Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 420: An Antler Geek's Manifesto with Tony Hansen

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Ep. 420: An Antler Geek's Manifesto with Tony Hansen · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. In this is episode number four
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  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty, and today I'm joined by outdoor writer
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  Speaker 1: and bow hunter Tony Hansen to discuss his book and
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Antler Geeks Manifesto, The Foundational Principles of a d I
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Y Deer Hunter. All Right, welcome to the Wired to
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Leg and today,
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  Speaker 1: as I just mentioned, I've got Tony Hanson here with
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: me on the show. Now, Tony someone who a lot
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: of you are probably familiar with. He is a fellow
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Michigan bow hunter. He has been in the white tail
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  Speaker 1: hunting outdoor media world for a long time. You've possibly
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  Speaker 1: seen his videos, his podcasts, his articles across many different locations, uh,
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  Speaker 1: maybe most prominently in the pages of Outdoor Life magazine. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: He's worked with white tailed properties. He's done a lot.
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  Speaker 1: And what I've always appreciated about Tony is that he
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  Speaker 1: gets it done the hard way. He hunts in heavily
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  Speaker 1: pressured places, all on his own, doing his own thing
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  Speaker 1: in places like Michigan by permission or most of the
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  Speaker 1: time a lot of the time on public land across
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  Speaker 1: the country too. And what he's done in this book
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  Speaker 1: is he has taken decades worth of experience and he
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  Speaker 1: has distilled all of these experiences, all this trial and
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  Speaker 1: error down into a simple system. This book, in Antler
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Geeks Manifesto, is his system for killing mature bucks in
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  Speaker 1: you know, normal everyday conditions that any one of us
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  Speaker 1: could do without a lot of money, without a lot
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  Speaker 1: of property, you know, doing it by permission, doing it
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  Speaker 1: on public land, uh and doing it yourself and tone.
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  Speaker 1: And he has the most unique thing about this is
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  Speaker 1: that he has shown exactly what he does and it's
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  Speaker 1: not overcomplicated. There's a few core principles that he follows
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  Speaker 1: all the time. And if he follows these core principles
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  Speaker 1: all the time and follows a couple of simple steps,
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  Speaker 1: he gets the job done. And it's a breath of
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  Speaker 1: fresh air in the white tail hunting world today that
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  Speaker 1: is so complicated and and honestly, I say that as
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  Speaker 1: a guilty party, like I realize that I'm someone who
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  Speaker 1: geeks out on all the details. We talked to ten
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  Speaker 1: million different people and get all these different ideas and
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  Speaker 1: that's a lot of fun. I enjoy it, but it
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  Speaker 1: can also sometimes make things overcomplicated. And Tony has stripped
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: all the bs off, He's stripped all the complicated things
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  Speaker 1: and given us these simple steps to success. This is
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  Speaker 1: what works for him, and he's got opinions and perspectives
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  Speaker 1: in here that not everyone's gonna agree with. That's okay,
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  Speaker 1: but this is him, this is who he is, this
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  Speaker 1: is what works for him, and it's pretty cool and
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  Speaker 1: it's something that I think we can all learn from.
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  Speaker 1: And so today what I want to do is walk
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  Speaker 1: through this book with him, to talk through what these
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  Speaker 1: foundational principles are, how he came to them, and how
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  Speaker 1: he's been able to develop a system that makes deer
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  Speaker 1: hunting more fun and of course makes him more successful.
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  Speaker 1: So I think you're gonna enjoy this one. Tony has
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  Speaker 1: got a lot to share, and uh, I'm excited. I'm
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  Speaker 1: excited to have this conversation. So with no further ado,
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  Speaker 1: let's get right into it. Let's talk with Tony Hanson.
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  Speaker 1: All right with me now on the line, is Tony
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  Speaker 1: Handsome Tony, welcome back to the show. Hey, it's good
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  Speaker 1: to be here. Yeah, I appreciate you making the time,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm excited about this one. We we haven't talked
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: on the podcast for a number of years now. I
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: think when I got you on the show last I
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: was sitting in my truck recording it in Montana while
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I was in between I think I just had wrapped
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: up in Montana whitetail hunt and I was recording my truck.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And now today I'm recording my truck in Idaho. So
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: this seems to be a theme. But uh, but I
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: don't have a filled tag in a buck in the
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  Speaker 1: back of the truck on this one, so I think, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: I think it will still be a good chat. And
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  Speaker 1: what got me wanting to have this chat, Tony, was
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  Speaker 1: your book that you published last year and n Antler
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  Speaker 1: Geeks Manifesto. Why did you write this book? Why was
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  Speaker 1: that something you wanted to do now? Because you've done
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  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the outdoor and deer hunting world.
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  Speaker 1: Why was now the time to write this? I guess
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  Speaker 1: there was a couple of reasons. Um. Honestly, the primary
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  Speaker 1: reason was just too to say that I had done it. Um,
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  Speaker 1: I had talked so long. I don't even know a
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  Speaker 1: number of years. Probably three or four years ago is
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: when I had the outline for this and had messed
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  Speaker 1: around with it. And at the time, you know, I
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  Speaker 1: was fairly active in the outdoor media world still, and
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I thought that it would be a lot easier to
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  Speaker 1: get it done that way, but you know, it never happened.
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  Speaker 1: So I guess the primary reason I did it was
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  Speaker 1: just to show myself that I could. It was also
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  Speaker 1: I hadn't um you know, in the last I guess
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  Speaker 1: five years or so, I'm definitely taken a step back
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  Speaker 1: from the outdoor media world, and it was just kind
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: of a way to sort of dabble back into it,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: but on my own terms, in my own way. And
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that's really why it's all self published and self edited.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: So you know, I definitely want people to understand if
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: they do read it, they're probably gonna find a typo
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: or something. Um nobody else has had a finger in
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  Speaker 1: any of it except me, and that's not the best
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: way to get you know, absolutely perfect copy and everything,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: so you might find a typo. And the cool thing
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: about UM self publishing, if you find it, you can
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  Speaker 1: tell me and I can get it changed on future
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: orders that you know, I can change the the system
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: on Amazon real quick. So that was a primary reason.
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  Speaker 1: I guess. The second reason was, um more for myself
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  Speaker 1: to kind of just get my thoughts in order of
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  Speaker 1: how all of these years that I've done this sort
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: of stuff in terms of do it yourself hunting, I
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: feel like I have a system now a little bit,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and I wanted to just organize it. And I thought, well,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: if I can organize it in a book and help
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  Speaker 1: some other people, that's a good way to do it.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: So those are those are, you know, the two main
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  Speaker 1: reasons that I decided to do it. And of course
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Covid played a role. Um, I had the time, all
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, all my Turkey season stuff was pretty
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: much shot. Um you could. I'm not super social, so
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like I was missing out on the bar
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: scene and everything, but there was no ball games to
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: go to my all my daughters, UM, musicals and things.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: She's super big into theater, you know. For the first
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: time in my life, my adult life, I guess I
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: didn't have things to do five or six nights a week,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: so I just started writing. What was that process like?
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Was it Was it what you expected? Was it what
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: you wanted? It was actually a lot easier because I
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: always thought I had some Jeff Sturgis books. Um. I
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: like Jeff. I think it's a good dude, and I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: like his books, and they're about the right length of
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: what I wanted. I had no idea how many words
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: go into a chapter. I didn't know, and I thought, man,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna be able to fill
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  Speaker 1: up a book. But and it's not like a giant book.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a novel, and I didn't want it to be.
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  Speaker 1: I wanted it to be about that the size that
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it turned out, So it was actually a lot easier
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: than I thought. UM came together really fast. I probably
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: wrote it in a week and a half two weeks. UM.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I had some of the chapters sort of started, but
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't a big deal. And then I just went
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  Speaker 1: through and learned how you did the layout, and I
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: just used the Amazon service and um Kindle publishing thing.
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  Speaker 1: So it was fun. It wasn't anything unexpected. Really. UM.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I knew that self editing was going to be tough,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: so I probably read it more than any other drafts
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  Speaker 1: I would like. For magazine articles and stuff. I read
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: it through a couple of times and I hand them
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  Speaker 1: off to people who are really good at it editing.
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  Speaker 1: With this, I probably had to read it a little
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: bit more, and I'm sure I still miss stuff, but um,
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  Speaker 1: and I still do. I mean, I was reading it
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: over last night to look through some things and I
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: found one type of so I already changed it today.
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  Speaker 1: But it wasn't a surprise. It kind of went the
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  Speaker 1: way I wanted it to go. Um. But I also realized,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: after rereading it a couple of times, there's a bunch
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  Speaker 1: more stuff that wanted to include that maybe I'll do
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a follow up on sometime. Yeah, it's it's it's funny rereading,
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  Speaker 1: at least for me, rereading anything I've written is always
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit painful. If it's if some time has passed,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I always look at it again, like, God, jeez, I
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  Speaker 1: wish i'd included this. I wish i'd done that. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: So it's nice in your case with this setup that
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  Speaker 1: you can go in there and make updates future printings
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  Speaker 1: and stuff. That's uh, that's a really nice benefit of
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  Speaker 1: the way you did it with a self publishing Yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 1: And I always kind of joke around, whoever's got like
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the first three copies with a hundred typos in it?
