Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 975: The Secret to My Best Rut Hunt Ever

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Ep. 975: The Secret to My Best Rut Hunt Ever · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
0:04
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven
0:08
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
0:13
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
0:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
0:23
Speaker 2: the show, I'm breaking down my twenty twenty five Iowa
0:26
Speaker 2: rut hunt and detailing for you the decisions I made,
0:30
Speaker 2: the tactics I used, and the mindset I had that
0:33
Speaker 2: ultimately led to me having what I believe white possibly
0:37
Speaker 2: might be my very best rut hunt ever. All right,
0:47
Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
0:50
Speaker 2: you by First Light and their Camera for Conservation Initiative.
0:54
Speaker 2: And today it's just you and me, another solo episode,
0:57
Speaker 2: and I am doing a couple day after breakdown of
1:01
Speaker 2: my twenty twenty five rut cation to Iowa. I've done
1:06
Speaker 2: this before. I've broken down specific hunts, especially ones that
1:11
Speaker 2: turned out well. They don't always turn out well, but
1:13
Speaker 2: this one did. I've got a successful rut hunting deer
1:18
Speaker 2: story for you today, and really an epic trip. As
1:22
Speaker 2: I mentioned in the introduction, as I drove home from
1:24
Speaker 2: this trip, a couple days ago, I thought to myself,
1:27
Speaker 2: this is probably my most enjoyable rut hunt ever. This
1:32
Speaker 2: was my best rut cation to date. And so what
1:37
Speaker 2: I want to do today for you is explain to
1:39
Speaker 2: you exactly why that was. Explain to you exactly how
1:44
Speaker 2: this hunt came together, why it was so successful, and
1:47
Speaker 2: maybe more importantly, why it was so enjoyable. So I'm
1:52
Speaker 2: going to break down day by day where I sat,
1:56
Speaker 2: why I sat there, how these things set up, what
1:58
Speaker 2: were the tactics I ed use, what kinds of things
2:01
Speaker 2: did I see, what didn't I see what worked, what
2:03
Speaker 2: didn't work, and everything else that went on around it, Because,
2:06
Speaker 2: as I just alluded to a second ago, what was
2:09
Speaker 2: going on around this hunt maybe was just as important,
2:13
Speaker 2: or possibly more important than what was actually going on
2:16
Speaker 2: in the tree. And I'll explain that to you more
2:19
Speaker 2: as we go along here. And you know, a lot
2:22
Speaker 2: of what made this trip so successful, what I think
2:25
Speaker 2: made this trip so special in many ways, can be
2:28
Speaker 2: attributed back to some lessons that I learned from the
2:31
Speaker 2: last time I hunted in Iowa. That was back in
2:34
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, and some of you might remember I
2:37
Speaker 2: recorded a podcast the very day after that hunt ended,
2:41
Speaker 2: in which I did something very similar to what I'm
2:43
Speaker 2: doing here today. I just broke down the hunt, what
2:46
Speaker 2: happened day by day, what I did, what my decisions were,
2:49
Speaker 2: how it all went, and what I learned from it.
2:51
Speaker 2: And that was a raw podcast. That was a podcast
2:54
Speaker 2: that I was I was feeling it on that day,
2:57
Speaker 2: after it had been a rough hunt. Things ended poorly.
3:01
Speaker 2: A bunch of stuff happened throughout the week but ultimately
3:04
Speaker 2: didn't fill my tag, and that next day I was
3:09
Speaker 2: driving to another trip I recorded this podcast, and after
3:13
Speaker 2: that I realized that there was something wrong with my
3:17
Speaker 2: hunting life. There was something missing or something I guess
3:26
Speaker 2: it's still hard to put words to it exactly, but
3:28
Speaker 2: my why maybe had gotten off course and I had
3:32
Speaker 2: lost the fun in my hunting. And eventually, over the
3:36
Speaker 2: next year or two, if you've listened to if you
3:39
Speaker 2: listen to the podcast back then, you heard me kind
3:41
Speaker 2: of trying to work through that and trying to make
3:43
Speaker 2: sense of my hunting journey and where I was and
3:46
Speaker 2: why I was doing what I was doing and how
3:48
Speaker 2: I was doing things. And what I ultimately realized was
3:50
Speaker 2: that I had lost the fun in deer hunting because
3:53
Speaker 2: I was so obsessed with success, conventional views of success.
3:58
Speaker 2: I was so obsessed with killed the big buck. I
4:01
Speaker 2: was so obsessed with being a good deer hunter, and
4:05
Speaker 2: all of that led to me missing out on all
4:08
Speaker 2: the other good things around hunting that make it so special.
4:11
Speaker 2: An appreciation for the beautiful scenery, spending time with your
4:15
Speaker 2: family out there, prioritizing trips with your friends, participating in
4:20
Speaker 2: the fun camaraderie stuff that goes on around to hunt,
4:23
Speaker 2: going for a track job with a buddy during the
4:25
Speaker 2: middle of the day, or going out to lunch or
4:27
Speaker 2: breakfast after the morning hunt, or hanging out with friends afterwards,
4:31
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. I was so single mindedly focused
4:35
Speaker 2: on doing everything I could to kill that big, giant
4:39
Speaker 2: buck that everything else was pushed off to the side.
4:41
Speaker 2: And that was really epitomized by that Iowa trip. So
4:45
Speaker 2: what I want to do for you to set the
4:46
Speaker 2: stage for today's conversation is I want to give you
4:49
Speaker 2: a chance to listen to me back then four years ago,
4:53
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, Mark Kenyon, just after my last Iowa hunt.
4:58
Speaker 2: I want you to hear how I was feeling at
5:00
Speaker 2: the end of that trip and I think that will
5:02
Speaker 2: provide a very interesting contrast to what you're about to
5:06
Speaker 2: hear from twenty twenty five Mark Kenyon. So here's that
5:11
Speaker 2: excerpt from the end of my podcast breaking down my
5:14
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one Iowa hunt. I'm honestly, I'll go back
5:19
Speaker 2: and say I'm embarrassed, like I'll tell you, like just honestly,
5:23
Speaker 2: just being brutally honest with you. This is embarrassing. It's
5:27
Speaker 2: embarrassing that I missed a buck. It's embarrassing that I
5:32
Speaker 2: didn't kill a deer. It's embarrassing I spent seven days
5:34
Speaker 2: in the best place in the world and couldn't get
5:36
Speaker 2: it done. It's embarrassing that, you know, me, Clay, Tony,
5:39
Speaker 2: and Spencer were all on this hunt for the show,
5:42
Speaker 2: and Tony killed, Spencer killed, Clay killed. Who's the one
5:47
Speaker 2: guy that didn't kill the son of a gun that
5:49
Speaker 2: hosts the Wired Dunt bog Gas this great big whitetail podcast.
5:52
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to be the guy that's supposed to get
5:54
Speaker 2: this done and then I don't. So all of those
5:58
Speaker 2: things have been in my brain and man, it sucks.
6:07
Speaker 2: But the one thing when I climbed out of the tree,
6:10
Speaker 2: last night. I just said, I freaking gave it my all.
6:16
Speaker 2: I mean, I just did everything I could. I did
6:21
Speaker 2: not take a break. I did not take an easy
6:23
Speaker 2: route every time I thought, man, I gotta make an adjustment,
6:28
Speaker 2: every time I thought, I gotta take a long way,
6:29
Speaker 2: every time I thought I gotta go harder, longer. Whatever
6:33
Speaker 2: I did it, I give every damn little bit of myself.
6:37
Speaker 2: And I am whooped and tired, and you know, that's
6:45
Speaker 2: just how it goes sometimes. So I am going to
6:49
Speaker 2: try to sleep easy tonight in some kind of way,
6:52
Speaker 2: knowing that I left it on the court, left it
6:55
Speaker 2: all on the field, and that that is just how
6:57
Speaker 2: it goes sometimes. That's right, that's life, all right. So
7:02
Speaker 2: as you heard there, I was down the dumps. I
7:06
Speaker 2: was frustrated. I was upset, and much of it was
7:10
Speaker 2: because I was upset with myself for my performance in
7:13
Speaker 2: the field, how I actually executed in the moment, whether
7:16
Speaker 2: or not I killed a big buck, and if I
7:18
Speaker 2: had success right. But as I alluded to a couple
7:22
Speaker 2: minutes ago, the more I thought about it, the more
7:25
Speaker 2: I realized that my discontent with the hunt actually had
7:31
Speaker 2: a whole lot to do with all the other things
7:32
Speaker 2: going on, because during that hunt, you just know, I
7:36
Speaker 2: had a bunch of other buddies down there hunting the
7:38
Speaker 2: same area. I had two local friends who lived in
7:41
Speaker 2: the area who were hunting. My good buddy Josh was
7:45
Speaker 2: in town hunting as well, and some other local friends
7:48
Speaker 2: were there too. So everybody was enjoying their Iowa trip.
7:52
Speaker 2: They were going out and having a good time in
7:54
Speaker 2: the evenings, meeting up, having dinner, stuff like that. They
7:58
Speaker 2: were getting together for a late breakfast or lunch in
8:00
Speaker 2: the middle of the day. They were sometimes hunting together.
8:04
Speaker 2: You know, they've got some ground blind set up in
8:06
Speaker 2: some spots that multiple multiple people can hunt together and
8:09
Speaker 2: have a good time. They were doing all those things,
8:11
Speaker 2: and I was not allowing myself to because I thought,
8:14
Speaker 2: you know, a really good di y deer hunter isn't
8:19
Speaker 2: gonna sit some ground blind that his friends set up
8:21
Speaker 2: for him. No, he's gonna do it all himself. He's
8:22
Speaker 2: gonna hunt from his saddle, and he's gonna show the
8:24
Speaker 2: world that he's a great deer hunter himself. I wasn't
8:27
Speaker 2: going out for lunch with all the friends, because a
8:30
Speaker 2: really good deer hunter should hunt every single possible minute
8:33
Speaker 2: and should never take a break and should do everything
8:35
Speaker 2: he can to possibly, you know, kill that big deer.
