Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #203: Hal Blood On Tracking and Hunting Big Woods Bucks

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #203: Hal Blood On Tracking and Hunting Big Woods Bucks · 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
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  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this episode number two oh three,
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  Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're joined by Hell Blood
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  Speaker 1: of Northern Maine to discuss hunting and tracking big mature
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  Speaker 1: bucks in big woods settings. All right, folks, welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sitka Gear.
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  Speaker 1: And today on the show we are talking big woods
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  Speaker 1: deer hunting, and we're joined by one of the most
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  Speaker 1: well known experts on this topic on hunting the big
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  Speaker 1: woods of the Northeast, Mr Hale Blood. And uh my
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  Speaker 1: wife thought that was a pretty apt name. By the
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  Speaker 1: way she heard that, She's like, well, of course that
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  Speaker 1: guy hunts. Yeah, it's bad ass. Yeah it is, it is.
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  Speaker 1: And Hell in addition to having a great name, he
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  Speaker 1: is the author of Hunting Big Woods Bucks Volume one
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  Speaker 1: and two and Tracking White Tail Bucks. He is the
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  Speaker 1: president of the educational company and website Big Woods Bucks.
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  Speaker 1: He's a seminar speaker, a registered Master guide in the
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  Speaker 1: state of Maine, and based off the many emails I've
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  Speaker 1: gotten over the years requesting him as a guest. He
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  Speaker 1: is a very well respected and revered hunter who I
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  Speaker 1: think is gonna have a lot to offer when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to you know, not just helping people that hunt
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  Speaker 1: in the same place as he hunts, like up in
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  Speaker 1: the Northeast, but you know, after you know, hearing more
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  Speaker 1: about him. And actually I have already recorded the interview
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  Speaker 1: with him, so I know what he does talk about.
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  Speaker 1: And UM, he just has a lot of stuff that
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  Speaker 1: he's interesting and applicable to me in what I do
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  Speaker 1: here in Michigan. And I think, even like you Dan,
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  Speaker 1: hearing this kind of stuff, I think there's stuff we
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  Speaker 1: can learn from his attention to detail, his attention to tracks, UM,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff like that that I think can
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  Speaker 1: be applied anywhere. So I'm excited for people to hear
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  Speaker 1: this one. UM. I found it really interesting and UM
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  Speaker 1: in last week's podcast, UM, I talked about a trip
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  Speaker 1: I'm taking up to the boundary waters of Minnesota, and
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  Speaker 1: I think a lot of the stuff the hell talked
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  Speaker 1: about in this one I can apply to that kind
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  Speaker 1: of hunt too, So just a lot of cool stuff.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's it's unique compared to a lot of
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  Speaker 1: our conversations. Um, but before we get to that, we
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  Speaker 1: do need to have our pregame show, because Dan, you
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  Speaker 1: were able to carve out some time in between family
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  Speaker 1: emergencies and all sorts of crazy stuff too, to at
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: least let us catch up a little bit. So how
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  Speaker 1: the heck are you? Man? I tell you what, this year,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: as everybody hears on the news, is like the year
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  Speaker 1: of the flu. Right, everybody's got the flu. Well it's
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: not necessarily the serious flu that's gone through our house,
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  Speaker 1: but with three kids, just it's a numbers game, right,
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  Speaker 1: someone's gonna be sick throughout the wintertime and the last
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  Speaker 1: two weeks, and part of the reasons why I couldn't
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  Speaker 1: be on the podcast and um, which really pisces me
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  Speaker 1: off because I like, you know, I like being the
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  Speaker 1: co host. But you know, today I had to go
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  Speaker 1: into the doctor again and get my youngest breathing treatment
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  Speaker 1: because he's he's he's got so much congestion in his
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  Speaker 1: lungs and now he's on antibiotics. And the older my
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  Speaker 1: oldest one, she's on medicine too because she's, uh, you know,
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  Speaker 1: got some kind of sickness going on and it's just
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  Speaker 1: been kind of rotating through our house the past couple
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  Speaker 1: of weeks with my wife and my kids and myself
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  Speaker 1: and and uh, I'm just kind of ready for summer
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  Speaker 1: to get here so so we can get rid of
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  Speaker 1: all this ship, you know what I mean? Yeah, man,
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  Speaker 1: I hear you on. I've had some serious cabin fever too.
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  Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you, you worried me a few
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  Speaker 1: minutes ago before we started recording when you told me
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  Speaker 1: that your son had a broad tosaurus and he has
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: a dinosaur and then you realize that you meant bronchitis. Right,
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  Speaker 1: That's right. But like you should see how many simple
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  Speaker 1: mistakes I'm making these days because I am not getting
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  Speaker 1: the sleep that I need. I think, like full blown
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  Speaker 1: dead life dude. Like it sucks because my boss came
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  Speaker 1: up to me like three different times in the past
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  Speaker 1: two days and he's like, hey, Dan, can you quick
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  Speaker 1: change this on the report? And I look, and I
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  Speaker 1: got all these numbers and then I have a random
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  Speaker 1: word in with all these numbers, which is throwing the
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  Speaker 1: entire thing off. And I'm just like, oh, ship, this
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  Speaker 1: makes me look bad. But I think is that is
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  Speaker 1: the is the random word that's always in there deer
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  Speaker 1: or bucks or something like that. I think these days
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  Speaker 1: it's probably sleep. Yeah, I can relate. I hear you.
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  Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm learning, so you uh, not all is bad? Right? Then?
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  Speaker 1: Had some good stuff happen? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I
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  Speaker 1: I got Can you go ahead? Can I say before
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  Speaker 1: you tell me? I just gotta tell you that when
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I saw what happened to you, I was like writhing
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  Speaker 1: and jealousy I was. I was like, I hate him
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  Speaker 1: so much. You know, we we've talked about this before,
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  Speaker 1: but you know how when you flip through Instagram and
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  Speaker 1: you see like, oh, this guy shot a giant and
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  Speaker 1: there's a there's you know, a majority of it is
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  Speaker 1: congratulations of that person for shooting a big bucket, but
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  Speaker 1: then there's that little sliver that just kind of the
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  Speaker 1: thought sneaks in that's just like that bastard, Like, you know,
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  Speaker 1: like I hate him. I hate that guy, and uh
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  Speaker 1: happy for exactly. But dude, I had one of those
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  Speaker 1: walks where you just you just run into shads man
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  Speaker 1: and it was awesome walk us through it because that
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  Speaker 1: was pretty unbelieving. Right. So, for the first thing is
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  Speaker 1: the stars kind of all aligned, right, and the goal
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  Speaker 1: was to just quick go out, take a tree stand
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  Speaker 1: down and get back and get home. But um, my
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  Speaker 1: daughter had a birthday party with a friend, so my
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  Speaker 1: daughter took or my wife took my daughter and the
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  Speaker 1: baby to this birthday party, and my son stayed home
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  Speaker 1: with grandma because she didn't have to work. So I
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  Speaker 1: had time where if I wanted to, I could go
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  Speaker 1: do something without having any kids with me. So I
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  Speaker 1: went real fast, took down this tree stand. Found a
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  Speaker 1: shed while I was taking down my tree stand. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Then I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna go walk
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  Speaker 1: this field. It's a real easy walk. It's a place
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  Speaker 1: you've walked actually before. And um, I think on this
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  Speaker 1: field I found a shed and Corey fall found a shed.
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  Speaker 1: Uh this is the big crop field with strips on it. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the buffer strips in it. And I'm like, you know what,
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  Speaker 1: if there's gonna be sheds here or you know, anywhere,
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  Speaker 1: that's a real easy walk that I can cruise real
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  Speaker 1: fast and not take up an a ton of time.
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna walk this field. So I walk into it
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  Speaker 1: and the first shed of the day that I find
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  Speaker 1: is laying right on a fence in a in a
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  Speaker 1: little tuft of grass that looks like you know, these
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  Speaker 1: deer are um going and eating and then they'll have
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  Speaker 1: their like their night bed, you know what I mean,
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  Speaker 1: where they'll they'll basically just sit and chew all the
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  Speaker 1: food that they ate. Right. Um, So that was the
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  Speaker 1: biggest shed sixty five and five eights inches what I
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  Speaker 1: measured it out at um and that was a four
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  Speaker 1: point side was four point side, so give or take.
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  Speaker 1: And I gave him. I gave him a seventeen inch
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  Speaker 1: inside spread, which I think it's probably being conservative, so
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  Speaker 1: it's like a hundred forty seven inch eight pointer, which
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  Speaker 1: is I got. I got pictures of him two years
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  Speaker 1: in a row, um, and he's definitely on the he's
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  Speaker 1: a hitless buck. And uh so you know that walk
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  Speaker 1: then turned into me kind of slowing down and really
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  Speaker 1: scraping the area really good. And uh in the first
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  Speaker 1: buffer strip, I found three sheds, and in the next
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  Speaker 1: buffer strip, I found another three sheds. Um and then
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  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think I found I found eight sheds
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  Speaker 1: in that field. Uh. One one of them was a
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  Speaker 1: match set. And then, um, dude, it just just kind
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  Speaker 1: of happened, you know, what I mean, And every one
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  Speaker 1: of them was in the grass and I was just
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  Speaker 1: kind of cruising looking for the cherry pick. But I
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  Speaker 1: swear this weekend, Um, if I don't go to the
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  Speaker 1: Iowa Deer Classic, I think I'm gonna go shed handing
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  Speaker 1: again with my wife and we're gonna walk that cornfield
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  Speaker 1: in the rows and just kind of real slow, methodically
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  Speaker 1: go through it because I have a feeling I missed
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  Speaker 1: a lot in that that are just kind of sitting
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  Speaker 1: out in that field. Yeah, there's that many just in
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  Speaker 1: the buffer strips right right along there, and then it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't almost all right sides. Yeah, And that's the funny thing.
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  Speaker 1: So of the nine sheds I found, and by the way, uh,
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  Speaker 1: I dropped a shed walking back to the truck that
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  Speaker 1: I didn't notice because I had I didn't have a
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  Speaker 1: backpack because I was like, this is just gonna be
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  Speaker 1: a quick walk. I found all these sheds, so I
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  Speaker 1: had to carry them all by hand, and I think
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  Speaker 1: I dropped one of the smaller ones. So it's still
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  Speaker 1: it's still out there somewhere. Um that do you count
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  Speaker 1: that as twice? Is that two sheds? If you found
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  Speaker 1: it and then you find it again. Hopefully my wife
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  Speaker 1: finds it there you go. So but yeah, man, I mean, um,
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  Speaker 1: and that was only half the field too. I didn't
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  Speaker 1: get to the timber line because I time, I slowed
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  Speaker 1: way down, time expired, the grass was a little taller.
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  Speaker 1: I was going back and forth and all these trails
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  Speaker 1: just trying to see what else was there. I was,
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  Speaker 1: you know, looking for beds and um, but I found
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  Speaker 1: the food source that they've they've been hitting the past
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  Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and I don't know, it just made
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  Speaker 1: me excited to get out and do more shed hunting.