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: You know it'll be like the Tom Kelly books books
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be paying on eBay five. So, so what
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: about what about for people reading this? So for you, you
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  Speaker 1: you want to do it because it was going to
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: force you to kind of synthesize your system and put
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it on paper and organize it. But what about for
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the people that you wrote it for to read it?
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: What's your pitch to them? Like, what does someone get
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: when they pick up this book? Why should someone read
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: this book? And not so and So's other deer hunting
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: god to success. So, if if you want to kill
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  Speaker 1: big deer, older deer um more than one time in
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: your life, you have to understand that whatever it was
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that you did, if you can't duplicate it, the bottom
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  Speaker 1: line is you're never going to do it again. So,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: if somebody shot a hundred and fifty hundred sixty deer
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and they're like, and I want to make this a
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: regular thing, it won't be unless you have some sort
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  Speaker 1: of formula or plan or system. And so what I
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: tried to do is just literally tell people this is
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: what I do. And I know with absolute certainty that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: if you do it in the right places and you
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: can shoot reasonably well at twenty five yards, you'll kill
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: a big buck, and you'll kill more than one. I
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: have no doubt that it will happen, because if I
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: can do that, which I do, this is how. And
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I really wanted to just show people that UM doesn't
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: take a bunch of money. It does really take some
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and it takes time. But you don't have to be
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: anything special. I'm certainly not, and I fully expect in
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the coming fall. I mean, I'm gonna shoot at least
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: one dear that's four years old or older, and maybe
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: two or three. And the only way you do that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: is you have to be able to repeat what it
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: was you did to make it possible. UM. You can
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: get lucky once, everybody does, but you can't get lucky twice,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: usually not with older deer. What I like about this book,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this more and we get into
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: your foundations, your those main principles, but I think the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: secret that the secret. But something that really stands out
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: about this book, I guess is that it's a little
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: bit counter to popular media in that and even this podcast.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: If you listen to this podcast enough people have heard
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: seventy two thousand different ways to deer hunt, and so
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: many different little details you could do, and so many
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: different little things that one guy will say you have
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: to do this thing, another guy says you gotta do
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: this other thing, and they could be complete opposites, and
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: it can get complicated, especially if you're a little bit
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: newer and you don't have your own system in place.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's probably fair to say there's a lot
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of people out there who can get just their head
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: spinning with all these different ideas. And something that really
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: stood out with what you've put here on paper is
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: a really streamlined, clear, relatively uncomplicated system for success. It's
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: it's it's you've kind of cut away all the fat
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and all the bullshit and said, hey, here's a few
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: simple steps, and if you focus on this stuff, and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: if you execute on it and you have fun, this
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: this is a system for success. You don't need to
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: worry about the ten other things. You don't need to
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: worry about the all the fancy gismos and gadgets. This
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: is a proven, simple system that works, and there's there's
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of value in that. I mean, someone could
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: say they could write a ten thousand or I don't know,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: thousand page book of encyclopedia of every different idea out there,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and they could say that's really valuable. But in some
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: ways it's almost less valuable because it's so damn confusing.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So I like that about this and and I think
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the first thing you did, which which I thought was
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: a nice way to organize it, really hammer home those
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: most important things is you kind of delineated these foundational
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: principles that everything else revolves around. And I thought that'd
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: be a good place to start diving into your system.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Can you can you walk me through principle number one
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and and and what it is, why it's so important, um,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: and then we can kind of go from there. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the first one is really the one that matters, and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: that's the pressure is the single most important factor. Um.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Everything else, all the other principles, all the other stuff
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: in the entire book is all hinged on hunting pressure.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And if you are thinking you're gonna have consistent success
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: on older deer, and when I say older, I'm I'm
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: thinking four years old and older. In some places, it's
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: probably needs to be three year old, or you'll just
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: never shoot a deer because it's so rare to see
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: one older than three. But you cannot have that if
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: there's too much hunting pressure. They simply do not live
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: long enough. And I beat my head against that wall
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: way too long. And the flip side of of that
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: is too Even if there are older deer like you
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: know what we have here in Michigan, there's there's getting
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: to be some pockets where we can have three year
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: olds fairly regularly, some four year olds from five year old.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: But the hunting pressure part of it makes those deer
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: so difficult to hunt that you can spend your entire
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: season trying to shoot one of them and never even
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: see the deer. So everything that happens when I'm deciding
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: how to hunt, when to hunt, where to hunt, it's
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: all about hunting pressure. And if there is hunting pressure,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just not I'm not doing it. Um. I don't
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: pick places to go if I think there's going to
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: be a bunch of people. Um. You know a classic example,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure this will upset some people or get offended. Illinois.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I will never hunt there. Um, there's it's got a
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: great reputation. It's got a you know, a whole book
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: full of big deer in the record books. I've been
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: there twice. There's so much hunting pressure it's it's non
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: functional for me and how I want to hunt. So
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: even though the data would indicate a state like that
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: would be really good to go to, I I just
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: won't go there. So every decision I make, every UM
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: thing that I've developed in my quote unquote system, it's
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: all based on the hunting pressure because that's the one
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: thing that I don't think I can overcome really. Um.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I can work around it, I can deal with it,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: but I can't solve it. Um. And it makes a
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: big once you start figuring out what hunting pressure does
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and how deer respond in the difference when they aren't pressured. UM,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: it's it's like a light bulb goes off. It's not
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: it's really not that hard to shoot big deer when
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: they're not pressured. In your approach is a little bit
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: different than a lot of people on that. I mean,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: most everyone says hunting pressure matters a lot of impacts everything. Um.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people say that recognize that. But
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: if you hunt in a place of heavy pressure. A
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: lot of folks do a bunch of stuff to try
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: to have success in those heavily pressured areas. Right, there's
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: all sorts of books about bow hunting and pressured areas, etcetera. Uh,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: your ideas is like, screw screw that spot. I'm gonna
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: find where it's not. And so rather than beating my
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: head against a wall in the spot where it's so
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: pressured and and screwed up, your idea is kind of,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: let's save my time and energy for somewhere where it's
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: better spent. So just cross that stuff off the map
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and and move on to something different. So in a
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: lot of cases, for you, it sounds like you know,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: from what I've seen over our years and then also
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: reading the book, right, a lot of that means you
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: travel to other states, but you do still our home
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: state of Michigan, which of course gets a lot of pressure.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: It's one of those states we will know it that
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: gets hammered. Um, So talk to me about how you
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: handle this hunting pressure thing here in Michigan, because in
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: most cases you're saying, right off the map, forget it.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: But what about when you do want to hunt local?
