. So we had, like I said,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: eight or nine different bucks that are probably three and
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: a half or older and your name. You always like
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: to name them all. We have a buck we named
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: here at my house called old Limpy. Olymp We got
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: and uh, old Limpy last year had a bad front
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: leg and oh, Olympi this year has a bad back leg.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: But no, no, my kids, it's Olympian. It's just Olympi.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: The limp moved, the limp moved, but it's him. Yes,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: we've got an old one eye. We got a one
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: eyed buck out there. Um, he's a buck that was
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: around last year too. He's the only one that for
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: sure I can identify from last year to this year.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: So that was cool to see a hold over. Um
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: there was a little droppy, just a little he's got
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: a little drop time And when I first saw him,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, he's got a little drop he time.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: And so that just nat his name stuck. Um there
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: was Usually these names are just kind of just labying,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: a labeling, a characteristic. So there's the sticker eight. There's
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: a tight eight point. It has some stickers off of
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: his base on one side. Um, there's a heavy eight,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: just a really heavy solid eight point. Sometimes you're very clever,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: right like last year. Last year there was a buck
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: called the wide eight and guess what that buck looked like. Man,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: it's it's I used to I used to do the
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: whole naming thing. It used to be a thing like
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: I think when I when I was getting into hunting
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: to this degree, I saw these other people doing it
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and I was like, Oh, that's like, that's the cool
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: thing to do. And I started doing it from that perspective,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: and that kind of faded for me, and now it's
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: simply just it's a practical thing to do. Because I
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: see these deer over and over and over, and I
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: have to talk about these deer over and over and over.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: It's really difficult. It would be very difficult for me
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: to be on a podcast and say I saw that
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: one eight pointer that's on the six acre property has
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: got a patch on his neck. Man, G four, that's
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: not quite this tall. So some keep it pretty simple. Um,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: so yeah, there's the stick or eate the good Uh
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: oh god, I need to ask you why you can't
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: get that one tron buck. But don't don't bring that up.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: What other names? Uh? Yes, I'm trying to think. What
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: haven't I covered yet? There was a heavy eight, there
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: was the sticker, ay there was droppy, there was all
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: one eye, there was there's a funky side of buck
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: that Tony Peterson, one of our mediator contributors, he was
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: out there with me the summer and we're looking at
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: trail camera pictures and there was a buck that has
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: one really nice four point side and then the other
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: side is that really funky, strange couple of forks and
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: daggers coming off. So if you look at him from
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: one side, he's real straight and normal. But if you
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: were to get to know him a little bit more,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: you see he's very strange and a little bit unique.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: And so Tony thought that was it would be fitting
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: to call him Spencer, after our mutual friend Spencer. So
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: so there's Spencer, um, and I'm to thin who I'm
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: forgetting here? Those are Those are the bucks I can
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: remember off the top of my head. And when you
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: but when you're hunting and you know, you know, you
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: had a crew with you, so you're filming the hunt
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: when you're hunting, and you can see the hunt on
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: the back because it's like a cool, successful hunt. But
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: were you tailoring it? Were you like trying to generalize it,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: or are you tailoring your activities for one of these
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: or for all of these m HM. So in some
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: places it would be for one of these. In this case,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: it was kind of for any one of these. We
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: had to see which one of these deer or which
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: which of these deer would spend the most time during
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: hunting season, during the period we would actually hunting there.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: So as you know, coming into the season, I saw
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: all these deer were there. I was looking at pictures
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: of all these different deer using the property, and we
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: can only hunt certain windows, right because that's when we're
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: gonna be there hunting it and filming and everything like that.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: So it was a little bit of a waiting game
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: and saying, Okay, these bucks are there right now, which
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: of these bucks will be around here when we can
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: start hunting them, and what can I learn about that?