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  Speaker 1: That's awesome. When you hit the jackpot like that, that's
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  Speaker 1: pretty incredible. I've never had I've never had a day
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  Speaker 1: like that. That just sounds nuts. And that's two let's see,
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  Speaker 1: that's a tie. I found nine sheds. That's a tie
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  Speaker 1: for the most, I think the most sheds I found
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  Speaker 1: in a day. And that was only and that's crazy
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: because that was only too. Like if you if you
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  Speaker 1: add in the first shed I found when I was
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  Speaker 1: walking through the timber and you know, because I took
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the like a back way in to get my tree
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  Speaker 1: stand down. Um, just so I was kind of looking
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  Speaker 1: for sheds the entire time. Uh if you if you
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: don't count that, I've only walked for two hours and
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  Speaker 1: found nine sheds, so that's pretty good. And I've had
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: days where I've walked ten hours and found zero sheds. Yeah,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: well you found that all happened to what was that Sunday? Yep, Sunday. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So during the week prior to that, I think I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: spent like two evenings or afternoons, maybe I put in
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: like four or five hours, maybe more than that. Maybe
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: we'll say four to six hours during the week. And
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: then Friday afternoon and a good chunk of Saturday and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a good chunk of Sunday I put probably put on
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: another fifteen hours, so we'll say maybe twenty hours of
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: shed hunting last week in Michigan. And I found zero.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: And so then I saw you had your two hour
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  Speaker 1: nine shed day, and I said to myself, man, why
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: are you shed hunting in Michigan? So then guess what
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I did? You went to Ohio. I went to Ohio.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Can I tell I? Can I tell you about that?
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I want you to tell me about it. So I
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: got my buddy further and we went on down to
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Ohio yesterday and um, long story short. On that walked
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: our property, Josh found a nice shed um in a
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  Speaker 1: spot where I've always thought we would find sheds but
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: we never have. But pulled the nice I think it's
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  Speaker 1: probably a three year old buck, young youngishu um, but
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: great potential. He had a busted G two but hiss
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: G three is like ten inches long. Um, so he's
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: definitely a deer that will look a little uh little
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: grown to something special probably by next year. So that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was cool. Um. And then there's another property we have
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: shed hunting permission on, so we went there and um
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: stopped by the landowner's house to say hi. We always
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: like to chat, and the landowner says, I got something
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: for you, Mark and picks up off of the lawnmower
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  Speaker 1: a gigantic shed, hands it to me and I just
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: about flipped out. I think it is I'm holding it
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: right now. I haven't measured it yet, but it is
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  Speaker 1: the most massive shed that I have now in my collection. Um,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and it could be like a seventy inch side, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: just super duper mass. And as I was looking at him,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: like I know this buck. This is a buck that
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: we have referred to as Blades. I saw him as
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  Speaker 1: a three year old, further saw the next year as
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: a four year old. We've had we didn't see him
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  Speaker 1: at all last year as a five year old, but
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  Speaker 1: we've had pictures of him for three years straight now
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  Speaker 1: and now I have his shed in my hands. So
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  Speaker 1: that was amazing. So he's gonna be a six year old.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: He's gonna be a six year old this year. You go,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: so when you saw him? How far away was he
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: from you when you saw him? Uh? Well, this is
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: when I When I saw him was as a three
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: year old, um, and I I watched him from maybe
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards away. That's crazy. Yeah. But now we say, okay,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: we're gonna go for our walk. So we go start
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: walking and we're walking this fence row and within three
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to five minutes of leaving the landowners house, I look
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: on the edge of the field in the fence row
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  Speaker 1: and there's a shed and I go running over and
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: grab it and it is the match side to Blades
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: And that's this that's the this year's shed, right, Yeah,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: this is this year's shed. Um. And that shed again,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're just amazing. This the one side
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: that was given to me is a five point side,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: just a clean, really heavy five point side. The side
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I picked up is a five point side plus a
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: really big sticker point coming off the base of the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: brow time that's maybe four inches long. Um So technically
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I guess on the eleven pointer I would I would
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: probably put him at maybe a one sixty something inch
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: buck five year old last year. Um so that was incredible.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: That was the biggest shed I've ever found. That was
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: bigger than the Mark Kenyon shed I found with you.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, I dude found the biggest shed ever
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and was given the match side two minutes or five
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: minutes before that. So that was pretty That was pretty awesome.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So I haven't found many sheds, but the sheds that
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: have found have been like really big, really cool, uh
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: special sheds. So I'm a happy shed hunter so far.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I cannot complain anymore. And it's like our friend further Man,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: that should be like a Netflix series, our friend for friend.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: You know this time I was joking with him about
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: this yesterday. I'm like, dude, you should. You can't complain
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: about the fact that everyone refers to as further Not
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: because as you know, he works for the QT may.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: So he gets lots of emails from people, like official
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: work emails, asking, you know, talking about different events or
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: different things like this, and people are emailing him and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: referring to him as further. Oh, man, I hope he
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: doesn't flip out mentally and kill you. I'm telling he
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: should be thankful because like he is the only man
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: in the hunting industry now, the only person in the
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: hunting industry who goes by one single name. Like he's
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: like the Kobe, He's the Kobe of the hunting world.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Now he's just he's not he's not a he's not
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a public figure. He's an icon. That's he's just further.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: That's right. So I smell a T shirt coming. Oh
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: that would be good, Yeah, that would be good. So yeah, man,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: it was a lot of fun. We had a good day.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And he found though too, right, Yeah, I mean he
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: found that good one, that three year old that told
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: you about. And then he found another small one that
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: actually I think might be actually the it's it's a
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: busted off piece of a nailer. It's not a shed on,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: so I think it's the end of a main beam
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that must have been from a pretty good buck too. So,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: um yeah, dude, it was a good day. And um,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to keep walking. I'm back in Michigan now
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do some more walking probably this weekend
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and off to Iowa next weekend, right right, chance there's
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: a chance I might be able to join you for
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: that too, Yeah, dude, work on that schedule. Yeah, yeah,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it's gonna take some work. It's gonna take like a
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: date night, I think, and that kind of you know,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: like maybe like two or three backrubs. And then these
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: days that ship really doesn't pay off anyway, because then
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: no matter what I do, my wife is still at
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: home with three kids. Yeah, but I I here's here's
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: something funny. So I I texted our other good friend,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Ross Hossman today, Oh, Ross, and I said, dude, is
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: your wife gonna come hunting? Because you know, like I
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: love my wife to death, right, but if your wife's
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: like can I come? And it's like last year, if
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: my wife came, I'm pretty sure there would have been
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: a lawsuit that would it came out of that that,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: you know, those those conversations after she sell what Peter
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: do you? Yeah? Exactly exactly. So um so, so I'm like, hey, dude,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: is your wife gonna come with us? Because my wife
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: kind of wants to come to And he's like, well,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know yet, So I don't know. There may
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: be there may be some females joining us. Maybe al right, well, hey,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for us to
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: act like upstanding citizens for once, right, right, But I
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: think there is there's something positive about men scraping the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: bottom of the barrel every once in a while just
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to get it out of their system, that there's something
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: to be said about that too, right, right, And I
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: feel like you've you've taken that to the extreme for
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: many years. Absolutely so yeah, And I'm just like you, man,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I am ready to get out and do some more
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: shut hunting. There's something about at the end of the day,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: your legs and your back are sore, and it just
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: feels good. Yeah, it's a good feeling. And then it's
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: an especially good feeling if you can sit back in
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the couch afterwards and holding your hand a piece of
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: a piece of bone hand, spin it around and touch
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: it and look at it, and I don't know, I know,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: you're just like made. That's just something special to hold
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: that and look at it and think about it, and
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I was cool first human being to ever touch that angler,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: which is I find I find it awesome. Yeah, it's wild.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I mean when you think about that was a piece
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: of this like living animal, and maybe it's a deer
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: you hunted, a deer you've seen before, encountered, and to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: now like hold some piece of that, that's I don't know.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I I gotta kick out of it. So one question,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I know, and I know we're on time, but have
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: you ever killed a deer that you have found sheds too? Yes? Yes, okay, yeah,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: um six shooter the buck I killed in Michigan two
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, I have one of his antlers. Um, that
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: might be the only one though until until holy Field
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: this year. Right, for as many sheds as I found,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and as you know, the deer that I've killed, I
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: have yet. I'm looking back and I have yet to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: kill a deer that I have found a shed too.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty hard to do, except in those
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: situations where people have like these really big managed properties, right,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: but by permission small properties are are kind of situations.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: In most cases, it's a tough cell. It's it's tough
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: to pull off, right, but maybe maybe the tides attorney,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: maybe you're gonna kill this mega eight pointer this year.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Man who knows I I'd love to He's a he's
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: a good he's a good buck. He's almost a nine.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: He's got a little crab claw. That's awesome. Well, here's
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: my advice for you to kill this big this big
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a pointer. Um. Stick around for the rest of this podcast.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: As I know you you couldn't be here in the interview,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: but stick around for this one. Here what Hall has
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: to say about tracks and how we can tell how
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: fresh tracks are, and how we can tell how big
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a buck is by a track and by his stance
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and his gate um, and then apply that to this
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: year in Iowa when you're looking at like tracks in
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the mud, and that might help you better identify where
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: this big burley buck is hanging out or walking. And
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I feel that this tracks are something that I'm getting
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: more and more interested in. It's kind of overlooked a
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: lot of times today. We focus so much on tild
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: cameras and all that kind of stuff. But I think
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: that there's something to be said about paying attention to
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: what's actually on the ground. So, um, we cover some
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of that stuff today. It's pretty interesting. I'm ready, all right. Well,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: then let's take a break for our sick gear story
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of the day and then we'll get right to hell Blood.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: For this week's sick of story, we're joined by Seth Healy,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: who tells us about checking trail cameras with his son. Well,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: it was about the beginning of October and the summertime.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I got my little boy out with me checking cameras,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: you know, velvet bucks, and uh, I started hunting some
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and what much going on, and the weather was started
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to cool off, and I thought, well, that would be
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: a good time to get him out with me and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: kind of get him in the woods a little bit
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and uh check some more cameras. So we go out.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: The previous card pools hadn't been too good. It was
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: getting pretty slow, you know, October law was starting to hit,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and so we go out and go to my favorite
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: area of our family farm, and uh go to check
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: a couple of cameras and I let him, you know,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I opened and opened the cameras up for him and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: let him pull the cards out and put new cards in.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: And he was just I mean super excited to be
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: out there, and it was for a moment for me
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: that you know, I had never got to do that
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: with my dad, and for me to be able to
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: share just getting him out there and doing something that
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I love was super special for me. Um, I don't
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: even I can't even describe how to be whenever I
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: actually get to take him hunt with me, you know,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: because he's only three. It was just I don't know,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: it was even though we didn't kill anything or you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: anything like that, it was still a special moment to
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: get my kid out there with me and and uh
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: let him enjoy everything that I enjoy about the outdoors.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: On seth Son, he was wearing Sickest Fanetic hoodie. If
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: you'd like to create a Sickest story of your own,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: or to learn more about SITYS technical hunting apparel, visit
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: sitkey gear dot com. Alright with me now on the
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: line is hell Blood. Thanks for joining us. Hell, Hey,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: you're welcome, glad to be here. Yeah, I'm I'm excited
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: to excited to have this chat. I've been following some
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: of your your articles and different things you've posted over
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the years. Um, kind of from a distance and kind
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of always been aware of some of the things you've
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: been doing. And I've heard a lot about you and
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: some other folks up in your neck of the woods
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: as far as how you guys hunt, but I haven't
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: done a good job of getting anyone on the wire
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Dune podcast to talk about this stuff, to talk about
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the big woods, to talk about tracking deer um. So
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: you are filling a big gap for us. Hell, so
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: so thank you for doing that. And before we get
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: too far into that stuff, I'd like to hear from
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: you first a little bit about yourself. What's your story? Hell,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: how how did you get into all this? And how
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: did you get to where you're right now? I think
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I got a crazy story. So I I started deer
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: hunting when I was ten years old, which is when
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: you can start. And me and you've gotta be ten
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: to hunt. Well now they change it. But and my
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: father was my father dea hunted. He wasn't a big
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: dea hunter as far as you know, like an expert
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: or anything, but he'd like to go and every every
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: once in a while he shoot ada, you know. And
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I grew up in the southern part of Maine, and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and there wasn't there weren't a lot of dia back
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: then in southern Maine. The northern forest w was was
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: where the dea were the most heavily populated because southern
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Maine was reverted farm country. It was reverting when they
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: let the farms go by, and they just hadn't populated
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: in I guess, but it was a back then. I
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: remember back in the I started hunting in the late
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: sixties and and uh, you know, it was a big
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: deal if you shot a deer and you could shoot
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: either sex back then, you know, as anything goes and