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And we know that almost everything is heavily pressured here.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: How do you how do you think through this principle
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: in Michigan or if someone lives in Pennsylvania or New
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: York and they still want to do some local hunting. Yeah,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: So the first thing I do is I make sure
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not the problem. Um, I'm not going to be
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the one that's putting any of the pressure on. So
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I don't do any preseason scouting really at all. I
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: think it doesn't work in pressured situations, and I think
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: it's counterproductive in a lot of situations. Trail cameras, the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: cell the cell service trail cameras certainly have changed that
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: quite a bit, and I will use those. But I'm
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: not even gonna worry about what Buck is where in
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: July or August, because if I get there the first
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: week of October and there's a couple of trucks parked
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: there on the neighbors, that Buck's not going to be
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: there anyway, or he's not going to be huntable. He's
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: gonna be pretty nocturnal. Um. I really I enjoy John
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Eberhart stuff. I've learned a lot from his books, and
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: he talks about hunting pressure and I think what people
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: misunderstand is he's if you really read it, what he's saying,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: He's not saying, here's how I deal with the hunting pressure.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: He's saying, here's how I avoid it. I find all
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: of this stuff in the You know, I'm still gonna
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: hunt in Michigan, it's still super pressured, but I'm not
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt the spots that are getting super pressured. He's
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: going to find the locations where the deer feels safe,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and that's kind of what I do. So in Michigan, yeah,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm going to write off those spots that are
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: just getting pounded. But if that's the only property that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I have access to and I want to hunt, I'm
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: still gonna hunt it. But I'm gonna try to hunt
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the place that isn't getting pressured, if that makes any sense.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And the only way I've figured out to do that
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: is I just have to do all of my scouting
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: in the season, and I do it based on I'll
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: take the first week to ten days of October and
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: go around any of the places that I have to hunt,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: including public ground, and I'm just literally doing an inventory.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Is somebody hunting this and if they are, I'm I'm
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I'm done with it. I'm not going to mess with
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: it because I can't. I can't control them, which means
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I can't control that pressure, which means I can't I
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: can't think for myself because I can't, I don't have
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: any There's too many variables to it. So I just
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: bump around seven to ten days, the first ten days
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of October, and then I start to figure out, Okay,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: this place isn't getting hunted is hard, or they're hunting
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the south end and not the north end. And that's
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: when I start to do my scouting, and I'm gonna
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: use the cameras and see if there is a deer
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that I want to hunt in there. It's all about
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: making sure wherever I'm gonna be. It's the least amount
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: of pressure that I could have gotten. Obviously in other states,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: much easier, much different, you know, because there's not necessarily
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: that there's less hunting pressure. There's more space for it
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to be spread around. You know. If you take even
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: a state like Ohio where there's lots of hunters and
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: you've hunted their mark, um, you get in southern Ohio
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: and drive around a little bit and you start to realize, Okay,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty bow hunters here is a whole
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: lot different than bow hunters in southern Michigan because there's
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: so much more available ground and escape. You know, they
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: could really get away. Yeah, definitely, definitely different. I want
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to talk more about your scouting, both your your off
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: season scouting and why you don't do it so much
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and all that. But before we get to that, I
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: think we've got to talk about principal number two. Because
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: principal number two is all about choosing those spots that
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: are worth scouting, that are worth spending time on, uh
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. And you've got again
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a different idea around this that
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, but it is a little different. Can
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: you walk me through foundational principle number two and how
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: you got to this because he had some pain points
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: that kind of led to this one for you. Yeah.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So you your earlier question about you know, what was
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: there difficulty in the book, et cetera. This was by
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: far the hardest part of it too write because it's
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: hard for me to explain it. It's very clear in
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: my head and it's very clear what I do it's
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: hard to explain it. So this, this principle is you
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: can invest into something that you don't own, basically meaning
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: you can't go out and put a lot of time
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and effort and energy into property that you're hunting by
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: permission or that you're leasing. And this all came about
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: because I had a property here in Michigan that I
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: leased for I don't even remember how long. I know
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: it was at least ten years. It might have been
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: closer to fifteen. I don't remember when I first started,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: but I lost that too years ago, I guess, um
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: just a phone call in the spring saying, hey, I'm
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: not going to lease it anymore. And that really like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: it all came crashing down because I thought, okay, now
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I spent almost forty dollars on this place in lease fees,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: who knows how much money in food plots. I spent
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: additional money on cameras and stands that I probably wouldn't
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: have before. All of that money stuff obviously hurt. But
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: what really hurt is I'm now going into I've got
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: three months to figure out a property and I can't.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I never you know, you can't take ten or twelve
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: years of experience and replace it in three months. So
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: everything that I invested into that property was a complete
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and total waste. Yeah, I killed some decent deer and
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: I had some good hunting, but I can't use it again.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I can't do it going forward. So now what I do.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: The only thing that I will invest a lot of
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: time and for it, really any money at all into,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: is something that I own. And that's either obviously private
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: land that you own, which I don't own any right now,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: or public land that can't be taken away. And there
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: are some gray areas there, but for the most part,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about state and federally owned um property that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I will never lose. It doesn't mean that I don't
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: hunt someplace that someone gave me permission to hunt. I will.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: What it does mean is I'm not going in there
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: and doing a bunch of extra effort or work. I'm
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: not trying to force my way to find time. Because nobody,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter who you are, we none of us
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: have the amount of time to hunt that we want.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: So you have to make it, and that means taken
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: time away from family or whatever it is. If I'm
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: going to take that time away, it's going to be
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: spent on a place I know I'm never gonna lose.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: And if I had done that, maybe I don't kill
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a five or six or seven year old buck whatever.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I've got some of those on that place
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: at least. But I would be going into the future
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: seasons knowing that I have a pretty good spot figured out.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to do the things that
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: i want to do. It just you know, like I said,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: it's hard to explain, but the bottom line is, when
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: you're investing the amount of time and energy into those places,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: you have to know what's going away, and it is
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: that you're not going to be able to keep those
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: places if you lease them or have permission, it's all
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: gonna it's all gonna come to a head and it's
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: gonna stop. So I just won't do it anymore. Um.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Definitely a hard concept to understand and very counter to
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: what a lot of people would think. But that's the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: way I do it right now. And so the big
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: thing here is is if you it's all that time
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and energy and knowledge that you sink into these places,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and if you could never cash in on that knowledge
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: again because it's gone, And of course the money. What's
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the point so that, so you're sticking with land you
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: own or public land that's always going to be there.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Talk to me about those two options. So what about
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: for folks that want to buy? What's the Tony Hanson
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: take on buying land? I know you've got some experience
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: both owning land yourself and being someone who sells land. Uh,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: can you give me a little bit of your thoughts
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: there for someone listening and if they want to take
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that leap a little bit of perspective on that. I've
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: never met someone who bought land who regretted it, And
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: you can't say that about very many things. Um, there's
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: certainly been people who bought it and then it what
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: it didn't turn out to hunt the way they wanted, etcetera,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: and they ended up, you know, flipping it and getting
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: something else. But I've never met someone who bought property
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and be like, I wish I hadn't done that. Owning
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: your own land is the only way you're ever going
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: to be able to truly control all the variables that
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you want to control. I do think it's more affordable
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: than people think. If you think about if you're spending
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: two or three or four grand a year on a lease.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: I know you can buy land that it might not
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: be the eight acres you want, but um, I know
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: you can buy a smaller piece and probably do just
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: as well. If you buy it you know the right way,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: and get the right types of things on that smaller property,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: you can own it. Um. It's not as hard as
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: people think. It does take some discipline. You do have
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to save money for down payment and all of that.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: But in the long term, I wish that I had
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: started buying land a lot sooner than I ever did.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: And I know going forward that that's you know, another
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: person I had something. I sold it because the market
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: got really good, honestly, um. And so it seems like
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: that's the thing you do when you have a smaller piece,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: you can flip it and get something bigger. So someday
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: I'll do that. But I don't think if anybody is
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: considering it or on the fence, I think you need
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: to really look into it, because you're not. I don't
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: know how you would ever reat doing that. And if
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: someone wants to do that, And let's let's take the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: scenario small properties, because that's where most people start. Uh,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: your three most important things when buying a small property
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: or something on those lines, What are those things that
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: you're looking for or would recommend to someone. Well, the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: first one is budget. Don't overspend um. That's just a
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: personal thing. People get in trouble doing that, so obviously
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: stay with your means. I like the location. Obviously there
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: are parts of Michigan that I would much rather have
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: land in, and I'm sure it's that same way in
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: every state. And the third thing, especially if it's a
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: smaller piece, um, the shape of it matters. So let's
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: say you're buying fifteen acres, I don't want to square.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I want a rectangle. I want it to be deeper
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: than it is wide, because that's going to get you
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: further off the road. It's gonna get you more depth
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: into different habitats and different cover types. And if possible,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: it's this is not as common in Michigan, but places
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: like um Ohio, Missouri, Indiana. I'd really like it to
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: be land locked with an easement, like an access through
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: someone else's place to get further off the road. And
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I love it if it borders like a big piece
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: of public like in southern Ohio or southern Indiana, then
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: you can really have something special. Now, some people would
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: look at that and say that that sounds a little
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: contintuitive because they're gonna hear next to public land where
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be tons of pressure, and they're gonna be
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: shooting all the deer and pushing stuff all around. Why
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: do you not think that it depends on the type
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: of terrain. But I can tell you I was just
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I did a one day turkey trip to southern Ohio yesterday.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: My legs are screaming at me today and I feel
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: like I'm kind of crazy. I do a lot of
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: things people won't do. I promise you there were hills
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I stopped and turned around. The average person wouldn't get
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: to that point. If you have. If it's the way
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that that public lay is out and it's got those
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: types of hills and ridges, you're not going to see
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: very many people. And if you do see someone like that,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: you should be very you should be happy and celebrate
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: with them because they're doing something that pcent of the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: population will not do. And that's and it's not just
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: about getting deep. I mean, it's you have got to
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: go over some crazy stuff in some of those places.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: And if you're on the back side of that, you know,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: a mile, two miles, three miles from that road access, Um,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be pretty much hunting deer that are untouched. Yeah.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: So talking about public land, I like the fact that
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: within this the way you think about this, that you
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: look at public land is something that is worth investing
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: in because, as you know, as an American, you do
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: own it right per se, and it's not gonna be
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: taken away from you, UM hopefully and UM. Talk to
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: me about that side of things you've got. I really
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: like the process you go through when it comes to
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: finding public land that you think is worth hunting. You've
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: got a hell of a system there that's a little
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: different than some people. Can you walk me through that
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: research process of how you go about figuring out those
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: new spots you're gonna check out. Yeah, and it's I'm
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: almost an addict to, you know, like on x and
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Google Earth and all that stuff. A lot of people
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: sit around at night watching The Bachelor. I sit around
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: at night watching Google Earth and onyx. Um. I start
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: by looking at, obviously the amount of land that I
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: would have to choose from. I'm just I've learned over time.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: I can't go someplace and have two or three options
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: because I've gotten burned where I've done that. You know, here,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I've just driven ten eleven hours and I spent whatever,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars on this tag, and I get there
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and the two or three options that I thought were
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: awesome are not good, and now I'm really scrambling. And
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: scrambling is never going to be productive when you've only
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: got five over six days in a place you probably
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: have never been. So I need fifteen to thirty options
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: that I could get to. I'm also different. I think
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: it's why a lot of you know, my friends that
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: used to hunt with me, they really don't like to
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: It has no problem. I have no problem getting up
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: in the morning and driving seventy miles to a spot,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: and then another hundred and fifty to look at another one,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and then coming back, you know, and eighty the other way.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: It does not bother me to do a big, big
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: area when I'm looking at stuff. But I gotta have
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of options. So I look at that once
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: you look past, you know, and say, Okay, there's there's
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: enough ground that I can work with. Obviously, I look
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: at the number of licenses that are sold. That is
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: kind of the only number that doesn't lie. UM. You
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: can see lots of stuff on line forums about this
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: buck was killed, this buck was killed. But I need
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: to know how many people actually are out hunting and
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: have hunting licenses. That really dictates a lot of the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: pressure to me. Do you like to look at the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: county level or just state level of the one state level?