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: And so as the season started progressing, you would see
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: there was you know, this buck is spending a lot
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: of time in this corner, and these two bucks are
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: hanging out in this bottom section, and so you start
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: to have a little bit of a pattern related to
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: one or two of these bucks. But once we started hunting,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: you had to kind of given the fact is so small,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: you simply don't have a lot of options. There's a
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: few good spots that are probably gonna be where it's
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah, it's not like you're like driving off
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: to this end of the place. It's just like you
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: can walk it off. Mark, how many truck cameras do
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: you have up on that six acres? You know, I
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: think we had ten. It's like a convenience store. It's
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: it seems to me like on a property that small,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: it would be hard to I mean, to answer or
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: to add to the question Steve's asking. It's like on
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: that sixty acres. So there wasn't like a section that
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: you were like, Okay, that buck is always there, that
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: buck is always there. It was there you were hunting
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: travel areas that any one of those bucks could come through.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Now at any given time, it might have been a
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: trend for one of those bucks to be showing up there. Yeah,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: that's that's exactly right. And so you know what happened
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: is that eventually, um, as we started hunting, I noticed
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: that that droptime buck was our most frequent visitor to
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: the southern half of the farm. That's where he was
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: spending a lot more time based on pictures and sightings
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: of any deer that we saw. I saw him the most,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: and he was spending a lot of time down there,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: so he became the deer I thought was most likely
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: that we'd have a chance at um. And I saw
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: him the first time we hunted the farm all year,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: I saw him come out down there. And then the
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: first night of my rut hunt out there in early November,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: I saw him and almost got a shot. Had him
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: come in chasing a dough and in those fields, one
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: of our little food plots there, and he came running
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: around and several times stopped at about fifty five yards.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: I just didn't want I wasnt gonna take that kind
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: of shot. And uh so after that, I said, Okay,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: this buck, the draftime buck, is hanging out in and
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: around this betting area. We call it the honey hole.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: He's in here a lot. And if I spend enough
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: time around this betting area and make sure that the
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: wind's right so I'm not spooking dear. If I if
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: I'm in this area with the right winds for enough
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: days during the rut, He's gonna come through and and
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: I'll be in the game at least so to oversimplify things.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: That was was my strategy when I actually started hunting,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: which was during the rut um, and you know, and
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: eventually it kind of came together. I don't know, if
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: we want to get into that pan out. Yeah. So
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: two days after that encounter with him, this was in
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: November nine, I think or eight um ninth I guess,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: I went and sat in that honey hole spot. So
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: this is this patch of native prairie that we found
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: last year. It's really unique. It's rare. There are not
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: many spots that native prairie ecosystems still exists in southern Michigan.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: You recognize it right off and knew that it was
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: gonna be like a producer. Yeah. That was what sold
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: me on the farm. When I walked at the very
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: first time. That was I walked it from a clockwise
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: in a clockwise direction. So I started up in the
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: panhandle at kind of eleven o'clock and then walked the
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: outside edge all the way down to about eight o'clock.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: Eight or nine o'clock is when you get to the
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: honey hole. And when I got there, I said, oh,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: this this has something special going on here with the
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: grasses and the cedars just tremendous betting habitat for all
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: all types of animals, but deer especially. UM. So this
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: is actually the spot the first tree I prepped to
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: hunt last summer ended up being the tree we killed
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: that buck from this year. And we did a prescribed
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: fire in there this summer to improve it in that
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: starting summer in the spring, so we actually went in
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: there and lit the place on fire, which is a
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: cool thing. I'd never done that before. Um, It's amazing
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: the power that fire has to naturally revive and restore
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: an ecosystem. Basically, it burns all the extra detritus and
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: and leaf cover and and dead material on top of
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: the soil and and opens it all up for new growth,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: adds new nutrients to the soil. Um. Right, that that's
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: what happens out on public lands out west when a
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: fire comes through. It restores a lovitality to that to
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: that area. And so that's what we try to do here.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: We had a special little rare prairie. Let's let's boost it,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: let's help it along, let's help it grow. So we
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: remove some of these invasive autumolives and buckthorn trees in
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: there too. So all that to say is that we
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: we it was neat to make some change to this
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: already pretty neat spot. See that come together hunt the
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: first trey I ever thought we should hunt from on
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: my last hunting trip on the back forty and have
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: it come together where you know. That morning I got
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: in around the edge of this and oh, an hour
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: after daylight, spotted a buck way down the swamp beneath me,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: and pulled up my binos and it was that spencer
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: buck was the funky side of deer, and you could
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: just see he was cruising across the swamp. He wasn't
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: with the doughe but he was. He was searching for
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: a doll. Just you could see the way he was
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: moving on a mission across the swamp. So that got
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: me excited. And maybe ten minutes later I saw another
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: flash of white down there. I pulled up my binoculars
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: and I see a doll running across and then a