8:38
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna hunt from dawn till dusk and no sacrifice,
8:43
Speaker 2: no time off, got to be out there. And there's
8:46
Speaker 2: just all these different examples of stuff like that. I
8:49
Speaker 2: refuse to enjoy the hunt because I had to kill
8:52
Speaker 2: a big deer, and then ultimately my friends had a
8:55
Speaker 2: great time. I had a miserable experience. They all ended
8:59
Speaker 2: up killing deer and I didn't. And I started to
9:01
Speaker 2: think that maybe there's a connection there too. Not only
9:04
Speaker 2: was I making myself miserable, but maybe because I was miserable,
9:07
Speaker 2: I wasn't hunting as successfully as well. So all of
9:10
Speaker 2: these things, as I mentioned, led to some changes in
9:13
Speaker 2: my hunting style, led to some changes to how I'm
9:15
Speaker 2: prioritizing my hunts and my decisions, and ultimately led me
9:19
Speaker 2: to decide that when I ever returned to Iowa for
9:21
Speaker 2: another hunt, I was going to do things differently. And
9:24
Speaker 2: that's the trip that just wrapped up. So let's get
9:28
Speaker 2: into this trip. To kick things off, I did a
9:33
Speaker 2: scouting and shed hunting trip in the spring this year
9:37
Speaker 2: to this region of Iowa. I was going back to
9:39
Speaker 2: hunt in the same region where I had in the past,
9:42
Speaker 2: where my good buddies have some land and live close by,
9:45
Speaker 2: and wanted to spend time there in the preseason to
9:48
Speaker 2: enjoy the whole scope of things. So for the first
9:50
Speaker 2: time ever, I actually invited my family to come out
9:52
Speaker 2: and join me for one of these trips. I had
9:54
Speaker 2: my wife and my two boys come out or a
9:57
Speaker 2: spring shed hunting trip. Got to go there with my
10:00
Speaker 2: buddies and their families. Got to, you know, just have
10:04
Speaker 2: a good time out there, got to walk, got to,
10:06
Speaker 2: you know, show the kids some antlers. They got to
10:08
Speaker 2: find some antlers, be a part of the process. See
10:10
Speaker 2: these places where I was gonna hunt. Just had fun
10:13
Speaker 2: and we ended up finding some antlers, and I got
10:15
Speaker 2: to learn a couple of these properties a little bit
10:17
Speaker 2: more too. Now the two spots I was going to
10:20
Speaker 2: hunt this year would be one new spot one spot
10:24
Speaker 2: that I hunted last time around. Both of these properties
10:28
Speaker 2: are spots either owned or leased by my friends. A
10:33
Speaker 2: major major element to this year's hunt is the incredible
10:38
Speaker 2: generosity of my buddies, two friends in particular, who have
10:42
Speaker 2: just been so kind and generous with providing, you know,
10:45
Speaker 2: me somewhere to stay, providing somewhere for me to hunt,
10:50
Speaker 2: having spots you know, well set up, well managed, well
10:53
Speaker 2: taken care of that. They have been you know, very
10:55
Speaker 2: open and generous with myself and some of our other
10:58
Speaker 2: buddies and letting us share these properties with them. So huge, huge,
11:02
Speaker 2: huge thank you to my pales Ross and Peter for
11:06
Speaker 2: being great friends over so many years and now being
11:09
Speaker 2: so generous with their hunting spots. They've got these incredible
11:13
Speaker 2: spots here in Iowa that they've shared with myself and
11:15
Speaker 2: several of our other friends, and we've all had so
11:18
Speaker 2: much fun because of that. This week being a terrific
11:22
Speaker 2: example of that. So we did the group shed hunt,
11:25
Speaker 2: came back on this summer, did some work on these properties,
11:28
Speaker 2: helping out, hanging some stands, doing some scouting, doing some
11:31
Speaker 2: velvet footage, putting up trail cameras the whole nine yards. Again,
11:35
Speaker 2: just a really great excuse to get together with my
11:37
Speaker 2: best hunting buddies and see some deer, get amped up
11:41
Speaker 2: for the hunting season, establish what deer might be in
11:44
Speaker 2: the area. Want some really good deer near my buddy
11:47
Speaker 2: Peter's property that I was excited to hunt got some
11:50
Speaker 2: really great velvet footage that some of you might have
11:53
Speaker 2: seen on Instagram. But coming into the fall, we then
11:57
Speaker 2: started looking at trail camera pictures and again, and this
12:00
Speaker 2: is like a fun group activity because we're all kind
12:02
Speaker 2: of hunting together. We're sharing all of our cell cam
12:05
Speaker 2: pictures and texting each other when different bucks show up
12:08
Speaker 2: and talk about how old do you think this one is,
12:10
Speaker 2: or what do you think about this deer? Or have
12:12
Speaker 2: you seen this deer in the past, and going back
12:13
Speaker 2: and forth and just having fun with it, not obsessing over,
12:17
Speaker 2: you know, we have to kill this one deer, but
12:19
Speaker 2: just enjoying it and just getting excited about it. Ultimately,
12:22
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks before I was going to go
12:24
Speaker 2: to hunt, we decided we we're having a hard time
12:27
Speaker 2: keeping track of what deer was what. So I went
12:30
Speaker 2: and spent a couple hours one night finding each different
12:33
Speaker 2: individual buck on all of their properties and building like
12:36
Speaker 2: a Google image or like a Google folder for each one.
12:39
Speaker 2: This is my inner nerd coming out, So we basically
12:44
Speaker 2: had a folder that had pictures of each buck so
12:46
Speaker 2: we could then say, okay, yeah, yeah, this buck is
12:48
Speaker 2: the one with a funky G four that curls in
12:51
Speaker 2: and here's four different pictures of him, and this way
12:54
Speaker 2: we kind of were able to make sense of each
12:56
Speaker 2: individual deer. And then we decided, yeah, we're going to
12:59
Speaker 2: put names on these deer, so we know how to,
13:00
Speaker 2: you know, talk about them, but we're gonna do it
13:02
Speaker 2: in kind of a stupid way and in a long,
13:06
Speaker 2: roundabout way. We ended up deciding to theme all the
13:09
Speaker 2: names of the deer this year around types of bread.
13:14
Speaker 2: So really dumb, but ended up being very funny because
13:17
Speaker 2: now we've got deer like sour dough, pumper nickel, french bagette, hamburger, bun, pancake,
13:26
Speaker 2: Kirkland signature, just a bunch of ridiculous names that every
13:31
Speaker 2: time you say them you laugh to yourself about how
13:33
Speaker 2: dumb it is. And that ended up making the whole
13:35
Speaker 2: thing pretty funny too. So we've got this whole list
13:36
Speaker 2: of deer that have been showing up on these properties.
13:38
Speaker 2: They're named after types of bread. I think that very
13:42
Speaker 2: well sets the theme for the trip because there was
13:43
Speaker 2: a lot of ridiculousness. It was a lot of fun
13:46
Speaker 2: and a lot of laughs, and it seemed appropriate that
13:49
Speaker 2: when we talk about any one of these bucks, we
13:51
Speaker 2: don't take ourselves too seriously and doing it because we're
13:54
Speaker 2: referencing Ah Man, We're gonna go in there and try
13:56
Speaker 2: to hunt hamburger bun. So that was how the hunt began.
14:01
Speaker 2: Day one. I drove up on Halloween and was going
14:05
Speaker 2: to be staying at my buddy's place. He's got a
14:08
Speaker 2: house out there on one of these properties that he
14:10
Speaker 2: shares with all of our hunting buddies, so we can
14:11
Speaker 2: all camp out there, hang out, have fun in the evening,
14:14
Speaker 2: and have somewhere to sleep. So got to the clubhouse.
14:18
Speaker 2: Ross was gonna hunt with me on day one. We
14:20
Speaker 2: were going to go in for a hunt in one
14:22
Speaker 2: of these ground blinds that he had set up that,
14:24
Speaker 2: you know, four years ago I would have said, no,
14:26
Speaker 2: I can't do that. That seems, you know, not DII
14:31
Speaker 2: enough or something. But this hunt, this time, the goal
14:34
Speaker 2: was to just enjoy the whole experience, and that's something
14:37
Speaker 2: I probably should have set up at the beginning. My
14:40
Speaker 2: plan here, my goal here for this hunt was not
14:42
Speaker 2: that I had to kill some big giant buck, not
14:44
Speaker 2: that I had to prove myself and hunting any particular way.
14:47
Speaker 2: My goal was simply to enjoy the Iowa experience to
14:51
Speaker 2: its fullest. And what does that mean? That meant number one,
14:53
Speaker 2: having a really good time with my good buddies. Number two,
14:57
Speaker 2: that meant letting myself enjoy the week without the pressure
15:02
Speaker 2: and expectations of having to kill a giant buck. I
15:05
Speaker 2: did not go into this having some kind of arbitrary
15:08
Speaker 2: well it's got to be this big kind of thing.