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I mean most states, you can't get a whole lot
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: deeper than that. Some states have UM you know, they
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: break down the number of deer that were tagged in
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: each county based on their TeleCheck, and that is that's helpful,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and generally when I see that, if the area I
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: want to go to, if like say there's six counties
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and three of them had really high deer kills and
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: two of them were medium, when one was lower, I'm
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: going to the one with lower if the habitats the same,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: because in my mind, I'm thinking, Okay, there's just fewer
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: people hunting there, but it's still the same stuff in
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the way I confirm that and maybe this is a
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: different I don't know if a lot of people do.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I look at real estate listings all the time, and
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at their trail cameras and seeing what type
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: of deer around those cameras. And I can usually tell
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: by the way this is gonna sound horrible, but I
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: can tell by the a the listing is written if
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the person who listed it knows anything about deer hunting.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: And I can tell by the way the cameras are
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: set up if that person really is a serious deer hunter.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And if there are a non serious deer hunter and
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: it's listed by someone who's not that serious about deer
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: hunting and there's nice bucks on there, I get super
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: excited because I'm like, they have that area in general
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: probably doesn't put a high emphasis on deer hunting, So
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: that's someplace I might be able to make some hay.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: So I just use, you know, sources like that to
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: figure out where these public areas that I do want
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: to hunt. Yeah, so you look at when going back
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: to the numbers, you've got this kind of formulaic approach.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe you call it when you're looking at
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: licensed sales, number of deer killed. And then I think,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: if I remember right, you also talked about just general
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: human population. Yeah, can you talk through though, how you
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: weigh those things? Because you've got an interesting approach on that. Yeah,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, to me, the easiest part is I just
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: go by the principles and the number one as pressure
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: is more portant than everything. So if I have two
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: very similar areas that I'm trying to decide between, I'm
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: gonna go to the one that has fewer people. I
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: look a lot at town size. Um it's a pain
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: in the butt, but I don't like to be near
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: a town that has hotels because that's where people will stay.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking at the population density of the county,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: the total population, which can be misleading because some counties,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: so like in Kansas, have more people than the county
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: I live in here, but the ground area is four
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: times larger, So you do have to look at the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: density a little bit too. And UM, I'm gonna try
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to pick those places where as few people would ever
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: venture as possible, And generally speaking, if you have a
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: hotel or something, I'm gonna dry about a twenty or
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: thirty mile circle around that town and stay away from it.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: It makes sense, makes sense. Probably is that hard to
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: find spots like that that meet all those criteria. It's
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: it's it's less hard to find the spots. It's harder
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: to figure out. Okay, if I'm going for a week
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: in November, what am I gonna do because I kind
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: of have to stop and sleep somewhere. And I have
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: a camping set up right in the back of my truck,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: just a cheap thing that I made. I can't always
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: do that in November because I do get cold and
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: it at some point it's like, I'm totally willing to
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: take the abuse and to go, you know, and suffer.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, I do this because I
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: enjoy it. And am I enjoying it now? When it's
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: twenty degrees at night and I'm freezing and I can't
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: sleep and I'm parked literally in somebody's pasture and I'm
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: waiting for them to come shoot me. You know, there's
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: a fine line there. Takes a little fun out of it. Yeah. Yeah, Uh.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: What about the rest of your digital I don't want
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: to call it stalking, but digital snooping. Um, you talked
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: with the real estate listing stuff, which is super smart,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: but you also talked about using some social media, some forums, videos,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. How does that factor into your kind
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: of fact checking of these areas You find appealing. Yeah,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: so that's kind of one of the secrets. It's not
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: really seecret, but sometimes I wish I hadn't given it
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: away because people will stop doing it. But if they
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: talk about a place and you could, I guess you
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: could do it in reverse, if you talk about a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: place online and and there's a lot of chatter about it,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna hunt it because everybody is looking at
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: it and they're like, and the classic example of this
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: the Woodbury Wildlife Area near Coshocton, Ohio. I'll just throw
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: it out there because it's not a secret anymore. Back
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: in the day, my friends and I we would go
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: down there and we would waylay the turkeys. It was
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: so stupid. I mean, I think we killed eight in
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: one day with ten of us. And now there was
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: a story that and this is like ten or twelve
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: years ago. The story came out a lot of like
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: the Michigan Sportsman forums and stuff. We're just coming up
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: in a lot of chatter on it, and now it's
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: really a shell of itself and it's a hun percent
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: because people saw online when they're researching like I'm doing,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: They're like, man, people say this is good let's go there.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I do the opposite. If people say it's good, I
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: go somewhere else, um, because I figure a lot of
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: people are doing that and saying, yeah, I'll check this
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: place out. It's got a good reputation. Um. I just
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: don't go anywhere. Now. If I look up a public
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: area and I don't see much chatter, I get really
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: excited about that, and I'm really careful about what I'll
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: say about it, Like you know, kind of now, I
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: really don't tell anybody what states I hunt anymore. I'll
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: say I'm you know, in the Great Plains or lower Midwest. Um,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: but I don't mention a whole lot about the states anymore.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: With that mind, did you have do you have any
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: worries about putting all this stuff out there? I mean,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: you've got a little bit of a process that's different
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: than some that's helped you uniquely. Did you think at
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: all about when you're writing this book? Just do I
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: want everyone to realize that this is a way to
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: go about it. I mean, I just thought of that
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: when I'm thinking about the same thing, like not being
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: super open about locations. It's something I do too. It
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: can be worrisome and I think about all this myself.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: How do you process that yourself? I don't know. I
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: go back and forth, um and I think I'm probably
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: more selfish and greedy than I should be. I'm certainly
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: less so than I was. And I think partly that's
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: why I did write this is because I want to
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: change that a little bit. I want to give back
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a little bit more, I think. But at the same time,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I think I would rather have people out and this
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: this might rub some people wrong too, like especially in
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: public land, I would rather have you hunting in a
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: way that makes it possible for those dear to keep
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: moving and kind of keep the pressure down, then doing
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: it other ways that had a lot of pressure and
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: bump a lot of deer and spook a lot of deer.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: It's not it's not like I'm so smart that people
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: couldn't figure this out, you know, all these things in
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the book on their own. But I do want people
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: to have success. I do want them to, you know,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: enjoy their time out there. And I think part of
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: being in the communication field is it's kind of your
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: duty to tell people what you've learned and experiences that
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you've had, and it's a formula yeah, but it's not
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: like they're not buying a lot or you know, like
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: a guaranteed lottery ticket. Here, I'm still going to struggle
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: years where I don't kill any bucks, and I wrote
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: the book, so I don't know, I don't I think
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: about it. But at the same time, I think there's
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: enough involved that you still have to kind of do
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: the work yourself. These things are always easier said than done,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. Oh wait, easier so so long those lines. Then,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: you know, talking about how it would be probably beneficial
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: for all of us if more folks that are hunting
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: public land are doing in a way that doesn't pressure
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: and blow stuff up as much. That kind of ties
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: into your whole scouting approach, which you touched on a
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: little bit earlier, but I think it's worth diving into
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: a little bit more. Um, just the whole idea that
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: you've kind of canned your preseason scouting and focus just
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: on in season and and that's pretty that's pretty contrary
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: to popular opinion these days, a lot of folks are
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: really really into offseason scouting. Um, is there any offseason
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: stuff that you think is still worth doing in your system?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: For sure? And it's what I do. It's literally on
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: a reason I went down to Ohio yesterday. Um, the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Turkey season scouting to me is the most beneficial because
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I can only look at I can only figure out
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: so much on an aerial photo. I'm not I mean,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Google Earth helps a ton, but I'm not great at
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: reading you know, the elevation and lines and all of
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: that and understanding exactly how steep this thing is and
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff down there you have to
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: wonder if it's coal mine reclamation or not. In that
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: hunt's totally different than if it's If it's not, it's
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: if you've ever seen it, you know what I'm talking about.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: That stuff that was mined and then is reclaimed is
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: incredibly thick and you have to do a lot of
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: things different than it's if it's just normal hardwoods that's
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: been managed in things. So the boots on the ground
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and getting familiar with the property is super important. And
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: that's why I think Turkey season is a great time
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: to do it because you can go out and explore
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: and you really can cover a lot of places fast.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: You don't worry about what you're doing to the deer
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't matter at that point. Outside of that,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I really don't have a whole lot of use for
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: any other UM scouting. And now it's fun to get
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: trail camera pictures a deer in velvet, and I try
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: because I enjoy it, but I don't put any value
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: in that almost at all. And the idea is those
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: bucks are relocating anyways in most cases, right yes, And
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: if they don't, that's fine because in Michigan UM most
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: of the time, I'm not going to have any velvelet
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: pictures out of state because I don't leave my cameras
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: out there in the public. But the only place that
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I would would be here in Michigan, and we don't
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: have the most sophisticated of habitats. You know, it's a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: square wood lot, a square property. It's kind of easy
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: to figure out if that buck did stay around, it's
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: kind of easy to figure out what to do in
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: early October, late October and the rut. So it's not
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: like I have a lot to figure out. But for
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: the most part, those bucks are not going to stay
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: there once the hunting pressure starts, or if they do
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: stay there, there darn near unhuntable. They get really nocturnal,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: all the stuff you know. You know this because you've
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: lived it. If you can get those deer unpressured and