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a big deal, a big saying.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: It was always, you know, to get your dea because
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: it was a big deal to get one. So anyway,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: that's where I started. But I actually shot my first
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: one when I was twelve, and I show it when
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I was thirteen, and I skipped a couple of years
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: because I really didn't get to go that much anyways.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: But then when I was sixteen, my my relatives invited
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: me to come down to there their hunting lodge, which
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: was an old farmhouse and it was it was more
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: to the northeast of us, still kind of near the coast,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: but I got to go up there and spend a week.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: And uh that was a big deal for me because
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I would go on Saturday of Thanksgiving us something before then.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: But and there was quite a few more deer up there.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: You know. It was calming to see some deer every
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: day up up there. So I started shooting some deer
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: up there. And then I went in the Marine Corps.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: As soon as I turned eighteen, I got out of
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: high school. I went in the Marine Corps for a stint.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: An idea hunted down in North Carolina where I was stationed,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and uh, I drought a bunch of deer down there.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: The limit was four years, I think down there. But
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I was always crazy about it, and and I was
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: crazy about tracking, even though I didn't know it that
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: much then because in southern Maine we didn't have much
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: for snow during da season, but I used in the wintertime.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Me and a couple of buddies, we tracked rabbits around
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: of snowshoe hares there and we tracked them to ourselves.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: But and then when I got out of the Marine Corps,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I had to get a job. I wanted to be
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a game wouldn't but they weren't taking applications. So I
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: just got a job in a grocery warehouse, and not
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: to bore you with all us, that only lasted a
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: couple of years. But the only vacation pick I could
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: get was up north in the season opened a week early,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: So I got that pick, and I talked my father
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: into going. That was me and my father. We had
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: this little pop up camp and we borrowed and we
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: headed to the North main Woods to an area it's
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: where I live now, and settled into because we used
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: to go fishing their Memorial weekend and I always saw
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: a da So I said, well, that'll be a place
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: to try anyways, And and it was kind of ironic
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the first trip I made north after that week up north,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I felt it was hard to go back and hunt
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: in southern Maine. I don't know why it was, but
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: it was just like something in my mind. It was
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: It's like I got a love for it in one week.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: It was big. You know, it's a bigger area than
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I've ever been in. And you know, you see that
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: big buck sign and I've seen We had some little
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: bit of snow that week off and on, and I
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: followed a few big buck tracks and I just got
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: intrigued by it. So I did still have to hunt
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: down in southern Maine for a little bit more off
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: and off and on. But I did take my time
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: every year when I could get it. By then I
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: had started UH only I only uh after that first
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: two trips up north, I UH. I ended up going
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: with my father in law. He was a lobsterman, and
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I helped him for a couple of years as a
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: stern man. And then I bought my own boat and
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: went lobster and on my own. And then I periodically
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: got some time to go north every year. But that's
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the only place I wanted to go when I hunted.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I'd drive up all three hours the hunt for two days,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: you know, and then go back and go back lobster.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And so anyway, I told my wife back then, I said,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I want to I wanted. I always wanted to think
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: of something I could do to make a living in
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the you know, being part in the woods. So I said,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: let's let's start a sporting camp and guide people and stuff,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you know. So just ran on that dream, that's all.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: And I lost it for nine years. And then we
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: sold that business and built our built up business up here,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: you know, and outfitting business, and ran that for twenty
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: two years. I think we sold that four years ago,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: now be five years actually in December. So meanwhile I
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: started guiding the hunters, the deer hunters, and and uh,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: you know, got to learn a lot from that about
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: people and and deer as well, because it got me
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: in the woods, you know, every day of the season
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: for years and years and years, and and then uh,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: that led into I decided to write a book about it,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: because my hunters kept saying, once you write a book
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: about this stuff, I'd be telling stories at the table
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: every night, you know, when the hunters would come in,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: you know. And so I did. So I wrote my
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: first book and I titled it, uh Hunting Big Woods Bucks.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: And that was a that was a term that I
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: coined back then, back I think that was in two
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: thousand and five, I think when I wrote my first book.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And now you see it, you see it everywhere, you know,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: you see big woods bucks everywhere. It used to be
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: northern the north Woods and Northern Woods and northern deer
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: and all that, but everybody uses big woods bucks now.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: So but anyways, and that's that's how my I started
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: my business with a partner after that. It was a
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: buddy of mine, a client, Chris Dalty, and he said, hey,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: what do you think about getting the camera and filming
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: some of this stuff you do when I go, yeah, sure.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: So we just kind of started that way and and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: uh kind of moved it along to where it is now.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: You know, it was a slow stock because I had
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: my other business going on, guiding and stuff. So but anyways,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what happened. Just kept kept in the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: woods and studying. I was always a a student of
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the woods anyway. So the time I remember when I
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: was six, seven, eight years old running around the woods
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: all day. Back in those days, my mother would kick
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: your out of the house, you know, and be back
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: for supper and that was it. So I ran around
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: in the woods and stuff most every day. Not that
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: we had huge woods, but big enough to roam around
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: in and see things. You know, they always feel pretty
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: big when you're that young too, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: for sure. It was a relative. So, UM, I guess
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: that's go ahead. I was gonna say. I heard you
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: say once speaking of this big woods hunting. Um, I
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: heard you say once that you either love it or
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: you hate it when people try this kind of hunting
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: or hunting in this kind of place. Um, why is that?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And why is it that you ended up loving it
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: so much? Well, I loved it so much just because
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I always loved the woods, and the bigger the better.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And I was never I was never afraid in the woods.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: And I think back now on that. Uh when I
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: used to first start at hunting, I never thought about
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: being lost. I never thought that I needed to be
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: right with somebody else. Even at ten years old, I
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: started rabbit hunting with my grandfather. He had beagles when
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I was ten years old, and I'd roll them around
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: by myself. My snowshoes were taller than I was, and
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I'd catch up with him during the day, you know,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and we get a rabbit running. If I didn't know
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: where he was, go find his make a circle, find
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: my grandfather's track, and follow it until I caught up
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: to him. And but never, never ever thought about being lost.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: And uh so when I got to the Big Woods,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: I was the same way. The first couple of years
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I went up north, I never even carried a compass.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: And then I got a little turned around in the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: snowstorm one day, and I said, you know, compass probably
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: would be a handy tool to have up here. And
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: back then there was not as many logging roads as
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: there is now. Ei there were some some really huge
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: pieces of woods with no logging roads. But so when
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: I started to I just figured everybody would like it.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I just was like, I liked it. So
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: you know how you are, you typically tend to think
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: everybody kind of maybe thinks a little bit of like
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: all hunters maybe anyway. But um, when I started to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: realize that not everybody liked it is when I started
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: guiding clients and I could see even the ones that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I took, some of them that I took, they wouldn't
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: they were they were there for that year, and then
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: they it wasn't their cup of tea and they'd never
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: come back. And then I saw it a lot more
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: with guides that clients that weren't guided, they come up
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to they just rented a cabin and went and did
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: their own thing. Ah, some of them would leave halfway
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: through the week, even some of the guided ones, you know,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: by Wednesday or Thursday, they'd pack up and go home.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: And you know, they would never tell you the real
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: reason why. But but it boiled down to a couple
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: of things, and one of them it shouldn't have been,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: was the low deer densities. Because we always told them,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna come up north, I always would was
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: honest with people, you're not gonna see a lot of deer,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: because they used to be all the deer up north.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: But when they started back in the seventies and eighties
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and even through the nineties, when the log and really
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: accelerated with mec and I his equipment, they cut a
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: lot of the deer winnering areas are actually most of them,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and the deer herds plummeted up north. Meanwhile they were
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: recovering in the south, they were building up. So now
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: it's opposite all the deer in southern Maine now and
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the the deer if you were in further between the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: northern Maine. And but I would always tell people that,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: you know, if you I told I used to tell people,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: if you see five or six deer in the week,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you've had a good week up here. Because if you
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: might see the one buck you want to see and get,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's this is an area where you can
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: shoot a buck of a lifetime you know, a big,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: heavy body buck with heavy antles and stuff, and that
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: was kind of like the mystique of most people loving it.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: They didn't care if they didn't see him any deer,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: but they knew they were there. They saw the buck
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: sign that you on huge trees and the huge tracks,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and they'd see him at the tagging station. Other guys
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: getting them are on the game poll at camp, and
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: they knew they were there, and they were willing to
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: put the time into for their chance of getting one
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: of those once in a lifetime bucks. So that's how
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: I got to learn that they either loved her they
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: hated it. But the bottom line with most of it
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: was fear. And I've written that in my new book
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: fear is the biggest obstacle people have the hunting in
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the big woods, and the biggest fear is being lost,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: which I never related to it. Like I told you,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I never thought about it. But you know, I realized
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: that even with people I guided, that they were nervous
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: being right with me. You know, would be on a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: one on one hunt track and a buck of something,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: and when they started asking you, you know, how far
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: out are we and which weighs back. You know, they're nervous, right,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: So that's how I got to figure out that people
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: were basically scared of the woods. Spit scared of being lost,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: a scared of spending the night in the woods. And
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: that was a limiting factor. So it still is to
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: this day. Most people don't get even up here a
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: quarter of a mile from the roads, any of the
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: logging roads, or anything a quarter of a mile about
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: it for most people. What do you what do you
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: consider big woods? Like? What are the kinds of places
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: that you hunt? Um? And I guess also, I know,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I think you've mentioned you've hunted a number of other
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: states too. I'd be curious to hear kind of where
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: all you've experienced that's kind of hunting to Okay, what
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: my definition of the big woods is anywhere that deer
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: don't have access to agricultural crops or suburban areas with
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: his neighborhoods where they can eat shrubs and stuff. In
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: other words, not really contact with people on a on
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a regular basis. You know, so because agricultural cross crops
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: is what determines what dea do, right, that's where you
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: most people all you hear about people talk about when
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the white tailed deer hunting is patterning dea between you've
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: got to know where the feeding areas are in the
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: bedding areas well. That's only because they're limited to feed
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: where the crops are because the woods is all browsed
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: out where there is no feed basically in the woods,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: so they have to go to crops, which makes them
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: patternable in the big woods. The same food is about
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: everywhere in the woods. Now it's different different times of
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the year, but there's all kinds of green plants in
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the woods and mushrooms and nuts, and and they don't
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: go to any one place. These da just roam even
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the does you know, they'll be on maybe one ridge
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: one day or maybe a week. They feed up and
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: down a ridge and then they might cross the ravine
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: go on to another ridge of half a mile or
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: a mile away and spend a week or a few
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: days over there. They just roam around, even the even
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: the dos. You're not gonna pattern them. You know, you
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: can find deer trails in the woods and stuff where
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: you might be a better chance to you know, to
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: get one if you were sitting something you're gonna get
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: on a stand. Yes, there's places you can do that,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: but it's not because they're going from a feeding area
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: to a betting area. They just traveling from one place
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to the next basically. And as far as the states go,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I've hunted in uh, well, on the east side, you know,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I've hunted around New England, you know, Maine and New
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Hampshire and mass actually shot my first Massachusetts buck last fall,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and the Muzzloda hunted the Adirondacks in New York, and uh.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: I hunted like North Carolina and stuff, you know, years ago.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: But far as for track, I have hunted in Montana,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: the up of Michigan, Minnesota, and Ontario Northwest Ontario which
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: is right above Minnesota there. But all these places I
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: go to, it's for the bigger woods, you know. I
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: don't go there to hunt around family, and I go
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: to hunt in the big woods, like Montana. The the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: eastern parts all prairie and agriculture. In the west is
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: all those big mountains. Well that's where I hunt, you know.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: So uh space, and there's differences in the deer a
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: little bit from one area to the next, but it's
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: not enough to be hard to figure out. Mostly it's
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: because the deer populations are different in those different areas,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: you know, Like what I saw up in the Up
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: of Michigan was probably similar amount of deer is back here.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: When we first started hunting Ontario, there was quite a
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: few more deer than here. In Montana there is they're
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: in pockets, but there's places with his more deer in
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: places that's the same. So you just gotta get used
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: to the amount of deer, and that controls kind of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: how far the big box will travel, you know. But
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: people have asked me what's my favorite place to hunt?