15:09
Speaker 2: I did not go into this believing, well, I got
15:11
Speaker 2: to kill this one deer. It was just let's go there,
15:15
Speaker 2: let's see Iowa at its best. Right when you go
15:17
Speaker 2: to Iowa, you want to be able to see some
15:19
Speaker 2: mature bucks. You want to see some running activity, you
15:21
Speaker 2: want to see some fun stuff that maybe you're not
15:23
Speaker 2: normally gonna see, you know back home in Michigan, where
15:26
Speaker 2: there's not as many mature bucks. So I wanted to
15:28
Speaker 2: not rush things. I wanted to see the show and
15:32
Speaker 2: do the fun, dumb stuff that all my buddies get
15:35
Speaker 2: to do. But I would never let myself so hunt
15:37
Speaker 2: the groundblines, hunt the box blinds, go in for lunch,
15:40
Speaker 2: do some drives looking for deer, do all the fun
15:42
Speaker 2: stuff that's not just sitting in a tree and making
15:45
Speaker 2: myself miserable. So that was the goal. We started out
15:48
Speaker 2: with this first night hunt in this really nice little
15:51
Speaker 2: corn food plot, tucked into the timber. They're standing corn
15:54
Speaker 2: corn behind us. There's some knockdown corn in front of us.
15:59
Speaker 2: Our ground blind tucked into that corn, just a dynamite
16:01
Speaker 2: setup and sat there that night just having a blast.
16:05
Speaker 2: Me and Ross were telling stories, laughing probably too loud.
16:10
Speaker 2: Ended up seeing a bunch of deer come in towards
16:12
Speaker 2: that last hour of daylight, including a really nice three
16:14
Speaker 2: year old buck, that buck that we called Kirkland after
16:18
Speaker 2: the Costco bread and super nice three year old deer
16:23
Speaker 2: I think a nine pointer with a little sticker off
16:25
Speaker 2: his G two on one side, and got to just
16:27
Speaker 2: watch that deer out in front. That was one deer
16:29
Speaker 2: that we'd agreed like, hey, he's a young one, he'll
16:31
Speaker 2: be great some other year. I would love for that
16:34
Speaker 2: deer to be around for Ross and other people to
16:36
Speaker 2: hunt in the future. So that was a deer I
16:38
Speaker 2: wasn't going to go after, and I was perfectly fine
16:40
Speaker 2: with that. So we got to watch Kirkland feeding around
16:42
Speaker 2: in front of us and kind of nose around some
16:44
Speaker 2: does The setup here was the wind was in our
16:48
Speaker 2: face blowing back into that standing corn. There's betting to
16:52
Speaker 2: our west. So what we imagine happening was that there
16:56
Speaker 2: would be bucks and does on these ridge points, and
16:59
Speaker 2: the would come off of these points feed into that cornfield,
17:02
Speaker 2: and hopefully some of these bucks would cruise through checking
17:05
Speaker 2: the does, and that's basically what happened. We saw a
17:07
Speaker 2: handful of young bucks that really nice three year old
17:10
Speaker 2: and that was the night. A day two we decided
17:15
Speaker 2: to go back in and actually hunt that same spot
17:17
Speaker 2: one more time because it had actually been blowing up
17:20
Speaker 2: on trail camera. The big mature bucks had been hitting
17:24
Speaker 2: this corn plot in the mornings, especially actually coming back
17:27
Speaker 2: in late morning and checking for doughs and hitting this
17:30
Speaker 2: scrape tree that was out there, and so we thought, well,
17:32
Speaker 2: let's give it one morning hunt. It's a small corn
17:34
Speaker 2: plot that the part that was actually knocked down was
17:37
Speaker 2: probably you know, quarter acre maybe, so it's not like
17:40
Speaker 2: a destination food source. There were some big cornfields way
17:44
Speaker 2: to the north quarter mile up there maybe, so in
17:47
Speaker 2: this particular location, it's usually a late morning thing because
17:51
Speaker 2: they're slowly transitioning back from those big fields. So the
17:54
Speaker 2: idea was, let's get in there early before those deer
17:57
Speaker 2: get back. Let's get set up in this groundb line.
17:59
Speaker 2: Hopefully the trickle back in as they head to bed,
18:02
Speaker 2: and then you get those bucks doing the same because
18:04
Speaker 2: this is a secluded food plot. This is not like
18:06
Speaker 2: a wide open, open food source. This is a back
18:09
Speaker 2: in the cover, a little Heidi hoole spot. So I
18:11
Speaker 2: end up doing that and see a decent handful of
18:14
Speaker 2: deer and some young bucks again but not the big guys,
18:18
Speaker 2: but just a very fun hunt. And this is something
18:21
Speaker 2: that came up over and over again on this trip
18:23
Speaker 2: and something different than a lot of my hunts, just
18:28
Speaker 2: because the priority on this trip and for you know
18:30
Speaker 2: a lot of my friends when we do these group
18:32
Speaker 2: hunts out there has been enjoying each other's company. The
18:37
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes the priority isn't on everybody hunting in
18:40
Speaker 2: their own spots so that everybody can kill a big deer. Sometimes,
18:43
Speaker 2: like in this case, my buddy Ross was sacrificing one
18:46
Speaker 2: of his own hunts to instead sit with me, just
18:49
Speaker 2: to enjoy it with me and you know, get to
18:52
Speaker 2: share some stories and get to see the deer together
18:54
Speaker 2: and maybe he could you know, get to be there
18:56
Speaker 2: watch me kill a deer, all that kind of stuff.
18:58
Speaker 2: So that made for a really fun hunt and it
19:01
Speaker 2: was something that we ended up doing later that day.
19:03
Speaker 2: We came in at midday, had coffee, had lunch. My friend,
19:09
Speaker 2: another friend from Michigan, Dustin, actually drove all the way
19:12
Speaker 2: out from Michigan. Speaking of sacrificing hunting time, he came
19:15
Speaker 2: out to camp even without an Iowa tag. He drove
19:17
Speaker 2: all the way from Michigan to come out and spend
19:19
Speaker 2: three four days with us, just to be there for
19:21
Speaker 2: the deer camp, just to be there to tag along
19:24
Speaker 2: for a few hunts and have some fun and see
19:26
Speaker 2: the show. So Dustin and I went and hunted on
19:29
Speaker 2: another one of these properties. We hunted another blind overlooking
19:33
Speaker 2: a really cool kind of a larger interior food source,
19:38
Speaker 2: surrounded by again these like high fields with big ridges
19:41
Speaker 2: all around them that dropped down to some thick, nasty bottoms.
19:44
Speaker 2: So the deer, I'll bet around these outside points. The
19:47
Speaker 2: does come from those bottoms up into feet into the
19:50
Speaker 2: upper fields. You've got bucks that are then cruising the
19:53
Speaker 2: edges of these ridges, and then the evenings they pop
19:56
Speaker 2: up and check those fields for doughs. So the evening
20:00
Speaker 2: was hunting one of these blinds overlooking this other interior
20:03
Speaker 2: food source, and at this point, day two, I'm just
20:07
Speaker 2: gonna kind of want to get a lay of the land,
20:09
Speaker 2: see what stuff looks like, and also just get a
20:12
Speaker 2: sense of what's happening. So some observation type sits was
20:15
Speaker 2: what I was trying to do with these, And this
20:18
Speaker 2: one in particular was exciting because even though on this
20:21
Speaker 2: property Pete's property, there weren't a whole lot of mature
20:23
Speaker 2: bucks showing up anymore on camera the last month or so,
20:27
Speaker 2: the standing corn was getting combined right then, so when
20:41
Speaker 2: the corn comes out oftentimes that shakes things up. You
20:44
Speaker 2: start to see new deer, or the deer that are
20:46
Speaker 2: there are more visible in daylight because they're forced to
20:49
Speaker 2: be in the timber or in the open now. So
20:52
Speaker 2: we hunted this blind. Actually put my Dave smith Buck
20:56
Speaker 2: decoy out in front of me just in case we
20:58
Speaker 2: could get something in sight and rattle or call him in,
21:01
Speaker 2: and me and Dustin just had a great time again
21:04
Speaker 2: telling stories, watching things, catching up on life. Ultimately, we
21:08
Speaker 2: saw two of the better bucks on this property, but
21:12
Speaker 2: both of them were like three maybe four at the
21:15
Speaker 2: oldest and none of them came in range, but very
21:18
Speaker 2: fun hunt saw a bunch of deer. There was some chasing,
21:22
Speaker 2: There was actually some rattling success. I rattled and one
21:25
Speaker 2: of those nice bucks when we called sourdough, and then
21:28
Speaker 2: another younger buck actually came running in as I was rattling,
21:31
Speaker 2: but they stopped at about one hundred and fifty yards out.
21:34
Speaker 2: They ran for maybe three hundred got to like one
21:36
Speaker 2: hundred hundred and fifty and then just kind of moved off,
21:38
Speaker 2: cruising in two different directions. Fun hunt no success that day.
21:44
Speaker 2: Dig three. Now we're getting into the point where I'm
21:47
Speaker 2: starting to get a little bit more serious. Those early
21:50
Speaker 2: hunts were low impact, observation type sits. I really didn't
21:54
Speaker 2: want to force things too early. Like I said, I
21:56
Speaker 2: wanted to enjoy the Iowa show. It would be a
22:00
Speaker 2: little bit disappointing probably to show up and kill on
22:04
Speaker 2: the very first day and be done. So I didn't
22:07
Speaker 2: mind that I was kind of hunting this outside in
22:09
Speaker 2: kind of way. But day three, decide, Okay, it's time
22:13
Speaker 2: to get a little bit more serious and punge in there.
22:16
Speaker 2: And so I moved into one of the better spots
22:18
Speaker 2: on that first property. This is a really cool location
22:23
Speaker 2: that uses terrain to funnel deer in and around a
22:27
Speaker 2: bunch of dough betting. So you're you're layering, like the
22:30
Speaker 2: two core principles of hunting, the rut into one spot.