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: staying there, then you've got a chance. I just don't
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think the odds of that are very high
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: when you have as many deer hunters as we have,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: so so would that be in the case, then yes,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: you hang back out of most of the stuff. You're
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: not pressuring him in the summer. You're not pressure him
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: just before the season like a lot of folks do
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: when they go out and set their stands the week
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: before the season or something like that. UM, walk me
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: through once season opens. I know you've got a kind
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: of rule of three approach to kicking off the season.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: On those traveling hunts are kicking off a hunt, But
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: what about for your local stuff? How does that begin? Yeah,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the local stuff is gonna literally, you know, obviously begins
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: the youth weekend. A little bit, not so much because
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the places around me. Um, the kids that I knew
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: hunted are old enough they don't hunt the youth season
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: and they're not old enough to have kids yet, so
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: that isn't as much of a factor. And I love
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: the youth season. I want to keep it going don't.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I don't want anybody saying that I'm thinking saying anything
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: other than that, but that is hunting, sure, So I
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: just wanted to see if anybody was out. And then
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: from the first week of October through about the tenth,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: like I said, I'm just going to go in the
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: mornings generally mornings, um on the weekends, and evenings on
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the weekdays early in the season, and I'm just gonna
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: see who if there's anybody parked at the places that
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I can hunt. And then around that eighth ninth tent
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: of October, if I've just found some places that aren't
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: getting hunted super hard, I will go in you know,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: midday and go through it pretty much as quick as
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I can. I'm not, you know, being an idiot about
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: it and running, but I'm I'm gonna walk right through it.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: And I'm looking for scrapes. That's pretty much the only
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: thing I'm looking for. If I see a big road,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: I love it, but I'm really looking for the scrapes
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: because that's gonna tell me, Okay, there's bucks in here
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: and this is where they like to hang around, and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I will get a camera on it. Um sell cameras
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: now or obviously a godsend. So I run a lot
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: of those, and then I wait three or four or
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: five days and see what those cameras are picking up
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: on those grapes. And if I find one to hunt,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: then I already kind of know where I would put
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: a stand based on again, Michigan is not that hard
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: to figure out where to set up. And uh, when
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I get ready to hunt, I usually will take stand
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: right with me that day, usually in an evening, you know,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: get it there just earlier, slip it up there and
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: uh and start hunting, and until the cameras tell me
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: that something has changed. Um, it's it. It seems like
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of wasted time, and it is when
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: you don't really hunt the first two weeks. But it's
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: a waste of time for me to hunt the first
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: two weeks because if I'm looking at other guys, you know,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards away, I'm not really hunting anyway. Maybe
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: it's skipping ahead a little bit here, But you've got
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: this rule of three approach for those travel hunts in
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: which you well, let's take a stip. Let's just talk
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: about that first, and then we'll talk about how that
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: applies to the step on the private or your your
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: local stuff. So let's let's now look at the same
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: snares the beginning of your trip to wherever you're going,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: some Great Plain state or wherever you are. You maybe
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: did a Turkey scouting trip, maybe not, but you did
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: all of this East scouting. You've got a bunch of
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: potential locations. You have looked at the numbers for deers,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: dear killed human population, You've looked at the number of
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: licenses sold, and you zeroed it on these zones. Now
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: it's late October or early in November when you or
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: or maybe it's November fifteenth when you take off after
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: gun season. Talk to me about how you approached the
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: beginning of that type of hunt and this rule of three. Yeah,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: So the I try to time it, if possible, to
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: get there so that I'm I'm not arriving in the
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: middle of the day because I just feel like there's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: only three or four or five hours or whatever till dark,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: kind of wasted time. I can scout a little, but
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to get done what I want to
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: get done. So I try, I try to make it
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: so I'm either getting there, you know, after dark, sleeping
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: and then getting right up early and going or sometimes
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: and I do this a lot too. I literally will
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: drive through the night so that I get there right
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: when the sun is coming up, and then I take
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: off and start scouting. But the whole point is that
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: first day is balls to the wall, as hard as
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I can go, as many miles as I have. If
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: there's no units, it is I don't care if I
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: go from the east side of the state to the
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: west side until I find what I want unless I'm
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: restricted by a unit in the license um. And I'm
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: looking for for three spots that I can hunt, And
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: by the end of that first day, I want to
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: have one tree stand up so I can hunt the
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: following morning or maybe the evening if I get lucky,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: and two trail cameras, and I don't want them in
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the same spot. Obviously, I'm gonna put a trail camera
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: where I put my tree stand, but I want two
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: additional trail cameras. So I've got three things by the
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: end of the very first day that I'm there that
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: are sort of quote unquote hunting, you know, the cameras
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: are always hunting for me. And then that first morning
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: I will be sitting in a spot I feel like
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: they are going through and this was all and all
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: of it kind of ties into I was just wasting
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: so much time out on these out of state hunts,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: scouting and doing all that stuff that I was half
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: of my week was gone and I hadn't decided on
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: a place, and it was nonproductive and it didn't make
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: any sense. I had to start trusting myself that I
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: had picked the state, the county, the area based on
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: research that I thought there was mature bucks there, better
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: than average number of them, and less hunting pressure. So
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: when I find deer sign buck sign like scrapes, I
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: need to start assuming that those are the types of
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: bucks I want to hunt and just start spending time
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: there instead of trying to find the perfect spot on
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: the spot all the time. And it really kind of
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: opened the door to me killing a lot more of
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: them because I wasn't wasting so much time. So the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: idea is basically, get on the first pretty decent looking
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: spot because you can learn so much more through observation
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: right by being out there hunting, and then also trust
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: that you've got cameras and two other spots. Is that
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: is that the idea versus wasting time walking and walking exactly.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: You know, I just have to trust the fact that
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: where I'm at has less hunting pressure than what I'm
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: used to. In those types of states with a good
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: you know, age structure and sex ratio and all that,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of yearling bucks making scrapes or
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: really actively working those scrapes. If you find a good
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: active scrape and you know, you know what when you
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: see it, that's likely going to be made by multiple
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: deer that are overage. Two, there's no reason to keep searching.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: If you have a good ambush site and it's far
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: enough off a road that you don't think they're just
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: doing it, you know, at night as they crossed the
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: feeding a corn field or something, there's no reason to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: keep looking. Get a camera on it, get a stand up,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: get out of there, Go find another parcel, find another similar,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: you know, set of scrapes, get a camera on them,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: get out of there, Go find another one, get a
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: camera on it, and then you can start. Now you've
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: got three spots that are telling you by the end
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: of the first day what's here, and hopefully that's all
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: it takes. Sometimes I have to do it all again
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the second day, but generally speaking, that first evening I
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: will have a camera or I will have a photo
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: of a buck that i'd be happy to shoot. Yeah.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure there's some people listening who either are
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: having a hard time visualizing what you're talking about when
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: you're saying a great active scrape area, or maybe there's
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: someone listening who's heard people talk about scrapes, that heard
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: people talk about primary scrapes, that heard people talk about
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: field edge scrapes. Blah blah blah blah blah. Uh can
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: you just paint a more detail picture of exactly what
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: this kind of scrape area looks like that for you
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: is worth stopping on. Yeah. So the first thing I
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: would say, if you're super interested in in just being
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: more knowledgeable about deer, I would go to Johnny Eberhart's
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: books about scrapes. He doesn't have a book about scrapes,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: but he writes a lot about them. Gene and Barry
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Wentzel are scrape geniuses. They have done so many discoveries
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: on scrapes that so anything that they've written. And then
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the deer lab um, I think it's uh, South Carolina
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: or whatever university has the deer lab and that'll tell
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: you all the different types of scrapes. What I tell
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: you is, I don't care what type of scrape it is.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: As long as it's being pawed and peed in, that's it.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: That's it. I care that it looks active, and you
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: can tell it's active and it's not, you know, just
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: one of the like the field edge or boundary or
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: frustration scrapes. It's gonna be fairly large, maybe you know
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: the size of a of a like a snow sled saucer,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: one of those things. It's gonna have at least one
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: good looking branch and probably two or three. And if
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: it's really one of those kind of hubs that people
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: that the bucks hit a lot, just stand at that
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: scrape and look in a circle around you, and if
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: you see one or two other scrapes in sight, that's
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: you need to be there. And the reason I love
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: scrapes more than anything else is because there's no other
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: sign in the woods besides a rub that tells you
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: bucks use that area. And rubs are less um, they're
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: less timely because you can have a rub that was
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: made the first week of September or mid September is
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: they're losing velvet, and that is going to be there
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: until the end of the year. A scrape has to
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: be hit every day or two for it to stay
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: looking open and fresh and active, and that's what I want.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: And I also know a scrape is going to be
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: hit by more than one buck. A rub probably isn't.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: So if I find those active scrapes with some big
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: rubs in the area, there's zero reason to keep looking
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: for another place to hunt. And that's what I would do,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: though I'd be like, oh, I need to go deeper,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: or I really want to have three pinch points lining
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: up here, and I would just it was I was
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: just paralyzed by analyzing all that stuff and wouldn't make
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: good decisions. And now the decision is easy. I want
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: to find the best spot I can as fast as
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: I can. And my version of best is doesn't have scrapes,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: and can I hunt it? And if it does, I'm
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt it. In your book, you talk a lot
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: about or you refer to some spots is proximity areas?