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: And it's still right here in Maine, believe it or not.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: I just something about, you've got a chance to kill
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: these big bucks, you know that dressed well over two
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: hundred and uh the tracks are bigger, you know, everywhere
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: else you go the tracks are as big as here. Actually,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: up up in the Up, I found some tracks that
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: were big like here. But for the most part then
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: on because it's a different The bucks we have in
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: northern Maine, northern New Hampshire, right up in New Runswick
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: can que back. It's a Northern Borealis white tail, which
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: is the largest subspecies, and so they have the they
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: have the largest tracks. I know we shot some. My
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: heaviest deer I shot was actually in Ontario, but he
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: had no ways near the foot is some of the
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: big ones here that one dressed to eighty. But it's
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: a different subsidies. I think it's the probably the northern
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: like probably the the Coda white tails probably spread north
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: or whatever up into Ontario because up there where we hunted,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: it's the deer weren't always there, you know, they kind
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: of spread north over the years. So so anyways, that's yeah.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: The it sounds like you've been able to kind of
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: put your big big woods strategy into action, surprising a
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: lot of different places, which is pretty interesting to me. Um,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: So I want to dive into the details of how
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: exactly you do that. But one of the things that
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I have kind of wondered about right at the gate
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: is when you talk about the you know, deer hunter
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: like myself here in southern Michigan, and I hunt a
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: lot of the Midwest where I am hunting that kind
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: of agg land wood lots and agg fields type landscape.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Just like you said, there's a lot of that, um
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: figuring out where they bed, figuring out where they feed,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: trying to intercept them, patterning deer, doing a lot of
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: offseason scouting, hanging tree stands, all that kind of stuff.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: So our off season is full of all sorts of preparation.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: But as a big woods tracker, what do you do
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: in the off season? Are you scouting and doing a
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: whole lot of preparation or is the hunt for you
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: really just getting out there and finding a track and
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: going Yeah, that's really what it is. Because Uh, I'm
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: not a sitter, never have been. Even when I was
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: a kid, I couldn't. I couldn't sit very long. I
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: don't have any patience for it. So I'm either still hunting.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: If it's be a ground, I still hunt around. Call
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: it scouting now because I don't really want to shoot
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: one on bay ground. I'd rather track one down, you know.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: But I go out and go through the motions, and
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I go and like around here, I'm so familiar with
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: my area that I just go check some areas I
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: might know how to hunted for ten of even twenty years.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: I go back, you know that they might have gone
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: downhill from logging or something else. But a lot of
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: times those areas they like come full circle and it's
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: good again, you know. So I go out in all
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: I look for when I'm scouting, even in the spring,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: is basically what I'm looking for is where them big
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: bucks travel. I'll incidentally find out where the does are
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: hanging out. You know, they always hanging around with the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: best feed is in the woods, which is typically the
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: newer logging, you know, the newer cuttings, because that's where
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: the best feed grows. And the doors take their their
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: fawns there to raise them up, so those will attract
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the bucks later in the season, you know, once the
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: rut kicks in. But these big box in the big woods,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: they're real secretive creature. You can't believe how secretive they are.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: There's places they go that without snow, you would never
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: find them. You would never you'd never go there to
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: find some of the places they go to lay down
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: or even and hang out. You know, it could be
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: right to the tops of the highest mountains down in
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: these swamps. But they're reclusive. They're really reclusive animal. And
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: but I'll tell you the key here for me of
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: locating the big box is a signpost rub. And that's
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: another that's another term that I coined back when I
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: wrote my first book, because I kept finding these rubs
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: in the woods up here that they look different than
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: other ones. And I started studying them a little bit
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: because I was always curious any anyways about things in
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: the woods. And I could see that the same tree
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: had been rubbed year after year. You could see the
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: you could see the growth rings where it kept healing
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: over and healing over, and it actually someone would be
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: brought it right to the middle. They've been rubbed so
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: many years. And I call them signposts because what I
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: figured that what it is is it's a place where
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: they put sent and communicate. And now with trail cameras
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: you can I mean I had the theory, I said
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: it's got to be that, but now with trail cameras
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: you can prove it because you can watch how they
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: rub those. They're not rubbing them as much out of
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: aggression all the time as they are just to put sent.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: And sometimes they quite frankly, they go buy them and
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: they don't rub them. They'll just smell them and keep going.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: They want to see who's there. It's like a communication point. Well,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of those places there will be several bucks
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: overlap right there. That's like the spoke of a wheel.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Of the hub of a wheel, you know, where those
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: different bucks cross paths. And that is a real key,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I call it. That's the key to unlock in the
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: secret of the big woods when you when you locate
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: a bunch of those in the woods, you know, and uh,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: they're not necessarily that easy to find until you know
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: what to look for. But I mean, I've had guys
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: that I've taught and stuff and read my books that
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: still never found one. And if I've taken them in
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the woods and showed them or explained it a little
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: bit better, they go and find them and they start
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: sending me pictures back of the ones they found. And
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: excuse me, sorry, I was just gonna say, so, are
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: there specific types of places that you usually find a
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: signpost rublic? Is it at a junction of some kind
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: of different type of terrain? Or where where do you
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: find these? There can there be anywhere? Well up here,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: nine five even more per cent of the rubs are
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: on a specific tree and it's a brown ash, or
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: you'd call if you looked it up in a tree book,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: could be a black ash. And I think it's because
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: that black on that tree. It's like balsa wood. I
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: think it holds a scent. And I also think it's
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: because it's it's a rare tree. It's not like a
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: maple tree or a birch tree. It's they don't grow everywhere.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: They grow around wet ground, so they grow around uh
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: seed of swamps, spring seeps down through the woods, up
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: in the even up in the mountains. They'll grow if
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: there's a seep where they've gotta have a lot of water.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: So that's how you find though, so I don't I
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: don't go looking in the woods. There's too many trees
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: in the woods to look for a signpost rub. So
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I walk the wet areas until I find the trees
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: at the rubs most likely on. That's how a scout.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: And if I find these brown ash and I get
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: through an area with brown ash, and I don't see
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: any rubs on them, there ain't too many bucks around
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: because they don't they got to rub them, you know.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And then when you get down south of here, towards
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: the middle of Maine, things change a little bit and
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: they start there's different ones you'll find signpost rubs on,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: and it transitions into things like white oak, hemlock, red cedar.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: When you get down beyond Maine and you get into
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: southern New England as a red cedar, and red cedar
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: goes all the way into the south. I found signpost
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: rubs in Tennessee turkey hunting in the spring on red
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: cedar trees. You know, when those grow probably about anywhere,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: but you'll see them a lot around abandoned fields and stuff.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: They'll grow up around the edges. So in your area,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: if you know what tree to look for, you go
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: look for those trees and you'll find signposts if if
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: it's if it's a a big enough woods where bucks
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: can grow old, because if they can't grow old, you're
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: never gonna find a signpost because it has to be
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: rubbed enough he is to make one, right, it makes
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: sense to you. So if a if a buck gets
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: shot when he's two or three years old, he's not
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: really he might have started a rubb. If you rubbed
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: two years or three years and then you you kill
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: that buck, then it's probably the end of that signpost,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: unless there was already several big bucks making one. Which
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: if you you know most places aren't like that. You know,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: you gotta get remote to places that grow enough big bucks.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Now I know those those places in Iowa and Kansas
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: where they shoot all those big bucks. But the reality
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: is most of those big bucks aren't really that old,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: you know, So you need old age to create signposts,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: and signposts would be the key in the big woods
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: to find in where the bucks travel. So so back
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: to the original question, then, which is about the preparation scouting.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Is there anything else you do on the off season
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: other than looking for those signposts, anything else before we
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: move on to the actual in season stuff. Nope. If
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna scout new areas, I go in the I'll
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: go in the spring. As soon as the snow leaves
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the ground late April early May, before it greens up,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: I'll go check some new places because you'll still see
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the rubs and scrapes on the fall, excuse me. And
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: then if I'm going to scout in the fall, I'll
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: scout the last week before the season, because before that
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: they ain't there. They roamed around somewhere else in their territory.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: And what changes them really here is when the leaves
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: drop in early October, they move wherever this summer range was,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: where they're feeding in a cot or whatever it was.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: As soon as them leaves drop off in the woods
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: opens up, they moved to a different area, they get
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: they get back with his green growth. For swamps, they
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: just they feel like they're they're out in the open.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: In other words, wants the leaves fall. You know, it's
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: the only two times I scout right, If I see,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: I can go hunt there when the snow flies. Now,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: what about before the snow flies, when the season opens
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: there's not snow yet? Do you do you try any
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: dry ground tracking? Is there anything you do before the snowfalls?