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: big set of white times behind her and run. Soon
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: after I could see the drop time, so I could
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: see it was not was the drop buck that I've
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: seen a few days before. So I'm watching watching, I
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: see the dough squired out and maybe fifteen minutes later,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: here she comes again, and here comes the droptime buck again.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: So I was excited by that, but it was pretty
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: far away. This is five yards away maybe, and on
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: the neighbors, you know, off in the distance. I could there,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: You could just see him through the binoculars, so that
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: I knew they were in my world, but I did
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: not necessarily think they'd be on top of me anytime soon. Um,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: So fast forward forty five minutes when I saw a
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: flashing movement right underneath me, about sixty seventy yards away,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: passing through the cedars. I wasn't expecting it necessarily to
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: be one of those bucks, but I saw a nice set,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: a nice kind of profile view of of of antlers
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: passing through the cedars, just like a flash. Really quick,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: I knew it was a buck that I wanted to
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: get another look at at least though, So I grabbed
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: my grunt tube, let out a couple of just deep grunts,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: and five seconds later, this deer comes popping back out
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: from behind the seedar and instantly saw it was the
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: draftime buck. And it's it's beautiful. It's so neat that
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: we have a captured on film and I can relive
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: that moment because just a really cool deer, and he
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: came into the grunt, walked underneath one of these seeds,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: just ripped up a scrape dirt and leaves, like kicking
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: twenty behind him. You can just see it thrown way
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: back there. Yeah, he was fired up and made that
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: scrape and then kind of walked across behind a big
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: oak tree that's in there, and I couldn't get a shot,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: And it was there was a moment of significant tension
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: where he was. If he continued on that route, he
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: was going to hit where my wind was blowing. It
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: was blowing r the edge and he was headed right
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: for it. And so in my head, I'm thinking, all right,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: if he steps out from behind that oak tree, he's
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: gonna be right. He's gonna be right in my wind,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: and it's gonna be either I'm gonna have a quick
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: moment to get that shot or he's gonna blow out
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: of there. So I was mentally preparing myself for that,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: and then just out of pure luck, he stopped, turned
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: around and started to go back the way he came,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: but angled even closer to me. So he came back,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: came around the oak tree and walked right to the
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: most perfect place for a shot something like that. Perfect.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: I stopped him with it a little map, it's a
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: little sound, stopped him and uh, it's a pretty good grunt.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: When you went, when he went? When he went? Man?
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: Did he? Um? Did he peg you? Or did he
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: just stop? He stopped and looked right in our direction yet?
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: But you know, I don't I guess I don't remember
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: if he looked up or towards us. I'd have to
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: go look at the video again, I don't remember, but
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: either way, whatever, along. Yeah, I was a full draw
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: and he had an air on him seconds later, so
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: and he ran like he ran maybe fifty sixty yards
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: and was down. Um, So that was it was super cool,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: like between that wide eight which is so cool lash. Yeah,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: that's great man, It was, it was. It was awesome.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's been a project that's been a ton
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: of work and a lot of a lot of Last
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: year felt like we were just beating her head against
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: the wall, and I was I was surprised by how
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: little um progress we were seeing. To see it change
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: this year in pretty dramatic fashion. Just this really encouraging
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: to me. And uh, and what you can do. And
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like we did anything really crazy with with
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: an insane budget. We we went. We didn't sink tons
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: and tons and tons of money into the changes we made.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: We we use small equipment. We rented something for a
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: day to plant the trees. Um, you know this is
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: something that that I could have done, you know on
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: my own. Maybe. Um, what I'm trying to say here
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: is is not outside of the possibility for anyone else
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: to do something similar. Um m hm. How how bad
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: do you wish? Like like if you had that place,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: if all of a sudden we said, like, I know
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to back out onto plan, But if
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: also it was just yours for whatever reason, would that
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: be like a favorite hunting spotty yours? Last week while
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: we were hunting, I thought about this a lot, and
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: even one of the cameraman I joked that maybe we
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: should save up some money and whenever the new owners
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: want to get rid of it, will buy it from
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Because yeah, is this place pretty far from where you live. Mark,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: It's clote relative the close it's within. You know, I
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: could hunt it if I wanted, um on a frequent basis.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: There's so much potential. Like to see the difference we
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: were able to make in one year. I could I
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: could sit here for two hours talking to you about
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: all the other projects I'd like to do if we
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: had this for ten years, and how how much, how
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: just how awesome it could be. It's it's I think
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: what we've proved here was that you can make progress
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: towards a goal like we had, and I think you can.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: I can confidently say like we made positive steps in
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: the right direction in two years basically a year and
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: a half. Um. But there's a lot lots more we
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: could tackle if we had the time. And hopefully, you know,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: some days somebody will yeah. Well. One of the beautiful
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: things about the project is it you're starting to, you know,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: helping create a blueprint. Not that you're you know, like
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: like we're inventing anything here. It's like a thing that
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: people do. We're just doing a version of it. We're