22:34
Speaker 2: So if you can imagine this is an area with
22:36
Speaker 2: with a bunch of different ridges and points all extending
22:40
Speaker 2: down to the spottom, so it's like a ridge. And
22:42
Speaker 2: then imagine almost like three big ridges, like an E
22:45
Speaker 2: pointing down into the bottom right and at the top
22:48
Speaker 2: of that E. If you imagine, like I guess, it's
22:51
Speaker 2: more like an M because the m's pointing down right
22:53
Speaker 2: at the top middle of that M. All three of
22:57
Speaker 2: those points kind of come together in this spot, and
23:00
Speaker 2: I was sitting in that spot. There's a little bit
23:03
Speaker 2: of a saddle. Three of these points all kind of
23:06
Speaker 2: come together up at the top here. And in addition
23:09
Speaker 2: to that, my buddy who had owns this property had
23:13
Speaker 2: cut some paths through all the thick stuff too. So
23:15
Speaker 2: there's a mode trail down one of the points. There's
23:17
Speaker 2: a mode trail that leads to another point, and there's
23:20
Speaker 2: a mode trail that cuts down into a ditch where
23:23
Speaker 2: there's a crossing leading over to the other point, and
23:26
Speaker 2: then at the hub of this wheel in the middle
23:29
Speaker 2: of this he has a scrape tree that, as I
23:32
Speaker 2: showed up and saw, was just pounded by deer with
23:35
Speaker 2: bucks making scrapes there. So really a dynamite set and
23:39
Speaker 2: a location that you know, you could see deer cruising
23:41
Speaker 2: through and visiting at any point in the day. And
23:44
Speaker 2: then off one of those points within sight, not the
23:47
Speaker 2: one I'm sitting on the top of that m, is
23:50
Speaker 2: where that corn plot was that I hunted on day one,
23:53
Speaker 2: so I could see some of that from where I
23:55
Speaker 2: was at. So I can see to this little heidihole
23:57
Speaker 2: food plot, I can see down to the bottom of
23:59
Speaker 2: the down at the bottom where you know, that's like
24:03
Speaker 2: this low area where it's really hard to hunt because
24:05
Speaker 2: of swirling winds, But that's like where a whole lot
24:08
Speaker 2: of travel converges too, So I could see down there
24:10
Speaker 2: and call to anything. But up high on the m
24:13
Speaker 2: at the top of that hub, I can have that
24:15
Speaker 2: safe wind and still take advantage of a lot of that.
24:18
Speaker 2: So I get in there early in the morning. Just
24:20
Speaker 2: as I'm almost done getting set up, I hear and
24:24
Speaker 2: a buck comes walking right in underneath me to that
24:27
Speaker 2: scrape tree. I had taken my bino harness off because
24:30
Speaker 2: I was putting on my main jacket and doing that,
24:35
Speaker 2: I hung the binos up off to my side. So
24:37
Speaker 2: that buck walked in when I didn't have access to
24:39
Speaker 2: my binoculars, but just with bare eyes and it was
24:42
Speaker 2: dark still, I could just see this huge frame and
24:45
Speaker 2: he just destroyed that scrape tree, and I could smell him.
24:48
Speaker 2: You could smell the rut musk stink on this deer,
24:53
Speaker 2: so that was an exciting start. Had a second buck
24:55
Speaker 2: coming behind him. This one was maybe like one hundred
24:58
Speaker 2: hundred and ten inch buck, and he looked dinky compared
25:00
Speaker 2: to that first one, so knew there was a good
25:03
Speaker 2: one in the area. Knew that, you know, the two
25:06
Speaker 2: best bucks on this particular property were in the zone.
25:10
Speaker 2: They had been showing up on camera a lot in
25:12
Speaker 2: recent days. The buck that had been at that corn
25:16
Speaker 2: plot most often the last week was this deer we
25:19
Speaker 2: called Hamburger Bun, and he's just a giant ten pointer
25:23
Speaker 2: with a split brow tye and a big hook kind
25:26
Speaker 2: of flyer off off his I guess it'd be his
25:29
Speaker 2: right side looked like one hundred and sixty class buck,
25:33
Speaker 2: big bodied, and I got to think, and that might
25:36
Speaker 2: have been the deer that came in before daylight, just
25:38
Speaker 2: based on the way the frame looked. So I was
25:41
Speaker 2: excited as it became daylight and right away just buck
25:46
Speaker 2: after buck cruising through, and it seemed like I was
25:49
Speaker 2: on the X. Like almost every buck that came through
25:51
Speaker 2: would cruise up one of these points and go through
25:54
Speaker 2: that hub of the wheel right in front of me,
25:56
Speaker 2: or a couple times just for fun, like I saw
25:58
Speaker 2: a two year old or a three year old buck,
26:00
Speaker 2: I would do a little grunt and they would come
26:02
Speaker 2: and that would suck them in right to there. So
26:04
Speaker 2: I felt like unbelievably confident in the spot. I think
26:07
Speaker 2: I saw six or seven different bucks that morning, maybe
26:12
Speaker 2: two year olds, three year olds, year and a half olds.
26:16
Speaker 2: Just an awesome Iowa morning, the kind of morning you
26:20
Speaker 2: dream of. Cold crisp, a lot of deer moving, a
26:23
Speaker 2: lot of deer in range. Got to watch a bunch
26:25
Speaker 2: of NICs. Like I said, young bucks just ripping up
26:27
Speaker 2: that scrape fifteen yards in front of me. Very enjoyable.
26:33
Speaker 2: I came in. I hunted till I guess twelve thirty
26:36
Speaker 2: or so on that day, and again this is where
26:40
Speaker 2: I think what I tried to do on this trip
26:41
Speaker 2: differently than other years was that I tried to balance
26:44
Speaker 2: hunting hard still and putting in the time and being
26:47
Speaker 2: out there, but at the same time still trying to
26:49
Speaker 2: enjoy yourself and be a part of the camaraderie side
26:52
Speaker 2: of things. So I told myself I wasn't gonna hunt
26:54
Speaker 2: every day all day. I was gonna take some days,
26:57
Speaker 2: coming at midday and enjoy the thing whateverbody else. So
27:01
Speaker 2: on this particular day, hunt until twelve thirty snuck in.
27:04
Speaker 2: It was a spot where I had the right access
27:06
Speaker 2: to be able to exit without spooking anything. So I thought, Okay,
27:09
Speaker 2: this is a perfect time where I can slip out
27:11
Speaker 2: the back door. Nothing will know I'm gone, nothing will
27:13
Speaker 2: know I'm coming and going. Went back to the clubhouse,
27:16
Speaker 2: had coffee and lunch with the guys, had a good laugh,
27:19
Speaker 2: enjoyed ourselves for an hour and a half, and then
27:22
Speaker 2: I grabbed my gear, snuck back in, was back out
27:25
Speaker 2: there by two thirty or so. Get back in that
27:28
Speaker 2: same tree. I all just get everything all set up
27:32
Speaker 2: and then look way down there in the bottom of
27:34
Speaker 2: this creek, bottom down there, and I see something moving around.
27:38
Speaker 2: Pull up my bi and I see a dough, see
27:40
Speaker 2: another dough, and then I see antlers. Pretty quickly, I
27:43
Speaker 2: see it's a big buck, and then I realized it's
27:46
Speaker 2: Hamburger Bun, the number one deer, and he's back there
27:50
Speaker 2: bumping around this dough. I watched him for a while
27:53
Speaker 2: and she eventually takes him up off the other side,
27:55
Speaker 2: up the ridge, on the opposite of my kind of
27:59
Speaker 2: ridge top. I'm on and off out of sight. Very
28:03
Speaker 2: exciting though, to see the number one buck, the big
28:05
Speaker 2: guy with a dough in the area. The afternoon progresses
28:10
Speaker 2: and other young bucks are bumping around down there, and
28:13
Speaker 2: then I see another set of big anilers pulp my
28:16
Speaker 2: bios zoom in there. Assume it's the same buck, but
28:19
Speaker 2: it's actually the number two deer. It's the other really
28:21
Speaker 2: big deer in the area. And this is a deer
28:23
Speaker 2: that did not have a brand name at first. This
28:26
Speaker 2: deer originally was called nutkicker because my buddy originally said
28:32
Speaker 2: this was a deer that they thought we should not shoot.
28:37
Speaker 2: And so the joke was that, you know, if you
28:40
Speaker 2: shoot this buck, it's a nut kicker. So at first
28:44
Speaker 2: he was calling it that deer. But by the time
28:46
Speaker 2: this got around, my buddy got to the point where, actually,
28:50
Speaker 2: and hey, we're supposed to be having fun. Kind of
28:51
Speaker 2: back to my same thing. My own journey is a
28:54
Speaker 2: journey that I think my buddy who owns this property
28:56
Speaker 2: has been going through himself in many ways to not
29:01
Speaker 2: be so stressed out about big deer, not be so
29:03
Speaker 2: stressed about whether or not you kill the big one,
29:05
Speaker 2: but instead sharing the good times of the people, enjoying
29:10
Speaker 2: the process, enjoying these friendships that form around hunting. And
29:15
Speaker 2: so in doing that, you know, he has made the
29:19
Speaker 2: incredibly generous choice to share this property with myself and
29:23
Speaker 2: some of the of our other friends. And also you
29:26
Speaker 2: know realize like, hey, every deer doesn't have to get
29:29
Speaker 2: five or six, Like it's okay if we shoot a
29:31
Speaker 2: really good four year old or something like that. And
29:33
Speaker 2: so this deer ended up being one of those deer
29:35
Speaker 2: that was like, maybe he needs another year. But at
29:38
Speaker 2: the same time, gosh, he's a giant. This would be
29:40
Speaker 2: an incredible deer for one of these guys to shoot.
29:42
Speaker 2: Go ahead, shoot him. So the name was changed to
29:45
Speaker 2: Nutbread Sticking with our bread. The very ridiculous. I realized that.
29:51
Speaker 2: So Nutbread is down there following a dough, and I'm
29:54
Speaker 2: texting with my friend and just confirmeding, like, are you
29:56
Speaker 2: sure this is the deer? You want me to shootes again?