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: What do you what do you mean by that? Is
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: that just like a sound like this or yeah, so um,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: you just need to be in the proximity of where
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: a buck will where he's living. You're not going to
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: find that out um in a week's time. Generally, and
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: especially on a place you've never hunted, you're not gonna
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: know where that buck beds. You're not gonna know, especially
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: anything western the Mississippi. They travel so far. I just
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: need to be in a proximity of him that he
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: will come through, and the scrapes tell me where he
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: wants to be. It's not like if you think about
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: it in human terms, right, we do things opposite of
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: what dear do. So like say Mark wants to live
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: in Idaho, You're gonna move to Idaho and buy a house,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: and you're going to change all of your travel pattern
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: around that house. Right, the scrape is the opposite. He
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: already lives where he lives. He does what he does.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: The scrapes show up where he moves. So he doesn't like,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: go well, over there would be a beauty full spot
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: for a scrape. Let me go over there and make that.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: He doesn't do that. He makes the scrape where he
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: travels and where he expects other dear to be traveling,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: and other bucks will be traveling. And that's why when
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: you only have five six days to hunt. You have
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: such a leg up if you are hunting in an
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: area where there are scrapes, because those bucks are coming there.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: You hope they're coming there in daylight. You won't know
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: until you start hunting it and get your cameras going.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: But you've picked a spot that's less pressured, so the
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: odds are better that they're going to be doing it
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: in the daylight. When when you're going on one of
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: these rut traveling trips and you're looking for this kind
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: of thing, um, do you prioritize where you're gonna walk
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and do your speed scouting to hit typical rut things.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Because right, we haven't talked about funnels or pinch points
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: or dough betting areas that a lot of people would
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: be saying you have focused on those kinds of places
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: during the rut. You haven't said those words once, um,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and hardly talk about it in the book at all.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Do you still have that in the back of your mind?
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Is places that you want to look for these scrape
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: type setups, or forget it. I'm just covering ground until
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I find my scrapes. It's for me, it's a little
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: bit different because a lot of the places that have
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: less hunting pressure, or my version of less hunting pressure,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: like I'm trying to get zero to be honest with you,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to get zero hunting pressure. So I'm looking
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: at places that are really not necessarily remote, but they're
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: like on the fringe of what people would think would
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: be good deer hunting. I mean, I've definitely hunted places
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: that are The whole farm was acres of walking access
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: and there were three trees on it, and I really
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: wanted to hunt that place. Not many sane people would
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: do that. So I don't have to worry as much
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: about the pinch points and that sort of thing, because
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: they're going to where the trees are, so the terrain
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: and that kind of takes care of itself. They're going
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: to travel along those, um those creek bottoms and drainages
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: and finger ridges and things. Now, when you get into
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: a place like Appalachia, Ohio, Southern Indiana, Missouri is in
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: a Appalachia, but it has similar type stuff, then it, yes,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: it does matter more. And then I would have looked
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: at saddles and funnels and things that I can figure out.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: But that's where the Turkey season really comes in because
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not good at that. I'm not good at seeing
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: those digitally. I think I can find them, and then
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I go there and I'm like, oh, this isn't what
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: I thought. This is a straight cliff. So I do
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: have to get on the ground for those, and I
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: do that in Turkey season. But for the most part,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: don't overthink it. The scrapes are there because the deer
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: walked there. They walked there. Whether it was a pinch
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: point or funnel, I don't care. They made a scrape,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: so they're there. You know. That's the part where I
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: would I would confuse myself and I be thinking, I
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: literally would. I can literally remember thinking, man, there's a
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: bunch of big rubs and their scrapes here, but there's
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: no pinch point, so I'm gonna keep looking. I've been there. Yeah,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: And it's counterproduct. I mean, when you think of it
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: that way, you're like, hmm, that doesn't make sense. So
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: and I don't you know, it's not like I'm saying,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: here's a scrape, I'm gonna hunt right over it. After
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: I find the scrapes, then I'm looking in that area.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: What's the what's the most likely spot that you are
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: going to walk through that I can pinch them down,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: And there are some even in those like you know,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Kansas and Iowa type situations where they're creek bottoms, there's
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: certainly spots where you can do that. So if I'm
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: within a hundred yards of that scrape, I'm fine. I
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: don't care exactly how closer far I am. As long
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: as I'm not too far away, I will move around
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: and figure out the best, you know, situation for a stand. Yeah,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit more about that, um
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: that being you know, how you pick the tree? Once
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: you found your your zone with those scrapes, what's your
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: decision process to choose, Like, Okay, this is where I'm
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: going to hang my stick and stand. A lot of
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: times this is gonna sound like a horrible answer, but
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of times it's whatever tree I can get
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: one in, because a lot of them states that are
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you know, west of the Mississippi with the cottonwoods, it
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter what tree you want. You gotta go with
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: the tree that you can use. They're big, they're leaning,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: they're just terrible for stands. But if I have options,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: I want a tree where obviously I'm gonna worry about
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: the wind. I want to be on the you know,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: the side where I feel like the wind's gonna be
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: in my favor the most of the time. And I
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: also like a tree with limbs. I just feel safer
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: in them, and I have better cover, and I want
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: to be I really want to see the deer coming
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: to the scrape rather than hit the scrape and going
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: past me, just because I feel like I have a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: little bit more time to my advantage when they're coming
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: to a place they want to be then leaving a
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: place that they want to be, because he could hit
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: that scrape and turn around and go back the way
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: he came, and I never get a shot if I'm
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: on the other side of it. So there is a
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: guessing game of which way they're coming from. But again,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: you can look at the rubs and see which side
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: of the tree they're on, and you can look at
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: your greater aerial view and be like, he's probably betting
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: here and probably coming from that direction. So I try
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: to be on a quote unquote upwind side. I don't
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: mean literally the upwind side, I mean the travel side
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: of the scrape. And I want a tree with a
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: bunch of limbs, so I can move around and not
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm going to fall out. But a lot
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: of times it depends on you know, there's just a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: bunch of giant cotton was I kind of find whatever
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: tree I can put it in. Yeah, sometimes you're pretty
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: limited there. What about what do you Here's one thing
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: that I always wrestle with, which is what if you
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: do have multiple tree options, but one of them has
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: great cover, but it's farther away from the spot you
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: really think the deer is going to pass through. Or
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: maybe it's you only have a shot at one of
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: the shooting lanes or one of the trails. But then
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: there's another tree that is perfectly located. Maybe you can
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: shoot to the two different travel routes you're expecting, and
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: that's grape maybe, but it is a bean pole. It's
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: why it open. Do you take the crappy tree in
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: the right location or the better tree that limits you
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm gonna go again to the first principle,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: where the pressure is what will make me decide? Um.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: I shot a deer two years ago, I think, yes,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: two falls ago in the Great Plains. I was about
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: nine and a half feet off the ground being pulled
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: straight tree. And he came from three yards away, walking
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: right at me and hit four or five scrapes on
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: the way, and I shot him. He was eighteen inches
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: from the bottom of the tree stand or the base
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: of the tree. Those deer, when they're not pressured to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: have zero clue that someone can shoot them from above.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: So I wouldn't worry too much about it. I would
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: try to get my stand on the back side of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: the tree so I could hide a little bit. But
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: I don't like shooting. I don't like shooting over twenty yards,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to lean more towards being closer and
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: having a little bit better shots. And if I get
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: busted then I'm then I'll adjust. But if those it's
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: amazing deer that aren't super pressured, they really don't pay
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: any attention to tree stands. If I was in Ohio,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: if I was here in Michigan, I would go for
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: the much better cover. Yeah, so what about the other
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: side or the the next step in your process? Once
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: you find your spot, you found your tree. Uh, you
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: mentioned that even if the spots rehand your stand, you're
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: gonna put a camera. Um, some people would say, don't
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: ever put cameras near your tree stands because they might
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: spook UM. What's your take on that? And and since
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: you do it, how do you do it in a
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: way that you're not worried about spooking deer with those
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: camera placements. I can send you the picture of the
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: camera that shot the deer. Took the picture of the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: deer fifteen seconds before I killed him. UM. And I
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: don't put this. I don't put the cameras on the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: tree stand, tree or anything like that. I'm they're always
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: on a scrape. I won't put a camera unless it's
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: on a scrape. UM. So I don't worry about it.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: I use UM. I have certainly had deer pictures of
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the deer looking right directly at the camera. I think
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: what that is? They hear something. I think some cameras
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: have some sort of internal noise when they take a picture,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: and generally at night, it's that filter. It's that red
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: little filter that flips over your lens. UM. Expensive cameras
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: don't do that. I don't really buy expensive cameras because
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: I don't need to and I'm gonna lose them. I
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: don't think the camera is spooking the deer. I've gotten
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: too many pictures of where they look at the camera
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: and then they're right back to doing what they're doing.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: And again, the advantage of the camera gives me is
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: infinitely more. The upside is just so much higher than
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: the potential of me spooking um the deer anyway, because
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: I'm if anything's gonna spook them, it's the fact that
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: I just walked down that trail and walked around their
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: scrape ten hours, five hours whatever it is before that
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: camera took their picture. I'm leaving scent that's gonna happen.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: So I'm not worried about the camera. Um, I'm way
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: more worried about not knowing what bucks we're hitting that
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: scrape when I wasn't there. Yeah, so then what next?