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Or do you just follow the snow or wait for it? No?
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I well, I it's yes to both of them. I
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: stay here at home when it's bare ground, and I
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: scout around. I go check some of the places where
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I know the signposts, see if they're hit, see what
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: it looks like. The best time to track you can
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: track on bare ground is very difficult. But the best
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: time is right after a rain where it flattens all
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the leaves out, and then you really only have about
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: a day and then there's more tracks laid down and
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: you can't do it anymore, you know what I mean?
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: And then when you do find it, you've got to
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: find a track you know, one of those big ones
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: that's track is bigger than all the rest of the tracks,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't blend in with them. You know, if
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: you've come across the other tracks, it'd be easy enough
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: to to sort it out, you know. And typically they'll
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: sink in deeper in the leaves and all that. But
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I've tracked the number of one bay ground before and uh,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun. It's slower going, you really,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: I'd part is that your your eyes are on the
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: ground all the time, so you know, looking around, whereas
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: when there's snow you can look out that track sometimes
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: ads and you don't have to look at the ground anymore,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: you know, you can look ahead look for a deal. Yeah, well,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I think now is a good time to take a
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: quick break for a word from our partners at white
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Tail Properties. This week. With white Tail Properties, we're drawn
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: by Justin Mason, a land specialist out of Illinois, and
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Justin is gonna be telling us about what some things
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: are to consider when looking at a property that frequently floods.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing to consider when looking at
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: a property that floods, there's a misconception that flooded ground
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: doesn't hold beer, and I have found that personal on
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: my own farm to be false. UM. I had perfect
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: video of this just a couple of weeks ago. The
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: river got up. Less than forty eight hours later, the
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: deer we're back in there. So I think, what if
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: you have property that plugs you need to try to
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: identify a kind of that high ground and make sure
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: you know that the high ground has as much food
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: and cover on it as you can get. That way,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: when it pushes those deer out, they have a place
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: to go, and hopefully you can still keep them on
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: your property without losing them to your neighbor. If you'd
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: like to learn more and to see the properties that
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: justin currently has listed for sale, visit whitetail properties dot com.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Backslash Mason that's m A S O N SO. I
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: feel like a lot of guys and girls that hunt
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: UM in the Midwest or other of these these kind
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: of generic deer hunting types examples where most of the
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: media and stuff comes out of UM. There's not quite
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: as much of a focus on paying attention to deer tracks.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Everyone wants to focus on trail cameras or food plots
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: or whatever might be. But there's been kind of this, uh,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: this lack of interest in tracks in a lot of
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: both media and simply help most average guys are hunting.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: So in a bearground scenario, what should the average deer
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: hunter know whether or not they're gonna track a buck
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: or not? What should they know about tracks? Or what
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: can you tell us about tracks that can help us,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: you know, better determine what is a big buck by
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: its track or how fresh is it or anything else
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: that we should be paying attention to when it comes
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: to that kind of sign, Well, again, a track is
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: relevant to your area. You know, a track what I
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: would call a big track out here, you probably won't
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: find one in southern Michigan that size. So you've gotta
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: go with what's a big track for your area. So,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: for here, I call it a three by three track
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: or a three by three and a half. Typically they're
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: a little longer than they are wide. But if I
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: find a three by three track, I'm pretty well assured,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: unless it's late season when they've lost a lot of weight,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: that that buck is gonna field dress over two hundred pounds.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: That's the kind of bucks I like to go after.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: You know you they're going to be a mature buck,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: you know. But out of your way in southern Michigan,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: that might be a two bite two and a half track.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, But up in northern Michigan
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: and the up I did see some, you know, some
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: of them three by three and a half tracks. I said,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: I saw some up there. But you'd have to get
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: used to your own area. What's a normal size, but
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: the biggest, the biggest thing. Anybody in the area is
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: gonna say if they used to see him be a tracks,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: they're gonna say, wow, that's a a big track. But
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: the mature buck is gonna have the do clause will
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: be no matter what size the print is, his due
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: claws are gonna be set quite a bit back from
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: the back of his hoof, say two inches or more,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: and it'll be usually a little wider than the hoofs.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: In other words, where you see those dew claws, those
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: prints will be wider than the than the track itself
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: from the horse, and the dow clause will be turned
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: more perpendicular to the hoof almost ninety degrees, whereas like
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: a dough typically their dew claws are almost in line.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: They turned a little bit, but not much. The other
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: key thing if you had snow, you'll never know. On
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: bare ground, but even in an inch or two of snow,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: a mature buck will drag his feet, so you'll see
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: those drag marks. And if you see drag marks in
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: an inch or two of snow, that's an older buck.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: They just get lazier when they get older, and they
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: don't pick their feet up as much. And that would
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: be anywhere. That would be if if your big bucks
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: in your area dress out a hundred and fifty pounds,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: like in the Adirondacks, they've got some nice rack bucks,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: but you know, to shoot a buck over a hundred
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: and eighty pounds is not real calm. And most of
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: those mature bucks, they get way a hundred and fifty pounds,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: hundreds of sixty pounds, but they'll be dragging their feet
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: all the time. Those older bucks, you know, you get
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: a six nine year old buck, he'd be dragging his feet.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: So what about the things that tell you how recently
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: a track was made? What are the things you're looking for,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: whether it be on bareground or snow, what are the
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: things you look for on that Well, that's one of
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the hardest things for a track, and I have to
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: learn because it's one of the most important things, because
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: how fine you might be behind a buck determines how
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: ask you're gonna go on the track. So I call
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: a fresh track any track made in the night, because
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: I get out at daylight and I'm looking for a track.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: If I find a track that was made the night before,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: to me, that's a fresh track. If it's an hour old,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: eight hours old, that's a buck I'm gonna follow. Now
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: I might. If I'm on an eight hour old one,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I might. If I see a fresher one, I'll switch
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: over to it, as long as it's big enough. But
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I always start somewhere because if you follow one buck,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: eventually it's probably gonna cross paths with another one. So
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: but it is the hardest thing to determine. But I
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: can tell you one thing about about a track in
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: the snow is is the minute that track is made,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: it starts to change. It's either freezing and evaporating or
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: it's melting, you know, thawing and melting. Either way it changes.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Now it's gonna be a subtle change in the beginning
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: for that first hour, but beyond that you'll you'll you'll
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: notice if you know what to look for, which is
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: basically the edge with a hoof punches through the snow
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: that deteriorates first that sharp edge made in the dust
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: or the wet stuff that's pushed out in front will
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: melt before it melts down inside the print or freezes
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: down in the print. And that's just a guideline. The
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: rest of it depends on temperature. If it's zero, it's
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: gonna deteriorate quicker than if it's five degrees. So you
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: almost gotta have like a an internal calculator, you know.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: And that's only you're only going to get that from experience.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: You know. What about what about the bare ground track
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: anything on that front that you look forward to determine
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: the fresh just there is it? Is it similar in
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: that you're just looking for the sharp edges or anything else. Well,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: you can't see that in the like I said, on
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: the on bare ground, you know, unless you saw one
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: in the dirt, Like if you're some fields, I'm never
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: in there, but in the woods and the leaves, they're
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: just gonna be punch marks and you'll see the since
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: so the rain flattens the the leaves everything's flat. When
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: they punch that in the edge of them, leaves will
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: flip up like straight up. You can actually you can
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: see those for ways down through the woods. No, not
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: fifty yards, but you can certainly see them for and
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: steps ten of twelve steps ahead, you know, and you'll
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: see it's punched up kurt crisp like that. And they'll
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: stay that way even when the leaves dry out. But
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: like I said, the highest problem with the bare ground
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: is every day there's more tracks getting added to the
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: so they start everything starts blending together. That's why you
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: can't really follow them too much after the first day.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Now that being said, if you get in an area
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: that there's very few dea, you won't cross as many tracks,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: so you could possibly maybe go another day. Sometimes I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: just take a track like that to see if I
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: can get at least get to some new sign. I've
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: done that a lot of times in a new area.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: Follow a track on bare ground, I might be only
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: able to follow it for a quarter or a half
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: a mile before it gets into some how we call
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: it softwood, you know, you people call it the pines.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: But in the spruce and fir needles, the tracks will
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: disappear and there, But that track still might take me
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: to a signpost, rob or scrape line, or it might
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: take me to something that shows me where that buck
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: is traveling, you know, m Yeah, going going back a
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: second to um, determining what kind of deer you're tracking? UM.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: I think I remember. I do remember reading in some
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: different places where people also pay attention to things like
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the length of the stride or the width of the
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: between the each footstep. Is that something you pay attention
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: to personally? Yeah, I wrote about that my first book.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: I put some illustrations in that because and and it
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: is a variable in that, because the same dea can
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: walk fast as slow and change his stride like like
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: we could do it so you Sometimes a stride just
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: means he's hurrying, But if you follow one long enough,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: you will get to figure out what his normal walk is.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: In the longer stride means it's a longer deal or taller,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: however you want to put it. He's longer, and a
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: longer deal is gonna weigh more because they're not all
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: built the same. They're not all going to weigh over
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: two d pounds up here. And it's like people or
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: any other animal. You know, you've got long, thin ones,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: short squat ones, whatever it is, they're all different shapes.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: And then the I call it the stance, or some
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: people call a stag. How they stagger the width that determines.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: As a deer gets bigger, that's gonna widen out right
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: his shoulder and his chest. He gets bigger and thicker,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: So that's normally gonna widen out. But up here I
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: look for I look for a buck that's got eight
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: inches side to side, eight to twelve inches, and uh,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: that'll be a pretty good buck. Twelve inches will be
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: a real big one. But so yeah, I look for
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: that size of the print, uh, dragging his feet Like
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: I said, it is a real key, because then I
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: know it's it's an old buck. You know, an old buck.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: When you said the stance you're measuring, you know, twelve inches?