29:58
Speaker 2: I shoot him, shoot himbsolutely. So I ca to him
30:00
Speaker 2: as he's coming up, let me take it back. He's
30:03
Speaker 2: following this dough up the hill. Then the dough breaks
30:06
Speaker 2: off of him and he does not follow the dough
30:08
Speaker 2: for some reason. Now he's on his own, kind of
30:10
Speaker 2: angling in my general direction, but looks like he's going
30:13
Speaker 2: to move off down this point in the other direction.
30:17
Speaker 2: So I give him a grunt and that turns him
30:19
Speaker 2: and he starts coming my way. This is like a
30:21
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty something to one hundred and sixty type, big, huge,
30:26
Speaker 2: clean typical, but taller and tighter than the other one.
30:30
Speaker 2: And this dear kind of follows the opposite ridge from
30:34
Speaker 2: me all the way up from like two hundred and
30:37
Speaker 2: fifty yards away all the way to seventy yards gets
30:41
Speaker 2: to this point where this ditch crossing is that all
30:44
Speaker 2: these other bucks had dropped down and come up right
30:47
Speaker 2: to my hub. I watched probably three or four other
30:50
Speaker 2: bucks do this thing. They get to this very same
30:52
Speaker 2: point where Nutbred is, then they drop down the ditch
30:55
Speaker 2: and cross and end up at the scrape tree right
30:57
Speaker 2: in front of me. So I've got everything righty. I'm
30:59
Speaker 2: holding my bow. He's at seventy yards and walking down
31:03
Speaker 2: to that ditch crossing like he's gonna just pop up
31:05
Speaker 2: right to me. And it's this mode trail. Once you
31:07
Speaker 2: drop him to the ditch, it's like a mode path
31:10
Speaker 2: that like delivers deer right to you. It's it's a
31:13
Speaker 2: dynamite set up. But as he starts to drop, he
31:17
Speaker 2: hears something behind him, turns around and there's a dough
31:20
Speaker 2: above him, and that spins him. He goes up there,
31:23
Speaker 2: chases the dough and he's out of my life. But
31:26
Speaker 2: incredible evening having seen both of those bucks, both the
31:30
Speaker 2: two biggest bucks in this property, both of them, you know,
31:33
Speaker 2: incredible to see in person, and one of them came
31:37
Speaker 2: pretty darn close. So great day, great setup. This this
31:42
Speaker 2: terrific terrain funnel that's also surrounded by dough betting and
31:46
Speaker 2: dough feeding just within sight too, So kind of the
31:48
Speaker 2: dream rut scenario. So the next day, I said, I'm
31:51
Speaker 2: going right back in there. Day four, I'm hunting this
31:54
Speaker 2: location again, and if it's good again, I probably should
31:58
Speaker 2: just stay the whole day. So I slipped the under
32:01
Speaker 2: the next day, it's a slower start, but around nine
32:04
Speaker 2: something nine thirty or so, I see what looks like
32:07
Speaker 2: a deer running straight down into the bottom ahead of
32:09
Speaker 2: me from the opposite side. So I just had a
32:12
Speaker 2: quick glimpse of what looked like a deer, maybe a buck,
32:15
Speaker 2: sprinting down into the bottom. I pull up my bios,
32:18
Speaker 2: can't see anything, so I say to myself, well, I
32:22
Speaker 2: was thinking about maybe doing some rattling in the late morning.
32:24
Speaker 2: This is as good a time as any. Let's rattle
32:27
Speaker 2: and see if whatever ran down there will come up
32:29
Speaker 2: my way. So I grabbed my antlers, turn around to
32:33
Speaker 2: rattle away from the direction of where I saw those deer,
32:35
Speaker 2: because I don't want them to see the flash of
32:37
Speaker 2: the antlers. I'm rattling. And as I'm rattling, I look
32:40
Speaker 2: back over my shoulder down towards the bottom, and I
32:43
Speaker 2: see a deer running like charging up at me out
32:46
Speaker 2: of the bottom, and it's a huge framed buck, and
32:49
Speaker 2: I realize it's Hamburger bun. The number one deer is
32:52
Speaker 2: charging up out of the bottom, and so you know,
32:56
Speaker 2: in that moment you kind of freak out. You trying
32:58
Speaker 2: to hang up the antlers, trying to grab your bow,
32:59
Speaker 2: trying to turned around, just pure amazing white tail chaos.
33:04
Speaker 2: He charges up from three hundred yards down at the bottom,
33:07
Speaker 2: all the way up the opposite ridge, exactly in the
33:10
Speaker 2: same path that Nutbread took the day before, and he
33:12
Speaker 2: gets all the way to seventy yards right to that
33:14
Speaker 2: same ditch crossing, and then stops and stares over at
33:17
Speaker 2: my ridge and just just looks like a monster, and
33:21
Speaker 2: he's looking for the fight. And he just sits there
33:23
Speaker 2: and stares and looks and looks and looks and looks,
33:27
Speaker 2: and then finally he didn't see the other bucks, and
33:30
Speaker 2: so he turned around start walking away. I tried to
33:32
Speaker 2: give him a call or two, but he wasn't having it.
33:35
Speaker 2: He just started trotting back the way he was going.
33:37
Speaker 2: So he runs back down the hill, runs up my point,
33:40
Speaker 2: and then does like a big circle and circles downwind
33:43
Speaker 2: of me, eventually going out site. But I was a
33:46
Speaker 2: little worried in the back of my mind, like, oh crap,
33:48
Speaker 2: he probably circled down wind of me, out of sight,
33:50
Speaker 2: maybe winded me, probably winded me. Maybe that's the end
33:54
Speaker 2: of the day, Like maybe that's the end of this
33:56
Speaker 2: buck encounter. He's gonna catch on to me and be
33:59
Speaker 2: out of here. So super exciting encounter, but sort of
34:02
Speaker 2: disappointing that, you know, it didn't ultimately come together on
34:06
Speaker 2: the good news though, is that we ended up getting
34:08
Speaker 2: a trail camera picture of him like six hours later
34:11
Speaker 2: in daylight on that property. Still, so I was like,
34:14
Speaker 2: all right, he's still around, he didn't spook. Game is
34:19
Speaker 2: still on. That night goes on, I do the all
34:22
Speaker 2: day sit see some more deer, but but no more
34:24
Speaker 2: big deer. That's day four, great encounter. Day five wind switch.
34:32
Speaker 2: Can't hunt this area that I've been hunting the first
34:34
Speaker 2: handful of days. Now we've got easterly winds. We've got
34:37
Speaker 2: to go to a brand new place. I'm gonna still
34:40
Speaker 2: hunt the same property because we very quickly kind of
34:43
Speaker 2: found that this particular property where hamburger bun was where
34:47
Speaker 2: way more mature deer. We're hanging out the other property
34:50
Speaker 2: where sour dough or pancake, where those deer were there
34:55
Speaker 2: was you know, those deer were like three year olds
34:57
Speaker 2: and we really were not getting any of the older
35:00
Speaker 2: so we had got on camera in the summer still
35:02
Speaker 2: around it all. My buddy Pete, who had been hunting
35:05
Speaker 2: there had not been seeing anything mature, but on this
35:08
Speaker 2: other property it seemed to be really lights out, so
35:11
Speaker 2: that's where we focused. So day four no sorry, day
35:15
Speaker 2: five with a southeasterly wind, we had to relocate to
35:18
Speaker 2: a different side of the farm. And this is another
35:21
Speaker 2: really good setup. It's another one of those like ideal
35:23
Speaker 2: rut locations that's worth discussing I think in some detail
35:27
Speaker 2: here because it's something that if you can replicate like
35:30
Speaker 2: it will work. This is the kind of spot that
35:32
Speaker 2: absolutely will work if you have bucks in the area
35:35
Speaker 2: that you want to get a crack at. This kind
35:37
Speaker 2: of setup is perfect. So if you can imagine this
35:41
Speaker 2: property has like two big blocks of cover. You've got
35:44
Speaker 2: imagine like one big bowl like a big circle, and
35:48
Speaker 2: then another big like rectangle of cover underneath it, and
35:53
Speaker 2: separating these two is like a big crp field that
35:56
Speaker 2: pushes in. So this big grassy field goes in between.
35:59
Speaker 2: So you've got this big bowl on top and you've
36:01
Speaker 2: got this big rectangle cover beneath it, and the cerp
36:03
Speaker 2: field pushes and separates the two right in the middle,
36:06
Speaker 2: except at the very end of it that timber there's
36:10
Speaker 2: a small sea of timber that connects the two. So
36:13
Speaker 2: imagine a big circle at the top, a sea of
36:16
Speaker 2: timber that then the letters I mean, like the letter C,
36:19
Speaker 2: that curves down and then connects this big rectangle cover
36:22
Speaker 2: at the end. So that creates a pinch point in
36:24
Speaker 2: the end, and that letter C of timber is created
36:28
Speaker 2: by this point, this topographic feature that has big bluffs,
36:32
Speaker 2: and so you've got this high point that then drops
36:35
Speaker 2: off to a low valley beneath it where a creek
36:37
Speaker 2: bottom is. So where we were set up was at
36:42
Speaker 2: the head of that pinch, right by that big bowl.
36:44
Speaker 2: So there's a big circle which is basically timber that
36:49
Speaker 2: then gets low on the bottom and on the edges
36:51
Speaker 2: of that is dough betting all around it, and then
36:54
Speaker 2: the pinch right there leading to the bottom. So we
36:57
Speaker 2: were sitting at that pinch next to do all this
37:00
Speaker 2: dough betting that connects to a bunch of dough betting
37:03
Speaker 2: at the other side of the funnel, and then our
37:05
Speaker 2: wind blew off that bluff out over the creek bottom
37:08
Speaker 2: behind us, so the wind was perfect, nothing could smell us.