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: But when it comes to checking those cameras for these
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: traveling hunts, are you trying to use sell cameras almost
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: a pent now for those so you don't need to
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: physically go back and look or yeah, yeah, I'm I'm
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Every camera I'm gonna put out is a cell camera.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean I always have service, and that's what
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: really gets irritating. But pretty much anymore now that you
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: have Verizon and a T and T versions, and I
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: carry both always, so I generally will take six cameras
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: with me on a trip three and three Verizon, just
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: so that I have what will work. Um if I
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: don't get service. And I did write about in the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: book a little bit too, I'm just I'm too anxious
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: and nervous. I can't sit all day very well if
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not seeing deer, so that I generally planned. The
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: first day that I hunt, I'm gonna get down about
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: eleven eleven thirty, and I'm gonna go check cameras if
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: they're not sending pictures to me. Um, and then I
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: just go check them real quick. I just, you know,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: buzzing there. I use a bike as much as I
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: can where it's legal. The bike makes a big difference
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: because it saves me time. I think does save on
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the scent as well. And if they do see a
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: bike coming buzzing at him, I don't know, maybe they
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: think that's not a hunter. I don't know if deer
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: can think that way. But UM, I'm gonna check those
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: cameras daily until if I don't get pictures like the
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: first night, and I think this grape is really good,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: I'll leave it. If if I was kind of on
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: the fence about whether it was a great spot or not,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and find another place for that camera
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: on the second day. Wow, So what about your hunting,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Like you you set up your stand on day one
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: and one of those spots you hunt there the next morning.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Let's say you don't see anything that first morning and
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: you don't have pictures of any mature bucks on those
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: cameras yet. Are you relocating stuff already or do you
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: just keep going back to the well and give it
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: some time. That well, that's it's super hard for me
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: because I want tom, I want to bail. But that
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: dear I just told you about um. I had been there,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: so I had one day to scout and I didn't
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: see a single deer, and I didn't see a deer
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: in that entire state when I was driving through it.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: I found that area with the scrapes and a bunch
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: of rubs, and it looked awesome, and it was only
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: seventy five yards from my parking spot. And I sat
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: there the first morning until about ten o'clock because it
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: was getting really really windy and I hadn't found any
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: other places for camera, so I was going to get down.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Didn't see a deer that whole day. I sat there
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: the second morning and it was about ten thirty and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: I hadn't seen a single deer, and I was fighting
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: with every ounce of my being not to bail and
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: literally take the tree stand with me on the way
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: out and just relocate to an entire early different part
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: of the state and start all over. And I looked
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: up and he came walking through and I shot him.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: And that's the only deer I saw in that whole trip.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: It's I don't know the right answer. I wish I
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: did part of the time. If I can myself into it,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give it. The scrapes are there for
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: a reason, That's what I have to keep telling myself.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: And if they're active and there's you know, big rubs,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: give me a lot of confidence. I'm going to leave
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: it until I have a reason not to. And most
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: of the time I don't have a reason not to,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: because it's not like if I was seeing dear other places,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I would move there. But I set up my cameras
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: in the stand based on that's the best stuff I
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: was able to find. In the time I had, and
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: I have to trust it. That's what That's the trap
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: I would fall into Previously, if I didn't see a deer,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't like it. I just kept looking and looking
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: and looking and looking, and I ended up just never
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: hunting and never actually spending the time that it took
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: to hunt. So I'm gonna leave him a day or two,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: probably two days. By the third day, if nothing's on it,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: then I'm I'm getting panicked. But honestly, that shouldn't ever happen. Um,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: if it's past October, there's not going to be three days.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Is they go buy without bucks on those scrapes? Now,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: what about the flip side of that, where you have
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: hunted and you spot one, you spot a buck you
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: you would like to get a shot at, but he's
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: out of range and he's not hitting these scrapes, so
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: he's not around those scrapes. He's somewhere, you know, in
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: within sight but not within shooting range. Do you immediately relocate,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: you know, as soon as that deer's out of range.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Do you wait till the next day? Do you think, Wow,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: that might have been random? I'm going to stick to
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: this spot because there's the scrapes and he should come
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: back through, there's a better chance he'll be here. What
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: about that? If did I see him making any scrapes
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: or he was just walking along, I'm gonna say he's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: just walking along. But tell me what you tell me
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: how scrapes would change your thoughts. I'm not going to
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: move because he's gonna come to those scrapes at some point. Now,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: if he was over there working scrapes, is literally the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: second I can't see him, I'm down and I'm moving
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: the stand over there. Um, if it's one I really
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: really want to shoot. Now, if it's you know, middle
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: of the road and I'm like, yeah, I would shoot him.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: But he's not he's not the biggest buck I think
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: is here, then I probably wouldn't. But um, whatever scrape
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: that deer is on actively, And if he he had
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: to like really worked and spent time and did the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: licking branch and all of that stuff, if he just
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: like pawed once or twice, he might just be you know,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: sexually frustrated. So but um, if he really worked it over,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna be there. And if that was
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: the morning, I probably expect to shoot him. That afternoon,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: because I think he'll be right back in there. What
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: about if there's a buck on a dough, either chasing
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: a dough or locked on a dough. How do you
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: move on situations like that? Do you just do whatever
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: you can? I mean, when they're locked on to the
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: dos in that particular deer and you can see him,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: do whatever you can to get him killed. Eventually he's
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: coming back to that scrape, but you might it might
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: be three days. I mean, he's going to come back
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: through the those areas, not just to work the scrape.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: That's just where he goes, and he's using that areas
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: to kind of scent check. Like a lot of times,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: I think I had it wrong when I used to
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: write about this. I always talked about I wanted to
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: hunt those dough betting areas during the rut, and I do,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: but there's tons of scrapes around there. The reason being
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: is because the bucks are leaving scent, the doughs are
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: leaving scent. So yeah, I was hunting the dope betting areas,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: but I was actually hunting those scrape lines and just
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: didn't realize it. So once he loses that dough, he's
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: going to be back on his prowl pattern, and where
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: he prowls there will be scrapes. If he's locked down hard.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I know that's not going to happen for a little while,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: So you have nothing to lose. Just you can get
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: snuck up on him, do whatever you can do. I
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: suck at that, so I know. But I mean it's
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: probably never going to happen that I kill one that way.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: But if I see him bed down or locked down
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: with him, I'll go try it. Yeah. What about calling?