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Is that from the outside of the print to the
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: opposite outside of the inside inside, Well, I just I
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: just call it from like the center to the center
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: however you want to do it. But it isn't split
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: in his you know, you don't have to split hands
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: with it. But when you look down and it's looks
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: like it's eight inches wide, yet out of the center
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: to the outside, it's that's a good one. And if
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: you get out to twelve it's a big one. Now,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: when you get into areas where a deer or smaller,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: they're probably never gonna get twelve inches, you know, eight
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: inches might be the biggest size, and you know five
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: or six might be on the narrow side. You know, yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: all relatives. That makes sense. Yeah, that's just I always
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: look at that because out here and in in the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: lot of the North, people are more interested in the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: weight than they are in the antlers. Because when you're
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: hunting in the big woods, if you were trying to
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: hunt for a certain box with a certain set of antlers,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: or only shoot a buck with big antlers, you ain't
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: gonna shoot many bocks, I'll tell you, because you ain't
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: gonna have time usually to even see what it's got
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: when you're tracking. You know, you might he's got a rack.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: I don't care if it's a basket rack eight point.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: If he's eight years old and he weighs two and
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: fifty pounds, that's more of a trophy to me than uh,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: you're in a half year old at scores one fifty
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: we don't appear we don't. I mean, we have an
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: antler club in the state, and yeah it's great. You know,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: people shoot some big rack box. I look as it
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: is a bonus if you get one with a big
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: body and he's got a rack to go with it,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: it's just a bonus. I'll hunt for the big deer
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: over the big rack any day, different mindset. Yeah, no,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: I completely understand that. Um, what does what does a
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: day in the life of this kind of hunting look like? Then?
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Can you walk us through when you start, how the
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: how the process begins, what your thought processes then throughout
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the entire Maybe you could like give us a hypothetical
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: scenario you could walk us through. Yeah. I start every
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: morning at daylight. I'm usually driving to where I want
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: to go hunt. I'll pick an area I might pull
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: sometimes I don't know. This is kind of funny, but
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: I drive out my driveway in the morning and sometimes
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if which way I'm going. I don't
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: even know where I'm gonna hunt for the day. Now
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: that being said, it might be determined by where the
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: early snow is because a lot of time we got
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: mountains here and sometimes there's only snow in the mountains.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't have the snow in the bottom.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: So I gotta go hunt some mountains somewhere up. So
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: I head out, and I'm driving to where I'm gonna go.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: And if I'm lucky, which I'm not very often, but
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: I might if I see a track crossing the logging
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: road on the way to where I'm going, I get
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: out and I look at it and it's going somewhere
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: where I know there isn't gonna be a bunch of hunters.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: I'll get right on that one. I've shot quite a
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: few that way. But usually I end up driving to
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: where I want to hunt and then just striking off
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: through the woods, you know, whether it's up over a
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: mountain and down another valley to another, I just strike
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: off trying to find a track I want and stay
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: what's that? Sorry? I was gonna say, are you striking
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: off with like a destination of mind? Or are you
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: heading towards one of those signposts post drubs you found?
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: Or do you just say, all right, I'm heading off
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: into this general region, just gonna see where it takes me. Hey,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: you're pretty observant. You're keyed in on that signpost, and yes,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: that's what I do. I'll usually make a route. I'll
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: usually say, I'm gonna hit I'm going up through this
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: side of this mountain, through this notch, the signpost on
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: the back side. I'm gonna check that one. And there's
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: one over in another valley. Then I'll go check that one.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: And and you're right, if you go to enough of
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: them signposts, if you can check enough for them on
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: any day, you're gonna find a big buck track there.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: You're lucky you find it at the first one, and
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: if you're not, you might not find a track your noontime.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's just just the way it goes
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: some days. So when I find my track, I just
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: I start on it, you know, if I know what's
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: made in the night, which and that's another thing to know.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Some people say, well, how do you know that was
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: made that night or the night before or three nights ago.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: Well that's very easy to tell if you get used to,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: you know, looking at snow the nighttime track. Because once
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: a track goes through one day, it really changes, especially
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: if it was the sun was out the day before,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: not even if it melted, but um, it changes a lot.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: It's not that hard once you get used to it
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: to tell what's made in the night. So I just
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: follow that track. And when I get on a track,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: I'm going with the idea that I gotta catch up
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: to this buck so I can hunt them, because if
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: you don't catch up to him, you're not in the
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: game yet. Too many guys will go out there and
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: get on a track and they find a track and
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: they start hunting that track like Elma Fudd, one step
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: and looking all around. What you chances I you're never
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: gonna see that buck. I mean, just you're not going
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: to because that buck could be he might have You
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: might get lucky and he's laying down a half a
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: mile away, and he might be five miles away, and
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: you don't know that. You get going and see what
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: he's doing, you know, because the story of that buck,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: whatever buck you track, he's writing his life in the snow.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: And that's what's so fun about tracking, is he's showing
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: you his life, what he's doing, where he's going, what
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: he's up right now this time of year. It's all
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: written for your in the snow. If you're not how
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: to interpret it right, he starts wandering around he might
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: start chasing does, and even earlier, you know, before the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: red starts. He might find some doze and they know
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: where all the does are. They can go right from
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: one bunch to the next. They might app here where
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: the populations as heavy. You might get into some areas
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: where there's a little pocket of does. It might be
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: two or three dos, four doz, and the next might
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: bunch might be a mile away. So he just beat
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: feats for that mile till he gets over there. So
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: that's what you gotta do. You gotta keep going. And
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: then when he's done his route for the night, whenever
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: you get done, he's gonna nine times out of ten.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you get thrown off during the rout. They don't
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: They kind of don't eat as much, but usually they'll
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: they'll eat, feed around, wander around, and then they lay down.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: They're gonna be if you see that sign where their
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: wandering and feeding around quite a bit in a small area.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: He's right there. You canna be laying right there, some
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: way close, and it might already be too late, because
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: sometimes he's laid close enough where he he sees you already.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: Because they always lay watching their backtrack for danger, so
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: that sign will tell you though that I stop immediately
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: and I stopped looking around. He might be right there.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: He might be up on that ridge up there you're
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: looking at. And then I gotta try to figure out
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: if I can maybe get a chance to shoot him
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: in his bed laying down, or shoot him when he
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: gets out of his bed or something. But sometimes that
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: might not be till afternoon. I've got on bucks before
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: and going rate steady fast as I could walk for
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: five or six hours, never stop, catch up to one fast. Yeah,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: you're moving as fast as you can go all the
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: way until you see the wandering kind of tracks. Is
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: there anything else that would indicate his time to slow down? Well,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: if he picks up the dough and gets with a dough,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: if he starts off staying with the dough, they may
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: not be all that fire again, right, So anything like
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: that is what you've got to look for. But typically,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's just the life of a buck. You know,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: he's gonna he's gotta eat, sleep and bread and and
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: watch out for danger, and and it is really as
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: simple as that. That's all they do, right, So you
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: just gotta figure out what he's doing, where he might
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: be and that when I go through my day, I
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: call track and I call it an emotional roller coaster ride,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: because you're up, you're down, you're up, you're down. You know,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: you think he's right close, and then oh no, he's
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: struck off again with a fast pace. He's way over
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: the era. You know, it's just you don't know. You
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: gotta turn left here, you gotta turn right there. All
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: kinds of decisions all day. That's why you don't shoot
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: one every day, right? Why it's so fun If you
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: could go out and shoot one in every day, I
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: wouldn't bother going be too easy. Tell me this, Tell
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: me when you when you see that he's slowed down
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: and you think he's close. Now he's been wandering around,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: maybe you've seen sign of him rebnatory, you're feeding or
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: anything like that. What is your how much time do
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: you spend that at that point, now you think he's
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: slowed down? Do you just do you? Do? You? Now
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: get into that Elmer Fud mode where you glass and
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: then you take a few steps and need glass You
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: take a few steps or what's your process at that point? Well,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: I don't glass until I spot something I can't recognize
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: because it's I don't take enough time to glass around.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: Some people do fine, I don't. I look for I
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: look for things out of place, you know, like an
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: ear or an eye. But the first thing I try
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: to do is and again it's because I hunt in
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: the mountains a lot. Usually when they're gonna lay down,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: if they're up on a ridge somewhere, or they turn
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: up the ridge, they lay down up high so they
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: can look down right easy to escape danger that way,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: and they usually go up on the edge of the
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: green growth up in the mountain where it's sticker, and
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: lay either on the edge of it or just in it.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: So if I see a buck feeding around and he
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: he heads up and I can see a green bluff
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: up up there, I'm not going to follow that track
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: up through the open because he's watching that track, or
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: I assume he is. I make a circle down wind
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: around it, go up over the knob around it, and
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: make a complete circle to see if that track comes out,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: because it won't take me. I won't be losing any
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: time by doing that. So if I've got any doubt
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: to whether I'm not sure if he's laying down, I
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: make a quick loop like that might take me twenty minutes.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: But now I can confirm if I cut a circle
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: in his track, didn't go out. Guess what. Now I
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: have that buck in a small area in the big woods.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: He's captive for me. Now I just gotta try to
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: see him. If I cut that loop in his track
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: come out the other side. I just saved myself a
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: lot of time of Elma fuddon, didn't I? Yeah? But
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: some places you can't do that. Some places, the type
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: of woods you're in, you can't make that circle. It's
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: not gonna work either because of the wind the terrain.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: You can't always do it. But if I can do
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: it and make sense of it where it's not gonna
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: not gonna waste a lot of time, I'll do it.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: You mentioned wind that you you circled down wind there.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: Do you think about or factor wind into your strategy
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: at all at any other points of your of your
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: day or is it just at that point where you
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: thinking where is that? Yeah? Just when I think he's
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: if I think, if I think is the buck is around?
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: I started paying attention to the wind. Other than that,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: then make any difference. The wind blows four directions every
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: minute anyway, he's up in this country. But uh, quite frankly, Sometimes,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: once you've jumped the buck and he knows you're after him,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: he'll put the wind right in his back and walk
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: and he knows you're behind him. And you know he
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: knows because he'll be walking along and you'll see he'll
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: make two or three jumps and he'll pick up his pace.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: He smells you getting closer. There's nothing you can do
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: about it. You just keep going because eventually he's gonna turn,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: or the wind's gonna change, and you might get a
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: chance again, you know. Yeah, That's what I was gonna ask. Next,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: is what happens when you do spook a deer? Um?