37:11
Speaker 2: We were in between we were in a funnel in
37:13
Speaker 2: between two betting areas, and then we were also right
37:16
Speaker 2: next to a set of dough betting areas and could
37:18
Speaker 2: see more dough betting around us to call to. So
37:22
Speaker 2: it's got everything you could possibly ask for for a
37:24
Speaker 2: rut sit. It ended up being a kind of slow morning,
37:29
Speaker 2: if I recall, that then led to kind of the
37:33
Speaker 2: affirming information we needed in the late morning. So very
37:36
Speaker 2: slow early. But then late morning we saw a handful
37:39
Speaker 2: of younger bucks and then a pile of doughs. I
37:41
Speaker 2: can't remember exactly how many, but maybe nine or ten
37:44
Speaker 2: different doughs, and five or six of them ended up
37:47
Speaker 2: betting like right around us, you know, within sight of us.
37:51
Speaker 2: And so what that told me was that, hey, maybe
37:54
Speaker 2: this doesn't work out right now this morning, but eventually
37:56
Speaker 2: a good deer has to come through. Her bucks will
37:59
Speaker 2: cruise through here because they are forced to buy this
38:01
Speaker 2: terrain and buy this cover. This is the connecting point
38:05
Speaker 2: to get between these two big dough hot spots. And
38:08
Speaker 2: our wind is bulletproof, so if you spend enough time
38:10
Speaker 2: here good things will happen. That's what I kept telling myself.
38:14
Speaker 2: We sat there till midday, did not see a mature buck,
38:19
Speaker 2: but saw the doughs that we needed. Some young bucks
38:22
Speaker 2: actually pushed out most of those doughs. We didn't have
38:24
Speaker 2: to spook them getting out of there. We left midday,
38:27
Speaker 2: went and got lunch. One of the other guys in
38:31
Speaker 2: our camp had shot a buck, so we got to
38:33
Speaker 2: go check that out and have some good times just
38:36
Speaker 2: helping with you hanging the deer up, weighing the deer,
38:38
Speaker 2: standing around gawking at it, telling stories, all that kind
38:41
Speaker 2: of good stuff. So that was another fun thing that
38:44
Speaker 2: was going on. But it is day five, so you
38:47
Speaker 2: got to make sure you're still taking advantage of your
38:49
Speaker 2: hunting time. So we ended up going to a new
38:52
Speaker 2: location for the evening because again the southeast wind was
38:56
Speaker 2: tough for the original best spots. So here's another situation
39:02
Speaker 2: where there is a ground blind that's set up next
39:06
Speaker 2: to a sanctuary of sorts that doesn't get hunted, that
39:10
Speaker 2: has tons of bucks historically, and it's a spot that
39:13
Speaker 2: my buddies have access to a neighboring property. It's just
39:16
Speaker 2: a field, but they've set up a ground blind on
39:18
Speaker 2: the edge of this, and then when you put a
39:20
Speaker 2: buck decoy out in that field, sometimes you can pull
39:23
Speaker 2: bucks off of the neighboring property out into your field
39:27
Speaker 2: and get a shot out. This is a spot that
39:29
Speaker 2: I had the opportunity to hunt last time, and I
39:31
Speaker 2: said no to it because again, it wasn't like up
39:35
Speaker 2: to my hunt, my imagined hunt quality standards or whatever
39:43
Speaker 2: it was. So I didn't go. And instead some of
39:45
Speaker 2: my other friends went and they had a grand old time.
39:47
Speaker 2: One of my buddies shot a great buck and had
39:49
Speaker 2: all sorts of fun. So this time around was like, dang,
39:51
Speaker 2: I wanna hunt the blind. Who cares? It's a good
39:55
Speaker 2: time and we you know, usually multiple people will go
39:58
Speaker 2: hunt and you just kind of shoot the bowl the
40:00
Speaker 2: whole time, and it's a very fun place because you
40:03
Speaker 2: can see a lot of deer and then you maybe
40:04
Speaker 2: get bucks out there in the field to come to
40:06
Speaker 2: your decoy, so you get to watch all that. So
40:09
Speaker 2: you know, dang it, I'm gonna experience that finally this year.
40:22
Speaker 2: So we did it, got out there, two of my
40:24
Speaker 2: buddies sat with me. Again, this is not your typical
40:28
Speaker 2: hardcore DIY saddle hunter kind of set up. This is
40:32
Speaker 2: instead three goobers sitting in a box blind, laughing and
40:36
Speaker 2: telling stories for much of the day. But at the
40:38
Speaker 2: same time we saw a bunch of deer, got to
40:39
Speaker 2: see some cool interactions with the decoy, and just had
40:44
Speaker 2: a really good time. Ultimately we saw a couple of
40:46
Speaker 2: nice three year olds, but nothing that we were gonna shoot.
40:48
Speaker 2: Nothing came close enough that we wanted to shoot. And
40:51
Speaker 2: so that was the end of day five. Day six,
40:55
Speaker 2: new wind, north wind. I decided to go back to
40:58
Speaker 2: that first property Hamburger, Bond and nut Bread were and
41:03
Speaker 2: again hunt terrain. But with a north wind, I couldn't
41:05
Speaker 2: hunt that hub of the m as I described it earlier.
41:09
Speaker 2: I had instead go to the bottom ridge of the
41:12
Speaker 2: m where you could blow your wind off that ridge
41:15
Speaker 2: over another one of these big creek bottoms got down there.
41:19
Speaker 2: This is deep in the property. This is hard to
41:21
Speaker 2: get to. I had to get in there very early
41:23
Speaker 2: in the morning, and I was gonna have to stay
41:25
Speaker 2: there all day, very windy day. I don't know if
41:28
Speaker 2: you remember. This would been like November fifth or sixth
41:31
Speaker 2: or somewhere in that ballpark, and it was like twenty
41:35
Speaker 2: thirty mile an hour winds. So I was blowing in
41:37
Speaker 2: that tree all day. It was kind of a tough
41:39
Speaker 2: long sit. Didn't see a whole lot. Saw a young
41:42
Speaker 2: buck come in early, and then a couple doze, and
41:45
Speaker 2: then two forty five. I look over my right shoulder.
41:49
Speaker 2: The one place that my wind will get me in trouble,
41:52
Speaker 2: like this spot's bulletproof, right in the edge of this
41:54
Speaker 2: bluff blowing out over the back behind you. But the
41:58
Speaker 2: wind cuts just a little bit where some deer could
42:01
Speaker 2: travel on the edge of this bluff, and that, of course,
42:04
Speaker 2: is where this deer comes from. I see feet, I
42:06
Speaker 2: see legs approaching me through a pine tree. Pull up
42:09
Speaker 2: my binoculars and I can see big antlers and this
42:11
Speaker 2: is one of the shooters, a deer we called pumper nickel,
42:15
Speaker 2: and pumper Nickel stops at like thirty yards and it's
42:20
Speaker 2: just like staring at me. And I drop a milk
42:22
Speaker 2: weed and see that the milkweed is going right to him.
42:24
Speaker 2: So I realized, like I'm busted. He's smelling me right now.
42:28
Speaker 2: I sat here all day long, and then the one
42:30
Speaker 2: time you see a buck, of course, he has to
42:32
Speaker 2: come to the one like five degree area where I'm
42:35
Speaker 2: vulnerable from a win position, and he does. He wins me,
42:38
Speaker 2: he spins around. He doesn't like spook spook, but he
42:41
Speaker 2: does turn and just kind of like trots away. And
42:44
Speaker 2: that was the day. That was day six. It was
42:48
Speaker 2: one maybe point in the trip where I was starting
42:51
Speaker 2: to feel like, uh oh, this is not this is
42:55
Speaker 2: not going my way, and we're running out of time.
42:58
Speaker 2: And was trying to stick to that positive message that
43:02
Speaker 2: I've been sharing with you here today, like just have
43:04
Speaker 2: fun with it, see what happens. But I will tell
43:07
Speaker 2: you that this point I was getting a little bit nervous.
43:12
Speaker 2: I guess a little background for you. I hunted Iowa
43:15
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve and killed a buck, but when I
43:18
Speaker 2: went and returned in twenty fifteen, I missed a giant
43:22
Speaker 2: like a one hundred and sixty five inch buck. Missed
43:24
Speaker 2: a buck in twenty fifteen. Then I came back in
43:28
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one in the trip that I've been telling
43:30
Speaker 2: you about last time around, and that's I missed a
43:33
Speaker 2: giant eight pointer on the last day of that hunt.
43:35
Speaker 2: So it's twenty twenty five. Now it has been thirteen
43:38
Speaker 2: years since I filled the tag in Iowa. And my
43:42
Speaker 2: buddies have been giving me a hard time about it.
43:44
Speaker 2: The joke has been that I'm the buckless non resident.