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: You talked a little in the book about calling in
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: somewhere like Michigan versus somewhere like the Great Planes. Uh,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: would you ever try to call a buck off a
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: dough or is that just a lost cause in your perspective.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: I would try it. I mean I'll try anything at
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: that point. But I mean, do you remember the first
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: time you rattled horns and a deer came in? Were
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: you like, holy cow, this works. I wash my early
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: rattling all did what you just said, which would be
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: they all go the other the other way. Yeah, I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: mean I tried it for so long and then I
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: did it and it was like holy cow. So yeah,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: I would. I would definitely I would definitely rattle at
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: him um and see what happens. But I've never really
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: had it. I've never really been able to pull a
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: buck away. Um, And I don't. I want to use
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: decoys so badly, but I'm not really in the situations
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: where I hunt that a decoys practical. I just get
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: tired of carrying it around and all of that. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: they're hard to justify and traveling situations especially like that.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: But they are awesome when they work. And I mean
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: this stuff Jared and Chancey d from White Till Adrenaline
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: is just it's awesome. It's hard to argue with that
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: when you see how it works. Yeah. Um, I don't.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: I don't want to cover everything in the book because
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: I want to make sure folks know there's a lot
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: more to to cover in there, which which I think
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: there is, um, But I do think it's worth wrapping
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: up with your final principle, which which maybe is what
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: I It's like, my biggest takeaway from the book in
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: general is your is your final principle and how you
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: kind of wrapped it all up because it it has
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: reminded me too chill the hell out on some of
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: my stuff and look at the way you have started
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: trimming stuff down. Can you talk a little bit about
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: this final principle and why you put it here at
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: the very end while the other two at the beginning. Yeah,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: I mean one of them. So there's I mean, there's
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: two reasons. There's a practical reason and then there's just
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: a personal reason. And I guess I'll start with the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: practical first. It's when you know, with the career that
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I had and the things that it's not like I
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: don't know a lot about a deer. I mean I
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: can point out their glands and name some of the
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Latin stuff of them, and it's not like I don't
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: know what types of scrapes are what and why they
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: use them, and you know I don't. It's not like
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know the chemical makeup. I mean, I sent
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: true story, I sent dear piss to a hospital to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: have a your analysis. It's not that I don't know that.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: But we get so caught up in all of the
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: like knowing everything there is to know, and we lose
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: sight of the fact that knowing it doesn't help you
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: kill any deer. If you're making it so convoluted and
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: complex and hard to do any of You're just you're
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: stuck in one spot you can have. You know, I
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: always look at guys who put a lot of stuff
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: on their bow, and what I think is one of
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: the worst inventions of the history of bow hunting is
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: the adjustable single pin site. So you're telling me I
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: need at the deep because I think most people are
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: are like me when you see a giant buck coming
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: your way, that your first thought is, holy crap, it
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: might actually happen. I've waited so long and worked so
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: hard for this, and your adrenaline is crazy, and you're shaking,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: and all of those things you're telling me. Somebody thought
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: it was a good idea that at that point you
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: should have to know the exact yardage to adjust your
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: pin on your bow, and if you don't, you're gonna miss.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: That is what I mean, Like, we have taken something
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: simple and basic and made it so mechanical that we've
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: lost sight of it. So for me, I wasn't having
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: trouble making decisions of where to hunt, when to hunt,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: how to hunt, even why to hunt. To be honest
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: with you, and that's where some of the personal stuff
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: came in. I just wanted all that stuff stripped out. Now,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: if I find scrapes, I know Bucks made it. If
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: I hide a tree, stand near a path that leads
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: to those scrapes, or you know, on top of the scrape,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: if I have to and I hunt there, pretty good
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: odds I'm going to get a shot at one of
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: those Bucks. I don't need to know anything else. I
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: don't need to do anything else. I don't need to
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: think about anything else. It's made it more fun. I
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: got rid of a bunch of gear I don't I
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: don't worry about it. It doesn't mean I'm cheap. I'll
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: still spend good money on good equipment. I just have
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: way less of it. And if I don't need to
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: spend good money on it and it's still good, I
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: don't care what brand it is. The personal side of
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: it is a lot of that. I just didn't like
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: the commercialization, and more I didn't like kind of the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: space I had put myself in and the way that
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: I had kind of branded myself, so to speak. I
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: didn't like any of it, and so I just decided
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: to change it. And I don't think there's anything wrong
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: with dummying things down if it makes you more successful.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: And just taking a lot of the crap out. I
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: still post on social media because it's fun and I
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: want to see what my friends killed, and I like
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: to see what other people killed. But I don't worry
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: so much about the image of it. It doesn't matter.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna try to shoot big deer, and I've
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: the last three or four years, I've done a lot
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: better than I had done in the three or four years,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: and some of those dear I didn't even put a
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: picture up of just didn't matter at that point, you know. Yeah,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's a great reminder simple works. I mean,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: I need that reminder because I'm I'm the personality type
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: where I can overcomplicate stuff a lot and uh and
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: get into that whole analysis paralysis stuff. So it's because
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: you're you're you have the capacity to learn. Like you
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: you're a learner and you want to learn and not.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: What I really don't want people to think is that
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: dummying things down, are doing things simple means you're stupid
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: or that you're not learning is I think it means
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: you're learning better. It means you're learning that this knowledge
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: is useful. But the application is gotta have its place
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: how do you how do you how do you translate that? Though?
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: For I mean, my my instinct tells me that like,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: you can't get to the place that you're at where
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: you can keep it simple until you have enough experience
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: to know like what matters and what doesn't or what
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: matters for you in your situation. Is there any other
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: way to go about like filtering all the stuff or
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: is it simply you have to put the stuff into
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: practice and then figure out what the right fit is
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: for you and then find that system. I think, unfortunately
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: you're right, a lot of it is experience. Um, I
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: know that I couldn't and I'm still not like I'm
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: I still struggle big time with those decisions, but nothing
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: like I would have ten or fifteen years ago, And
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: I don't think I was ready to I didn't know enough.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: So even though it's simple, it's because the more things
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: that you understand and learn and know, you're able to
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: have more confidence that you're okay and what you're doing.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: You know, just like we talked about before, ten years ago,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: if I saw a big buck go up a treeline
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: and he was out of range, I'm down and I'm
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: moving my stand now I'm thinking, if he didn't make
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: a scrape or do something that tells me he wants
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: to keep returning to that tree line, there's there's no
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: point in me doing that. His sign is here, the
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: sign that he returns to is here. Just trust that.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: That's a simple way of thinking about a whole lot
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: of experiences, in complex things that you've tried and done
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: and learned from in the past. So it maybe it's
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: not even just simplifying things. It's more about trusting the
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: things that you've learned. And I think that a lot
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: of people have that that issue. It's why we put
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: so much stuff on our bows. That's why we, you know,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: realize so much on the comparison stuff on social media,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: and we have all, you know, these fancy things. We
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: don't really trust ourselves, you know, we need to have
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: that aura or that image too in case we don't succeed.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: So what would this is? This is a really good
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: place to think wrap up. What would the final what's
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: your final message to folks that maybe have found themselves
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: in that position. There's there's I'm a lot I'm sure
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of folks out there right now who
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: are in that who have gotten really excited about this
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: deer hunting thing with Delvin head first who really like it,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: but also maybe aren't quite comfortable in their own skin
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: yet as far as what they're doing, how they're doing it,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: what they're doing looks like compared to everybody else. Um,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: you've kind of been through the ring or you've come
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: out the other side and you're in a different place
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: now that maybe you were ten years ago. What's the
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: final parting words before we wrap this up. There's not
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: the things that we tend to focus on so much
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: don't matter. There's not a lot of things that do.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: You know. Um, if you enjoy what you're doing and
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: you think eventually you can be successful at it, then
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: keep doing it. That way. The things that you're seeing
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: in a lot of you know, media outlets, it's not
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: your situation. It's not a situation that you can duplicate
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: or replicate, so it it doesn't matter so much. Um,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: just if you're making mistakes and you're never killing anything,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: you gotta ask yourself why and is it something that
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: I'm doing that I can change and then change it.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: But don't change just for the sake of changing. You
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: have to have you have to be able to think
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: through the decisions that you're making, and don't make it
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: harder than it is. If there's a scrape and a
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: deer trail and some buck rubs because bucks went through there,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: So if you spend some time there, probably can't see
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: another buck that you can shoot. It doesn't have to
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: be any harder than that. And and to shoot him
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: in the lungs and you'd be good. Wise words right there, Tony,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: I would recommend folks go out and pick up your
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: book right now. I really enjoyed it. It it's a
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: breath of fresh air I think in a lot of
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: ways from from other things out there. And uh, if
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: anyone who listens conversation, I think we'll have a good
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: sense of of how that's the case. Uh where can
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: people find the book? Where should they go by this?
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: It's just on Amazon. Like I said, I just self
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: published it. I honestly never even really intended for it
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: to sell anything. Amazon was just an easy way for
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: me to get twenty copies for myself. So um, it's
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: you just will go to Amazon and you can google
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: my name or likeas manifesto and that should or search
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: not Google, but on Amazon and search it and it
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: should pop up there perfect well. I enjoyed it, Tony,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: and I enjoyed this conversation. Thank you, thanks for writing this,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: Thanks for taking the time to talk about too. No
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: problem at all anytime. All right, And that's a rap.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Like I mentioned, Tony Hanson's book and Antler Geek's manifesto,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: pick it up, give it a read. It's it's a
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: quick read, but it's worth it. I enjoyed it. I
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: think if you heard our conversation today here, you're gonna
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: understand why. So head on over to Amazon, pick up
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: a copy, and then get to work. So until next time,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: thank you all for tuning in. Thanks for being a
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: part of this community. I appreciate it. I think that
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: uh man, the Wired to Hunt audience, you guys and
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: gals are You're my kind of people, and I'm lad
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: that we can spend a little time every week chatting
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: and geeking out on deer and deer hunting. Because there's
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff out there in the world it's
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: kind of lousy, but this is one of those things
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: that is not. This is just some good stuff, and
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: thank goodness for that. So until next time, thank you,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: and stay wired to heart,