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Do you wait a while or do you just get
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: right after it? Or what happens at that point? That's
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: a good question because when I was in my training stages,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: because I had to teach myself all this stuff, I
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: didn't have it. I didn't have My father didn't hunt
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: up here, you know. I mean he came up when
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: I did, but he wasn't a tracker, and I didn't
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: have anybody to teach me. I just I just rustled
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: to it myself. But your first inclination is to go
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: right after him, because now it's you know, you're close,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: but it's the worst thing to do in most cases.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: There's a couple exceptions, but up here where the deer
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: don't get pressured. And again this is why it's different
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: than bigwoods. Deer hunting is different in a lot of respects,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: and this is one of them. You know, you get
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: in a lot of places where where deer or pressure,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: they might run along ways when they get spooked. But
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: these deer, typically a buck is gonna he's gonna run
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: off maybe a hundred two hundred three four yards whatever,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: and he's gonna stop and look back. Nine out of
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: ten times. Once in a while, you get what I
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: call a runner that doesn't do that. His escape mode
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: is the run a mile, and it's only because that's
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: how he Every every buck up here has lived to
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: his age by escaping kyos year round. So once they
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: figure out how to escape a coyo, that's what you
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: are of them, because they ain't used to be in
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: followed by people for the most part. So they're gonna
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: go off and they stop and they wait to see
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: if something's fallen, because probably they might have saw a
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: little motion. They might have heard a twig snap anything
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: like that, and that's what just got them out of
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: their bed, and they just want to make sure it's
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: nothing fall and they want to just put that little distance,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: you know, So I waited. I started waiting fifteen minutes,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: and that didn't work very good. So I pushed it
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: to a half an hour. And once I did that,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: that was the key right there. That's killed more box
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: up here than not just by me, by by me
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: writing about it. I had lots and lots of guys
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: over the ear told me after I wrote my first book.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: He they said, you know what, I don't know why.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: I never could figure that out, but it's perfect sense,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: you said, they tell me. And since they started doing it,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: they kill more box. You know, because really the best time,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: your best, hardest time to kill a buck is really
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: if he's laying in his bed watching his backtrack. You
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: think about that, right, He's got all the advantage. He's
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: just laying there watching where he came from, and all
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: he's gotta do is catch a little movement, a flash
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: of something, and he's out of there. You most of
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: the time you won't even see him, So you know,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: you gotta the next time is your best chance. So
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: if if if you go right after him, what happens
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: is they just confirmed what they thought. Something's after him.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: Now the chase is on. You're gonna be chasing him
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: all day. Not to say you can't kill him that way,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: because I have, but but it's a lot hotter and
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: you're gonna put on a lot more miles. But by waiting,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: that buck's gonna do a couple of things. He's only
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: got two choices. He's gonna lay back down, which means
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: he was not rested or not from he hadn't been
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: laying there long enough, or he's been laying long enough
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: to be rested up. And he's gonna go about his
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: business and start checking scrapes, rubs or whatever he wants
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: to do, and check does And that's the time. The
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: best time to kill a buck is when he's on
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: his feet moving because now he doesn't have the advantage. Yeah,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: he's gonna always look behind him, but he's moving and
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: you're moving, and but you still your odds are way up.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: You see how that works. It does, and what really
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: gives you the advantage. I tell people this all the time,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: just because the snow on the ground doesn't make it
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: a good chance to shoot a buck tracking, because you've
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: gotta have some other things in your favor. Because if
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: you're on a day when it's uh you know them
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: days in the woods where it's definitely still like you
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: feel like you can hear a pinder up like a
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: mile away, that's a hard day to kill a buck
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: tracking because they just even if they're on their feet,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: they got that advantage. And no matter how quiet you
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: can be, it's very difficult. The best the best weather
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: for killing the buck is wind. I don't care if
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: it's blowing fifty, I don't care if it's snowing. I
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: call those buck killing days because all of all his
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: advantage is gone. He's not gonna smell you, probably not
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: gonna see it because in the wind, you know, everything's
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: the trees are moving, the leaves of rustling things are swaying.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: They don't pick out your movement as well. Not to
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: mean you're gonna walk up on them. What I'm saying
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: is if you're sneaky in those kind of days, that's
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: the time to get a look at one you know
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: at this point in your I guess we'll call it
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: your hunting career. What what are the what's your show
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: of like actually seeing the buck that you pick up
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: a track on. Like if you if you pick up
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: ten tracks over the course of the season, do you
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: end up seeing eight of those bucks? Do you see
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: one of those bucks? How does that usually end up? Oh?
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: See just to see him? Oh, I don't know. I
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: never figured that out. More than you know, I see
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: more than half the ones I get on and about.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: It might be just oh you know, that's that varies
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: with the weather, And I'll give you a good example
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: of that. This pass fall. We had a year of
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: crusty snow. Whenever we had snow in rain and it
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: would freeze and make a crust. Even when I went
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: to Montana this year, we had a crust out there.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: They got a bunch of wet snow and then it
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: got cold and froze. We hunted on crust. I got
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: back here, I hunted on crusted every day, crunched around,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: and miraculously I still didn't see a few of the
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: bucks that I was on. But nowhere is near what
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: I could have. I know that I had two weeks
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: I hunted like that. The last week of rifle and
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: the week of muzzlo to here, made around here and
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: I saw I saw more big bucks and I've seen
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: in quite a few years. And I think a lot
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: of that was because usually I shoot one and then
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: I ain't hunting around here, you know, more is to
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: see anymore. But I was crunching around, but I still
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: gotta look at four or five. I ended up kind
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: of a crazy thing. I I won't I didn't. I
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: hit one with my muzzload. I just nicked it. But
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: I missed one with my rifle, didn't that much of
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: a chance, just fired when he's going to disappear. And
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: the last day of the season, and then I missed
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: one with my muzzlo to here and and nicked one.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: And then I saw a couple more that I couldn't
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: get a shot at. And then I I missed one
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: with my muzzleloader and masks and then I shot one
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: down there. But that was actually quiet going. It wasn't crunchy.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: But so to bring that back around, I don't really know.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: I don't really keep track of it, but I know
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: back the older I got in my career, the more
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: picky I got about what buck I wanted to shoot,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: and the older the buck. Those are the hardest ones
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: to kill, so the odds that you know, your odds
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: are tipping the other way. To go out and shoot
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: any buck is not a problem for me on probably
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: any day. But but to try to kill those biggest ones,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: that's why I like it so much. It's such a challenge.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: But I know, back when I was guiding full time,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: I only got the hunt days. Like when I was
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: guiding one on one hunters, if I got him a
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: buck that week, I get to hunt maybe a day
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: or two or whatever. And that's basically what I used
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: to do. I take a day here and a day there,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of days. But I remember in my first book,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: I still remember writing that because I actually did. I
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: think back to how many days I hunted because it
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: was easier because I didn't have many days, and it
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: averaged I shot him. I shot my buck every three days.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: In other words, it averaged. It took me three days
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: to kill a buck. And they were good bucks, you know.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: It took me three days. Some of them might have
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: been five. Several of them was the first day I went.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: But it averaged out to three mm is. And I
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: don't know if this is something maybe you know just
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: from talking to a lot of other hunters in the area,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: but in the big woods type of situation year and
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: up in northern Maine or maybe in the ed Aroundecks
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: or the upper Great Lakes. Um, do you think that
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: this kind of strategy track and bucks is that the
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: highest odds way to kill buck? Do you think in
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: this kind of area versus sitting around and waiting on one?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: You know, I say it is, and I know it
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: is for me because I can't sit around. But uh,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: there is some guys that if you're willing to put
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: the time in sitting on a good place, Yeah, the
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: same thing, you might kill one. The first I've had
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: clients I put on a stand and they kill them
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: the first day out that other you know, obviously most
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: of the hunters will sit all week and they don't
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: see one. But for me, by fire, it is and
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: and and because I know there's a buck at the
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: end of that track no matter what, all I gotta
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: do is get to them. Be That's different than sitting,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: and it's different than still hunting because you can be
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: sitting and you don't know in that woods where that
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: buck is. You've got no idea. You don't have any
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: idea if there's a buck within five miles of you
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: and you're just being in waiting that one comes along
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: when you're sitting there. But by tracking the buck is there.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: You just gotta do what it takes to catch up
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: to him and then do what it takes to get
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: your chance at him. Definitely, Yes, odds are better anywhere
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: there's snow. If you learn how to track and you
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: put it into practice, I can guarantee anybody if you
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: stick with it and get good at it, your success
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: will be a lot higher than just sitting around. And
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: again I'm talking about bigwood situations where the deer population
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: tends to be less. You're not sitting in a bean
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: field where you can pass up five bucks a day.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: You get the one. You weren't talking about that, but
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: in the wood hunting track. And for sure, what is
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: more successful. What if you're tracking all day and you
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: never catch out tune it gets dark. Can you get
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: back on that track the next morning the same at
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: the same place, or do you try to cut it
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: off or is it just a lost cause and you
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: start brand new the next day? What do you do
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: the next day? I started out new I might not
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: even go back to the same place, because after I've
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: left that buck, if I got to start again and
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: he's got all night to travel, I'm starting way behind.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: I'd rather find one that I might only be a
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: few hours behind. You know, I have. I've shot a
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: few bucks that the track was a couple of days old,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: and I've taken one only out of necessity because I
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: couldn't find anything else. But the biggest buck I shot
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: here in Maine. When I got on that track, it
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: was two days old, and it was the first week
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: of the season, and that's usually when they don't travel
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: as fact, because it's the ruts not even close. You know,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: the rut up north. It's probably the same in the Up,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: but here it's basically the you can market on your calendar.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: That's when the breeding starts, and I'm sure up is
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: about the same. But it was the first week of
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: the season and and my client had shot It's actually
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: a gallant. She shot her first buck the second day
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: out Tuesday. So she asked me if she could go
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: along with me, and I said yeah, but I said,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta hold back if I tell you
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: that when I'm getting close. I don't want you clumping
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: around behind right behind me. So I finally picked up
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: this track at about eleven o'clock. I'd actually tracked a
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: couple other ones, and one went into the crossed into Canada,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: and the other one I caught up to when it
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: wasn't big enough. So I got on this big track
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: and had a little We had a dust in the
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: snow the night before and it was in it. I
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: followed it down off this ridge and he rubbed on
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: a brown ash and there was shavings there and they
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: had that dusting, and the way it was headed, I'm like,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like headed like into any big real back
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: in any bad place. I said, I'm gonna follow this thing.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: I might be able to catch him, even though it
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: was eleven, you know, And I didn't go. Probably from
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: where I picked that track up, I don't know, as
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: I went much more than a half a mile. And
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: he went in in this little knoll on this ridge
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: and he laid down and he come back out and
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: started down the ridge and he caught up to and
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: I was three or four doors of the smaller buck
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: following around, and he followed those tracks down over the ridge,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: and I could see where he caught up to him
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: was written right in the snow. They all started running,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: and he started chasing them back up the ridge, and
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: then they all started walking and they went along. He
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: followed him for a few hundred yards, and then he
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: turned right off and went right down along the top
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: of the ridge and it got into a little bowl
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: up in the ridge with some open hardwoods, and he
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: started feeding there, and then he went across that and
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: it went into an old cutting that was pretty slashy
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: and thick, and he went in there, and I'm like,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: he's gonna be laying in there somewhere. So I told