43:48
Speaker 2: I'm the only guy who I'm the only non resident
43:50
Speaker 2: who can't kill buck in Iowa, apparently. And so now
43:53
Speaker 2: it's day six again things don't go my way, and
43:57
Speaker 2: I'm starting to feel like I might be the buckless
43:59
Speaker 2: non resident forever. So there's a lot of joking and
44:04
Speaker 2: laughing about that. And you know, I should point out
44:08
Speaker 2: that every one of these nights, everyone comes back to
44:11
Speaker 2: the clubhouse, and so there's like the group of us
44:14
Speaker 2: that are hunting, and then there's some other local friends
44:16
Speaker 2: in the area that all come to get together, and
44:18
Speaker 2: so just a lot of fun and camaraderie and giving
44:20
Speaker 2: each other a hard time and telling stories. So that's
44:24
Speaker 2: all going on, while I'm also, you know, slowly getting
44:27
Speaker 2: a little bit more nervous that, geez, is this going
44:30
Speaker 2: to be a whole bunch of close but not close
44:31
Speaker 2: enough hunts again? Which leads to day seven. And day
44:37
Speaker 2: seven we have that southeast wind again, and so with
44:39
Speaker 2: the southeast wind, this is when we hunted that just
44:43
Speaker 2: picture perfect rout setup that blows your wind off over
44:46
Speaker 2: top of the creek at the sea, the sea pinch
44:49
Speaker 2: point I was telling you guys about, that's the set
44:51
Speaker 2: that would work really well for the southeast wind. So
44:54
Speaker 2: this is a situation where we said, like, we have
44:56
Speaker 2: to just trust that even though we didn't seen an
44:59
Speaker 2: good bucks last time, even though it seems like, you know,
45:02
Speaker 2: the southern part of the Farmers where we've seen everything,
45:05
Speaker 2: we gotta trust that this place, if you spend enough
45:07
Speaker 2: time here, it's gonna work out because it is a
45:09
Speaker 2: pinch point between two amazing dough betting areas. You're right
45:13
Speaker 2: next to one of those amazing dough betting areas and
45:15
Speaker 2: your wind blows off into never never Land, so nothing's
45:18
Speaker 2: gonna bust you. It is so good when the wind's right.
45:22
Speaker 2: Spend time there, good things will happen. That's what I
45:24
Speaker 2: kept telling myself over and over again. So now we
45:26
Speaker 2: had that southeast wind, my buddy Ross is gonna hunt
45:29
Speaker 2: with me. He's going to take a day off from
45:32
Speaker 2: hunting and sit with me again because this is just
45:34
Speaker 2: seems like a good spot, great time. Let's have some
45:36
Speaker 2: fun together. Let's get out there and sit in the tree.
45:38
Speaker 2: So we slip in there before daylight gets set up,
45:42
Speaker 2: and pretty quickly we're seeing deer. We see a really
45:45
Speaker 2: nice buck chasing a dough way off in the distance.
45:48
Speaker 2: Down on that bottom there's crop feels way down there
45:50
Speaker 2: that you can see from a farce. We see that
45:52
Speaker 2: going on. Then we see some young bucks cruising around
45:55
Speaker 2: in the bowl. That big northerly betting area I talked about.
45:58
Speaker 2: We can see some bucks cruising there. Then some does
46:00
Speaker 2: start moving in to bed around us, and it just
46:05
Speaker 2: feels like, you know, anytime no something good's going to happen.
46:08
Speaker 2: And uh, you know, I just remember, like the sun
46:12
Speaker 2: is rising and the whole woods is like glowing and
46:15
Speaker 2: glittering blue skies, orange and yellow kind of just rattling
46:20
Speaker 2: leaves all around you. The sun's kind of shimmering through.
46:23
Speaker 2: I think you guys know what I'm talking about. This
46:25
Speaker 2: is like that gorgeous early November mornings where you have
46:30
Speaker 2: the bluebirds, skies, the golden sun, the orange fall colors,
46:35
Speaker 2: the kind of like fog that's in the air just
46:37
Speaker 2: a little bit that kind of like makes everything just
46:40
Speaker 2: seem like ethereal, almost like a magical scene around you.
46:43
Speaker 2: That's what's going on. I look over my right shoulder.
46:46
Speaker 2: I see antlers coming towards our way through that pinch.
46:50
Speaker 2: Pull my binos realize that's a big buck. I tell
46:52
Speaker 2: Ross like, big buck coming, big buck coming. I hand
46:55
Speaker 2: him my phone so he can film. Then he says
46:58
Speaker 2: it's him, and I realized, Holy smokes, this is the buck.
47:02
Speaker 2: This is hamburger bun. This is the number one deer,
47:05
Speaker 2: the one that I've had two other encounters with. And
47:08
Speaker 2: he's coming right down the pipe. So I slowly get
47:12
Speaker 2: turned around. I grab my bow. He's heading right down
47:14
Speaker 2: this pinch that just delivers deer right in front of you.
47:17
Speaker 2: If he follows this path and doesn't, for some reason
47:19
Speaker 2: get turned around, he ends up walking right into like
47:23
Speaker 2: twenty yards, but there's branches in my way here. He
47:26
Speaker 2: stops at twenty and looks like right up at the tree,
47:29
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, oh, no, like we're done. But he
47:32
Speaker 2: just kind of looks up in the general area. It
47:34
Speaker 2: doesn't see anything that he isn't like, and I thank
47:36
Speaker 2: goodness for just, you know, having a lot of cover
47:38
Speaker 2: in that tree. I guess because he doesn't see anything
47:41
Speaker 2: that totally bogers him. And he turns and just starts
47:43
Speaker 2: walking across. Now he heads right to where me and
47:46
Speaker 2: Ross walked in. Again, there's this one branch that's running
47:50
Speaker 2: along the side of me, and along this one side
47:52
Speaker 2: you just can't get a shot from the position I'm in,
47:55
Speaker 2: so I'm waiting for him to clear this branch. He
47:57
Speaker 2: gets to the spot where we walked in, so now
47:59
Speaker 2: he's at our ground scent and I'm thinking like, oh no,
48:02
Speaker 2: he's gonna hit our ground scent and this is gonna
48:04
Speaker 2: spook him. And he hits it, sniff, sniff, sniff, and
48:06
Speaker 2: here I think, goodness that I used I put nose
48:09
Speaker 2: jammer on my boots, you know, not trying to do
48:13
Speaker 2: a product plug here, but I do really think this
48:16
Speaker 2: thing helps. Smells that but doesn't freak out, but then
48:20
Speaker 2: turns and starts walking straight away. And now I'm thinking like,
48:22
Speaker 2: oh geez, that's it. He's just gonna walk the other direction.
48:26
Speaker 2: But he instead just took like one step away from
48:28
Speaker 2: us or two steps away for us, and then stopped
48:30
Speaker 2: and then turned back. So now my shot opens up.
48:34
Speaker 2: He's brought a slightly quartering away. Now he takes a
48:37
Speaker 2: step past that branch just blocking me. I'm able to
48:40
Speaker 2: draw back. I just remember thinking to myself like take
48:43
Speaker 2: your time, take your time, remember like centering my site
48:46
Speaker 2: picture in the peep site and then putting that pen
48:49
Speaker 2: right behind the shoulder. Pull him back and uh double
48:55
Speaker 2: lunged him. Perfect shot. He goes running off. I watch
48:58
Speaker 2: him go down. The celebration and ensues. And what made
49:01
Speaker 2: it so great, I think was that you know, my
49:03
Speaker 2: buddy was in the tree with me. We got to
49:05
Speaker 2: just you know, relive this story and high five and
49:10
Speaker 2: just celebrate the craziness of it all. It seems like
49:14
Speaker 2: in so many of these rut hunts, so many trips
49:16
Speaker 2: in general, at a certain point it starts to feel impossible.
49:19
Speaker 2: It starts to feel like, oh my gosh, this will
49:20
Speaker 2: never come together. Get you have close encounters, or maybe
49:23
Speaker 2: you never see anything, or maybe it seems that they're
49:26
Speaker 2: always just out of range, or something always goes wrong,
49:28
Speaker 2: or you're not seeing a good buck or whatever it
49:30
Speaker 2: might be. On so many of these trips, you get
49:33
Speaker 2: to a point where it seems like it's never going
49:36
Speaker 2: to happen, Like it never could happen. This is such
49:39
Speaker 2: a hard thing to pull up. How could this ever work?
49:42
Speaker 2: But if you stick it out and keep doing the
49:44
Speaker 2: right things, enough and keep it fun. Often not always,
49:47
Speaker 2: but often, eventually something flips and all of a sudden,
49:52
Speaker 2: in a matter of seconds, it's all changed and it
49:54
Speaker 2: finally does all fall into place. That's what happened this time.
50:00
Speaker 2: Kill Hamburger Bond. We get to walk up on him.
50:02
Speaker 2: He's an absolutely gorgeous, big old Iowa buck. It broke
50:07
Speaker 2: off that hook unfortunately, which it would have been just
50:10
Speaker 2: like a really unique cool buck, but one hundred and
50:13
Speaker 2: sixty class slammer Iowa whitetail, a deer that is one
50:19
Speaker 2: of my biggest bucks ever, but without a doubt, was
50:23
Speaker 2: a part of my most fun hunt ever, because you know,
50:28
Speaker 2: when I look at this hunt, there was a handful
50:31
Speaker 2: of things that stand out that made this trip so special,
50:34
Speaker 2: and much of it was not related to the fact
50:36
Speaker 2: that I killed a big, giant buck. That was a
50:38
Speaker 2: really nice side effect. I'm very glad that happened, but
50:42
Speaker 2: I still think I would look at this trip and
50:44
Speaker 2: still rate it as incredibly successful and fun even if
50:49
Speaker 2: I didn't kill this deer because of everything else. I
50:52
Speaker 2: think one thing that I did much better this time
50:55
Speaker 2: than I've done in previous trips, especially to Iowa, is balance.
50:59
Speaker 2: I really want to focus on balancing the experience, and
51:03
Speaker 2: you know, at times hunting really hard, at times hunting
51:07
Speaker 2: all day, at times you know, putting in the putting
51:09
Speaker 2: in the serious hours, because right, that's the name of
51:11
Speaker 2: the game in the rut is time in the field
51:14
Speaker 2: is grit is grit is toughness, is just being out
51:18
Speaker 2: there hunting hard. Right, So so you gotta do some
51:20
Speaker 2: of them. But the same time, I also want to
51:23
Speaker 2: not make the same mistakes that I had in the past,
51:25
Speaker 2: which was hunting so much that you don't let yourself
51:29
Speaker 2: enjoy the rest of the experience. And so that's why
51:32
Speaker 2: I came in for some lunches, That's why I went
51:34
Speaker 2: out for breakfast one day. That's why you know, I,
51:38
Speaker 2: you know, hunted the spots that maybe I want to
51:40
Speaker 2: hunt in the past. I hunted the tower blind I
51:42
Speaker 2: hunted the box blinds. I went out and brought friends
51:44
Speaker 2: with me. Those things probably did not help me have
51:49
Speaker 2: a better chance of killing a deer, right, more scent
51:51
Speaker 2: in the air, more chance for movement. But dang it,
51:54
Speaker 2: we had so much fun. We had so many good laughs.