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: creating a blueprint for how to come in and and
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: maximize wildlife habitat, like you know, restore piece of property
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: that has been You know that that the priority for
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: that land was different. The priority for that land wasn't
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: wildlife habitat. The priority that land was making food for
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: people to eat, which is like noble and been great.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: But what can be done when you can take a
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: little piece of ground and bring some you know, environmental
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: stewardship and good conservation practices and and kind of watch
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: that impact. And if you could do that, or people
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: can do that in a lot of places all across
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: the country and create like this extensive patchwork of pieces
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: of ground like that with some protections on them into
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: the future, it's good for everybody. Yeah, yeah, that's the truth.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: Are you are you want to talk about what's gonna
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: happen with that place or should we hold off? Yeah? Yeah,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: I can talk about that, but I want to give
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: a little prelude to that in in and that this
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: project not only open my eyes from a habitat perspective,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: but it also opened my eyes from the perspective of
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: how you can use and enjoy a place like this. Um,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: there's definitely a tendency, especially within like the hardcore white
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: tail hunting world. Two look at a property. If you
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: were to have access to a property, whether you own
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: it or have lease or it's a hunt club or whatever. UM,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: there's there's often a tendency to be hyper sensitive to
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: keeping it all to yourself or keeping it all to
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: just you know, no extra impact, no extra people, because
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: especially if you're trying to target mature deer or big
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: deer or whatever. Um. One of the overarching principles for
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: being able to have deer like that around and to
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: be able to get a shot at deer like that
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: is to keep those deer unaware of the fact that
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of hunters trying to kill him, so
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: keep pressure low. So for a lot of years I
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: have obsessed over the idea of you know, nobody else
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: out in these property if you can control it, you
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: know nobody else out there. I'm only going to go
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: in there a few times and everything's just right, and
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: I don't want to mess it up because if I
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: do that, Buck is gonna be out of here. Um.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: And and so that was a little bit of a
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: h that was like a lens that I looked at
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: habitat management in hunting through for for many of my
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: years leading up to this. But taking on this project,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: we decided that, hey, this isn't going to be a
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: place that just Mark hunts, and this isn't gonna be
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: about just Mark trying to kill a big buck. This
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: is also going to be about sharing it with other people.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: So last year we invited um Uh, we invite a
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: researcher out. We invite Doug during a come out and hunt.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: We invited my dad to come out and hunt. We
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: invited uh Cal and a new hunter last winter to
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: come out in hunt. This year, we brought my dad
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: back again. UH. We brought the hunt winner out last
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: week to come and spend some time out there. We
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: brought another new hunter out there, and what I learned
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: was two full number one. I learned that even on
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: a small property like this, even in a state like
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: Michigan where there are a lot of other hunters there's
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on these deer, um, you can
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: still share and have other people out there doing this
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: these kinds of things and having a good time and
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: still have quality hunting. We had way more people hunting
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: this property than I ever would have thought we could
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: have got away with and still killed some nice bucks. Um. So,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: from from that standpoint, that was eye opening and encouraging
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: to me. But most importantly, I also was just reminded
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: of how much more enjoyable hunting can be when you
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: share it with people. A lot of my white tail
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: hunting and a lot of other like really serious white
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: tail hunters, you sometimes can get stuck in the solitary
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: nature of it, and it's just like me trying to
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: achieve my goal in my spot, in my way, and
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: it's it's me waking up at three thirty in the
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: morning and going out and hunting all day and I'm
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: very mission focused or whatever you want to say. Um,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of folks like that, and it was
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: a great reminder to me. And getting to share this
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: place with other people and hunt with other people and
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: and see them enjoy this place of just and this
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: is a simple thing and it's obvious, but sometimes you
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: gotta get smacked over the head with it, like how
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: great that is. It was great to be able to
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: take a new hunter out there and see him get
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: a shot at his first buck, and the highs and
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: lows and the excitement it was. It was amazing to
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: get to take my dad out there, and I got
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to spend time with my dad on the
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: property last fall and this year come back again. We
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: changed a bunch of things to try to make it, uh,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: you know, a better situation for him, and he actually
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: got to kill his first deer with arch equipment ever,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: his biggest buck ever. Um, getting to see all that,
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: the the joy I got out of spending time in
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: the property with my dad and with Dan and with
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: Dane hunt winter and last year, or those of the people,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: that is what I will probably remember even more than
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: those nice bucks I shot. And And so I think,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: if I take anything away from this personally, that is
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: actually been my greatest lesson from the back forty. Um,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: you can transform a property not only in habitat and
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: wildlife use, but also in how we as humans enjoy
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: it and enjoy it together. And that was that. That
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: was the moral of the story for me. That's good,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: super good. So tell us real quick, what's gonna happen?