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: her to hang back a little bit, keep me out
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: of sight, and I pushed my way in there. It
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: was some little maple whips and stuff. But it was
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: a windy day, like I was telling you about, you've
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: got the wind to help you're out. And there was
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: a few little leaves stuck on a little maples that
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: were rattling in the wind. And I got my gun
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: kind of ready, and I just one step at a
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: time in there, and I don't know how far I
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: went in not fire fifty yards maybe into that thicket,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: and I come to us a skit of trail where
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: I could you know, there's an would be an opening.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: And I stuck my head out, looked down that skin
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: of trail that's where his track turned, and he was
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: laying in his bed, looking back over his shoulder at me.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: You know, he didn't recognize me. I don't know if
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: he heard something and he turned his head, but he
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: was laying facing the other way, which was odd. But anyways,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: I shot him right there, laying in his bed, tipped
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: him right over right there. It was nineteen paces wow.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: So that was a two day old track. So you
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: never know. Like I said, there's always a bucket the
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: end of a track somewhere. If you if you get
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: to the end of it right, what do you think
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: there are any consistent traits or anything along those lines
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: that make for a good big woods hunter. If you
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: were to look at all the best big woods hunters
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: that you know, do they have anything in common or anything's? Yeah,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: of course they do. It's the number one thing is persistence.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: You don't give up, you don't quit, you just keep going.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: You've gotta have the stamina, but you've got to be persistent.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: Too many people and that's just generally, that's a that's
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: a that's a general human trait. You know, people, especially nowadays,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: they give up on everything too easy when things start
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: getting a little difficult. You know, it's easy to quit, right,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: It's easy to give up on something. And I just
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: think it's a human trait. But that's a that's the trait.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: It that that will kill a guy that wants to
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: be a tracker. If you're gonna give up because of
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: buck crossed the stream, he went up a steep hill,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: or he crossed the road, or I don't know, whatever
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: it is. There's a lot of reasons you could give up.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: Oh you got into some other DIA tracks and you
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: got tangled up and you couldn't figure it out. That's
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: why people quit, you know, they just say it ain't
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: it ain't worth it to him. So to me, it
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: tells me the the prize at the end isn't worth
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: it to them, so they won't be a tracker. If
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be a tracker, it's all about that that prize,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: getting to the prize at the end and end killing
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: them is just the end result, you know, it's not
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: you know, that's not why we track. Really, you know
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: if I had to go kill a buck. I've been
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: invited a hundred times to all those places in the Midwest.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: Clients invited me to, you know, Kansas and all those places,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: and I just wouldn't go because I knew I didn't.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't enjoy myself trying to sit in a stand
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: to something and I think, out the buck I wanted.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: That's to me, that's not a it's not a hunt
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: for me. If I'm not saying it's not a hunt,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: but for me it's not. I'm more into like trying
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: to outsmart one beat him on his own turf, you know.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: And I think you would find that that's really what
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: keeps any track of going, is that prize at the end.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: It's it's going to be worth it for him, you know,
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a big accomplishment. I I tell the
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: new people that start tracking, don't start out tracking the
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: biggest track in the woods you can find, because if
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: that's where you start, you're gonna have a lot of
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: lessons to learn. You're gonna have a lot of failure
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: because those are the hard ones to kill. I just
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: tell him to to track something. Find a track in
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: the woods, and follow it and see what it is.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: If it's a doe, great, you just saw her dough.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Now you know how that doe walked around and how
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: she acted. If it's a spike horn buck, shoot it
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: your first buck tracking. Next year you can look for
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: a bigger one, you know. That's all part of getting
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: the experience of it, if you just try to go
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: after those biggest ones, which I was guilty of when
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: I first started up north. That's all I wanted was
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: one of them big bucks. You know. So when when
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough to have snow, which like I said,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't back in those US, and I had my
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: lobster and business, I couldn't go as much. I didn't
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: have a lot of days every year with snow, but
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: I always would find the biggest track I could find. Consequently,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: between that and not heaving a lot of time, it
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: was I was seven years to tell people. Listen now,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: people who find it hard to believe, it took me
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: seven years to kill my first buck track and once
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: I started, Wow, but I never gave up. I never
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: thought anything of that. I never thought it was I
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: never thought I was failing at it or anything. I
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: was learning all the time I learned what they do,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: I chase them around. That's when I that's when I
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: figured out, you know how to you know that I
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: needed to wait a half an hour. But once I
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: shot that first one tracking, it was like clockwork. Every year,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: year after year after year after year from then on
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: something I had to put this seven years. And I
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: try to help people now not have to go through
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: the seven years by teaching them some things. But I
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: hope it's not easy for everybody. Yet they go and
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: I've heard stories of guys tell me the first time
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: they went out to track something, They're walking along and
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: the bucks and stand there looking at and all that stuff.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Never it happens to me. I don't know why it
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: happens to Some people are just lucky, you know, But
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: but that luck doesn't stay. You've gotta have the fundamentals
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: and keep at it. And part of that, I guess
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: what came of that, all of that stuff through guiding
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: and all of the stuff over the ears, several people
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: came to me and said, you know, you really have
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: a system of what you do. And I thought about that,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: and it came from several different people that didn't even
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: know each other. And I got thinking about it, and
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: they were actually right. What I do is a system.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: Not that I do everything exactly the same every day,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: but I have a system. From what I wear, what
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: I do, to how I dress. Everything is a system
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: because it's easy. If you have a system, you don't
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: have to think about, well, what am I gonna weigh today?
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: What am I gonna you know, there's there's nothing else
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: to think about. You just follow the system. So that's
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: what in this new book I wrote this past year,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: which is a story book of twenty five of my
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: bucks I shot tracking up here. We're not just here
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: but wherever. I just started some way. I started with
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: my first tracking buck and I wrote twenty five stories.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: But the first chapter in it is all about that
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: system I developed from learning how to navigate the map
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: and compass, learning those skills, clothing, everything, everything is a system.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: And if you follow that, it'll be easier for you,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: you know, like you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: And I tell people put your own personality in the system.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: Don't don't try to be a clone of me, because
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: that will be painful. But it's a it's a it's
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: kind of a guideline is what I'd say, because everybody
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: gonna address a little different Those bodies regulate heat differently
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: and stuff. You know. Mm hm. Is there anything uh
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: important that we haven't touched on when it comes to
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: your system? Any important? Other strategies or things to think about.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: Are things that you do during the day or through
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: the course of the season that we haven't covered, uh,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: not too much. I would just tell people, don't think
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: you gotta um, don't get over analytical people people get uh.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: I call it analysis paralysis because a lot of people
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: read this stuff, you know, they read either my articles
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: or somebody else's whoever else's right side, I don't know,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: but they read all this stuff and maybe they've watched
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: some DVDs on it, daught films, and they get so
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: much information in their head that they cannot make the
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: right decision because they've gotta they gotta there's so many
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: things to sort through. I just tell people, don't don't
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: be like that, don't worry about it. Just pick something
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: because there'll be a hundred decisions to make every day.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: And if you if you have to try to over analyze,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: which one you're gonna pick? And then if it's the
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: wrong one. You think you failed at it. Don't do that.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: Pick something and go because you're gonna learn every day
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: on the track. You're gonna learn what worked and what
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: didn't work, and what works one day might not work
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: the next. It doesn't work all the time. But you've
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: got to go enough. If you I'm telling anybody, if
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: you follow a deer track, a buck track long enough,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: day after day, year after year, I don't care how
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: long it takes, the law of averages is going to
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: catch up to you. It has to, because it's all
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: about catching up to a buck in the right place
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: at the right time in the woods. That's all. That's
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: all killing a buck is. I've gone days and days
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: that I was five minutes late or two minutes earlier
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: my time, and was off in another time. You go
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: out in the next day and your time is perfect.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: You step up over us and old and you look
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: down the other side the bucks right there. It's all timing.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: You've got to catch up to him at the right
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: place to be able to to to be able to
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: kill him. I'll tell you what I um. I'm really
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: interested in trying to do this kind of hunting. You know,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: the more I've read about it and listen to people
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: tell stories like you, it's definitely it definitely seems like
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: a good time and a nice change of pace from
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: sitting in a tree all the time. So um, I'm
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: thinking that my Northern Michigan rifle hunting this year might
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: be more tracking and less sitting. So very helpful stuff. Hell,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate sharing this with us. And if people
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: want to learn more, if people want you out your
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: books or your website or all the different stuff you've
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: got going on, where can they find that. They can
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: find everything at bigwoods bucks dot com. It's pretty simple.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: If they want to contact me my emails there, uh
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: Bigwoods Bucks. I've assembled a team of guys that I
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: did that because I knew everybody wouldn't relate to me,
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: you know, the way I on exactly. You know, because
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of guys that I'm doing seminars.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: They look at me and I'm I'm tall and lanky,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and and they go, I don't think I
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: could keep up with him, and I don't think I
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: could go that fast. Well you don't have to. So
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: I got a bunch of guys that a good deal
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: track is too, and good deal Hunters and they're on
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: the team and they write articles and they do a
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: lot of the same stuff, and so there's something there
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: for everybody. So you can find some articles on the website.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: We're actually we're about the launch within the next week
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: or so here a club side of the website, which
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: is gonna give the hunters a forum to communicate with
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: each other and ask questions and and ask questions of
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: us and stuff, and there'll be a blog on the
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: home page. We're revamping the whole thing. And then all
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: of films, all the short films we produce, are gonna
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: go into that club side and we're gonna chage like
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: three bucks a month of thirty bucks a year for
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: all that to pay for the editing. And then we'll
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: start a podcast here coming right out, and that's probably
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: gonna start within the next week or so too, and
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: that you can find at the website. Actually that will
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: be on iTunes whatever that is, because I don't do it,
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: but I'm told you can get us on iTunes coming up.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you're on iTunes too, right, yep, that's the
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: place to be. So it's good. You'll have your podcast
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: there too. Yeah, we also got if they get to
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: the website, you know, besides books and DVDs and that stuff,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: we've got some other products that relate to the system.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: We We've got our own clothing line designed for tracking
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: the track and jacket and pants and it's actually we
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: had Silent Predator make it with wool rids wool good stuff,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: so something they have for everybody, not just trackers, but
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: any of the hunters that like to hunt in the
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: big woods or anywhere and whatever. We're just trying to
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: help people learn. Awesome. Well, I certainly think you achieved
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: that goal at least today. Hell, I've learned a lot.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: I think I think everyone listening has to. So thank you,
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: Hal for taking the time to do this. And I'm
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna hopefully send you a picture in about
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: ten and a half months, maybe have my first big
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: woods track and buck in in northern Michigan. So fingers
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: crossed for that. You better send me a picture. I
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: hope it happens alright, Hal, Thank you, And that's a wrap, folks,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: so hopefully enjoyed that one. Before we shut this completely down, though,
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: I will just send out my usual ask, which is
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: if you haven't yet, if you could go over to
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: iTunes and leave us a rating or review. It is
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: a very helpful thing for the podcast. It means a lot.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: We appreciate it, so if you can do that, it
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: takes us thirty seconds. And otherwise, just want to thank
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: our partners who helped make all of this possible. So
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: big thanks to Gear Yetie Cooler's, Matthews Archery, Maven Optics,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: hunt Terra Maps. And finally, thank you so much for
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: taking the time to be with me today for tuning
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: in hearing us b us about shed hunting, hearing us
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: talk about big woes hunting. Thanks for being a part
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: of it all, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.