51:58
Speaker 2: The experience was so much better because of it. This
52:01
Speaker 2: was an opportunity to really enjoy the companionship of some
52:05
Speaker 2: of my best hunting buddies out there in an incredible place,
52:08
Speaker 2: chasing an incredible animal and getting to share that with
52:11
Speaker 2: a friend or a family member makes it so much sweeter.
52:15
Speaker 2: And I allowed myself to do that this time, and
52:18
Speaker 2: I think that made a huge difference that made this
52:21
Speaker 2: so so so enjoyable. I also had trust this time around.
52:26
Speaker 2: I tried to not make the mistake that I've made
52:30
Speaker 2: many times as a hunter, and that is to constantly
52:34
Speaker 2: second guess your decision making, constantly debate we should have
52:38
Speaker 2: been here or here there? Or there? Was this the
52:40
Speaker 2: right spot? Was that the right spot? I shouldn't have
52:42
Speaker 2: done this because I at least know I'm a very
52:46
Speaker 2: analytical person. I'm constantly like hyper analyzing everything, and that
52:51
Speaker 2: can help me in many cases, but it can also
52:53
Speaker 2: hinder me because it can just lead to this constant
52:57
Speaker 2: decision making stress and worry over your tad decisions like
53:00
Speaker 2: then I put myself in the best possible place, or
53:02
Speaker 2: should I have moved there? Should I have rattled here
53:04
Speaker 2: and not rattled there? Whatever it might be. This time around,
53:08
Speaker 2: I tried to make a good decision and then trust
53:11
Speaker 2: that trust the decision, trust the spot, and then just
53:15
Speaker 2: release yourself from worrying after that, like, like, we made
53:17
Speaker 2: the decision, now let it be. It is what it is.
53:20
Speaker 2: Now just enjoy it. So I remember a couple different times,
53:23
Speaker 2: you know, where I start having that creeping feeling about geez,
53:26
Speaker 2: I should have done something different, or oh gee, should
53:28
Speaker 2: I do something different? And I would just remind myself that, hey, chill,
53:33
Speaker 2: you're supposed to be enjoying this. Enjoy the experience. Like,
53:36
Speaker 2: take a deep breath, close your eyes, listen to the wind,
53:39
Speaker 2: Smell the fresh air, take a look at the sun
53:43
Speaker 2: shining through the leaves, and just like, enjoy this thing.
53:46
Speaker 2: Enjoy it. Stop stressing, just enjoy it. Trust what you did,
53:51
Speaker 2: let it play out. Handful of times, I think that
53:54
Speaker 2: really helped me. I think another thing is that I
53:58
Speaker 2: released myself from expectations. As I described on pass trips.
54:02
Speaker 2: When you go to Iowa or one of these other
54:04
Speaker 2: big buck states, you sometimes go into it thinking, well,
54:07
Speaker 2: it's Iowa, or it's Ohio or it's Kansas. You got
54:10
Speaker 2: to shoot a giant. You see everybody's shooting these big
54:12
Speaker 2: giant bucks on these Midwestern states, and so you start
54:15
Speaker 2: to think that that's what you have to do too.
54:17
Speaker 2: So because of that, you put a lot of pressure
54:19
Speaker 2: on yourself. You pass a bunch of bucks maybe that
54:21
Speaker 2: you normally wouldn't want to pass. You force yourself to
54:24
Speaker 2: do things maybe that you wouldn't normally do because you
54:26
Speaker 2: got to shoot that giant. And so you're so worried
54:28
Speaker 2: about shooting that giant that again, you don't do the
54:31
Speaker 2: fun stuff. You don't spend time with your friends, you
54:33
Speaker 2: don't come in and do some stuff. Maybe maybe your
54:36
Speaker 2: buddy shoots a buck, and you don't go on the
54:37
Speaker 2: blood trail because you don't want to miss one possible
54:40
Speaker 2: minute in the tree. I've made that mistake in the past.
54:43
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to do it this time. So I
54:45
Speaker 2: came in with modest expectations, my expectations, my goals. Like
54:49
Speaker 2: I've said earlier, it was not to kill a one
54:52
Speaker 2: to seventy. It was not that I had to kill
54:53
Speaker 2: a six year old. It was not that I had
54:55
Speaker 2: to kill the number one target deer. It was I
54:58
Speaker 2: want to have fun. I want to, you know, experience
55:01
Speaker 2: the full Iowa experience, and I'd like to shoot a
55:03
Speaker 2: mature buck. And that was it. And just let you know,
55:07
Speaker 2: let be whatever is going to be. And because of that,
55:11
Speaker 2: I had so much less pressure, so much less stress
55:14
Speaker 2: during this trip. I just really tried to enjoy it.
55:17
Speaker 2: And yet at the end I did start having some
55:20
Speaker 2: of that creeping worry come in. That's hard not to have,
55:22
Speaker 2: at least a little bit. We did joke a lot
55:25
Speaker 2: about how I was going to be the buckless non
55:26
Speaker 2: resident forever and maybe I was just cursed, But at
55:31
Speaker 2: the same time, it wasn't so serious and so worrisome
55:34
Speaker 2: that I was actually miserable. I have been actually miserable
55:37
Speaker 2: on some of these past hunts where I'm so obsessed
55:40
Speaker 2: with the outcome. I just need to enjoy the process.
55:43
Speaker 2: That's what I was doing this time around, and it
55:45
Speaker 2: helped a ton. Ultimately. What it came down to, though,
55:48
Speaker 2: is I think because of the fact that I came
55:50
Speaker 2: in with those expectations, because of the fact that I
55:53
Speaker 2: balanced things, because of the fact that I trusted my
55:56
Speaker 2: decision making and didn't stress too much. And then finally
56:00
Speaker 2: I prioritized my friends and the camaraderie and the whole
56:04
Speaker 2: experience of being there with these good buddies. Because I
56:06
Speaker 2: prioritized that over these other things. I just had a
56:10
Speaker 2: damn good time. We laughed so much. We have so
56:15
Speaker 2: many amazing stories to share it now, we have so
56:17
Speaker 2: many experiences that I'm going to look back on fondly forever.
56:22
Speaker 2: The buck almost comes in second to all that. But
56:26
Speaker 2: I do think that I ultimately had success and killed
56:29
Speaker 2: the deer because I was enjoying myself so much and
56:32
Speaker 2: was not as stressed and not as worried as I
56:34
Speaker 2: would have been past years, that I was able to
56:36
Speaker 2: just let the hunt come to me. I was able
56:38
Speaker 2: to trust in the process, and finally, when the things
56:41
Speaker 2: actually lined up, I was in the right place, trusting
56:44
Speaker 2: a spot where we had not seen a big buck yet,
56:47
Speaker 2: but trusting in the spot. I was hunting with a friend.
56:50
Speaker 2: We were having fun, and we trusted that eventually good
56:53
Speaker 2: things will happen if we keep it fun, if we
56:55
Speaker 2: keep doing the right things well enough, and sure enough,
56:59
Speaker 2: day seven, the fates aligned and things happened, and yeah,
57:03
Speaker 2: I killed a great deer too, which is a hell
57:06
Speaker 2: of a bonus, tremendous trip, the perfect opposite, like the
57:12
Speaker 2: mirror opposite of the last time I was here in Iowa.
57:15
Speaker 2: And I think a reflection of maybe some personal growth
57:19
Speaker 2: and some important lessons learned that I think helped me
57:23
Speaker 2: not only have success, but also enjoy this hunt and
57:27
Speaker 2: made this my best rut hunting vacation ever. So that's
57:32
Speaker 2: how I killed this twenty twenty five Iowa Whytail. That's
57:36
Speaker 2: how I had a terrific trip. I hope there's something
57:39
Speaker 2: in there that you can relate to and that you
57:41
Speaker 2: can learn from. I think that that on the tactical side,
57:46
Speaker 2: you know, key things here would be trusting those pillars
57:50
Speaker 2: of the rut, not over complicating things, Trusting in funnels
57:54
Speaker 2: and pinch points and travel corridors, trusting in dough betting airs,
57:58
Speaker 2: and putting in the time in those places. Don't let
58:00
Speaker 2: all the other stuff cloud or muddy your vision and
58:03
Speaker 2: your plans. If you're hunting that kind of spot with
58:06
Speaker 2: safe wind and you put in the time in a
58:08
Speaker 2: place where there are the kinds of deer you want
58:10
Speaker 2: to shoot, that's all you gotta do. And then finally
58:14
Speaker 2: make sure you're enjoying the process along the way. And
58:17
Speaker 2: I know that's what I talked about a lot here,
58:18
Speaker 2: but I think that has just been so so important
58:21
Speaker 2: to this whole thing. You do that all the rest
58:24
Speaker 2: falls into place. So I appreciate you joining me. Thank
58:29
Speaker 2: you for being here, Thank you for following my journey
58:31
Speaker 2: over all of these years. As I've had my ups
58:33
Speaker 2: and my downs, and my highs and my lows, and
58:35
Speaker 2: my twenty twenty one type hunts and my twenty twenty
58:38
Speaker 2: five type punts. I hope all of it has been
58:42
Speaker 2: helpful to you as you go through your own journey,
58:45
Speaker 2: and I appreciate you being here a part of it all.
58:48
Speaker 2: So best of luck on your upcoming hunts, and until
58:51
Speaker 2: next time, stay Wired to Hunt,