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: Les's unless you don't want to get into it. Oh no, yeah,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: So that was that was my long wind up to
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: answering your question. Um, So, as I just described, I
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: think that we have both I personally and we as
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: a company obviously see the value and sharing places like
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: this and and using it as a tool as a
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: as a as a as a place where we can't
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: help others experience something like that. UM. One of the
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: things that came about this year is that I invited
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: a new hunter, Dan j Jo, out to the property
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: to hunt with us. And I had met him last
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: year at a q d M a field to fork event. Steve,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: I know you had those guys on the podcast. I
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: think it was last summer. We're all out here together. UM. Basically,
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: it's a mentorship program that that is is kind of
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: been scaled across the country to help bring new hunters
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: out there into the field, partner them with a mentor
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: and spend a weekend teaching them how to do everything
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: from shoot across bow to find deer and find deer
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: sign and then actually how to gut a deer, process
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: a deer, cook a deer, all these different things. So
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: I met Dan at a program like that last year
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: that I was mentoring at and I noticed in him
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: that he, you know, I was really passionate, was excited
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: about learning, but really struggled without a mentor. And we
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: invited him back out this here. We had him come
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: join us on the farm with Doug and helped plant
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: trees and plant food plots and help to teach him
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: along with all these different things and coming out of that.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: We just saw that man. This place, the Back forty,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: it it's a perfect place to facilitate that kind of
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: learning experience, both in the off season and then actually
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: in the season. He came out and hunted and and
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: had a really awesome experience. And so we've been looking
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: at ways to find, um, how can we scale that,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: How can we keep that kind of learning experience happening here.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: How can the back forty not just be a terrific
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: launching pad for Dan, but could it be something like
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: that for other people too? And what we have settled
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: on and what we're gonna do is we are going
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: to give away the Back forty to the organization formerly
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: known as the Quality Deer Management Association, now it is
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: the National Deer Association. We're gonna donate it to the
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: National Deer Associate and so that they can continue using
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: this place as a um as a as a learning tool,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: a place that they can bring folks out and show
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: them um things like have the habitat management we've done,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: and show them how to set up a tree stand
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: and how to find deer sign and how to improve
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: native grasses and why deer like to use these pockets
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: of evergreens and then eventually take them out there for
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: these hunts and and have a great, high quality place
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: to have a first deer hunt. I know from working
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: with some friends that have that worked for the Quality
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: Deer Management Association and set up these mentored hunts that
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: oftentimes finding a place to bring these new hunters is
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: your greatest challenge. A lot of times private landowners, um,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: they don't necessarily want to open up their ground to
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: a bunch of new hunters in the middle of October.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: So that has been a struggle, and we thought, hey,
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: let's let's help as much as we can there by
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: providing a great place to do that in a great
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: um essentially a living museum of of of learning opportunities here.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: That's what the back Ford it can be, and we're
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: what we're hoping it will be. So the NDA will
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: be taking on the property and using it to help
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: other folks and teach other folks and and hopefully mentor
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of people into the future. And that's at
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: high level, that's our plan. Okay, tell people uh to
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: close out, tell people how to go check out, and
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: UH engage with back forty. Yes, So the best places
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: go to the meat either YouTube channel and watched the
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: show there. Season one came out last fall. Season two
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: is being released right now every Sunday, I believe, Um,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: I can't run with time, but every Sunday a new
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: episode is dropping through December. Um, so check that out.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: You're gonna get to see all the preseason work I've
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: been talking about. You'll get to see my Dad's hunt,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: You'll get to see my hunt for the Droptime Buck.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: You'll even get to see the hunt where we take
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: Dan the new hunter out and Dane the sweepstakes winner. Um.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: And then we're we're gonna be putting the some content
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: also documenting what's gonna happen next year, these mentorship opportunities.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna create some stuff around that as well,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: so you'll be able to see all that at the
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: meat eater dot com. We'll be sharing articles and podcasts
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: about it as well. Mark. How many episodes of the
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: back forty and season two are there going to be?
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: There's six regular episodes, so there's there's two up. Well,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: by the time this comes out, there will be more, yeah,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: but yees. Six six episodes of the regular series and
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: then some bonus content to come next year. All right,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Mark, Thank you again, Clay Newcomb Newcomb,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining them, Thanks for the X and Clay that.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: Thanks for the excellent um book report you did on
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: Bruno the Bear. Bruno, I'm gonna be giving you fascinating
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: Still give you a lot more assignments in the near future.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: You did original research. Sounds good, like like a like
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: a like a like a hard hitting journalist. It's like
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: watching sixty minutes watching you work. Man. You should have
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: seen me on the phone. Man, I was giving them
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: left and rights bam bam at those biologies back in
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: the corner. Good stuff, man, nice a lot. All right, guys,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: thank you. Everybody. Go check out back forty. It's a
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: great story. We're super proud of it. Enjoy